Political History

Archives Partnership Trust to Honor Richard Dreyfuss

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The New York State Archives Partnership Trust and the History channel will host a conversation with Academy Award-winning actor and passionate advocate for strengthening history education in our schools Richard Dreyfuss and nationally prominent Lincoln Scholar Harold Holzer to be held on Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 7:30-8:30pm at The Egg, Center for the Performing Arts, Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York. Mr. Dreyfuss will then be presented with the Empire State Archives and History Award.

The cost for the program is $10 per person (plus handling fees). Tickets are available August 1st. Reservations are required. Tickets can be purchased by calling The Egg Box Office at (518) 473-1845 or online at www.theegg.org.

In advance of the program, a reception to meet Mr. Dreyfuss will be held at The Egg, Center for the Performing Arts, from 5:30-7:00 pm. Reservations will be accepted starting August 2, 2010 by calling the Trust office at (518) 473-7091. Please see the Trust website for reception ticket prices.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

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During Prohibition my grandfather’s brother Denis Warren, a veteran of some of the bloodiest American battles of World War One, was left for dead on the side of Route 9N south of Port Henry on Lake Champlain. He was in the second of two cars of friends returning from Montreal with a small supply of beer. Going through Port Henry local customs agents gave chase and the car he was in hit a rock cut and he was badly injured in the accident. Figuring his was dead, or nearly so, and worried he would go to prison, one of Denis’s best friends rolled him under the guardrail, climbed into the other car, and sped off.

Joe Kennedy, never really enthusiastic about World War One, spent the war as an assistant general-manager of Bethlehem Steel and used the opportunity to buddy up to Franklin D. Roosevelt who was then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. During Prohibition Kennedy went to England and with the help of FDR’s eldest son James Roosevelt secured the exclusive American rights for Gordon’s Dry Gin and Dewar’s Scotch. Contrary to rumors, Kennedy wasn’t a bootlegger, he imported his British booze legally under a permit to distribute medical alcohol. Kennedy was of course, the father of John F. Kennedy.

The story of these two Irish-Americans serves as a kind of microcosm of the story of Prohibition, when all of America seemed upside down. &#8220In almost every respect imaginable, Prohibition was a failure,&#8221 Daniel Okrent writes in Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. &#8220It deprived the government of revenue, stripped the gears of the political system, and imposed profound limitations on individual rights. It fostered a culture of bribery, blackmail, and official corruption. It also maimed and murdered, its excesses apparent in deaths by poison, by the brutality of ill-trained, improperly supervised enforcement officers, and by unfortunate proximity to mob gun battles.&#8221

The medical exemption to Prohibition, along with the sacramental wine exemption, and the fruit exemption for homemade wine and cider, meant that Prohibition was fairly doomed from the start according to Okrent. In fact it’s a wonder that Prohibition even got started. In the late nineteenth century drinking was at an all time high, a central part of American life. But immigration was also at an all time high, along with the Protestant Christian reformers, xenophobia, and racism. An unlikely alliance emerged to battle &#8220Demon Rum&#8221 that included racists (including the Klan), progressives, suffragists, and populists.

Okrent lays out the story of this coalition in a readable way, avoiding much of the political minutiae, while still illuminating the personalities &#8211 people like Mother Thompson, Frances Willard, axe-wielding Carry Nation, bible-thumping Billy Sunday, William Jennings Bryan (who helped bring the Democratic party on board), Wayne Wheeler (the long-forgotten man considered the father of Prohibition), and Mabel Willebrandt (the Assistant US Attorney General despised by the nation’s drinkers).

The usual suspects are all here: the rise of organized crime from scattered minor street gangs, the rum runners contributions to boat design, the rise of Sam Bronfman’s Seagrams empire. The most interesting parts of the book however, detail how leading suffragists sought the vote after being denied leadership positions in the temperance movement and then used that vote to secure first the income tax (considered crucial to weaning the government off the alcohol excise tax teet) and finally Prohibition. Okrent also clearly presents the brewers’ failure to band together with the distillers, and their lack of action against the Prohibitionist until it was too late. Mostly German-Americans, World War One sealed their fates.

Also illuminating is Okrent’s telling of how the Eighteenth Amendment, which along with the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery is the only constitutional amendment to deal with personal property and the only one to have been repealed, came to be reversed. Last Call chalks it up to a few primary factors. The ease of access to booze which was no longer regulated, and so could be found everywhere, not just at bars (the old joke went &#8220Remember before Prohibition? When you couldn’t get a drink on Sunday?&#8221). The presidential campaign of solidly wet New York Governor Al Smith (defeated by mostly dry anti-Catholics) that changed the political mood of the country’s immigrants [video]. The Great Depression, and the need for the billions in excise tax (which helped fund the New Deal) that gave Repeal a push. But the biggest factor was perhaps the right-wing wealthy anti-tax (and future anti-Roosevelt) Pierre S. DuPont who believed so profoundly that Repeal would mean an elimination of the income tax that he bankrolled the fight himself. Fundamentally though, it was the Democratic title-wave that swept FDR into office [music] that changed the make-up of the Congress that allowed the crucial Repeal vote.

Okrent avoids the obvious comparisons to today’s Drug War, but even the causal reader, can’t miss them. The seemingly limitless supply, the institutionalized hypocrisy of legal tobacco and alcohol while pot smokers go to overcrowded prisons. The overzealous and expensive enforcement on the one hand (particularly in the inner cities), alongside marijuana buyers clubs and lax enforcement that amounts to a defacto local option.

It took about 10 years to understand that Prohibition only increased lawlessness, corruption, greed, and violence. Last Call leaves the astute reader wondering how long it will take us to come to the same conclusion about the War on Drugs.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Madison Rediscovered Through Lost Law Notes

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The unearthing of law notes made by a young James Madison sheds new light on the shaping of the mind of the man. Rediscovered by Mary Sarah Bilder, Professor of Law at Boston College, the 39 sewn-together pages of notes on common law cases were found among the papers of Thomas Jefferson at the Library of Congress.

Long thought to be Jefferson’s notes, Bilder’s painstaking study of the handwriting, style of language, summarising technique, paper watermarks and numbering system has led her to conclude that the notes were in fact Madison’s. Madison served as the 4th United States President- his Vice President was New YOrk State’s first Governor, George Clinton.

Bilder’s account of the discovery, and what it reveals about Madison, is published in the latest edition of the legal history journal Law and History Review, published on behalf of the American Society for Legal History by Cambridge University Press. Bilder contends that the law notes demand a reassessment of Madison who, unlike other important early national leaders such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, had been thought to have had little interest in law beyond some desultory early studies.

The notes cover a wide range of topics including criminal law, the make-up of courts, elections, how to accurately measure time and even sex and relationships.

The error of assuming the notes were made by Jefferson is not surprising, writes Bilder, as the two men’s handwriting was very similar: “Late in life, Madison successfully ‘faked’ Jefferson’s handwriting in altering a letter&#8230-.and the two men exchanged numerous letters.”

Provenance is also supportive of Madison’s authorship of the notes, which came to the Library of Congress in 1931 from Mary M. McGuire of New York City, grandchild of James C. McGuire, the administrator of the Dolley Payne Madison estate and the largest collector of Madison manuscripts.

In revealing something of the ‘mind of Madison’ Bilder admits that there is disappointment for any reader, “looking for a protoconstitutional mind”. But she does find a foreshadowing of the Fifth Amendment in Madison’s notes on a case of an indictment for treason: “you shall not ask a witness or a juror any question yt wd make a man discover what tends to his shame, crime, infamy or misdemeanor.” He also made notes on cases relating to Habeas Corpus, legislatures and elections.

Many of the notes relate to Madison’s contemporary concerns during his work in the Virginia legislature, including the possible make-up of court systems. He avoided anything that was not relevant to post-revolutionary America such as uniquely English forms of property law.

The private Madison also emerges from the notes as he appears to seek enlightenment on matters in his personal situation. As an eldest son, he would become his father’s executor and the two lengthiest notes involve the settling of estates. Given his dependence on the Virginia legislature for a living, he was, not surprisingly, interested in cases about salaries for various offices.

That the Notes have survived at all Bilder describes as ‘serendipitous’, for, at the end of his life, Madison destroyed many of his papers. She argues that the restoration of the notes to the authorship of Madison reveals the inaccuracy of the long-held view that he had little interest in law: “These notes have been missing for over a century, and their loss contributed to the sense that Madison must not have been that interested in law. Now located, these notes reveal Madison’s significant grasp of law.

Madison also made a surprising number of notes on cases relating to sex and relationships. Perhaps recalling erstwhile love, Kitty Floyd, who broke off their engagement, he made notes on breaches of promise to marry. He also made notes on cases involving cohabitation and seemed particularly interested in bastards. Bilder concludes wryly: “What motivated his fascination with the subject has to remain purely speculative.”

David B. Mattern, Research Professor and Senior Associate Editor of the Papers of James Madison at the University of Virginia, refers to the research as &#8220a remarkable feat of detective work&#8221.

The entire article is available free of charge at http://journals.cambridge.org/bilder.

Portrait of James Madison from the White House Collection.

19th Vice President William Wheeler to be Honored

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The public is invited to Celebrate the life of Franklin County native and U.S. Vice President William A. Wheeler with the Franklin County Historical & Museum Society and the Malone Lodge of Elks on Saturday, June 19 at 10am.

The annual Wheeler memorial event will be held at Morningside Cemetery, Raymond St., Malone, and will feature a gun salute, wreath-laying and tribute by Felix Miller. Follow the signs to the Wheeler gravesite. Refreshments to follow at the House of History Museum, 51 Milwaukee St., Malone. Free and open to the public.

William Almon Wheeler was born in Malone, NY, a son of Almon Wheeler, a pioneer of Northern New York. Having worked his way through Franklin Academy, Wheeler entered the University of Vermont, where he spent two years. He returned to Malone where he studied law, and was admitted to the bar as an attorney. Wheeler became town clerk at the age of 21, Superintendent of Schools and, in 1846, Franklin County District Attorney.

In 1849 he was elected as a Whig to the NYS Assembly, where he served successfully two terms. Refusing a third term, he entered business in Malone. In 1857 Wheeler was elected to the NYS Senate as a Republican. In 1860 he was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he gave unswerving support to President Lincoln. In 1867 Wheeler was a delegate to the NYS Constitutional Convention, of which he was President. When Rutherford B. Hayes was nominated for the Presidency in 1876, Wheeler was chosen unanimously as his running mate. Wheeler served as Vice President of the United States from 1877-1881.

Contact FCHMS at 518-483-2750 for more information.

Photo: U.S. Vice President William A. Wheeler (1819-1887)

Exhibit: John Lindsay, The Reinvention New York

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America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention New York, an exhibition on view at the Museum of the City of New York from May 5 through October 3, 2010, will examine the controversial career and dramatic times of New York’s 103rd mayor. The exhibition presents John V. Lindsay’s efforts to govern a city that was undergoing dramatic changes and that was at the center of the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s- it will highlight Mayor Lindsay’s ambitious initiatives to redefine New York’s government, economy, culture, and public life. Through his outspoken championship of urban values, commitment to civil rights, and opposition to the Vietnam war, Lindsay emerged as a national figure in a troubled and exhilarating era- yet the costs of his approach included the alienation of many members of the white working class and an increasingly out-of-control city budget.

America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York will be launched with a symposium moderated by Sam Roberts on May 4, 2010 at 5:30 pm. to be followed by an opening reception. A companion publication of the same title accompanies the exhibition- it is co-published by the Museum and the Columbia University Press and is edited by Sam Roberts.

Exhibition Overview: “City in Crisis”

The exhibition will open with a sketch of the problems facing the city in 1965, the year that Lindsay first ran for mayor, in which a New York Herald Tribune series declared New York to be a “city in crisis.” Problems included poverty, racial tensions, a failing education system, crumbling infrastructure, and questionable accounting practices. Television commercials created by David Garth for the Lindsay campaign will be on view at the beginning of the exhibition- these highlighted his youth and charismatic good looks. He campaigned as a fresh alternative to the Democratic establishment and backroom politics, and as a candidate ready to take on the problems of the city, to embrace minority communities, and to use government to change New York for the better. Lindsay’s bold campaign will be documented through posters, fliers, bumper stickers, buttons, cartoons, and documents including a handwritten schedule showing his speaking schedule in New York’s ethnic neighborhoods.

The exhibition will go on to show that Lindsay’s inauguration as mayor threw him directly into a cauldron of race, class, and political tensions. This section of America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York will open with his first day in office, when the first transit strike against the New York City Transit Authority paralyzed buses and subways for 12 days. The dramatic confrontation between Lindsay and Michael J. Quill of the Transit Workers Union highlighted the risks of Lindsay’s new labor strategy, and ultimately, despite Mayor Lindsay’s tough talk, the settlement led to a victory for the TWU that paved the way for expensive contracts with other municipal workers during both of Lindsay’s two terms.

“Two Cities, Separate and Unequal”

In the years that followed, Lindsay engaged other volatile issues of a city transformed by increasing unrest. A major focus of the exhibition will be his bold initiatives with the black community- through photographs, video, and original documents, the exhibition will show Lindsay’s commitment to reaching out to minority neighborhoods and to addressing the problems of what he called “two cities, separate and unequal.” A particularly dramatic part of this section of the exhibition will be a rare photograph of Lindsay visiting the streets of Harlem on the night of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and video of his press conference the next day. Lindsay’s relations with black New Yorkers are credited with helping to prevent wide scale riots like those that devastated other American cities.

On the other hand, as the exhibition shows, Lindsay’s efforts to aid the black community and to enhance community control led to racially charged controversies such as the fight over civilian review of the police, the Ocean Hill-Brownville school crisis, and white middle-class anger over failure to plow the snow from the streets in the outer boroughs that almost cost him reelection in 1969. Yet at the same time, in the atmosphere of the growing militancy of the late 1960s, as expressed in the movements for women’s rights, gay rights, Latino rights, and against the Vietnam war, Lindsay emerged as a hero to many because of his support of the antiwar movement, his defense of free speech, and his championship of justice for the disempowered. The exhibition showcases pro- and anti-Lindsay picket signs, fliers, buttons, and photographs of demonstrations on a variety of causes.

Another section of the exhibition will explore Lindsay’s ambitious efforts to remake city government for the people and by the people. His approach included expanding the role of government in public welfare, including: increased services, ranging from open enrollment in the city universities to air-conditioning subway cars- ambitious public health initiatives, such as anti-lead poisoning campaigns and drug addiction clinics- pioneering regulatory agencies to protect the public good, such as the nation’s first Environmental Protection agency and the nation’s first Consumer Affairs agency- and groundbreaking focus on urban design in planning, creating special zoning districts and using such tools as incentive zoning and banking air rights to leverage private development dollars to achieve public ends. This section of the exhibition will show striking renderings of built and proposed initiatives such as the proposed Madison Avenue pedestrian mall, Manhattan landing, and the South Street Special District. It will also highlight Lindsay’s emphasis on community participation and decentralization, through tools such as “Little City Halls” in the neighborhoods and community planning boards.

These new and expanded programs were expensive, however, and the exhibition will explore the spiraling costs of welfare, education, generous labor contracts, and other municipal services, along with the diminution of resources to pay for them, as the national economy entered recession and the support of the federal and state government was scaled back. The exhibition will present the debate over the management of the budget by Lindsay and the city comptroller, Abraham Beame, who would go on to be the 104th mayor of the city and in whose term the financial chicanery involving the city’s budget brought New York to the brink of bankruptcy. The exhibition will conclude with an examination of the evaluation of Lindsay’s effect on the city.

A number of other major initiatives will be taking place in conjunction with the exhibition- these include a PBS documentary, The Lindsay Years, which is scheduled to air on WNET/Channel 13 on May 6th. In addition to public programs organized by the Museum of the City of New York throughout the run of the exhibition, a series of special programs are being organized by the Museum in conjunction with other New York institutions. With John Jay College of Criminal Justice (www.jjay.cuny.edu), the topic of criminal justice and law enforcement will be discussed- with the Paley Center for Media (www.paleycenter.org) Mayor Lindsay’s relationship with the press will be explored and with the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College (the Mayor’s urban management innovations will be reassessed). For information and reservations, visit www.jjay.cuny.edu, www.paleycenter.org, and/or www.zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu.

Photo: John Lindsay. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Earth Day: A Revolution 40 Years In The Making

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On Earth Day 1970, people around the country, mostly college students, demonstrated on behalf of environmental causes. Forty years later, the environmental movement has come into the mainstream and secured state and federal agency leadership positions. More importantly, the movement has significantly improved the quality of our rivers, lakes and forests and in doing so has provided for the proliferation of local wildlife. While there are certainly challenges that remain &#8211 invasive species, inappropriate development, toxic exposures, nitrate and storm water management, climate change, the plight of amphibians, migratory birds, and bats &#8211 the environmental successes of the last 40 years should not be underestimated.

By and large, the first Earth Day was much like those that have followed: politicians, celebrities, concerts, environmental fairs, and the like. But Earth Day 1970 was a radical proposition in a time before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded, and before there were state sanctioned bodies like the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to protect the environment. At Boston’s Logan Airport, where a few hundred demonstrators had gathered in what a CBS reporter called a &#8220thoroughly peaceful and non-disruptive demonstration&#8221, police charged the crowd and arrested 13.

In the 40 years since that first Earth Day the Adirondack region has seen a revolution in the way we interact with our environment. Sure, we can point to the founding of DEC (1970), the establishment of the EPA (1971), the Clean Air Act (1970), and the Clean Water Act (1972), State Environmental Quality Review Act (1980), the Superfund Law (1980), and the Environmental Protection Fund (1993) but there has been a leadership revolution as well. Today, Pete Grannis, who was part of the first Earth Day demonstrations, is now the head of the DEC. Judith Enck, the state’s leading environmental activist in the 1980s, is now the Administrator of EPA’s Region 2.

Changes in the natural environment have been extraordinary. The Hudson River, once an open sewer where no one dared to boat, never-mind swim or fish, now bustles with recreation activities in summer. According to the DEC, the number of seriously polluted waters in the state has fallen by 85% and Sulfur Dioxide pollution is down by 90%, with a corresponding improvement in Acid Rain.

Successes we don’t typically consider include the closure of outdated and poorly located landfills (more than 100 in Adirondacks alone), the elimination of the tire dumps (including more than 27 million tires statewide), the cleaning up of Superfund and brownfield sites (1,800 statewide) and the thousands of water bodies large and small around the state that have been cleaned-up in the last 40 years through waste-water management.

We may not consider those victories as much as we should, but local wildlife certainly has. In 1970 there was just one occupied Bald Eagle nest in New York State, in 2010 there are 173. Eagles and other raptors we rarely saw in the 1970s and 1980s, birds like the peregrine falcon, are now fairly frequent sights- ravens and osprey have returned to the Adirondacks. Wild turkeys have exploded from about 25,000 in 2010 to 275,000 today, and so turkey hunting has returned to the Adirondacks. Native trout have been returned to more than 50 ponds according to the DEC, and the average number of fish species has increased by a third offering increased angling opportunities. Beaver, fisher, and otter have flourished in cleaner, more diverse waters and so trapping seasons have returned for those species. In 1970 there were no Moose in the Adirondacks, today there are 400 to 500 in the region.

Clean water, clean air, and open spaces were the demands at the first Earth Day in 1970. Those demands were met by legions of combative corporations, industry alliances, business groups, chambers of commerce and their attorneys. A look at a local paper on any given day shows that those battles continue, but 40 years has shown that the environmental movement has been an enormous success. Despite the attacks and &#8220enviro-nazi&#8221 insults, the former hippies, political greens, organization environmentalists, and wildlife conservationists who have made up the environmental movement have much to be proud of.

Illustration: Earth Day 1970 Poster

Prominent Abenaki Opposes VT Tribe Recognitions

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Denise Watso, a descendant of the legendary Abenaki Chief Louis Watso who lived in Lake George Village for a time and figures prominently in Native American life there in the 19th century, has come out in opposition to Vermont state recognition several Abenaki bands and tribes. In March a recognition bill [pdf] made it out of the Vermont Senate’s Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs.

At least fifteen other American states have recognized resident native people as American Indian Tribes, without federal recognition. In 2006, a similar effort by the Vermont General Assembly fell short. Charles Delaney-Megeso, chair of the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs (VCNAA) supports the bill. The text of the bill describing it’s intent and Watso’s letter in opposition are below- Delaney-Megso’s letter of support can be found here.

Text of the bill that describes it’s intent:

This bill proposes to recognize the following tribes as the original Western Abenaki Indian tribes residing in Vermont: the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi St. Francis Sokoki Band, composed of the Missisquoi, St. Francis, and Sokoki Bands- the Koasek Traditional Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation- the Nulhegan Band of the Abenaki Nation, also known as the Northern Coosuk/Old Philip’s Band- and the ELNU Abenaki Tribe of the Koasek. The bill also proposes to amend the composition of the Vermont commission on Native American affairs, and to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Letter from Denise Watso:

I humbly request that members of the state legislatures of Vermont oppose S.222, a bill designed to confer state recognition upon groups who claim the rights, lands, and ancestors of Abenaki people without offering any proof to support these claims. I further request that the House Committee on General, Housing and Military Affairs allow testimony from historically-known Abenaki people regardless of whether their primary residence is in Vermont, New York, Canada or elsewhere. We are the &#8220Original Vermonters.&#8221

As a historically-known Abenaki person with documented evidence in the records of Vermont, (in the mid 1800s, John Watso, my grandfather’s grandfather, shared many Champlain Valley place-names in the Abenaki language with Rowland Robinson), part of our Abenaki original territories, I would like to voice my grave concerns with this bill and the impacts it will have on Abenaki people. How can the Vermont legislature pass such a genocidal law, removing my people from the history books and denying us our rights? How can they accept the word of people who refuse to provide evidence of how they are connected to historically-known Abenaki families? How can this be anything but an abandonment of their responsibilities to the Abenaki people and to all Vermonters, Indian and non-Indian?

Indian law is not the jurisdiction of state government, and our territories extend beyond the boundaries of states and countries. However state recognition and standing committees can accomplish much good for us all. All historically-known Abenaki people should be recognized by Vermont’s government as part of a sovereign nation, and as partners moving into the future.

These new groups such as the &#8220Elnu&#8221, the &#8220Koasek&#8221, the &#8220St. Francis-Sokoki&#8221, and others should be asked to provide their evidence rather than have their claims accepted without question. Just a few years ago, Vermont’s Attorney General and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs found no evidence that this last group, the &#8220St. Francis-Sokoki&#8221, were anything more than a social group. The first group, the &#8220Elnu&#8221, are well-known reenactors. Some Indians are reenactors, but being a reenactor does not make you Indian and therefore elgible for the possiblity of Federal Recognition.

The burden of proof must be on these new claimants to our Abenaki heritage, and Vermont’s political officials should not allow such a great travesty to pass with the stroke of a pen. These groups are allowed to be make claims based on family assumptions and declarations of Indian heritage, this is nothing more than self-identification to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the entity that determines and denied the &#8220St.Francis group&#8221. The Bill to be decided by the Vermont government is not equipped to make such determinations, possibly perpetrating violence against the original Abenaki of Vermont.

We are a historically documented people. We were never in hiding as the storyline has been woven to support the baseless claims of self-identified &#8220Abenaki&#8221. We have suffered the loss of our lands, the denial of our indigenous rights, the creation of an international border, warfare, poverty, oppressive governments, residential schools, racism and so much more. And now outsiders dictate our history to us and demand to be recognized at our expense. Why? So THEY can sell baskets and traditional arts which WE have long produced so that we might survive generation after generation. So THEY can access Federal funds to teach their children about OUR ancestors? So THEY can learn to speak OUR first language? So THEY can continue to claim the bones of OUR ancestors?

This is contrary to the spirit of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples endorsed by S.222. It is not too late, however, to address the injustices faced by generations of my people. Now is the time for Vermont’s elected leaders to work with historically-known Abenaki people to establish new relationships that respect our indigenous rights and our human dignity, and that strive to secure a better future for all the residents of our ancient homeland.

Our ancestor’s voices will be heard as we continue to speak and keep our names in honor of them. Abenaki names are still alive and spoken, it is not a hidden secret as these self identified claim. The legislators of Vermont must allow us to voice our grave concerns. This Bill will have the biggest impact and detriment on our Abenaki community, children’s future and ancestor’s legacy.

We will proudly share our Abenaki history and historically known names with the Vermont State legislators.

Sincerely,

Denise L. Watso (wajo)

NYCs Trinity Wall Church Offers New Blog, Online Resources

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Trinity Wall Street, the Episcopal Church in Lower Manhattan founded in 1697, has started a new blog. The Archivist’s Mailbag is an effort to publicize the archives and attract scholarly researchers interested in the church’s long and complex history. Multimedia Producer Leah Reddy says that &#8220We like to say that the archives are &#8216-the history of New York that nobody knows’, as they only recently became fully accessible and they stretch back to the earliest days of New York City history.&#8221

Trinity Wall Street’s archives go back to 1695, making them an excellent resource for students of history&#8211as well as those who want to shape the future. Trinity’s Archive was made fully accessible for the first time in 2003. In addition to its own history and the history of the city, Trinity’s records shed light on the development of the Episcopal Church and the Dioceses of New York. As landowner since 1705, its archives detail the stories of the New York neighborhoods now known as Tribeca and the West Village. Trinity’s congregants have included Alexander Hamilton and John Jay- among its tenants were Aaron Burr and John Jacob Astor.

Information about the scope of the archives can be found online as well as a guide to the holdings.

There is also an interactive timeline and an interactive search-the-churchyard feature.

NYS Museum: Womens History Exhibit During March

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In celebration of Women’s History Month, the New York State Museum will open a small exhibition March 1 featuring artifacts and images from the woman’s suffrage movement of the early 20th century. &#8220Women Who Rocked the Vote&#8221 will be open through March in the Museum’s front lobby window.

The exhibition chronicles the history of the suffrage movement, which was officially launched when Elizabeth Cady Stanton added the demand for equal suffrage to the Declaration of Sentiments at the first woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls that she helped organize. Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, the declaration condemned male tyranny. It also claimed for women “all the rights and privileges” of citizenship. News of the convention sparked controversy and helped ignite a national movement.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a large wooden wagon that was once covered in suffrage banners and hand-painted signs as suffrage activists used the wagon as both a prop and a speaker’s platform. There also are historic images and a large painted banner carried in a massive suffrage parade up Fifth Avenue in New York City. The parade came just 10 days before the November 1917 election which gave women the right to vote in New York State. Two years later the state ratified the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution that prohibited sex-based restrictions on the right to vote.

The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Founded in 1836, the museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the U.S. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open daily from 9:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

Photo: Suffrage Parade, NYC 1912

NYS Archives: Rights of Women in Early New York

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The New York State Archives is providing teachers and students with online access to historical records that illuminate the history of women’s rights in New York State from its earliest days as New Netherland through the mid 19th century through it’s quarterly online Document Showcase program which highlights a topic from state history using records from the Archives.

Each Showcase includes sample documents, an historical sketch and links to educational activities for classroom use. The topics are based upon the State Education Department’s core curriculum for 7th and 8th grade social studies as well as special events of that quarter. The educational activities are created by a teacher and correlate to New York State learning standards. Each Showcase also provides links within the State Archives’ website for further information on the topic.

In addition, because many early documents are difficult to read, translations and transcriptions are provided where necessary. This quarter’s Document Showcase on women’s rights can be found on the Archives website at www.archives.nysed.gov, and includes an excerpt of a marriage contract from 1643, a petition by a widow’s sons that she be granted a letter of administration from 1670, a law excerpt from 1710 classifying women as equals of minors and those “not of Sound mind,” and a law excerpt from 1848 protecting the property of married women.

Photo: Excerpt from the Laws of New York from 1848, Chapter 200, allowing women to own and manage real property separate from their husbands. Courtesy the New York State Archives.