On Saturday, August 8, from 11:00 am to 4:30 pm the Senate House State Historic Site in Kingston will hold a free encampment and activities event. Soldiers of the 150th New York State Volunteer Infantry Regiment will be encamped, performing drills and musket demonstrations, and ready to speak to visitors about camp life and battle. Performances of period music, and the opportunity to learn and participate in period dances, accompanied by live music, will be offered by the 77th Regimental Balladeers and dance instructor Eric Hollman. Quilter Dolly Wodin will demonstrate quilt designs from the period for visitors to make, and kids can enjoy a hands-on, historic craft activity and the chance to engage in wooden musket drills with the soldiers of the 150th. Senate House State Historic Site is located at 296 Fair Street, Kingston, NY 12401.
Senate House State Historic Site is open through October 31, 2009, Wednesday through Saturday, 10am to 5pm, and Sundays 1:00 to 5pm. Senate House State Historic Site is part of a system of parks, recreation areas and historic sites operated by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the site is one of 25 facilities administered by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission in New York and New Jersey. For further information about this and other upcoming events please call the site at (845) 338-2786 or visit the State Parks website at www.nysparks.com.
Ulster County
Henry Hudson, New Netherland, and Atlantic History
Dr. L.H. Roper, Professor of History at SUNY New Paltz and a scholar of international reputation in the field of Atlantic History has announced a symposium, ‘-Henry Hudson, New Netherland, and Atlantic History‘-, at SUNY New Paltz the weekend of 25-26 September, 2009. This host two-day international symposium on “The Worlds of Henry Hudson” is expected to be the premier intellectual event held in conjunction with the celebration of the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the Hudson River. Leading historians from the Netherlands, France, and Germany, as well as the United States will present papers on a series of topics related to Hudson and his times.
The program will include panel discussions, teaching workshops, and two luncheon addresses over two days to be held on the campus of SUNY New Paltz., as set forth below. At each session, two-to-three presenters will give talks on topics closely related to the character of the European exploration and colonization of the Hudson Valley, which arose from Hudson’s voyage, and the historical significance of the issues generated by these phenomena.
The emergence of the transatlantic perspective during the last two decades is a major development in the study of the history of Europe, Africa and the Americas during the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The scholars invited to this conference are among the major figures in advancing this perspective. The conference program is designed to provide an opportunity for the further integration of their work, and its advancement through publication of the papers it generates and by providing a means for secondary and elementary school teachers to incorporate this scholarship into their own classrooms.
A second goal, equally important, is to further the integration of the African, American Indian, and European contexts (“the transatlantic perspective” or “Atlantic history”) into teaching and learning about exploration and “colonial America” in our schools. The conference structure provides for interaction in each session among leading scholars of early modern Africa and Europe and of American Indian societies and current and future elementary and secondary school teachers.
The cost of registering for this conference will be $20/day and $15 per luncheon session. Teachers who wish to attend, with the exception of those in Ulster, Dutchess, and Orange Counties, should register through the Center for Regional Research, Education, and Outreach at SUNY New Paltz. The costs for attending the symposium will be payable directly to CRREO.
Teachers in Ulster, Dutchess, and Orange Counties who wish to attend one or both days should register via MyLearningPlan. Teachers in other counties should register through the Center for Regional Research, Education, and Outreach at SUNY New Paltz. Professional development hours are available for approval. The first fifty teachers who sign up and who have been participants in the Ulster BOCES Teaching American History Summer Institute for at least one week will have their registration fee paid by the TAH grant. Ulster BOCES will notify those registrants that their fee has been paid.
For further information, please contact Lou Roper of the Department of History at [email protected].
Ulster County Dutch Records Database To Go Online
Ulster County Clerk and Quadricentennial Committee Co-Chair, Nina Postupack has announced that a new database “The English Translations of the Dutch Colonial Records” will go online June 12th. The new database features keyword searches of the Dingman Versteeg
In 1895, Kingston Judge Alphonso T. Clearwater had the early Dutch records of his city examined by Dingman Versteeg, the official translator of the Holland Society. Judge Clearwater then pushed to have the records translated at the expense of Ulster County. The translations were indexed shortly after their completion and are the source of the online database “Ulster County Archive’s Deed Book 1,2 & 3 Index.” The new database will be an expanded version that also includes the Dutch Court and Secretary’s Papers volume 1, 2 and 3. These records are the earliest court and land records of Ulster County.
They will be available on line at www.co.ulster.ny.us/archives/database.html
Beacons To Commemorate British Departure
The Hudson Valley Press Online is reporting on plans to mark the 225th anniversary of the evacuation of British troops on November 25, 2008 by lighting a series of five local beacons that “replicate the original signal locations used by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.” The plan is a project of the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, Scenic Hudson, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, the Palisades Parks Conservancy, and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission:
These vital systems summoned the militia in both New York and in neighboring New Jersey and warned residents of the approaching British Redcoats. The types of beacons varied from tar barrels on top of poles, to pyramids, to wooden towers filled with dried grass or hay that could be ignited. The beacons enabled quick and effective communication with troops throughout the lower Hudson River Valley.
Instead of lighting fires, Palisades, the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, and Scenic Hudson will create a symbolic Xenon light display that will light up Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area from Bear Mountain State Park to Beacon. This project is also part of the larger interstate effort with national heritage area partners in New Jersey, the Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area. Six additional Beacons will be lit in New Jersey. The total project area will stretch from Princeton, NJ to Beacon, NY.
The five locations will include:
Bear Mountain State Park, Bear Mountain, NY
Storm King Mountain State Park, Cornwall, NY
Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site, Newburgh, NY
Scenic Hudson’s Mount Beacon, Beacon, NY
Scenic Hudson’s Spy Rock (Snake Hill), New Windsor, NY
While we’re at it, here is a story about Saturday’s relighting of the lamp on top of the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn. It has been for 87 years and commemorates those who died in the British Prison ships in New York Harbor during the American Revolution.
Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Grants Announced
More than 250 schools, grassroots organizations and local governments in the Hudson and Champlain valleys have been awarded “mini grants” to help bring supplemental funds to their preparation and planning for celebrating the 400th anniversary of the historic voyages of Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain, according to the the New York State Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Office (HFCQ).
The announcement coincides with last week’s launch of the new Quadricentennial website. The new site focuses on a listing of the dozens of events being planned by all of the communities in the Hudson and Champlain Valleys and New York City. Also included is a wealth of statewide images, historical information, countless project plans, and opportunities for partnership with the state wide preparations for New York’s 400th.
Over the last ten months, HFCQ has been rallying all communities in the two valleys to become “Quad communities” (including schools, libraries and colleges) and valley businesses and corporations to become “Quad ambassadors,” cultivating organizations, clubs, and cultural institutions to become “Quad partners” and assisting them in initiating Quad events and programs for their memberships, and promoting New York State’s legacy projects in the Champlain Valley, the Hudson Valley and the New York Harbor.
These efforts will help local governments in their preparations for the commemorative year- provide funding for 400th anniversary projects, exhibits and events, and help fund state “signature” events. These include the Walkway over the Hudson project in the Hudson Valley, events on Governor’s Island in the New York Harbor, and the Crown Point lighthouse project on Lake Champlain (co-sponsored with the State Parks Department).
Stretching from Staten Island to the Town of Champlain on the Canadian border, the grant winners represent a wide variety of initiatives, from theatrical productions to research and writing projects to local festivals. Each award is approximately $1,000, funded through a combination of state funds and a generous donation from the Dyson Foundation.
Some examples of the more than 250 projects funded include:
Adirondack Rowers & Scullers (Albany County) for the Albany Rowing Center to build five park benches, outdoor display case and new boat rack at riverside for Quadricentennial events in Albany.
The Field Library (Westchester County) for author Tom Boyle of World’s End to participate in the library’s literacy project, a community wide ‘-read’ of the book with Q&A and a film as well as part of the Quadricentennial.
Saugerties Pro Musica 975 (Ulster County) to contract with a musician to present a concert of HR/HV folksongs commemorating the New York 400th.
American Museum of Natural History (New York County) to present a public program series that will include the Quadricentennial theme, “Explore 400 Years of Progress in the Environment” which will focus on the impact of climate change on the HR Valley.
Cornell Cooperative Extension (of Warren County) to create a Quadricentennial display for the countywide events.
A full list of the more than 250 projects funded is available [PDF].
New Woodstock Museum Opens Today
Built on the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair, the Museum at Bethel Woods includes a 6,278 square foot exhibit gallery space, a 132-seat theater, an events gallery, a museum shop, a 1,000-seat outdoor terrace stage and more.
The Poughkeepsie Journal has some of the best coverage of the new museum including photos and video. According to the paper:
The Museum at Bethel Woods opens Monday. On display are seven high-definition monitors, 15 interactive touch-screen computers, more than 300 objects and photographs and more than 2,000 pieces of music and film, as well as photographs, included in the films and interactive exhibits.
Alan Gerry, the cable television magnate who built Bethel Woods, sees the museum as he viewed a 15,000-seat concert pavilion he opened two years ago on the same property – as an economic engine to help a region of the state that was once flush with tourism.
“We think the addition of the museum to the performing arts center is going to be the catalyst to keep this place open 12 months a year,” Gerry said during opening remarks Wednesday. “It’s going to attract more tourism and that was the whole idea in the beginning, trying to do something to resurrect our community – to put it back on the map.”
The museum’s exhibits take visitors on a journey through the music of the 1960s, explain who played the Woodstock concert, who didn’t play and why. There is an actual school bus painted in psychedelic colors and art, with a film about cross-country journeys to the Woodstock concert projected onto the windshield. And there is a Volkswagen Bug.
On the web you can check out the Woodstock Project, an attempt at a complete Woodstock Discography. You can also take a look at someone’s photos of the original Woodstock here.
