Category Archives: State History

State History, Stewardship

History on a Roll at New York State Parks

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As of part preserving New York’s heritage, State Parks recently unrolled a bit of history in the story of a former 20th century paper factory complex in Albany once owned by a New York native who invented modern toilet paper.

Today, the 222,120 square-foot red brick structure on Erie Boulevard, visible to thousands of passing motorists daily on Interstate-787, is a warehouse furniture and home goods retail store. It is now being reimagined as urban apartments with space for a smaller store, with its rebirth fueled in part by state and federal historic rehabilitation tax credits.

Such credits are available to commercial properties once a site is added to the state and federal Registers of Historic Places, which is coordinated by the Historic Preservation Office within State Parks. In March 2022, the former Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company manufacturing building was recommended by the state Board of Historic Preservation for addition to the registers, opening the door for millions of dollars in rehabilitation tax credits to support the transformation of this historic structure.

The former Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company plant in the city of Albany, now a warehouse furniture and home goods store. The building will be undergoing a $65 million rebuilding as a mixture of apartments and retail space, supported in part by state and federal rehabilitation tax credits. Below, an interior view of the sprawling building, which was once the nation’s largest manufacturer of toilet paper and paper towels.

Setting the stage for such credits is a critical way that State Parks helps protect and preserve New York’s heritage, by making it more attractive for developers to preserve and reuse historic structures, rather than bypassing such valuable assets to build new elsewhere.

According to recent reporting in the Albany Times Union, developers recently obtained city approval to start a $65 million rehabilitation project that will build up to 260 apartments in the building. Other planned upgrades include a gym, a pool, a beach volleyball court, gardens and a dog park.

But back in 1918, when the first section of this paper goods mill opened in Albany, the factory represented the vision of a Columbia County native, Seth Wheeler, who several decades earlier had made his fortune by inventing a new way to make and dispense toilet paper and paper towels that is essentially unchanged to this day.

Wheeler’s simple yet profound innovation was making paper into a long continuous sheet with perforations that could be easily torn and then putting a perforated sheet on a roll to be easily dispensed. Up to that point, what was then called “wrapping paper” was sold and packaged in pre-cut flat sheets bundled and tied together, which made it more expensive to produce and more difficult for consumers to use.

How could Wheeler have known, when he in 1871 patented a machine to make rolled and perorated toilet paper and later the toilet paper dispenser in 1884 and other related improvements afterward, that he was starting a bathroom debate that continues to this day as to how to hang the paper from the roll _ with the first sheet from the front or the back?

The story of Wheeler and the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company, which he founded in 1877, represents a time when the city of Albany, with its docks on the Hudson River, had easy access to lumber and later paper pulp to make paper goods. His company flourished, with branches in major U.S. cities, as well as in London and Paris. The company held a pulp mill and forests in Nova Scotia and a plant in England.

Wheeler’s new factory in Albany represented the company’s increasing success, which had grown so much that by 1925, the facility employed 1,000 workers to make up to 30,000 miles of toilet paper and paper towels each day for sale to customers around the world. By that point, the company had become the first in America to mass advertise toilet paper, pointing out that the “W” in its initials also stood for “welfare,” given that its product promoted public health and public sanitation.

This advertising lithograph for A.P.W. brand toilet paper dates to about 1900. The Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company was one of the first to nationally advertise toilet paper. (Photo credit- Albany Institute of History and Art, Digital Image ID 898)
Rose Barcomb stands in front of her machine at the Albany plant in this 1944 edition of the company newsletter. As World War II was raging, the caption calls Rose a “home front soldier” with her husband serving in the military overseas.

Seth Wheeler died in 1925, and his business was taken over by his two sons. In 1930, the company was sold to Roger W. Babson, an eccentric financial analyst, investor, and Massachusetts native who oversaw several expansions of the plant. In 1950, Babson sold an interest in the company to a New York City industrialist, who shortly afterward merged it with a larger Chicago rival. That led to a series of financial setbacks, and the shrinking company was sold again in 1957, after which it focused on commercial-grade towels and tissues. The final blow came in 1964, after the plant lost its largest customer and was forced to close.

The massive brick plant, constructed to be fire-resistant, was used for storage until 1985, when the current business of home furniture and other goods opened.

And that brings the story back to March 2022, when the State Historic Preservation Board recommended adding the former Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company and 20 other properties to the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Also recommended were other examples of New York State history including early automobile manufacturing and sales sites in Buffalo and Syracuse, a cemetery in the Mohawk Valley that includes the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, and the only remaining 19th-century textile mill in the Lansingburgh neighborhood of Troy, once known as the “Collar City.”

The State and National Registers are the official lists of buildings, structures, districts, landscapes, objects, and sites significant in the history, architecture, archaeology, and culture of New York State and the nation. There are more than 120,000 historic properties throughout the state listed on the National Register of Historic Places, individually or as components of historic districts. Property owners, municipalities, and organizations from communities throughout the state sponsored the nominations.

Once recommendations are approved by the Commissioner, who serves as the State Historic Preservation Officer, the properties are listed on the New York State Register of Historic Places and nominated to the National Register of Historic Places, where they are reviewed and, once approved, entered on the National Register.

The next time someone questions how to hang the toilet paper roll, remember: That debate was started a long time ago in Albany, New York.

An early advertisement for the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Co. (Photo credit – Redbubble)

Cover shot – Toilet paper rolls from the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company from 1935. (Photo credit – Albany Institute of History and Art) All images NYS Parks unless otherwise noted.

Post by Brian Nearing, Deputy Public Information Officer, NYS Parks

Cool Science, Historic Sites, Park History, State History

A New Light on Old Flowers

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Inside Grant Cottage State Historic Site, where former President Ulysses S. Grant died of cancer on July 23, 1885 after spending his final weeks penning his memoirs, national grief remains frozen in time in the form of flowers.

Now nearly 140 years old, five different Victorian-era funerary floral displays in the parlor draw different reactions from visitors, ranging from “amazing” to “creepy.” But given that relatively few examples from that era survive today, these displays are also a rare look into the past.

Ulysses S. Grant on the front porch at Grant Cottage, with his wife, Julia, by his side. Grant was racing against his terminal cancer to finish his memoirs as a way to provide for his family.

While flowers have long been part of burial rituals, it was the tragic death toll of the American Civil War that ushered in the golden age of arranged floral tributes, when such displays became common for soldiers’ funerals.

Upon Grant’s death, such expressions of mourning for a leader who meant so much to Union victory began arriving at the cottage, which is located on Mount Macgregor in Saratoga County, about an hour by car north of Albany. One tribute still on display in the parlor was in the form of an oversized pillow, provided by Union veterans in Philadelphia from the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) that Grant had commanded two decades earlier.

A composite image of the floral pillow arrangement, with its appearance today on the left, and a photograph taken in the late 19th century at the right.

A reporter noted, “Almost every train which arrived at Mt. McGregor has brought beautiful floral mementos from Grand Army Posts and other organizations, and also from personal friends…” making the modest cottage “fragrant with flowers.”

Perhaps the most impressive piece was the enormous six-foot-high “Gates Ajar” tribute which rested in front of the fireplace. Likely custom-built, it was sent by family friend Leland Stanford of California – a native of Watervliet, Albany County who went on to become California Governor and later a U.S. Senator from that state. Its design depicted the gates of heaven, a popular theme of tributes in that era.   

The “Gates Ajar” floral arrangement, to the right, with the pillow and cross arrangements on the table to the left. Lighting in the room is normally kept dim to protect the display from potential degradation.

For decades, these displays have remained untouched and undisturbed in the cottage parlor, losing their fragrance and much of their color faded, but otherwise intact, other than being understandably dusty. Last year, these artifacts came to the attention of historical florist expert Robert Treadway (co-author of A Centennial History of the American Florist), who visited in August 2021  to inspect  under the supervision of conservators from the New York State Bureau of Historic Sites and site staff.

Treadway immediately cleared up two common misconceptions about the displays _  that they were prepared using fresh flowers which dried over time and  had been coated in wax as a preservative, neither of which were the case.

Treadway also found that the most prevalent flowers used were immortelles (Helichrysum), a species in the sunflower family also known as everlastings for their long-lasting nature, which had been dried before use.  In the Victorian era, immortelle flowers symbolized remembrance and hope in everlasting life, especially to the families of the deceased.

Historical florist expert Robert Treadway, right, joined by State Parks Conservator Heidi Miksch, examines the floral funerary arrangements at Grant Cottage State Historic Site.

Everlastings were frequently shipped to the United States from Europe and dyed various colors for use by florists. Bunches would be wired to a small stick and inserted into moss which filled a wire framework to create the tributes. It was a painstaking process that involved numerous assistants. Since the displays for Grant were designed only for short-term use, wax coatings on the flowers were deemed unnecessary and not used, according to Treadway’s inspection.     

Given that the delicate nature of these artifacts, Treadway and State Parks staff discussed how to best protect and preserve such historic objects for the years to come. Various options were discussed, including coatings, enclosures, and environmental controls, each method with its benefits and drawbacks.

Representing a nation’s mourning over the loss of a war hero and leader, the arrangements reflect a uniquely Victorian outlook on death and the hereafter, each with its own specific meaning.

The “Gates Ajar” symbolized the gates of Heaven, reassuring the grieving that their lost loved one was destined for a better place that, with the gate left ajar so they could follow and be reunited. The pillow set piece represented peace, relief, and eternal rest from the trials of the physical world.

Two floral pieces feature a cross, commonly used as symbols of  Christian tenets of grace, forgiveness, and salvation. Two pieces incorporate an anchor, another favorite Christian symbol representing hope amid trial with God being the “anchor of the soul.” One piece features a heart along with the anchor and cross. The heart symbolized the everlasting love of Christ but also the love of those in mourning for the deceased.

The floral cross with sword.

Two pieces – the pillow and one of the crosses – also feature a sword, which reflected General Grant’s military career, as well as the virtues of justice, fortitude, and courage.  

Victorian set pieces showcased the artistry and creativity of florists during that period. One of the best-known florists, Adolph Le Moult, operating out of New York City, created one of the largest floral pieces ever made for an event in Grant’s honor during a visit to Philadelphia in 1879. Le Moult also created elaborate floral tributes for Grant’s funeral in New York City in 1885.

The goal of florists in the 19th century was not just making impressive arrangements but also ensuring they would last. Florists boasted in advertisements with statements such as, “I can so perfectly preserve even the most delicate flowers that they will last forever.”

Floral funerary displays line Grant’s Tomb in Upper Manhattan to mark the year after his death.

Preserved funeral mementos from the Victorian era can be found in public and private collections throughout the world. For example, wax-coated and encased floral pieces from the 1881 funeral of James Garfield are displayed at his home in Mentor, Ohio.

What truly makes the tributes at Grant Cottage unique is their sheer scale and survival to the present despite never have been coated in wax, encased or otherwise protected from the onset or in the decades since. Treadway indicated that the two largest pieces are larger than any others known to exist.

Flowers continued to be used in tribute to Grant by his widow, Julia. While staying at the family’s Long Branch, New Jersey cottage, she continued remembering her greatest love through this mourning ritual:

“On an antique cabinet… is a bust in plaster of the brave old soldier… Behind it hangs a wreath of white immortelles -a widow’s first tribute to memory- with a circlet of white ribbon still clinging to it, typical of wedded love. A slender glass filled with geraniums… Every morning this tiny bouquet is gathered… by the lonely wife who kisses the blossoms and tenderly places them before the face of her hero. The faded flowers are dried and, mixed with their own fragrance, go to make those memory-bags so highly prized by the friends on whom they are bestowed.”

For now, these  treasures at Grant Cottage will continue to transport visitors to a moment when family, friends, and a nation were in mourning for an American icon. They are tributes not only to a man,  but to the character and ideals he lived by. These aging blossoms speak to humanity’s enduring need to grieve and desire to memorialize those they love and respect.

Ulysses S. Grant, and his wife, Julia.

Post by Ben Kemp, Friends of Ulysses S. Grant Cottage Operations Manager

These , our Earth’s perennial flowers—
The fadeless blooms by Poets sung,
Songs, that from Homer’s Age till ours,
Down the aisles of Time have rung—
In many an emblem do we weave
For passionate Remembrance’ sake;
And howe’er we joy, howe’er we grieve,
Sacred pilgrimages make;
For Loss and Grief, the Asphodels
On our graves we mourning lay;
For Memory, the Immortelles—
Our loved ones live for us always.
Death in Life, Life in Death—how we
This, Love’s Faith, keep reverently.

By Laura G. Collins’s from Immortelles and Asphodels (Everlastings) (1898)

More About Grant Cottage

Located immediately below the summit of Mount McGregor in Saratoga County, the cottage and 43-acre site was recently named a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.

The cottage is kept as it was during the Grant family’s stay. Open to the public seasonally by the Friends of the Ulysses S. Grant Cottage, visitors can tour its first-floor original furnishings, decorations, and personal items belonging to Grant.

Tours are scheduled to resume for the season on April 30, 2022. Other artifacts on display include the bed where he died on July 23, 1885 and the mantel clock stopped by Grant’s son Fred at the moment of his father’s death.

Grant Cottage first opened as a historic site in 1890 when it was supported by funds raised by veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The grounds surrounding the Cottage served as a tuberculosis sanitarium beginning in 1914, which in 1945 was converted into a veteran rest camp, until 1960 when it was repurposed and annexed as the Rome State School for disabled children until 1976. The Friends of Ulysses S. Grant Cottage was formed in the fall of 1989 to provide programming and tours, and partner with New York State Parks on site stewardship.

Take this slideshow tour through the house…

Park History, State History

All are Welcome Where They Once Were Not

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Vacationing in New York has not always been easy for African Americans. For most of the 20th century cultural segregation was the norm. While Jim Crow laws in Southern states were explicit, here in New York there also were known rules of discriminatory racial separation in accommodations that could make finding a cool place on hot summer days challenging.

About an hour’s drive north of New York City, the popular mountain resort area of Greenwood Lake in Orange County near the border with New Jersey dated to the 1870s and for years had been off-limits to Blacks, Jews, and Italians. But in 1919, a change happened. Wanting to relax in this beautiful mountain setting and enjoy themselves without racial hassles, a group of prominent African American families, spearheaded by nine members of the Carlton Street YMCA in Brooklyn joined together to create the first African American vacation resort in the New York State.

One of co-founders of Greenwood Forest Farms, Arthur Lewis Comither. (Photo Credit – ProQuest Historical Newspapers)

Sterling Forest Farms Incorporated purchased 143 acres of land high in the mountains surrounding Greenwood Lake and named it Greenwood Forest Farms. The ‘Colony’ as it came to be known was to become the summer place to be for African Americans well into the 1960s. 

By the mid-1930s, Greenwood Forest Farms was well on its way to becoming the place to be seen during the summer months. A July 1938 headline in the Black-owned New York Amsterdam News boasted “Greenwood Lake May Become East’s Most Fashionable Summer Colony.” A full-page story covered details of the site’s founding, and reporter Thelma Berlack-Boozer was given tours of several cottages, gardens, and all the amenities. At the time there were twenty-eight cottages set in beautifully landscaped gardens with thirty-five other lots in development. The writer described the wonderful natural forest surrounding the location, the luxurious summer furnishings on expansive porches and lovely interiors, the corporation’s plans, and how those who happened to not own cottages still could enjoy time there.

The corporation built a club house called the ‘Farm House’ where vacationers could enjoy live music, dancing, and a restaurant. For those who did not own a cottage, the Farm House was one of three locations where vacationists could rent rooms. The other two were private cottages which rented bedrooms during the summer, with one of those, the Justice House, opened during the winter for those interested in hunting. An August 1941 ad offered lodging at the Farm House for $15 per week or $4 for the weekend, with a car shuttle leaving from Harlem on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays to make traveling upstate easy. The plan was completely upscale, to the point that in the 1940s the colony generated its own electricity. When completed the Colony had a man-made lake, tennis, and hand-ball courts, and a nursey school for everyone’s use.

New York’s Black elite both owned the properties and visited their friends. Luminaries like Cecil McPherson (Cecil Mack) the famous lyricist and music publishing magnate, and his wife Dr. Gertrude Curtis, New York’s first African American woman dentist owned a cottage there. The poet Langston Hughes was among several literary figures who summered there with friends. Civil rights giants James Farmer, Harold W. Cruse, and Robert J. Elzy, the head of Brooklyn’s Urban League were among the property owners and guests.

If people wanted to know where to find the cream of the crop during the warmer months, society columns in the New York Amsterdam News kept people up to date. In 1933 the paper’s Brooklyn Society column informed all that the Elzys could be found at their cottage ‘Rob-Lou,’ and that Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Webster, and their weekend guests from Baltimore motored up to the Greenwood Forest Farm House on Sunday. Mrs. Willard J. Price and her daughters spent the week as guests of Mrs. Walter Taylor of Greenwood. The Jamaica News and Social Briefs shared that Mrs. Gordon Jones and her daughter, were at Sterling Forest Farm for the summer but had returned to Jamaica.

By the late 1960s as the older generation died, and options for vacation locations expanded for African Americans with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the opening up of public accommodations, fewer people ventured up to Greenwood Forest Farms. In the 1970s the famous Farm House was lost to a mysterious fire, but many families continued to vacation and live there year-round. 

An account of the fire that destroyed the Farm House at Greenwood Forest Farm appeared in the New York Amsterdam News on Aug. 14, 1971. (Photo credit – ProQuest Historical Newspapers)

In 2007, the Greenwood Forest Farms Association, Inc was created by descendants of original property owners to preserve the legacy of the colony. Although diminished, Greenwood Forest Farms today remains a proud hamlet of the Town of Warwick and has a few multi-generational residents. 

Today, New York State Paths through History signs can be found along Nelson Road in the Town of Warwick commemorating Greenwood Forest Farm’s amazing story of resilience and joy. And this historic place is now preserved for the people of New York.

On January 11, 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a 130-acre expansion of Sterling Forest State Park, with a portion of the land belonging to Greenwood Forest Farms. Now with the designation of this land as a State Park, awareness of the legacy of the area will grow.

As State Parks celebrates Black History Month, we are reminded that this property tells the story of a time when racial segregation in the North was found around Greenwood Lake. It reflects part of a long journey to today, when State Parks is committed to the message that “All Are Welcome Here.”

Cover Shot – Historic marker for Greenwood Forest Farms (Photo credit – Woodham, Rebecca. “”The Colony” Historical Marker (Greenwood Forest Farms).” Clio: Your Guide to History. December 27, 2017. Accessed Jan. 20, 2022.  https://theclio.com/entry/53333)

Post by Lavada Nahon, Interpreter of African American History, Bureau of Historic Sites, NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

Learn More About Greenwood Forest Farms

Read this 2019 article and 2005 article from the Times Herald-Record newspaper.

Watch this accompanying video by the Times Herald-Record.

Read this 2005 article from the Warwick Historical Papers newsletter.

Learn about upcoming Parks programming on Black History Month. Events include the lighting of Niagara Falls red, green, and black to honor Black History Month on February 13th. The colors will be displayed every 15 minutes hourly between 6 and 11 p.m.

Learn more about Black history in New York State in previous posts on the the NYS Parks Blog:

Juneteenth — Coming to terms with Freedom

“Grand Old Fort: But Alas Manned by Colored Troops…” Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Ontario 

Do You Know Sojourner Truth?

Reviving a Dutch Holiday with African Flavor 

A Legacy of Strength: Civilian Conservation Corps

John Brown Farm: Growing Freedom in Adirondack Wilderness

About Sterling Forest State Park

Established in 1998, Sterling Forest State Park covers nearly 22,000 acres of nearly pristine natural refuge amidst of one of the nation’s most densely populated areas, a remarkable piece of woodland, a watershed for millions, and a tremendous outdoor recreation area. This unbroken deep-forest habitat is important for the survival of many resident and migratory species, including black bear, a variety of hawks and songbirds and many rare invertebrates and plants. Hunting, fishing and hiking opportunities are available.

The park’s Senator Frank R. Lautenberg Visitor Center overlooks the nine-mile long Sterling Lake and features exhibits about the local environment as well as an auditorium for related presentations.

The park has more than 80 miles of hiking trails, including a portion of the Appalachian Trail. It offers opportunities for horseback riding (permit required), hunting (permit required), fishing, biking, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing and ice fishing.

The park also is part of the Sterling Forest Bird Conservation Area, and includes such species as Peregrine Falcon (endangered), Pied-billed Grebe (threatened), Least Bittern (threatened), American Bittern (special concern), Osprey (special concern), Sharp-shinned Hawk (special concern), Cooper’s Hawk (special concern) Northern Goshawk (special concern), Red-shouldered Hawk (special concern), Common Nighthawk (special concern), Whip-poor-will (special concern), Red-headed Woodpecker (special concern), Horned Lark (special concern), Golden-winged Warbler (special concern), Cerulean Warbler (special concern), and Yellow-breasted Chat (special concern). Numerous other species contribute to the diversity of birds within the BCA including Broad-winged Hawk, Acadian Flycatcher, Least Flycatcher, Yellow-throated Vireo, Brown Creeper, Winter Wren, Hermit Thrush, Worm-eating Warbler, Blue-winged Warbler, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Pine Warbler, Ovenbird, Louisiana Waterthrush, Hooded Warbler, Canada Warbler, Scarlet Tanager, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Orchard Oriole, and Purple Finch.

Sources

Greenwood Lake May Become East’s Most Fashionable Summer Colony, Thelma Berlack-Boozer, The New York Amsterdam News, July 23, 1938, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Amsterdam News, pg. 10.

Brooklyn Society, Elzys ‘Rob-Lou,’ The New York Amsterdam News, September 6, 1933; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Amsterdam News, page 11.

Brooklyn Society, Mr. & Mrs. Webster, The New York Amsterdam News, July 12, 1933; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Amsterdam News, page 11.

Jamaica News and Social Briefs, The New York Amsterdam News, July 23, 1928; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Amsterdam News, page 9.

Family Fun, Historic Sites, State History

Mysteries At Crown Point

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Crown Point State Historic Site lies at the tip of a peninsula, jutting northward into Lake Champlain, a place at one time quite remote with a unique history at the crossroads of war, laced with more than a few tales of folklore, mystery, and imagination befitting the Halloween season.

A calico patchwork in fall of orange, red and gold, the Adirondack Mountains flank the western shore of the lake while the Green Mountains of Vermont rise along the eastern side, just beyond the farmland of the valley floor.  It is a majestic, glorious landscape with a sky so expansive, it is a daily reminder of our small place in this universe, a place where young 18th century soldiers who once manned this stone fortress must have felt far removed from the rest of the world they knew

As twilight approaches, the breath and expanse of this geography folds into itself as the darkness envelops the mountains and lake.   The mere depth of the night is unnerving enough but without the benefit of sight, sounds are amplified in the deep black of the understory of the trees. Owls calling above and rustling in the brush below are reminders of how vulnerable we seem in the vast darkness of this wilderness even today.

Located in Essex County, Crown Point has been on both the historic State and National Registers of Historic Places since 1976, significant as the location of ruins of the French-built Fort St. Frederic (1734) and the British fort, H.M. Fort at Crown Point (1759), the largest fortification erected on the North American continent at the time.  The French and British fought bitterly for decades over control of this place – precisely because of the sightlines the majestic landscape could afford those who wanted command of the waters of Lake Champlain, pointed like a silver dagger from Canada into the heart of Colonial New England.

NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation endeavors to preserve the Crown Point ruins in their current state as part of the 1910 stewardship agreement when New York State was gifted the property.  One of the defining features of the site are the officers and soldiers’ barracks in the British parade grounds, stones silently stacked and hidden behind the fort walls.  The structures are missing stairways, second story flooring and roofs; there is an ethereal quality upon viewing them, when conscious of the intended permanence of these structures and the ravages of time since people lived, worked, suffered and died within.

Take the darkness of night, mix with centuries old ruins, top off with harrowing local lore and this proves to be the perfect elixir of sinister, spooky, and spine-chilling. Visitors to the Haunted Histories at the Forts scheduled for October 29 will be welcomed with cider and donuts donated by local orchards and greeted with the first of many true, but unexplained tales at the site. 

Visitors to a previous Haunted Histories at the Forts events hear tales of some of the mysteries at and around the Lake Champlain historic fortress.

Present day meets the past in the most unfortunate of coincidences – this is not the first epidemic witnessed at Crown Point. The winter of 1775-76 found Boston in the throes of a smallpox epidemic.  Many know of the story of the artillery recovered from Crown Point and how General George Washington used the guns to drive out British troops during the Siege of Boston; however less well known, is at the time of liberation, the city was also ravaged by a pandemic of smallpox.

Most British troops had been inoculated or had the smallpox previously and were immune. In Europe, where smallpox was pervasive, most would have been exposed to the disease and likely had antibodies to protect them. 1 This protection was not the case for Indigenous peoples nor the colonists, and the disease persisted in Boston throughout the beginnings of the war, peaking in July 1775 and gradually subsiding by September of that year.  At that time, little was known about virology, and isolation was used as the primary control of transmission.

But then as now, that was only the first wave of the epidemic in the Colonies.  During the summer of 1775, the Continental Army launched the ill-fated Northern Campaign in an attempt to dislodge British forces in Canada.  Crown Point became the launching pad for these Patriot attacks directed at British-controlled Montreal and Quebec on the St. Lawrence River.

The second wave of the epidemic came in the midst of this campaign in 1776.  Patriot Major General John Thomas, Commander of the Army in Quebec, died of the disease in the summer of 1776 as the disease-weakened Continental Army was repelled from Quebec.  By that point, an estimated 3,000 men of the Northern Army were sick, most with smallpox.2 After a five-month siege on Quebec, defeated, diseased colonial troops withdrew to Crown Point where a hospital was set up. 

William Scudder, an officer serving in the New York 4th Regiment during the campaign, wrote in his journal:

“In June, I had the command of some batteaux…that were loaded with provisions to go to Crown Point, where our army then lay, under the command of General Sullivan, having retreated from Canada, – an such a scene of mortality was exhibited at that place, I never had beheld.  The hospital I judged to be about one hundred and fifty feet in length; on the lower floor in two ranges on each side, the poor sick and distressed soldiers.  Their disorder was chiefly the small-pox – Some groaning and begging for water, some dying and other dead and sewed up in their blankets; let it suffice to say, that by the middle of the afternoon they would begin to carry the dead from the hospital; I counted twenty-one carried out at one time, and it was common to bury fifteen or twenty in a day.” 3

Archeologists have been working at Crown Point from the mid-1950’s to the present.  In addition to first-hand accounts of those laying their final rest here, there are the Fort St. Frederic parish birth and death records of the French that inhabited the site prior to both the British and Colonial occupations.  Despite all the historical records, and the extensive archeological work throughout the 21st century, no evidence of human remains have ever been found. The French were Catholic, which prohibited them from burning the bodies, and even if the diseased soldiers had been disposed of by incarceration, there would be carbon remains.  No reasons can be found to explain this mysterious absence.

It’s not only the history that cannot be explained, but the mountains and lakes that surround Crown Point that are just as elusive and mystifying, as evidenced proven by both news reports and stories local inhabitants have passed down through generations.

Long before any European settlers arrived in the area, both the Abenaki and the Haudenosaunee native people had stories about a large creature inhabiting the lake. It was called Ta-to-skok by the Abenaki, a word meaning creature with two tusks. Early in the 18th century, Abenakis warned French explorers about disturbing the waters of the lake, so as not to disturb the serpent.

Samuel de Champlain’s diary reveals the following entry:

“. . . [T]here is also a great abundance of many species of fish. Amongst others there is one called by the natives Chaousarou, which is of various lengths; but the largest of them, as these tribes have told me, are from eight to ten feet long. I have seen some five feet long, which were as big as my thigh, and had a head as large as my two fists, with a snout two feet and a half long, and a double row of very sharp, dangerous teeth. Its body has a good deal the shape of the pike; but it is protected by scales of a silvery gray colour and so strong that a dagger could not pierce them.”

Never one to miss a trick, showman P. T. Barnum offered a reward of $50,000 in 1873 for “hide of the great Champlain serpent to add to my mammoth World’s Fair Show.” 4 No one ever claimed it.

The Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism lists many 19th century sightings, with 1873 being a particularly robust year.  A New York Times story reported that a railroad crew had seen the head of an “enormous serpent” in Lake Champlain, with bright silvery scales that glistened in the sun. In July that same year, Clinton County’s Sheriff, Nathan H. Mooney, reported an “enormous snake or water serpent” he thought was 25 to 35 feet long. Then in August, the steamship W.B. Eddy encountered Champ by running into it. The ship nearly turned over, according to many of the tourists on board. Never one to miss a trick, showman P. T. Barnum offered a reward of $50,000 for “hide of the great Champlain serpent to add to my mammoth World’s Fair Show.” 4

The stories continue through the decades, marked by a roadside sign upon entrance to the neighboring town, Port Henry, where they celebrate Champ Day each summer, hoping to catch sight of him again. 

Fun folklore or relative of Nessie, world famous occupant of the Scottish Loch Ness?  Fast-forward to contemporary times, and a quick Google search on Champ turns up what may be the only existing photo of his presence, taken by Sandra Mansi in 1977 while vacationing in northern Vermont.  5

A 1977 photograph allegedly showing the mysterious Lake Champlain beast, taken by Sandra Mansi. Below, the Champ sign outside Port Henry.
Local newspaper accounts of Champ sightings, (left to right) from the Essex County Republican (1895), and Ticonderoga Sentinel (1929, 1937)

Ronald Kermani, a former investigative reporter for the Times Union, whose family has a camp on Lake Champlain. He has spent summers here for the past five decades and told of his experience, at 7:10 a.m. on July 2, 1983, when he was fishing in a rowboat with a girlfriend.

He said he saw a creature about 30 feet away with “three dark humps — maybe 12 inches thick — protruding about two feet above the surface … two or three feet apart.”

Kermani wrote: “We watched in disbelief for about ten seconds. The humps slowly sank into the water. There was no wake, no telltale sign of movement. Unexplained. Eerie. Unsettling.”

He did not get a picture because he did not have a camera. Ever since, Kermani, who is retired and lives in Guilderland, has carried a camera in the boat with him when he is out on the lake — just in case. 6

It’s not just below the surface that menaces. In the mountains to the west of the peninsula are indigenous burial grounds.   Coot Hill near Port Henry has long been a reported locus of visions, vengeful murders, and accumulation of gruesome accidents.  Maybe they should have looked for property elsewhere to settle.

There’s not enough space to even address the French werewolves, apparitions appearing in the parade grounds, drowned Scottish soldiers or sounds that emerge and then follow a person as they try to retreat.  History books can explain some, but not all.   Coupled with deep darkness and imagination, that makes for a chilling trapse across the grounds at Crown Point, particularly in the dark of night.  For the Haunted History event, 18th century costumed interpreters will portray the restless soul of French settlers, who would have arrived at Fort St. Frederic with stories of their own to tell.

Keep your friends close and your flashlight on!

Post by Lisa Polay, Site Manager, Crown Point State Historic Site.

SOURCES

1 Gil Jr.l, Harold B. Colonial Germ Warfare.  Colonial Williamsburg Journal. Spring 2004.

2 Fenn, Elizabeth A. The Great Smallpox Epidemic.  History Today. Vol 53: Issue 8. August 2003.

3  The Journal of William Scudder, an officer in the late New York Line, who was taken captive by the Indians at Fort Stanwix, on the 23rd of July, 1779, and was holden a prisoner in Canada until October, 1782, and then sent to New York and admitted on parole. Evans Early American Imprint Collection

4  Lake Champlain Region (ROOST), https://www.lakechamplainregion.com/heritage/champ

5  Grondahl, Paul Champ:  Hook, Line and Sinker,. Albany Times Union. Dec 28, 2012.

6 Grondahl, Paul Champ:  Hook, Line and Sinker, Albany Times Union. Dec 28, 2012

Research, State History, Stewardship

Kinderhook Home A Revolutionary War Story of War, Loss, and Exile

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On Route 9, just south of the village of Kinderhook in Columbia County, a sign proudly proclaims it as the birthplace and home of Martin Van Buren, the eighth U.S. President. Next to that is a purple-and-gold sign for the local Elks lodge.

Right across the street sits an unassuming two-story red brick house with dormer windows. While locals know it as the Tory House, there isn’t a sign. But this house has its own story to tell about early New York, one of a family among many thousands that picked the losing side in the Revolutionary War and ended up years later losing that home to the victors in a practice that was to be banned in the U.S. Constitution.

That family was named van Alstyne, one of the many families with Dutch roots that settled in the region during the 18th century to farm. The family had three sons _ Abraham, the oldest; Peter, the middle son; and John, the youngest. By the time that the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, Peter had built his family the red brick house in Kinderhook on land that he and his brothers had inherited as teenagers two decades earlier when their father died.

Earlier this summer, that house – still used as a residence more than two centuries later – was named to the State and National Registers of Historic Places because of the story of Peter Sander van Alstyne and his family. The narrative of this post is based on research for that nomination submitted on behalf of State Parks by the late Ruth Piwonka, a former member of the Historic Preservation Division at State Parks, and a later Parks consultant and historian for Kinderhook.

Peter Sander Van Alstyne was 32 years old in 1775, already a successful farmer, married and with a young family. A local judge appointed by the Colonial government, he found himself caught up in the conflict the following year when a group of town members come to his home to forcefully tell him that his office, resting on royal authority, no longer had authority to settle disputes over debts. That same year, the beleaguered judge was chosen to be a member of the Albany Committee on Correspondence, a kind of shadow authority created by patriot supporters. But as a supporter of British authority (known as Tory, or a Loyalist), van Alstyne was not to last long on the committee, and he and more than a dozen other suspected Loyalists in that body were soon ordered arrested and imprisoned in 1776.

Many New Yorkers felt as van Alstyne did about their loyalty to England. Some studies estimate that about half of the state’s 200,000 residents held Loyalist sentiments, giving New York the highest percentage of Loyalists among the 13 colonies. Like van Alstyne, many New Yorkers took up arms to oppose what they saw as an an “unnatural” rebellion against the legitimate government.

Van Alstyne was released from jail in early 1777, but after being forced by threats to leave his home, he headed north to join British forces in Canada, and by summer was marching with British General John Burgoyne’s army from Lake Champlain in a bid to capture Albany as part of a strategic plan to split the rebellious colonies in two. His Kinderhook home was being used as a staging point for Loyalists and military supplies in the event that Albany fell.

But that moment was not to come, and van Alstyne was there when Burgoyne’s forces were defeated at the Battle of Saratoga that September, a battle that marked a turning point in the American Revolution and convinced the French to support the rebels.

Surrender of General Burgoyne, painted by John Turnbull, 1822. Showing Burgoyne presenting his sword to American General Horatio Gates at Saratoga, this painting hangs in the U.S. Capitol. Peter Sander van Alstyne took part in this battle – on the losing side. (Photo Credit – Wikipedia Commons)

By 1778, van Alstyne had gone to New York City and Long Island, which were under British control, to command sailors who fought in small boats called bateaux. His armed opposition to the Revolution by this point had put his life at risk. Continental troops stationed near his Kinderhook home were trying to catch him, and had captured some of his associates, some of whom were put to death as traitors. By October 1779, van Alstyne had been formally indicted as an “enemy of the state” by New York authorities under what was called the Forfeiture Act. As the war neared an end, New York officials in early 1783 ordered him stripped of his lands, his livestock, and his home, where his brother John’s family was living.

On Sept. 8, 1783, only five days after the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War, van Alstyne and his family, along with many other displaced Loyalists from Columbia, Rockland, Orange, Ulster, Westchester, and Dutchess counties, as well as some of the troops from Major Robert Rogers, of the famed Rogers’ Rangers backcountry unit, set sail for British-controlled Canada, according to a 1901 account published by Columbia University.

Settling on the northern shore of Lake Ontario near Quinte Bay, van Alstyne received a government land grant of 1,200 acres and became a prominent member of the community, being appointed a judge and later winning election to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada. He died in 1800, at age 57.

The former Kinderhook resident was among thousands of New York Loyalists, perhaps as many as 35,000 people, who left the state during and after the Revolutionary War for refuge in British dominions including Canada, according to the 1901 Columbia University account. That came from a total state population of about 200,000, so the forced migration represented about one in every six New Yorkers.

The 1901 account from Columbia University estimated that during the war, there were “at least 15,000 New York Loyalists serving in the Brish army and navy, and at least 8,500 Loyalist militia, making a total in that state of 23,500 Loyalist troops. This was more than any other colony furnished, and perhaps as many as were raised by all others combined.”

The legacy of these Loyalists who left New York can be found in the historic structures along the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario. Said State Parks historic researcher William Krattinger, “I focus quite a bit on the built and architectural environment and have seen examples of Dutch-framed barns and houses erected in Ontario, undoubtedly erected by builders from the Hudson, Mohawk and Schoharie valleys who were banished to the north after the Revolution. These New Yorkers brought their material culture with them.”

This 1786 painting by James Peachy, a British military surveyor, shows American Loyalists camped out on the northern shore of the St. Lawrence River at Johnstown (across from present-day Ogdensburg) during the summer of 1784 as part of their relocation into new lands in Canada. (Photo Credit – American Revolution Institute – Society of the Cincinnati)

Two years after van Alstyne’s death, New York State officials passed a law in 1802 to renew its still incomplete efforts to confiscate a list of Loyalist properties – a list that included van Alstyne’s Kinderhook home. Offering a bonus to anyone who pointed out forfeited property that had still not been seized, the law described those who had forfeited that property for opposing the Revolution as “attainted.” This concept originates from English criminal law, in which those condemned for a serious capital crime against the state lost not only their life, but also their property, the ability to bequeath property to their descendants, and any hereditary titles.

New York’s bid to seize and sell off remaining Loyalist property two decades after the end of the war came even though the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1789, specifically prohibits “bills of attainder” passed by legislatures to condemn those deemed state enemies and seize their property.

Here the trail of what happened to van Alstyne’s red brick house grows cold. A clear title to prove who owned the home after van Alstyne lost ownership appears in the public record only starting in the 1850s, although records of forfeiture and sale for other Loyalist properties in Columbia County do exist.

The fate of this home represents just one family’s part of the larger story of how the end of the Revolutionary War meant exile and loss for thousands of New Yorkers who had sided with England, and how the fallout of that time continued for years until the Revolution could truly considered to be ended.

Cover Shot _ Peter Sander Van Alstyne house, Kinderhook. All photos NYS Parks unless otherwise credited.

Post by Brian Nearing, Deputy Public Information Officer, New York State Parks

Resources

Learn more about the Loyalist experience in New York State, using these sources:

A New York Public Library blog post on the 1802 list of Loyalist property to be confiscated in New York State.

A 1901 study into Loyalism in New York State by Alexander Clarence Flick, published by Columbia University Press.

An account by the National Library of Scotland into the lives of two New York Loyalists.

A NYS Parks Blog post about Hudson Valley Loyalist Frederick Philipse III, one of the richest men in Colonial New York whose home is now Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site in Yonkers, Westchester County.