"The story of the Gansevoorts of Albany is a medium for the study of the social and cultural tradition of the Dutch patricians of the upper Hudson Valley. Spanning three centuries, the family's history began in the mid-1600's, when one Harmen Harmense van Gansevoort built a brewery, and included General Peter Gansevoort, the "hero of Fort Stanwix" of the American Revolution, and novelist Herman Melville. It ended in 1918 with the death of patrician...

"Tired of their high school teaching jobs and discouraged by their failed attempts at conceiving a child, Mark and Fran Finley decide they need a change in their lives. Abruptly, they leave their friends and family in suburban New Jersey to begin anew as innkeepers on a secluded lake in the Adirondack Mountains" --

Examining the past four hundred years of regional history, this book discusses the historic, economic, and environmental history of Long Island's East End. Backed by Weigold's academic experience and her extensive research, Baywaters provides an original and thorough account of this region's past. Weigold writes in a journalistic style and incorporates historical and contemporary figures into her text, from Albert Einstein to Whoopi Goldberg. Tying...

The Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen was a pioneering figure in early nineteenth-century abolitionism and African American literature. A highly respected leader in the AME Zion Church, Rev. Loguen was popularly known as the "Underground Railroad King" in Syracuse, where he helped over 1,500 fugitives escape from slavery. With a charismatic and often controversial style, Loguen lectured alongside Frederick Douglass and worked closely with well-known abolitionists...

Blacks in the Adirondacks: A History tells the story of the many African Americans who settled in or passed through this rural, mountainous region of northeastern New York State. In the area for a variety of reasons, some were lifetime residents, while others were there for a few years or months-as summer employees, tuberculosis patients, or in connection with full- or part-time occupations in railroading, the performing arts, and baseball. From blacks...

Unbridled passions threatened nineteenth-century America, a vulnerable young nation already feeling beset by foreigners, corruption, and disease. Purifying crusaders like Hamilton College philosophy professor and Presbyterian minister John W. Mears mobilized to fight every sin and carnal lure, from liquor to free love. In Upstate New York's famed Oneida Community, Mears encountered his stiffest challenge. Oneida's founder and patriarch, John Humphrey...