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March 28, 2024

BB-Basketball

....Kate Fagan is author of HOOP MUSES-An Insider’s Guide to Pop Culture and the (Women’s) Game an Adventure through Basketball History. Fagan is a native of Schenectady. She writes for Sports Illustrated.

BB-Baseball

....Brad Balukjian tracks down ballplayers from a single pack of 1986 baseball cards for his book “The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife”

44 overcast in The City of Amsterdam at 6:06AM-Thursday, March 28, 2024-Mohawk Valley Weather-A chance of showers, mainly between 9am and noon. Patchy fog between 11am and noon. Otherwise, cloudy, with a high near 47. West wind 6 to 10 mph. Tonight Mostly cloudy, with a low around 31. West wind 8 to 10 mph. Friday Partly sunny, with a high near 48. Breezy, with a west wind 10 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 32 mph.

Something to read while you wait for your favorite TV Show 

"Who Do You Think You Are?" visits Fonda and Johnstown
By Bob Cudmore

Story from July 2022

A national family history television show recently focused on a celebrity's ancestors in the Mohawk Valley.

Actor Nick Offerman and a production crew from NBC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" recorded interviews at sites in the Albany area and the Old Courthouse in Fonda, home to Montgomery County's history and genealogical collections, and the Johnstown Public Library, in the city founded by British colonial leader Sir William Johnson.

Offerman is best known for his role as Ron Swanson in the sitcom "Parks and Recreation." Researchers traced his roots to a Mohawk Valley couple, Bartholomew and Eva Pickard and their grandson, Joseph Mabee.

Montgomery County historian Kelly Yacobucci Farquhar said that members of the Mohawk nation complained about Eva Pickard, "Their complaint was that she owned a tavern around the area we know today as Indian Castle which is actually in Herkimer County. They complained that she would get them drunk and have them sign away their land."

Farquhar said there are references to this issue in documents in the Sir William Johnson papers, copies of which are at the Johnstown library. Pickard apparently was removed from her land.

Years later her grandson Joseph Mabee was able to recover a lot of that land in return for his military service with the rebels in the Revolutionary War.

By then Sir William Johnson was deceased. His family and many Mohawks and others loyal to the British crown had left the Mohawk Valley.

At the end of the TV show Offerman and relatives are seen standing on the land in question, located in the Herkimer County town of Danube west of Minden in Montgomery County.

Neither Farquhar nor Erica Wing of the Johnstown library was interviewed on camera. Farquhar, who has been with the county history department for 26 years, said, "I was OK with that because I was very nervous thinking about whether I would be on camera A lot of people were hoping the local historians would be filmed as well. I think the historians they had on did a fantastic job relating what was going on at that time."

Offerman and history professor Tim Shannon of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania discussed Offerman's ancestry on the TV show in an interview filmed in Fonda.

Shannon said, "(Offerman) seemed very much interested in learning about the Mohawks and their relations with the colonists there. I was glad to have the occasion to visit the Montgomery County Department of History and Archives and appreciated the staff's willingness to accommodate the film shoot."

Originally the TV show was to start production in March 2020 but the work was postponed by the pandemic. Production actually began in September, 2021.

Farquhar credits county supervisors with foresight for creating the Department of History and Archives in 1934. There was Depression-era federal funding available to have the staff then document area history.

The staff would get copies of church and cemetery records from across the state because at one time Montgomery County and its predecessor Tryon County encompassed territory west of Schenectady to Central New York, north to Canada and south to Pennsylvania.

Farquhar said over 30 counties can trace their origins back to Montgomery and Tryon County. "That's why genealogists and local history researchers come here to do research."

An event is being planned in Fonda on Saturday, August 27, to mark the 250th anniversary of the creation of Tryon County, the British colonial name for what became Montgomery County.

That day there will be historical tours of the area, artisan and militia reenactors and a new promotional video for the Department of History and Archives.

Friday, March 29, 2024-Episode 418-Bruce Dearstyne is encouraging New Yorkers to celebrate April 20 as the birthday of the Empire State.  The first New York State constitution was adopted April 20, 1777 during the Revolutionary War.  Bruce Dearstyne was formerly on the staff of the Office of State History and the State Archives.  He has written extrnsively on New York State history.

Bruce W. Dearstyne has published several books, including Railroads and Railroad Regulations in New York State, 1900–1913. He is co-author of New York: Yesterday and Today. He served as a program director at the New York State Archives and on the staff of the Office of State History. He has taught New York State history at the University at Albany, State University of New York, Russell Sage College, and the State University of New York at Potsdam. Dr. Dearstyne was also a professor at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies where he directed the HiLS (History/Information Science) joint degree program. He continues to teach there as an adjunct professor. He resides in Guilderland, New York

Mohawk Valley News The Daily Gazette, The Recorder News, The Leader-Herald and Nippertown. https://www.dailygazette.om/c

March 15, 2024

Bill Simons

Friday, March 15, 2024-Episode 513-Actor Kirk Douglas died four years ago at age 103. Emeritus history professor Bill Simons from SUNY Oneonta has done extensive research on the life of Amsterdam native Kirk Douglas and tells the story of visiting the actor’s childhood home.

March 08, 2024

Charles Postel

....San Francisco State University history professor Charles Postel is author of Equality: An American Dilemma 1866-1896. In this edit of Episode 286, Postel compares three important social movements: Knights of Labor, Women’s Christian Temperance Union and farmers’ Grange.

March 01, 2024

Mark Silo

Friday, March 2, 2024-Episode 512- British colonist William Johnson “made his bones” by defeating a French army who attacked his army at Lake George in 1755. King George II made Johnson a baronet, “Sir” William Johnson. Parliament awarded Johnson 5,000 pounds. Historian Mark Silo tells the story with commentary from Old Fort Johnson site manager Scott Haefner.

February 23, 2024

Ghosts of Segregation

Episode 511-Photojournalist Richard Frishman and essayist and professor Dr. B. Brian Foster are authors of Ghosts of Segregation, a photojournalism collection depicting a visual history of segregation through buildings and landscapes where racism has left its mark.

February 16, 2024

Terry Golway

Former Albany Politico bureau chief Terry Golway is author of I Never Did like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor, and Why He Still Matters. Golway tells the story of LaGuardia’s life through colorful episodes that relate to people today.

February 09, 2024

HighLights Edition 1-2024

Episode 509-Highlights Edition from 2023 and 2024 with excerpts from podcasts on Civil War volunteers from Saratoga, the story of Benedict Arnold, an ancient elephant tusk found in Maine and much more

February 02, 2024

Jerry Madden

Friday, February 2, 2024-Episode 508-Jerry Madden discusses his historical novel Steel Valley: Coming of Age in the Ohio Valley in the 1960s. Madden sets his story in Rust Belt in cities like Steubenville, Ohio, where steel mills have moved out.

January 12, 2024

Bruce Luyendyk

Bruce Luyendyk is a geologist and author of Mighty Bad Land, the story of his explorations of Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica in the 1990s, These explorations led to the discovery of a new continent, named Zealandia.

January 05, 2024

Gary Hoyle

Gary Hoyle is author of Mystery Tusk, the story of a 12,000 year old woolly mammoth tusk found in a manmade pond in Maine in 1959. Plus the chronicle of an African elephant, Old Bet, shot and killed in the early 1800s in Maine.

December 29, 2023

Chris Carola

Chris Carola, a former Albany based Associated Press reporter who lives in Saratoga Springs, talks to Bob about the Civil War’s 77th New York State Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

December 22, 2023

Amy Godine

....The Black Woods by Amy Godine chronicles the history of Black pioneers in New York's northern wilderness. From the late 1840s into the 1860s, they migrated to the Adirondacks to build farms and to vote. On their new-worked land, they could meet the $250 property requirement New York's constitution imposed on Black voters in 1821, and claim the rights of citizenship.

December 15, 2023

Jack D. Warren Jr.

Friday, December 15, 2023-Episode 503- Jack Warren is author of FREEDOM: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution. Freedom is a look into British America, the Revolutionary War, the birth of a new nation, what freedom means, and how the events of the past are important even today.

December 08, 2023

Jack Kelly

Friday, December 8, 2023-Episode 502-Jack Kelly is author of God Save Benedict Arnold. Arnold committed treason. Yet he was more than a turncoat—Kelly argues Arnold’s achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era.

December 01, 2023

Tim Keogh

Friday, December 1, 2023-Episode 501-Tim Keogh, author of In Levittown's Shadow: Poverty in America's Wealthiest Postwar Suburb. Keogh found that attics, basements, and sheds housed the poor during the suburban boom that followed World War II.

November 24, 2023

Dana Cudmore

Friday, November 24, 2023-Episode 500-Dana Cudmore, author of Farming with Dynamite. Before the introduction of concrete in the early 1900s, cut stones were used to build impressive structures such as churches, public buildings and homes. Cudmore documents more than 30 stone quarries across Schoharie County where dynamite was used to get large stones from the land.

November 17, 2023

Cosby Gibson/Tom Staudle/World Songs

Friday, November 17, 2023-Episode 499-Cosby Gibson and Tom Staudle with songs from Hanukkah, Kwanza and other year end holidays.

November 10, 2023

Jim Kaplan

Friday, November 10, 2023-Episode 498-Jim Kaplan on Revolutionary War General Horatio Gates. American commander in the key victory over the British in the Battle of Saratoga, Gates’ reputation suffered at the end of the war. He later moved to New York City and helped elect Thomas Jefferson as President in 1800.

November 03, 2023

Focus on History #3 for 2023

Several topics from Bob Cudmore’s Focus on History newspaper column: Amsterdam NY’s connection to Piscotta, Italy; carper mill tales; union Leader Leonora Barry. Plus an interview with Phillip Malcolm Bowler about his ancestors’ brewery in Amsterdam.

October 20, 2023

David Pietrusza

Friday, October 20, 2023-Episode 496-David Pietrusza with a guided tour of organized crime in the 1920s in New York City, Gangsterland.

October 06, 2023

David Brooks

Friday, October 6, 2023-Episode 495-David Brooks with an insightful look at the 115th New York Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War. The regiment was composed of men from Montgomery, Fulton, Saratoga and Hamilton Counties. Commanded by Simeon Sammons the troops went to war from Fonda. Brooks is a member of the board of the Fulton County Historical Society.

September 29, 2023

HighLights Edition 5

Episode 494-Highlights edition #5-Christopher Gorham with the story of FDR aide Anna Rosenberg; Gregg Ficery tracing the origin of the National Football League; Scott Shane chronicling the life of Thomas Smallwood, an African American who named the Underground Railroad and interviews from the 2015 Fort Plan Museum conference on the American Revolution.

September 22, 2023

Scott Shane

Episode 493-Scott Shane, author of Flee North- A forgotten hero and the fight for freedom in slavery’s borderland. The book traces the life of Thomas Smallwood, an African American who named the Underground Railroad.

September 15, 2023

Charles Yaple

Friday, September 15, 2023-Episode 492-Episode 493-Charles Yaple, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland, has written Jacob’s Land, a history of his immigrant family in New York State in the 1700s. Yaple has also written The Tree of Us following men, from Richford, New York, including John D. Rockefeller, once the world’s richest man, and Gurdon Wallace Wattle, a friend to five U.S. presidents.
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