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“I don’t think jazz should be called music.  It has no harmony.   It’s harsh and lacks dignity and beauty… It tears a piano to pieces and is suited only to a cheap instrument.”  This was the 1927 observation, and stern opinion, of Attica’s  Philetus Sheridan Tyler, nicknamed Leet, as quoted in the Buffalo Evening News on March 16. 

The religious history of the United States is one of persecution and yet tolerance. Differences in theological perspectives, politics, and loyalties existed among all denominations and religious communities. This aspect of life was also prevalent among the Society of Friends. Their spiritual life and journey to western New York reflected their civil and religious values as they established themselves in local society.

Just in case you're not feeling old, I'd like to remind you that there are hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who are adults today who were not yet born when New York City nearly went bankrupt in 1975.

If one were to drive through the Town of Verona, NY, on State Route 46 in this current century, a few things are hard to miss, while others are seemingly unremarkable and not hard to miss at all. One of those hard-to-miss sights is an unusually wide ditch-like body of water clinging to the edge of Route 46, brimming with cattails, fallen trees, and other vegetation.

Two hundred-twenty years ago, in the early nineteenth century, a feverish young woman rode atop her trusty horse in the Mohawk Valley region of Upstate New York. This young lady was returning to her parents’ residence in the Town of Verona, Oneida County. The young lady in question did not make her homeward-bound journey alone, for she had been accompanied by death-quite literally.

 Unbeknownst to many, the Mohawk Valley has a rich history of radical politics and organized labor. Some of these events, such as the Little Falls Textile Strike of 1912-1913, were torrid affairs in which strikers engaged in lengthy battles for better pay, working conditions, and other related provisions.

Municipal bankruptcies are, thankfully, few and far between. Allowing one to happen rarely happens overnight (although conceivably it could). Rather, it usually represents a combination of declining tax revenues, declines in other sources of municipal revenue, and insufficient reductions – or even increases – in municipal government spending over a period of several or more years.

The traveler, 26-year-old Alfred Trumble, had been the sole passenger on the schooner E. H. King, carrying logwood and coconuts from Jamaica to the Port of New York. It was a mild day at the end of January 1874

This incredible piece of history needs to be told and never forgotten. After the German Nazis defeated the French military forces, they occupied Paris from 1940-1944. The people were traumatized from violent physical treatment, most of their food supplies were used to feed the occupying German army, and anything of value was either stolen or ruined beyond repair.

The flagship in the German fleet of ocean liners, the Bremen, was an elite vessel, christened by Reich President Hindenburg with the American ambassador present, and launched with fanfare on August 17, 1928

The Republican Party developed in New York during the first Washington administration around the core of George Clinton’s anti-Federalists. During the Revolution, they provided the leadership of the popular Whigs. Federalist foreign policies during Washington’s second term enabled the Republican Party to establish a mass following.

The religious persecutions in Europe, particularly in the German-speaking regions during the 18th and 19th centuries, generated a mass influx of religious sects into America. Political and religious turmoil in the German territories produced a wave of immigrants seeking religious freedom, political autonomy, and abundant resources.

World War II (1939-1945) was the most bloody, destructive, and costly military and political conflict in the known history of humanity. The war spanned every habitable continent (except deep-frozen Antarctica), northern and southern hemispheres, and it was fought on land, sea, and air.

"Give an old ghost what you love most

Ninety years have passed since the radio listeners first asked, “Who was that masked man?”

In preparation for war in 1812, Congress passed a ninety-day embargo on trade. When news of the embargo reached New York City on April 3, city residents showed “alarm, hustle, and confusion.”

Two men of mid-19th-century Albany, New York, had much to share: origins in the Jewish communities of what would become Germany, immigration to the United States and more particularly to the New York State capital … and, eventually, the same father-in-law.