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January History News

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Image from Who Was Walter Cronkite

During the month of January, a number of history-related actions occurred that may be of interest to the larger history community. Below are brief notices about these items including the topics of:

    • Funding
    • Training
    • I Love NY Signs
    • State Museum
    • County Meetings: Saratoga and Putnam Counties
    • Indian Paths in Manhattan

 

1. Funding

 The Fortress Niagara newsletter for December (which I received in January) contained an important funding notice. Thanks to State Senator Rob Ortt, Old Fort Niagara received a check for $10,000 to assist the fort in its educational programs. Six other museums in the county received state funding through the auspices of the State Senator as well.

What made this notice fascinating was that the funding occurred outside the REDC process. Since there are no more Member Items, I was curious as to how the State Senator was able to procure such funding for the 7 museums. The answer is that Republican senators, since they are the majority, have access to a funding pool which may be apportioned at their discretion. In effect, it works a little like Member Items. So if you are a museum or historical society in need of some funding and have a Republican State Senator, now is the time to contact that person as the budget process begins.

2. Training

In a previous post, I wrote about the need for training of municipal historians starting at the county level. I suggested a week long program in Albany involving various state agencies and a culminating reception with the Governor in the Executive Mansion. I received the following comment from one eager county historian:

When will the week-long session be given?

I am definitely interested.

Take a survey and use the numbers to advance your splendid idea.

Joseph P. Bottini
Oneida County Historian

Here is an area where it is possible to begin to develop a history community advocacy agenda. Are municipal historians interested in a state-funded training program to be held in Albany and to include the state Archives, Education, Historian, Library, Museum, Parks, I Love NY, and REDC departments so everyone knows what a municipal historian is supposed to do and the person has been trained to do it?

3. Follow-up on I Love NY Signs

Since my original post in December, there have been new developments in the SAGA OF THE SIGNS. In December the Albany Bureau of USA Today Network which had been spearheading the investigation in to the controversy, filed a FOIL with the State Comptroller’s Office for the relevant contracts entered into by the State. The documents were received last week.

The update article was published in various newspapers throughout the state. Reporter Jon Campbell’s lead sentence reads:

The state Department of Transportation used emergency highway contracts and paid out thousands of dollars in overtime to install hundreds of I Love NY highway signs ahead of July 4 weekend last year.

Normally “emergency” means “urgent highway repairs.” According to Mike Elmendorf, president and CEO of the state Associated General Contractors, this usage was “’not typical.’”

The documents reveal that the costs of the project substantially added to the almost $2 million cost for the signs themselves. For example, in the Rochester area, the cost to install the 14 signs was $300,000. In Broome, Tioga, and Otsego, $200,000 was paid but the number of signs was not provided in the documents received.  In Long Island the cost was $448,153. The multi-colored signs of complex graphics cost $5,800 apiece with the smaller signs only costing $2,825.

Part of the expense was due to the rush to installation requiring weekend work.

That drew questions from Susan Malatesta, a contract management specialist with the Comptroller’s Office, who directed her staff to ask why the extra costs were necessary.

“Why pay more to get these signs up fast?,” she wrote in September 21 email.

Ultimately, DOT told the Comptroller’s Office the extra spending was to ensure the Long Island signs were up by the summer travel season. The Comptroller’s Office signed off on the spending request. Cuomo, who has been an outspoken supporter of the signs, likely got a first-hand look that weekend: He spent July 4 in the Hamptons, according to his public schedule.

Elmendorf’s words bear notice. He is a critic of the signs and said the money could have been better spent.

I think the bigger concern is using capital dollars for something that certainly has no benefit to infrastructure and, I think you could argue, has negligible benefit for tourism, because they don’t really tell you anything.

Exactly right. Cuomo has paid millions to market the Path through History concept but no money to create actual paths through history. For a person who wants to be president of the United States in a time of great national division, it is astonishing that he would engage in alternative facts and be so dismissive of the local and state history that helped make America great in the first place.

4. “NEW YORK STATE’S GREAT PLACES AND SPACES” PROGRAM AT THE STATE MUSEUM ON JANUARY 14 

Representatives from state historic sites and cultural institutions provided educational hands-on activities, unique artifacts to explore, and information about upcoming events during the annual “New York State’s Great Places and Spaces” program at the New York State Museum. Participating institutions included the Adirondack Museum, Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany Pine Bush, Burden Iron Works, Civil War Round Table, Crailo State Historic Site, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, Historic Cherry Hill, Guilderland Historical Society, Johnson Hall State Historic Site, Knox’s Headquarters State Historic Sites, New Windsor Cantonment, NYS Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation, Olana State Historic Site, Saratoga National Historical Park, Saratoga Racing & Hall of Fame, Schenectady Historical Society, Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, U.S. Grant Cottage Historic Site, and U.S. Naval Landing Party.

This event is an annual one in State Museum. In previous years, I have worked with Bob Weible, the former New York State Historian, to create a Teacherhostel/Historyhostel through this event. Bob and some invited speakers would talk about New York State history in the morning. In the afternoon, there would be a guided tour depending on the exhibits on display and a chance to meet with the people from the various historic organizations which had display tables. My recommendation is that such a program be done on an annual basis in combination with the general public program.

5. County Meetings – Roundtables 

    a. Saratoga (Champlain Canal Region)

Lakes to Locks Passage, a nonprofit organization with the mission to inspire people to discover, honor, celebrate and share the stories that connect our lives and foster vibrant communities for future generations, called the meeting held at the Saratoga Town Hall. Historians, museums, libraries, cultural groups, political leaders and community members were invited for a roundtable discussion on “Social Reform Movements of the 19th Century in the Champlain Canal Region of New York.” Stories gathered at the roundtable are to be used to design public humanities programs on themes related to social reform movements during the Industrial Revolution.

The roundtable discussion highlights how the Industrial Revolution reshaped the fabric of society as rural communities transitioned to industrial societies with technological, economic and political repercussions. The cultural disruption triggered social reform with statewide and national impacts as voices were heard in the Champlain Canal region calling for workers’ rights, women’s suffrage, abolition, the Underground Railroad, and new religious communities emerged. The discussion was facilitated by two humanities scholars, John Patterson, former Associate Professor of American Studies and History at Penn State Harrisburg, and Robert Weible, former State Historian and Chief Curator of the New York State Museum.

Unfortunately I was not able to attend this meeting. Several thoughts came to when I read this notice of it.

1. Similar meetings on that topic certainly seem appropriate for the Hudson Valley and the Erie Canal Corridor.

2. It would be useful when county and regional meetings are held, if the organizers would prepare a write up about the meeting perhaps for New York History Blog or a list serve for the New York State History community.

3. What are the programs which are to be developed as a result of the meeting? The odds are similar programs would be beneficial elsewhere and/or may already have been instituted or are in progress. Unless we share what we are doing everyone will always have to reinvent the wheel. There definitely are some conference venues where such sharing is possible.

    b. Putnam County

The Putnam County Historian’s Office invited the local historical community to attend a collaborative Roundtable to discuss plans for commemorating the Centennial anniversaries of Women’s Suffrage and the US entry into WWI. Sarah Johnson, the now-fulltime County Historian, reached out to all town historians, historical societies, museums, local libraries, and civic organizations to share resources collaboratively and jointly organize cultural offerings in cooperation with one another to make our collective resources go further and avoid duplicating efforts.

I was able to attend this meeting. We discussed in particular the use of local materials including in the collections of the historical societies and the family collections in the community of material related to these topics. Questions were raised regarding offering public programming about these topics, individually or as part of a county-wide or regionally-wide effort, host local outreach efforts to gather oral histories, and public history days to collect scans of archival material from your local community. One possibility to draw high school students was to tell the story of what happened in their own community or residents of their communities serving overseas. These performances would strengthen the civic bonds necessary for a healthy social fabric across the generations.

6. Indian Paths in Manhattan

In response to my post on New York State Indian Paths through History, a Greenwich Village reporter wrote:

Hi, do you have information on Indian paths in the Downtown / Village area of Manhattan? Basically, anything below, say, 34th St.?

I forwarded the query to Mike Misconie, the Manhattan Borough Historian who sent the following:

I would refer Lincoln to the Welikia Project (formerly known as the Mannahatta Project), the brainchild of Eric Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Society. The project digitally recreates the flora, fauna, and landscape of the NYC region of 1609. Eric has done extensive research, gathering information from far-flung historical and scientific sources, to reach his conclusions. I suggest you visit welikia.org to learn more about Eric’s work.

The project’s companion book “Mannahatta” has a chapter (number four) on the native inhabitants of today’s Manhattan, their settlements, and trails. In fact, page 105 shows a map of the Lenape trails.

The data from the project has been loaded into a website of OasisNYC, so you can see the trails (and a LOT of other stuff) without buying the book. Here is how to see the trails:

Go to this webpage: http://www.oasisnyc.net/ .
Click the link labeled “1609 Mannahatta imagery” in the text of the second bullet-point paragraph.
A map will appear. To the right of the page is a list of menu headings with check boxes. Uncheck all the boxes that are already checked (under the menu headings “Transit, Roads, Reference Features” and “Parks, Playgrounds and Open Space”). The map should now be essentially blank except for a satellite-style image of pre-colonial Manhattan.
Open the menu heading “Historical Land Use.” Then check the box marked “1609 Lenape Trails.” The trails will appear on the map.

If you wish to contact Eric, here is his e-address: esanderson@wcs.org .

As you may know, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian is located in downtown Manhattan. They may have more or better information on this topic, but I’m not sure. You may want to contact them if Eric’s data prove inadequate.

I recognize that these six items do not encompass all that has occurred in January that would be of interest to the larger New York State Community. But they do highlight the need to better disseminate what people are doing or want to do since the odds are there are others throughout the state with similar interests and concerns.

Now what we need is a New York History podcast!

Colorado Hires a New State Historian: Is New York Next? Apply by March 16!!!!!!!

unnamed
History Colorado Center
NYSED
NYS Museum

 

 

 

 

 

 

In January, Colorado hired a new state historian. When I saw the notice, it prompted me to examine what being a state historian in Colorado meant and what that might mean for New York. As it turns out, although the title is the same, there are significant differences in how the two states operate. Technically the Colorado state historian will be part of History Colorado which according to its website is a twenty-first-century historical society. Its mission is:

Inspiring generations to find wonder and meaning in our past and to engage in creating a better Colorado

History Colorado is a private organization:

Established in 1879, History Colorado is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and an agency of the State of Colorado under the Department of Higher Education. We offer public access to cultural and heritage resources of Colorado, including statewide museums and special programs for individuals and families, collection stewardship of Colorado’s historic treasures, educational resources for schools, students and teachers, services related to preservation, archaeology and history, and the Stephen H. Hart Research Library.

As a private organization it operates under the authority of the State Department of Higher Education so there are immediate differences with New York.

The additional areas of responsibility according to its website are:

History Colorado’s statewide activities support tourism, historic preservation, education and research related to Colorado’s rich western history, offering the public unique opportunities to interact with Colorado history through its network of museums [9] which offer engaging exhibitions and special programs for adults and children.

Through our education programs, we work with schools across the state to provide classrooms and teachers with important resources and curriculum related to Colorado history, and offers local communities resources that help them to enrich historical-related community based programs.

Through the State Historical Fund historic preservation grants program, History Colorado has awarded millions in competitive grants to all 64 counties across Colorado, which has resulted in a more than $1.5 billion impact on Colorado’s economy.

As the State Historic Preservation Office, the Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation handles the processing and documenting of statewide archaeological and historic preservation related projects.

These functions exist in New York as well but are not concentrated in one area.

In his recent post to New York History Blog on the state of the state historian

former state historian Bob Weible wrote that New York moved its State Historian from the Governor’s office to the newly formed Department of Education in 1911. According to Bob, after World War II, besides increasing support for the state’s many historians, historical societies, and history museums, the newly revitalized Office of State History took on the weighty responsibility for managing thirty-two state-owned historic sites. This configuration more closely matches what Colorado does today with the primary difference that one is a private 501(c)3 and the other a state entity.

To push the comparison further, Bob reports that:

a blue ribbon commission appointed by Nelson Rockefeller would even recommend the elevation of the State Historian position to assistant commissioner status with responsibilities for overseeing historical research, the state archives, a state history museum (separate from the existing, scientifically oriented State Museum), field services, and historic sites.

Clearly nothing like that exists with the current dysfunctional organization.

Bob went on to report that attempt to create something substantive did occur recently:

SED’s Office for Cultural Education, which oversees the State Archives, Library, and Museum, presented a 2011 strategic plan to SED’s Board of Regents that included the reinvention of the Office of State History [This link is to a site which can not be found.] And the Regents approved. The plan for State History was supposed to have been initiated in 2013 however, and it wasn’t, thanks principally to the Museum’s bureaucratic foot dragging.

The Legislature did get involved in its own way to no avail. When Assemblyman Steve Englebright chaired the committee on Governmental Operations, he sought to consolidate the history operations into something more closely resembling what the blue ribbon commission had recommended, the Regents had approved, and what Colorado now has. That effort went nowhere. He subsequently sought to create the equivalent of a history steering committee encompassing the disparate history functions scattered among the state bureaucracy. I attended and wrote about such a History Roundtable meeting held in May 2014. That effort went nowhere either.  New York continues to remain dysfunctional with no end in sight. The silos rule.

One change is happening. Bob became the state historian after the position had been vacant for seven years. However when he did so, technically he was not hired as state historian regardless of the press release to contrary. As far as the state payroll system was concerned he was the Chief Curator of History at the New York State Museum. In practice the majority of his time was spent as the curator of history exhibitions at the museum in Albany who occasionally would be allowed to leave the premises to attend statewide conferences such as APHNYS and NYSHA. He really did not have the staff, funding, or time to operate as a true state historian providing leadership to the history community in the state.

As goes the state, so go the counties. The situation in the history community involving the public historians is one where the state law continues to be flouted similar to the seven-year vacancy on the state level. Although officially the state takes pride in requiring all municipalities and counties to have an historian the requirement is disrespected by either not having one or not providing resources to make the position effective especially at the county level. In the recent APHNYS newsletter, President Gerry Smith who is a county and municipal historian who has a day job in a library where he actually can earn a living, wrote:

One initiative that we will work on in 2016 is a push to have every vacancy filled for every community. We will also be trying to ensure that those vacancies are filled by individuals and not museums, historical societies, etc.

Good luck with that effort. Worthy as it is, what incentive do mayors, town supervisors, or county executives have to comply with the law when New York State history is such a low priority in Albany?

As previously reported in a post by Orange County Historian Johanna Yaun, I said in a county history at Sullivan County, that I knew of only two full-time county historians in the state and they were in the audience: Johanna and Will Tatum of Dutchess. They thought there were a few more so I contacted a few people I knew who answered for themselves and some others they knew. So while this is not state survey here are the results:

Fulltime County Historians
Dutchess County Historian Will Tatum
Livingston County Historian Amie Alden who was once the subject of a post to New York History Blog
Orange County Historian Johanna Yaun
Wyoming County Historian Cindy Amrhein

Part-Time County Historians
Cayuga County 3 people
Putnam County Historian Sarah Johnson and 3 people

Fulltime Government Employees as County Historian and Records Manager
Chautauqua County as per Aime Alden
Genesee County as per Aime Alden
Montgomery County Kelly Yacobucci Farquhar
Wayne County Peter Evans

Gerry Smith informed me that a survey will be taken in January of all the counties so it will be good to have that information. Such a survey was last completed in 2001 by the then temporary state historian. Don’t you think that the state historian should have a database of all the government historians. Perhaps we can suggest that to the new state historian.

Yes, there will be a new state historian. I was just contacted by:

Patricia Polan
Associate in Instructional Services
Office of Curriculum and Instruction
New York State Education Department
Patricia.Polan@nysed.gov
Telephone: 518-473-0741

She requested I disseminate a job posting for:

Position: NYSED::Senior Historian, SG-22

Salary: $64,302 to a maximum salary of $81,415 based on annual performance advances

Location: Albany

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) is seeking to fill the position of Senior Historian in the New York State Museum. This position will serve as the Historian for New York State. The State Historian will have broad researched based knowledge about New York State, conduct research, provide statewide coordination and leadership of the historical communities in New York, promote collaboration, and a scholarship that ensures a greater understanding of the history of the State. Under the direct supervision of the Chief Curator (History), duties of this position will include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Perform historical research about New York State;
  • Provide guidance and leadership to New York State academic organizations, institutions, and local government historians appointed pursuant to Arts and Cultural Affairs Law 57.07;
  • Review annual reports submitted to the Commissioner of Education by local government historians;
  • Advise and assist any state agency, board, commission, office, civil subdivision, institution or organization in the planning and execution of any commemorative, scholarly conference or other gathering event relating to the history of the Colony and the State of New York;
  • Examine historical material to determine its significance and validity; and
  • Publish information concerning the history of the State of New York and regarding collections of historical materiel for academic and popular publications and (media) outlets.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

For provisional appointment candidates must possess a Master’s Degree in History, Public History, Art History, American Studies**, or Museum Studies**, and three years of professional experience in collections management and/or research OR a Ph.D. in History, Public History, Art History, or American Studies**.

**Including or supplemented with nine credit hours in history.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: Special consideration will be given to candidates who possess the following qualifications:

  • Doctorate in American History showing a concentration of research of New York State history.
  • Five years of experience in the university level lecturing about New York State history.
  • Evidence of published peer reviewed historical research.
  • Editing of publications about New York State history.

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT: This will be a provisional appointment. Promotions and transfers may change appointees’ negotiating unit. Applicants should be aware that changes in negotiating units may affect their salary, insurance, and other benefits.

APPLICATION: Qualified candidates should send a resume and letter of interest by March 16, 2016 to ocejobs@nysed.gov (email applications are preferred). You must include the Box number (OCE-937/27442) in the subject line of your email to ensure receipt of your application.

If you are interested in the actual PDF which I received, please contact me. This job posting is a step in the right direction but let’s see what resources the new State Historian to actually function as the state historian the way the Colorado State Historian does. The Conditions of Employment suggest other changes may be in the works.

This person will report to the Chief Curator of History. To see that job description go to the state website.

That position went to Jennifer Lemak who had been filling in for Bob since his retirement last summer.

Bob Weible optimistically ended his post on the state of the state historian with:

Maybe something good will happen. Maybe not. Stay tuned.

A Fork In The Path Through History

On January 25, I attended the Mid-Hudson regional meeting of the Path through History project. What follows is my report on the meeting which may, or may not, be the experience and take-away of others who attended (or what is happening in other regions). The Mid-Hudson Valley region includes the Hudson River counties of Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, and Rockland, along with Sullivan County in the Catskills. Continue reading “A Fork In The Path Through History”

County Historical Societies

This is the third in a series of posts on the New York State History infrastructure. The previous ones were on County Historians and Municipal Historians. These posts draw on my experiences in initiating a series of county history conferences in the Hudson Valley this year and on Teacherhostels/Historyhostels I have conducted such as the one to the Mohawk Valley this past summer prior to Irene. Continue reading “County Historical Societies”