This lecture explores the early history of baseball in Ulster County and the role the region played in the sport’s development during the mid-19th century. Long before professional leagues, baseball took root in river towns like Kingston and Rondout, where dockworkers, tradesmen, and clerks organized clubs and played on open fields. Drawing on newspaper accounts, […]

Dutch history can be elusive – it’s rarely taught in our schools and with so many disparate parts it often follows a meandering, convoluted path and connections are obscured. Historian/filmmaker Stephen Blauweiss brings this history to life in a fun and engaging way, using a vast array of quality images, maps, and timelines. What was […]

“Hudson River Undercover” explores how working-class recreation and private surveillance collided aboard Hudson River steamboat excursions during the early twentieth century. The talk focuses on an investigation report written mere weeks after the onset of federal wartime alcohol prohibition in July 1919 by an undercover agent working for New York’s Committee of Fourteen, an influential […]