This July and August, Copake continues to celebrate its 200th birthday. In many cases, this year’s celebratory events mirror those that took place in Copake’s past. This will be one of the themes explored in the 2024 Summer Exhibition at the Roeliff Jansen Historical Society. The exhibition, Mementos, Maps & Milestones: Copake at […]
The town of Mount Washington is nestled in the Berkshires along the Massachusetts/New York border and boasts a population of only 144 people, per the annual town report. But at the start of the summer, the population more than doubles as part-time residents come to bask in the comfort of the mountains for the summer […]
The Town of Copake is celebrating its bicentennial with a jam-packed schedule of events throughout the remainder of the summer. In February 2023, Copake formed an all-volunteer committee that has been working hard to create a line-up of events to celebrate Copake’s 200th birthday.
The planning process
The bicentennial committee, led by Kellie Nardin, wanted to […]
All our lives we have been inundated with moving images: television, film, social media. We are so inured to the constancy of the motion, color, and sound, that when an image holds still, it causes a momentary catch – the need to register what we are seeing.
It was a moment like that that captured the […]
Historians understand better than the rest of us that there is nothing in the present that hasn’t been in the past. For the Dutchess County Historical Society, that goes back to the inquisitive nature of Helen Wilkinson Reynolds (1875-1943).
Born and raised in Poughkeepsie, NY, from a young age she developed a deep love of […]
In 1823, a dismayed Clement Clarke Moore would learn that his poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, nowadays popularly known as ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, had been published in the Troy (NY) Sentinel, albeit lacking attribution.
The poem has since been published in the neighborhood of 2,500 times and illustrated by such luminaries as […]
Most of us in the Northeast know the winter solstice as the shortest day of the year. This is because the Earth’s poles reach their maximum tilt away from the sun, which results in the shortest period of daylight and the longest night of the year. In the northern hemisphere, it takes place in […]
The New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts region has an abundant Indigenous history. This November, we’re celebrating Native American History Month with a series of features centered around Native American tribes and their people.
According to the U.S. Department Bureau of Indian Affairs, Native American Heritage Month is a time […]
For many, the name “Pine Plains” evokes a dot on the map while driving along the Taconic State Parkway, but to relegate the Hudson Valley town to a bypassing point on a map is to commit a history lover’s faux pas.
For those who have benignly wandered into that particular offense, and I’m forced to include […]
For this special tenth anniversary issue, Main Street Magazine uncovered the interesting history behind some of our local towns and how they were granted their names – and this is just a tiny sampling!
As we go about our daily lives – going to work, shopping, attending cultural events, and gathering with friends – we often […]