History

Daniel Koch

The Office of Vice Master: A History

It has been a privilege to serve as Vice Master at Bedford School for six years. When I joined, I knew it was a very old school, founded...

Daniel Koch

The American Civil War and the Case for a "Long" Age of Revolution

The term “age of Revolution,” since it was used by Eric Hobsbawm in his trilogy of books on the “long” nineteenth-century in the 1960s,...

Daniel Koch

A Welsh Immigrant Writes Home from Upstate New York, 1856

Published in the New York Almanack, December 15, 2021 There is a fascinating letter from Evan Evans of Turin, Lewis County, New York to...

Daniel Koch

New York, New France: French Ambitions on Oneida Lake in 1634

Published in the New York Almanack, November 30, 2021 When a Dutchman, Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, travelled from Albany (then...

Daniel Koch

For the sacrifices of others, two minutes of sacred silence

Published in the Albany (NY) Times Union, November 11, 2021. Poppies really do grow in the fields around Ypres and the Somme. When I ran...

Daniel Koch

Classical Place-Names and the American Frontier

An upstate New York itinerary could take you on a drive from Troy to Ithaca via Utica and Syracuse, with stop-offs off in Camillus,...

Daniel Koch

Flying the Confederate Battle Flag in the North is a Special Sort of Disgrace

New York is not a place where confederate battle flags should be flying. And yet there are more here now than ever before. I saw dozens...

Daniel Koch

Teaching Anti-Racism on the New York Frontier: Beriah Green’s Oneida Institute

When the fervent abolitionist Beriah Green took the reins as president of the Oneida Institute in Whitestown, New York, in 1833, he made...

Daniel Koch

Friedensfest: Syracuse’s 1871 German-American Peace Festival

One of nineteenth century Syracuse’s largest celebrations took place on the 1st of May, 1871. It was called the Friedensfest, the Peace...

Blog: Blog2