History Room Programs

Author Event: In Defiance: Runaways from Slavery in New York’s Hudson River Valley

Program Description: In this local history talk and author event Susan Stessin-Cohn, former professor of social studies education at SUNY New Paltz and Director of Education at Historic Huguenot Street, and currently the Historian for the Town of New Paltz, will speak on her 20+ years of research into the history of slavery in the Hudson River Valley, with a particular focus on the plight of the “runaways”—enslaved persons who sought freedom by escaping from their enslavers. Stessin-Cohn and her research partner, Ashley Hurlburt-Biagini, have brought to light 830 notices of enslavers of the Hudson Valley placing notices of rewards for the recapture of their enslaved "runaways". They combed through newspaper archives and databases, microfilm and library special collections—even dusty attics—seeking newspaper notices placed by Hudson Valley enslavers offering rewards for the return of their “property.” The second edition of this book includes 250 more notices.

This in-person event will include a Q & A and book signing. Books can be purchased courtesy of Spotty Dog Books & Ale.

Date/Time: Thursday, May 9, 6pm

Location: Hudson Area Library Community Room, in-person

Registration: Free and open to the public.

An Archive for Hudson’s Queer History

Program Description: The Hudson Area Library in collaboration with Out Hudson is building a community-sourced archive of Hudson’s LGBTQ+ history. We are holding this public event for the community to bring photographs, documents, memorabilia, ephemera, and memories to share with our History Room team and the attendees. Material can be loaned to the library for digitization or donated for the physical collection. In addition we will be building our library’s oral history collection to include LGBTQ+ members of our community.

Trixie Starr is our Mistress of Ceremonies for the evening that includes clips from our new oral history interviews with Charlie Ferrusi and Ken Sheffer, time to share memories, celebrate, and give ideas for an inclusive archive of Hudson’s LGBTQ+ history. Please bring photographs, memorabilia, and ephemera that you would like to donate or loan to us to digitize. Wine and light fare will be served.

Date/Time: Thursday, June 6, 6-7:30pm

Location: In-person, in the Community Room.

Registration: Free and open to the public.

This program is made possible in part through funding from the Spark of Hudson, in partnership with the Eutopia Foundation.

A French Fabulist in Leisler’s New York: The Extraordinary Adventures of Mathieu Sagean

Program Description: In this Leisler collaboration, Owen Stanwood, Professor of History at Boston College, tells of Mathieu Sagean, an explorer and fabulist, what we can learn from his tales about Jacob Leisler and early New York history.

In 1700 a Canadian mariner, Mathieu Sagean, arrived in France and told of his discovery of a vast Native American kingdom in the far west, of his adventures across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and of the controversial administration of a certain New York governor, one “Linsselaer”; who conspired with a pirate to steal Sagean’s treasure. His narrative provides a valuable primary account of Leisler’s administration. Though Sagean was an inveterate liar, his report reveals the kinds of stories about Leisler’s New York that circulated in the late-seventeenth-century Atlantic, and how they related to a wider imagined world.

Owen Stanwood is Professor of History at Boston College. He is the author of two books: The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution (2011); and The Global Refuge: Huguenots in an Age of Empire (2020).

Date/Time: Thursday, April 25, 6-7:30pm

Location: In-person, Community Room, Hudson Area Library

Registration: Free and open to the public.