NEW YORK COURTS

Historical Society of the New York Courts & Albany Law School present: Illustrious Alumni - Bronson, Brewer, Mathews & Jackson

When: Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Time: 5:30-7:30 PM

Where: Albany Law School
Dean Alexander Moot Courtroom
80 New Scotland Ave, Albany, NY 12208
Cost: Free & Open to the Public

Reception to Follow

REGISTER

2 NYE CLE Credits will be offered (Cost: $50)

PROGRAM

Robert H. Jackson, United States Supreme Court Justice
by Professor John Q. Barrett, Professor of Law, St. John's University & Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow,

The Robert H. Jackson Center
         
David Josiah Brewer, United States Supreme Court Justice
by Dean Alicia Ouellette, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Intellectual Life & Professor of Law, 

Albany Law School
         
James Campbell Matthews, First African-American judge in New York by Hon. Randolph F. Treece, U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of New York
         
Greene Bronson, Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals
by Professor Vincent M. Bonventre, Professor of Law, Albany Law School
         
Conversation with Presenters
Moderated by Hon. Albert M. Rosenblatt, President, The Historical Society of the New York Courts


The Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York was founded in 2002 by the New York State

 Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye. Its mission is to preserve, protect and promote the legal history of New York.

ALBANY "GREAT WAR" BOOK PRESENTATION/SIGNING

When: Friday April 25, 2014
Time: 5:30 PM
Where: Huxley Theater
Cultural Education Center (State Museum building)
222 Madison Avenue, Albany NY 12230
Cost: Free and Open to the Public

It is no accident that the new book, Harlems Rattlers and the Great War by Jeffrey T. Sammons and John H. Morrow, Jr., virtually begins and ends with its most famous combat hero Henry Johnson--a man most closely identified with Albany, New York.

Sammons and Morrow believe that their book sheds new and revealing light on Henry Johnson and his cautionary tale. Join us for this presentation by Dr. Jeffrey Sammons.

Signed copies of the Harlems Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality will be available for purchase after Dr. Sammons' presentation.

The presentation by Jeffrey Sammons, sponsored by the New York State Library and the Friends of the State Library, will feature a display of several items from the New York State Archives on New York's 369th Regiment and Albany's hero, Henry Johnson.

BOOK TALK - MARGUERITE HOLLOWAY

Thurs. Apr. 11, 8:00 p.m.

Clark Auditorium

Cultural Education Center - Empire State Plaza

222 Madison Avenue - Albany

Marguerite Holloway, author of The Measure of Manhattan, will speak about the fascinating history of John Randel, Jr., the man who plotted the grid transforming hilly, undeveloped, early 19th century Manhattan into today's modern, geometric city.

Free and open to the public.  Sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, the Friends of the New York State Library, and the New York Council for the Humanities.

Free parking for this event is available in the Cathedral Lot, just east of the CEC.

Posted at the request of the Friends of the New York State Library.

NEW GEOGRAPHIES

Continued from June 23, 2012

When traveler James Stuart is informed by the New York State secretary of state's office in Albany in September, 1829, that all copies of the annual Auburn Prison report have been given away, he's also told that the nearby state printer's office may have a copy. Off he heads down the hill and enters the print shop. "The printer doubted whether he had more than one copy to keep, and he rummaged everywhere without success. I told him this was very provoking for me, who had got the previous reports, and wished to have the last report put up with them, that I might carry them together to Britain. My last remark put things at once to rights. The printer could not think of allowing me to go home without the paper; and he absolutely deprived himself of the only copy he had, in order to complete my set. I stupidly neglected to mark the name of this very obliging person."

His quest fulfilled, the Stuarts prepared to set out down the west bank of the Hudson on their way back to their temporary New Rochelle home. We'll dispense with their guide services at this point to explore the northern, central and western parts of the state on our own. The couple, along with their hack driver Hugh Duffie, will stop for meals and/or lodging at New Baltimore, Catskill, Saugerties (on October 1), Kingston, and Newburgh, then crossing the river back into New York at New Jersey. The entire ten-day journey had cost them $98.00 including Duffie's services.

Their boarding house was closing for the winter so they move to another nearby, staying until December and making a visit to the cottage of the late (1809) Thomas Paine. Then they're off again, really long-distance, traveling through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, returning to New York the following summer, where we'll have a reunion with them at some future date. But now we're on our own.

Back at the beginning of the year Albany's mayor Charles Edward Dudley had been elected to the United States Senate, to take the place of Martin Van Buren, who was now governor. Banker John Townsend was chosen by the voters to serve in Dudley's office and a short time later had laid the cornerstone for the new City Hall (a fire would destroy it 61 years later). This year also saw the election of a new Albany County sheriff. His name is tucked away somewhere in the county archives but it's the name (and nationality) of the person he defeated that's of most interest. War of 1812 veteran James Maher lost the election by an extremely narrow margin. One of the first Irish candidates for any local office (there would be many more to come) his near-miss was another signal of the slowly weakening influence of the Dutch patrician families in the state's capital region.

New political-geographical landscapes were forming as well. Part of the funding for the new city hall had been secured in May, when the state government paid $175,000 to the city of Albany to relinquish rights to the land where the state capital building stands and to the park surrounding it. Of greater importance is the growing feeling that the state's capital should be moved out of Albany to some city closer to the geographical center of the state. Hasn't happened yet, of course.

© 2012 David Minor / Eagles Byte