History-A-Thon Weekly Recommendations

Weekly 1
Friday, March 1st

Thank you once again for joining us for the PHM’s Inaugural History-A-Thon Challenge! As we embark on this journey together, we’re thrilled to guide you through your first week of historical exploration. Below are this week’s featured Challenge Prompts with some ideas to help you get started!

Challenge #1: Stop to read a historic marker.
Some of our favorite local New York State historic markers include the three markers located in front of the Putnam County Court House. Here, you can learn about the Putnam County Court House; Enoch Crosby’s role in the American Revolution; and Susan B. Anthony’s visit to Putnam County. Bonus: From this location, you can also visit Sybil Ludington’s commemorative statue, which is just about a 5-minute walk from the Court House.

The Historical Marker Database also provides a great list of local state markers. Let us know which markers you spot in your neighborhood!

Challenge #2: Listen to Music made before 1940 

With next week’s weather forecast looking a bit dreary, we recommend listening to some upbeat 1930s and 40s music to brighten your day. Let the music take you back in time, whether you’re dancing around your living room, observing nature through a window, tackling household chores, or simply enjoying a moment of relaxation. Here’s a playlist to kickstart your day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzukjHtPyVY

Featured Talk:

March is Women’s History Month! Celebrate by watching this wonderful talk by Sarah Wassberg Johnson, “Keepers of the Light: Women Lighthouse Keepers of the Hudson River.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28eqVHAnAAk

In the talk, Ms. Johnson discusses the role of women as lighthouse keepers and caretakers of Hudson River lighthouses.

Have a great weekend and week ahead – and we hope the History-A-Thon Challenge prompts add some adventure to your days! We’ll see you again next Friday for your Weekly 2 email.

Thank you for your support!

All the best,

Cassie and Kara

Weekly 2
Friday, March 8

Welcome to week two of the PHM’s Inaugural History-A-Thon Challenge! As we embark on this journey together, we’re thrilled to guide you through your second week of historical exploration. Below are this week’s featured Challenge Prompts with some ideas for completing them.

Remember, you only need to do four of the challenges to win- you might be well on your way! If you’re enjoying the challenge, please tell a friend & send them this link: www.tinyurl.com/historyathon! And, as a bonus, any friend who enters in your honor could help you win the ‘Most Funds Raised’ prize!

Challenge #3: Visit a local museum or historical society

While the Putnam History Museum is closed for the season, we thought we’d use this time to shout out some of our local history friends.

Challenge #4: Eat at a historic HV restaurant or make a historic recipe

The Hudson Valley is full of historic restaurants. Two just in Philipstown are the Hudson House River Inn and the Bird and Bottle Inn.

The Hudson House River Inn has been operating as an inn since 1832 – you can read more about it’s long history here. The Bird and Bottle Inn, off the historic Old Albany Post Road, was built before the American Revolution.

If you’d rather do the cooking yourself, how about this cheesy onion soup from 1796? Or perhaps try to arrange a fruit bowl with the care and finesse recommended in the 1885 cookbook, “Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving” By Mary Henderson.

Featured Talks:

“The Land in Controversy: Natives, Colonists, and the Fight for the Hudson Valley”

This upcoming Wednesday March 13, Philipse Manor Hall will (virtually) host historian and professor emeritus Jim Merrell. We were lucky enough to host Dr. Merrell in November, and he’ll be talking about the dramatic conflict of the wealthy Philipse family versus the tenant farmers and Wappinger who resisted their control. 

Women’s History – Lunch & Learn Talk, Thursday, March 14th, 12 pm

Celebrate Women’s History Month with a 30-minute Lunch & Learn Talk presented by Cassie Ward, Executive Director of the Putnam History Museum. Join us either in-person at the museum or stream it live virtually as we journey through the lives of 20 remarkable Putnam County women, spanning from the American Revolution to the present day. As a registered Challenge participant you can register for free as a “PHM Member.”

We hope the History-A-Thon Challenge prompts add some adventure to your days! We’ll see you again next Friday for your third Weekly email.

Weekly 3
Friday, March 15

We’re thrilled to see you in Week Three of the History-A-Thon Challenge! We hope the challenges have brought a spark of excitement and discovery to your routine. Let’s dive deeper into two of the challenge prompts for the week ahead:

Challenge #6: Celebrate Women’s History Month
Explore the impactful stories of Putnam County women through the PHM’s online HerStory exhibition. Additionally, we suggest the New York State Women’s Virtual Heritage trail for a broader look at women’s contributions statewide. We think this trail would make for an epic road trip! *Bonus* Invite a woman in your life for a cup of coffee/tea or an early spring walk, sharing stories and perhaps some Women’s History Month facts.

Challenge #7: Walk a historic trail, park, or street.

Putnam County boasts an array of historic trails and streets waiting to be discovered. For those on the west side of the county, Cold Spring’s Main Street and Garrison’s Landing offer rich history encapsulated in their architecture and historic views. Enhance your journey with our History Crawl series for a deeper historical experience of these places:

If you are short on time, even taking a brief walk in your neighborhood will likely lead you to seeing a bit of local history! Notice your neighbor’s homes – what are some of the architectural features? When do you think it was built? Do you see the rock walls/fences in the woods? These may have served as property boundaries or field markers. These are all sure signs of historical activity!

For a slightly more adventurous walk, travel to the northeastern part of the county to Patterson, for a blend of historic charm and natural beauty. Patterson offers a gateway to the Great Swamp, one of New York State’s largest wetlands. With easy access to the Great Swamp via Marble Rd. in Patterson, you’ll find an accessible boardwalk trail perfect for experiencing the sites and sounds of the swamp. Dive deeper into the Great Swamp’s story with this narrated video by James Earl Jones. The swamp will just be waking up with peepers & red-winged blackbirds – all sure signs of spring!

Keep up the great work, Challengers! Your enthusiasm and curiosity are what make this Challenge so rewarding.

Weekly 4
March 22nd

We are approaching the end of our History-A-Thon Challenge! It’s just nine more days until your four Challenge tasks must be completed- how are you faring? If you haven’t even begun yet, don’t worry! There are plenty of ways to add a little history & culture to your life that will have you winning the Challenge in no time. Here are our recommendations for this week:

Challenge 8: Attend a talk on local history & heritage

Since we are entering the last full week of Women’s History Month, here is one specifically about Women’s History in NYS: “She-Merchants, Sachems, and Slaves: Women of Colonial New York” lecture by Sarah Wassberg Johnson and Danna Cruz of Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site.  We’ve highlighted quite a other few talks throughout the month, which you can see here in the previous weekly emails.

Challenge 9: Think like a historian

The world around us has changed a lot in the past hundred years. Check out this map of Cold Spring from 1912. Many things that were commonplace only a few generations ago are no longer: stables, wagons, cobblers, and furniture repair shops. How will the people of the future look back at our present world?    

Try it! Grab an object that holds value for your own personal history and notice the tiny details. What about this item might give a future historian a glimpse into your life?

Here’s an example: A Cookbook. Are there notes in the margins, family recipes tucked into the pages, or stains that suggest one recipe made a bit of a mess? What ingredients are most common in the recipes? What does this say about which foods were popular and which foods were readily available? These small hints left on a physical object can say a lot about the history of the object and the object’s owner. Get creative & enjoy it!

This upcoming weekend is the last weekend to see Dirt: A New Play by the Putnam Theatre Alliance. You can get tickets here.

This play revolves around land ownership on the eve of the American Revolution in what would soon become Putnam County. The struggle over land in the Hudson Valley was famously tumultuous. Three individuals, Daniel Nimham, chief of the Wappinger tribe, Mary Philipse Morris, landowner, and Cesar, a miller enslaved by the Philipse family, had to decide which side they would support: the British rule or the American colonies.

You could count this as completing “Challenge 5: Make your own challenge!” or “Challenge 8: Attend a talk on local history & heritage” because it is about history and heritage, and the actors do, technically, talk 😊

We will see you next week for our final Weekly!

Weekly 5
March 29th

Wow – you’re almost there! The final weekend of the PHM’s History-A-Thon is upon us! We hope you’ve had fun adding a little extra history and culture to your daily routines this month! Here are some final recommendations to brighten the weekend ahead:  

Check out a monument in your neighborhood:  
There are many monuments, in all shapes and sizes, that you may walk or drive by without noticing each day. Take some extra time this weekend to try and spot these monuments. See if you can find out more about its history and what it represents. Here in Cold Spring, there is a replica Parrott rifle monument located at the waterfront – a testament to the industrious West Point Foundry and its crucial role during the Civil War and the development of Cold Spring as a village.

Make your own challenge: Browse an online archive 
Online archives hold a treasure trove of stunning and thought-provoking images and documents. At the PHM, we’re fortunate to share nearly 2,000 digitized images from our collection. We recommend browsing them with this ‘Random Images’ generator. 

Some of our other favorite online archives include the Library of Congress and Hudson River Valley Historic Newspapers. Pick a random topic that interests you and find yourself down the historical research rabbit hole for hours (no Easter pun intended 🐰) 

Final Step: Logging your Activity (60 seconds)

By Wednesday, April 3rd, 9 AM, please log your Challenge participation in this quick Google In-Take form. You will need to submit this to claim your donor and participation prizes. You do not need a Google Account to complete the form (you can ignore the prompt to sign in). It should take just about a minute to complete! We’ll send one last reminder on Tuesday! 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfQmDvaUDNGeJE_ajmBYN8ya3xuWpK1fuyL1dcb2B5mHNvP0w/viewform

Thank you for participating in our inaugural History-A-Thon – we appreciate your passion and support!