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Tag: Anne Dealy

This large multistory brick building with two towers and lawns and trees around it was the Classical and Union School.

Geneva’s Classical and Union School

Brief history of Geneva's Classical and Union School (Geneva High School).
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A painting by Margaret Hutchins of a view across a field between two willow trees and shrubs.

Margaret Hutchins: Enterprising and Fearless

Brief biography of Margaret Hutchins.
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Painting by Margaret Chrystie of an elderly woman sitting in a red chair reading a magazine.

Margaret Chrystie

Learn the story of a Prouty descendent who worked as an artist, painted in Geneva with Margaret Hutchins, and painted a portrait of Agnes Hutchins that hangs at Rose Hill Mansion.
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Five men in old-fashioned constable uniforms with billy clubs.

The Mensch Family

A short history of Geneva's Mensch family, including an early hotelier and one of the first village police officers.
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A commercial street of buildings with a trolley running down the middle and a man with a shovel and two horses behind large snowbanks.

Geneva 1879: Year in Review

A few highlighted events from the Geneva Courier's 1879 Year in Review.
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A NYC & HR train engine crashed off tracks under a railroad bridge.

Railroad Accidents and Safety

Horrific railroad accidents were common in the 1800s in Geneva and elsewhere, as technology and speed outstripped concerns for risk and safety.
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A transparent map digitally imposed on a Google Earth satellite image of Geneva's lakefront.

Geneva’s Lakefront: 1904 and Today

A 1904 map of Geneva's lakefront reveals the extent of change that has occurred in the built environment and residents' attitudes about it in 120 years.
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An elevated map view of Geneva from a point over Seneca Lake.

1873 Geneva Bird’s-Eye View

An 1873 Geneva bird's-eye view represents a popular art form in 19th-century America and details the city's built environment.
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A middle aged woman sitting at a desk talking on a landline phone.

Geneva’s Early Woman Journalist: Mildred Jennings

The life and career of journalist Mildred Jennings, one of 20th-century Geneva's first woman journalists.
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A white marble cemetery monument inscribed with the name Thomspon and various individuals on each side.

The Thompson Family of Washington Street Cemetery

The story of an ordinary family in Geneva's past, the Thompson Family in Washington Street Cemetery.
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A large open city lot with a group of about 20 men shoveling and moving dirt or placing playground equipment while a crowd of people watches.

Early Geneva Playgrounds

Early Geneva playgrounds provided safe summertime recreation for a growing population of children in the city in the first quarter of the 20th century.
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People and a horse-drawn sleigh standing around the street outside a badly fire-damaged building of three stories and a mansard roof.

Geneva in December 1922

A glimpse at Geneva in December 1922 through the newspaper.
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A 2-story, light colored brick house with a dark columned entry porch.

The Prouty-Chew House: From Family Home to Museum and Work Space

There were many changes involved in transforming the Prouty-Chew house from a house to a museum.
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A man and woman and five young girls in old-fashioned dress standing outside a large brick house.

The Prouty Family Home

Discover how the Prouty-Chew House changed over the Prouty family's forty-year residence.
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Birdseye view drawing of a town showing houses, streets and an elevated railroad crossing.

The Battle of the Avenue B Railroad Crossing

When the Geneva village trustees went to war over a rail crossing.
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A group of people in old-fashioned dress standing in front of a large brick house with a wrought-iron fence in front of it.

The Next Generation: The Prouty Family Legacy Part III

A chronicle of Phineas and Adelaide Prouty's children.
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Phin & Kit

Phin and Kit: The Prouty Family Legacy Part II

Take a peek into the early married life of Phineas Prouty Jr. and his wife Adelaide.
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Portrait of the head and neck of an elderly white man wearing a cravat and coat.

Phineas Prouty Sr and His Family Legacy Part I

Phineas Prouty Sr. and his family spent 50 years living in the building we use as a museum. Discover how their story begins.
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Portrait view of a woman in a high-necked dress with large dark polka dots.

Medical Women’s Success

Why did medical women find professional success in the 19th century, only to fall back in the 20th?
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Front and back cover to a 1968 Singer Zig Zag Sewing Machine

Historians At Home: Anne Dealy

The second post in our "Historians at Home" series.
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View of tollbooths on New York State Thruway.

My Geneva is…

For a commuter, Geneva is its built environment, especially the roadways.
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Pattern illustrations for corsets and bumpads.

19th-Century Corsets

In Part II of our series on corsets, we look at changes in 19th-century corsets and an example from the Geneva Historical Society collection.
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1893 Ballot

Geneva’s Close Election of 1903

Look back at Geneva’s controversial mayoral election of 1903.
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Caricature of a man tightly lacing the corset of a woman holding on to a tree.

The Early History of the Corset

The early history of corsets is tied to morality and the ideal figure in fashion.
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A keyhole desk with a computer, monitor and keyboard on it.

Memory and the Pandemic Experience

If you want to remember what is happening now, what you think about COVID-19, make a record now.
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Exploding Steamer

Disasters on Land and Water

Danger on water and land plagued 19th-century Americans.
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26 students standing by a blackboard or sitting in old-fashioned desks in rows with a teacher looking on.

Geneva School Expansion and Reform

A review of the period of school expansion and reform in Geneva during the late 1800s.
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Three large wooden beer barrels with taps.

Beer Brewing in Early Geneva

Find out more about beer brewing in early Geneva.
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1953-girls-basketball-team-in-uniform

Lessons for Life: Sports in Geneva

Join us to discuss the history and development of sports and athletics in Geneva in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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1953-girls-basketball-team-in-uniform

Panthers & Saints: High School Sports in Geneva

New exhibit explores 120 years of high school athletics in Geneva.
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handwritten-notes-headed-the-mental-faculties

What We Learned In School: 19th-Century Schoolwork

What was 19th-century schoolwork like?
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children-doing-gravestone-rubbing

Exploring Cemetery Stories with School Children

What can you learn from a cemetery? Every autumn Geneva's second and fifth grade students get to find out.
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1967-students-protest-with-signs

1968: A Year of Change

1968, the year the Geneva Historical Society opened Rose Hill Mansion as a museum, was a year of momentous change.
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Dove’s Geneva

In conjunction with the exhibit opening of "Dove's Geneva, the Geneva Historical Society and the Arthur Dove Tribute Group are hosting a special event celebrating the importance of Dove and his work to Geneva.
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Community Meetings on Facility Expansion

The Historical Society will host two meetings in January to solicit community input on a facilities expansion project.
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exterior-of-the-high-street-school-c1880

Segregated Schools in Geneva’s Past

Many Americans are familiar with the segregated schools of the Jim Crow South, however, officially segregated schools existed in most 19th-century communities in the North, including Geneva. It took the concerted efforts of Geneva's African-American community to advocate for improved education and eventual integrated schools for their children.
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five-panels-and-letters-MLK-on-a-wall

Curriculum Project Results in Student Mural

Geneva Middle School students create a mural recounting Geneva High School boycotts of the 1970s.
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A one-room brick schoolhouse with two teachers and a group of children sitting and standing in the yard.

Free Schools for Geneva

Free public schools appeared in Geneva in the mid-19th century.
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drawing-of-the-first-geneva-school-district-building-in-1856

Founding of the Geneva School District

The Geneva City School District can trace its birth to 1839, the year that the village’s Districts No. 1 and No. 19 merged to form the state’s first union school district. By the 1830s, the community had a College, dozens of private schools, and two public schools for the basic instruction of children of all classes. Yet schooling in the antebellum period here and throughout New York was far from satisfactory. The unification of Geneva’s districts was part of a statewide movement in the mid-19th century to improve public schooling.
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people-marching-in-downtown-geneva-in-1965

Geneva and the Civil Rights Movement

As we at the Geneva Historical Society look back at the 1960s this year, we cannot ignore the protest movements that sprung out of that decade, particularly the Civil Rights Movement.
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schoolhouse-in-the-snow

Early Schools of Geneva

The recent debates over Geneva’s school budget and national arguments about the Common Core curriculum have had me thinking and reading a lot about the history of education this past spring. Education and schooling have been part of life in Geneva from its early settlement, though not in a form most modern Genevans would recognize.
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Lincoln’s Assassination as Seen in Geneva

One hundred fifty years ago this week actor John Wilkes Booth changed American history when he stepped into the Lincolns' booth at Ford's Theater and shot the president in the back of the head, the first man to assassinate a U.S. president. The assassination was an awful event that shook the nation just a week after Lee’s surrender overjoyed the North.
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view-of-USO-building-in-geneva-in-the-1940s

The Geneva USO and WWII

The Geneva USO Club helped the community do its part during World War II.
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Geneva Teenagers and World War II

With World War II came the birth of the American teenager. While we tend to associate the flowering of teen culture with the baby boomers, it was actually their immediate predecessors, the so-called “Silent Generation” who were first referred to as teenagers. Then, as always, the older generation thought that the younger generation was at best misguided, at worst they were described as selfish, willful, spoiled and delinquent.
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Newspaper front page with headline Austria Declares War! Belgrade will be occupied at once. Efforts for Peace were in Vain.

Geneva’s “Busted Yankees”

As we saw in a previous post about the Herendeen family, World War I came about so suddenly and unexpectedly that few people were prepared for it. As mobilization for war began across Europe, there were over 100,000 Americans visiting or living abroad who were unable to leave easily.
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Newspaper ad for 6% bonds

Currency, Finance and the Civil War

Banking in the early years of the American Republic was decentralized, inefficient and disorganized, leading to frequent panics and depressions. As in many other areas of national development, it was the Civil War which prompted radical change in the country’s financial system.
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Workers at Rose Hill Farm

As we saw last month, the Swans at Rose Hill relied on female workers to do much of the housework and childcare. Running the farm operations required male workers.
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Domestic Service at Rose Hill

At Rose Hill in the mid-19th century, the Swans hired laborers for agricultural and domestic work. This post examines the female domestic servants at the house
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Banking in Early Geneva

Overview of banking in early Geneva.
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History of Christmas

A brief history of the roots of American Christmas.
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The Arrival of the Consumer Economy

The rise of modern consumer culture as seen in Geneva.
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Food Preservation: From Home to Factory

During the 19th century, Genevans went from preserving food at home in order to be able to eat to purchasing luxury preserved foods in stores.
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A stained glass window with lilies and the names and death dates of 10 Sunday School children who died of diphtheria.

Diphtheria Epidemic

Chronicle of the 1878-1879 Geneva diphtheria epidemic.
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Bunches of dried white corn braided and hanging from hooks.

Early Food Preservation in the Finger Lakes

Food preservation techniques of the Iroquois and European settlers.
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A group of mostly black men and women wearing shawls and hats stand on a sidewalk outside a white clapboard building with a lampost.

Celebrating African-American Freedom

Geneva's African-American community hosted a number of emancipation celebrations in the 19th century to celebrate their freedoms while protesting slavery and racial inequality.
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Engraving-of-Rose-Hill-Mansion

Sustainable Agriculture, c. 1860

Robert Swan's farming practice was what the modern observer could call sustainable.
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horse-walking-in-threshing-machine

Robert Swan Becomes a Farmer

Robert Swan's transition from city dweller to farmer at Rose Hill.
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lincoln-seated-with-his-cabinet-after-signing-the-emancipation-proclamation

150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

A little over one-hundred fifty years ago, on September 22, 1862, President Lincoln took a step he had planned for months and proclaimed that as of January 1, 1863 “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.…”
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Freezing Fingers, Toasted Toes: Heating in America

A comfortable house in winter was a rare thing in much of the United States prior to the late 19th century. According to one English visitor to Cayuga, NY in 1827, American houses were built “expressly for summer, without the slightest reference to the six months’ winter that they suffer.”
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