Night of Lights
2023-12-01 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Come celebrate the beginning of the Festival of Trees with the Night of Lights, an exclusive evening of radiant fir trees and wintertide enchantment. Featuring live music, great food, and more!

Holiday Ramble in the Stockade: A Festive Day of Celebration and Shopping
2023-12-02 10:00 - 16:00
A joyful day of holiday merriment and shopping in Schenectady’s most charming and historic neighborhood!
Get ready to immerse yourself in the holiday spirit in Schenectady’s historic Stockade neighborhood. Join us for a day of joyful festivities, combining merriment and shopping in one of Schenectady’s most cherished and historic districts.
Visitors are invited to explore the quaint streets of the Stockade District, where a plethora of unique activities and offers await at various local establishments. Highlights of the event include:
Arthur’s Market (35 N Ferry St) Wreath Pop-up: Witness the beauty of exquisite handmade wreaths crafted from natural materials by Mud Road Farm. Indulge in delicious seasonal treats to keep you energized during your holiday adventure.
Sweet Sprig + Brouwer House Creative (14 N Church St) Artist’s Open Studios and Sale: Join the talented artists of Brouwer House Creative for a day filled with creativity. Enjoy complimentary refreshments and a hot cocoa bar to keep you warm. Featured artists include Deborah Angilletta, Mary Ann Van Alstyne, Sizz Handmade, and Thistle and Clover. Explore Sweet Sprig, a unique store offering artisan soaps, gifts, candles, and skincare – all made on site. Plus, receive a free gift with every purchase!
Mohawk Valley Art Shoppe + Last Nerve Tattoo (101 State St) Immerse yourself in a day of art, poetry, and music at this collaborative event hosted by Mohawk Valley Art Shoppe and Last Nerve Tattoo. Thirty percent of art sales will support the “Things Of My Very Own” charity. The event features free morning poetry readings and afternoon live music, nurturing both creativity and community. Join us in celebrating the grand opening of Last Nerve Tattoo, complete with special promotions to further support the charity. Your presence will make a meaningful difference in our city.
Bex Salon (234 Union St) Enjoy a complimentary gift with any purchase throughout the day, along with festive seasonal refreshments.
Schenectady County Historical Society (32 Washington Ave) Festival of Trees (10:00 a.m. – 4:45 p.m.): Immerse yourself in the holiday splendor with an array of beautifully decorated Christmas trees. Admission is $6.
Hardwired Fitness (23 N College St) Join us for a FREE Community Class at 9:00 a.m. All fitness levels are welcome! Bring your family, friends, and neighbors – the more, the merrier! Please register online.
Don’t miss out on this special day of holiday cheer and local shopping. Come be a part of the Stockade’s festive spirit!

Festival of Trees
2023-12-02 10:00 - 2023-12-23 16:30
December 2 – 23, 10am-4:30pm at Schenectady County Historical Society
The Festival of Trees lights up Schenectady! Featuring 60+ artistically decorated fir trees, the Festival glows with the spirit of Christmas and the Solstice. Local artists, businesses, and non-profits have come together to turn the galleries of SCHS into a land of wintertide enchantment, and we warmly invite you to come stroll! When you stop in, be sure to vote for your top choices in 8 categories, including Cutest, Most Glamorous, and Most Creative trees!
The Festival of Trees is a fundraiser for the Schenectady County Historical Society. Admission is $6 for adults 12+. You can purchase tickets here in advance or buy them at the front desk when you arrive.

Jan Mabee's Twilight Tour
2023-12-02 16:30 - 18:30, 2023-12-08 16:30 - 18:30
Each twilight at Mabee Farm brings a different array of lights and colors, as the warmth of the sunset transforms into deep blue, moon-lit skies. Join us as we explore Mabee Farm as it’s meant to be explored; awash in changing colors, the wind gusting outside, and the flickering lights of the Mabee house keeping us cozy and warm. A costumed Jan Mabee from the early 1700s will lead us through the house, which is decorated for the season. He’ll delve into the histories and mysteries of the Mabee Farm, and give us a taste of what life was like for settlers living on the edge of the wilderness.

Schenectady Wine Society: December
2023-12-06 18:00 - 20:00
Join us for curated wine tastings by and for local wine lovers. Wine connoisseur Buffy Leonard and city historian Chris Leonard will lead us on a tasting and history tour of their favorite wines for the season.
$30; pre-registration required. Must be 21+ with valid ID. All ticket sales are final.

Drink the Seasons: December
2023-12-07 18:00 - 20:00
Join for an evening of seasonal cocktails and more at Schenectady Historical. Led by historian John Gearing, we’ll make — and sample — a variety of historic libations, made with holiday flare.
$30; pre-registration required. Must be 21+ with valid ID.
All ticket sales are final.

Chocolate Haus, Holiday Edition
2023-12-08 18:00 - 20:00
Experience a recreated 18th century chocolate house at the Festival of Trees. Well-known historian Paul Supley will tempt your pallet and tickle your tastebuds with a trio of historic hot chocolates, including delicacies enjoyed by English kings and the middle-class settlers of the Mohawk and Hudson Valleys. You’ll learn how easy it is to create and enjoy this wonderful treat favored by the ancestors. As a special finale to the evening, we’ll taste a libation infused with port or madeira. All amidst the backdrop of glittering holiday lights and decorated fir trees!

A Very Mabee Christmas
2023-12-09 12:00 - 14:00
Gelukkig Kerstfeest!! This program welcomes families to share in colonial holiday traditions, including those celebrated by the Dutch-American Mabee family. We’ll learn how revelers of yore celebrated the season, enjoy colonial-era treats and stories by the Inn’s fire, and make a craft to take home. Plus, we’ll have a very special scavenger hunt — kids can use riddles and clues to find holiday friends nestled around the historic site.
This program is $10/person or $5/person for SCHS members.

The Holiday Stockade Stroll 12/14
2023-12-14 17:30 - 19:00
Schenectady’s Stockade is beautiful any time of year but the holidays always bring out a certain magic! In this walking tour we’ll explore the lights and sights of this historic district while learning the ways in which generations past celebrated the season. Light refreshments will be served, and guests are invited to explore the sparkling Festival of Trees before and after the tour!

The Holiday Stockade Stroll 12/21
2023-12-21 17:30 - 19:00

The Holiday Stockade Stroll 12/22
2023-12-22 17:30 - 19:00
It’s the penultimate night of the Festival of Trees! Let’s close this beauty down with some revelry. Schenectady’s Stockade is beautiful any time of year but the holidays always bring out a certain magic! In this walking tour we’ll explore the lights and sights of this historic district while learning the ways in which generations past celebrated the season. Light refreshments will be served, and guests are invited to explore the sparkling Festival of Trees before and after the tour!

Mabee Farm Closed
2024-01-06 00:00 - 23:59
We apologize for any inconvenience but due to unforeseen circumstances, Mabee Farm will be closed on January 6.

Virtual Talk: "The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America, 1500–1800"
2024-01-10 19:00 - 20:30
This virtual program is part of our Winter Speaker Series, and will be presented on Zoom. A Zoom link will be emailed to all SCHS members before the program.
Professor Wayne Lee of UNC-Chapel Hill will discuss his new publication from University of North Carolina Press, “The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America, 1500–1800,” which recasts Indigenous warfare in a framework of the lived realities of Native people rather than with regard to European and settler military strategies and practices.
Wayne Lee specializes in early modern military history, with a particular focus on North America and the Atlantic World, but he teaches military history from a full global perspective. He also teaches courses on violence as well as on the early English exploration of the Atlantic. As a kind of additional career, he works with archaeology projects in the Balkans and has numerous publications in that field. Notable publications include:

The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America, 1500-1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023)
Wayne E. Lee, David L. Preston, David Silbey, and Anthony E. Carlson, The Other Face of Battle: America’s Forgotten Wars and the Experience of Combat (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).
Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Editor, with Michael Galaty, Ols Lafe, and Zamir Tafilica, Light and Shadow: Isolation and Interaction in the Shala Valley of Northern Albania (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013)
Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865 (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Editor, Warfare and Culture in World History (NYU Press, 2011)
Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War (University Press of Florida, 2001)
“Fortify, Fight, or Flee: Tuscarora and Cherokee Defensive Warfare and Military Culture Adaptation,” Journal of Military History 68 (2004): 713–770

Mabee Farm Closed
2024-01-12 00:00 - 23:59
Mabee Farm will be closed on 1/12/24 as we commemorate the raising of the Liberty Flag at SCHS. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Liberty Flag Raising
2024-01-12 12:00 - 13:30
We’re excited to present the first event in our local commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of America. Join us on January 12 at noon to raise the Liberty Flag in Schenectady!
SCHS will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the raising of the Liberty Flag in Schenectady. We’ll meet at the Schenectady Historical Museum, and then walk to the corner of Church and Union to relive the raising of the Liberty Flag. We’ll erect a flagpole, raise a replica flag, and enjoy brief remarks on the importance of liberty. Afterwards, attendees are invited inside the First Reformed Church to enjoy refreshments and sign a “liberty board” with discussions of what freedom means to them.
Chris Leonard, City of Schenectady Historian, and Michael Diana, SCHS Historian and Director of Education, explain the significance of the event, and what it commemorates. “What is liberty and what must we do to secure it? These questions have both united and divided Americans throughout history. On the anniversary of the raising of the Liberty Flag, we invite the community to relive that historic moment and reflect on the essential questions of freedom. Indeed, one of Schenectady’s earliest and most significant reckonings with the idea of liberty was on January 12, 1774. On that day, an angry crowd of 50 citizens gathered in the center of town to raise a flag emblazoned with the word “LIBERTY.” This was a hugely confrontational form of protest. Their supporters applauded them as patriots. Their detractors derided them as a riotous mob. But thus did Schenectady enter the bitter controversies of a Revolution that would forge the modern United States of America.”
SCHS owns the only surviving “Liberty” flag from the Revolutionary War.
This event is free and open to the public. As the event is outdoors and will take place in the middle of January, please dress accordingly. This is the first of many events that SCHS will sponsor over the next two years leading up to and beyond the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Please follow https://schenectadyhistorical.org/rev250/ to keep up with events for the city and county.

Virtual Talk: "Schenectady and the Regional Transportation Rivalry, Canals and Railroads, 1815-1860"
2024-01-24 19:00 - 20:30
This virtual program is part of our Winter Speaker Series, and will be presented on Zoom. A Zoom link will be emailed to all SCHS members before the program.
All aboard for a journey through 19th-century Schenectady history, with Dr. Michael Wheeler as your guide! We’ll delve into the complexities of a gripping transportation rivalry, and explore the clash between private railroads and the State-owned canal system. Join Dr. Wheeler as he uncovers the intricacies of transportation competition among New York, Boston, and Montreal. As a cartographer, Dr. Wheeler has developed extensive maps to illustrate this important period in New York State history. He’ll discuss his findings, shed light on the transportation rivalries that shaped the region in the 1800s, and discuss the critical transportation and settlement results in the Hudson, Mohawk, and Lake Champlain valleys.
Dr. Wheeler has undergraduate degrees in history and computer science. He has worked in Information Technology (IT) for 25 years, primarily in defense, finance, and geovisualization. Among other professional roles, he worked as IT manager of a U.S. hedge fund in Tokyo, Japan, and served as co-architect for a worldwide trading and hedging software system for a Big Oil customer. For the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), he helped to improve the Counter/IED problem (“roadside bombs”) for the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, modelled possible cyber vulnerabilities in U.S. critical infrastructure for the Air Force, and worked on safe drone flight in the National Air Space (NAS). Most recently, he has been working in Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to Multi-INT fusion. Dr. Wheeler earned a master’s degree in strategic studies at Johns Hopkins – SAIS, where
he wrote a thesis on Union military cartography in the Civil War. He returned to academia in 2000 where he worked on his PhD at Syracuse University developing 3D animated maps of New York State canals and railroads. This talk is largely derived from that dissertation work.

Full Moon Wolf Walk & Tavern Night
2024-01-25 17:30 - 19:30
January brings the full Wolf Moon, named for wolf packs circling icy villages, howling out in the night. Join us for the Wolf Moon with a short, illuminated walk in the woods of the Woestyne at Mabee Farm. Afterwards, we’ll make a fire in the Inn’s historic fireplace, and storytellers will share colorful tales from our area. Warm drinks will be served to fight off the night’s chill.
Admission is $10 for non-members, and $5 for members.

Winter Paint pARTy
2024-01-27 10:00 - 12:00
Instructor Karen Anthony of Karen’s Paint pARTies will teach us to paint a bright winter scene. No artistic experience necessary — you will be lead step by step to produce your very own masterpiece! Price includes 11×14 stretched canvas, all painting materials, and a selection of munchies — plus mimosas, of course! Feel free to BYOB, as well.

Ages 10+ only, please. All ticket sales final.

POSTPONED "Schenectady County Clerk’s Office: Records and Research" with Cara Ackerley and Jesse McGuire
2024-01-27 14:00 - 15:30
Postponed due to illness, to be rescheduled soon.
This program is part of our Winter Speaker Series, and will be presented in-person at 32 Washington Ave. No advance tickets.
The records kept by the County Clerk are essential to genealogy, house history research, and many significant life events. Join County Clerk Cara Ackerley and Deputy County Clerk Jesse McGuire to learn about the functions of the clerk’s office, what kinds of records are kept at the clerk’s office, and how to access those records and other services provided by the clerk’s office.

Free for members, otherwise $10.

Virtual Talk: "Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry"
2024-01-31 19:00 - 20:30
This virtual program is part of our Winter Speaker Series, and will be presented on Zoom. A Zoom link will be emailed to all SCHS members before the program.
In her recently published work from Cornell University Press, Professor Nicole Maskiell connects developing Northern networks of merit to the invidious institution of slavery. During the first generations of European settlement in North America, a number of interconnected Northeastern families carved out private empires. Maskiell argues that slavery was a crucial component to the rise and enduring influence of this emergent aristocracy.
Professor Maskiell is associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina. She specializes in early American history, with a focus on overlapping networks of slavery in the Dutch and British Atlantic worlds. Her current book project entitled “Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry” compares the ways that slavery shaped the development of elite Northern culture by examining the social and kinship networks that intertwined enslavers with those they enslaved. Professor Maskiell is a recipient the John Carter Brown, Gilder Lehrman, and Huntington Mayers research fellowships, and her dissertation was nominated for the 2014 Allan Nevins Prize

A History Lost
2024-02-06 12:00 - 13:00 | SUNY Schenectady
This program will be presented by SCHS Historian, Michael Diana, at SUNY Schenectady in honor of Black History Month. It is free and open to the public, and will be held in room Stockade 101.
In 1827 slavery was abolished in the state of New York granting freedom to a whole segment of Schenectady’s population. Newly freed, Schenectady’s black residents would still face many obstacles as they sought to establish a new place for themselves. Over the following decades, much of this community would vanish from our records and from the city altogether. This presentation seeks to shed light on this little known chapter of local history.

Virtual Talk: "Women in the Dark: Female Photographers in the US, 1850–1900"
2024-02-07 19:00 - 20:30
This virtual program is part of our Winter Speaker Series, and will be presented on Zoom. A Zoom link will be emailed to all SCHS members before the program.
Discover the stories of long-overlooked American women who, at a time when women rarely worked outside the home, became commercial photographers and shaped the new, challenging medium. Professor Katherine Manthorne will fill in the gaps in photographic, American, and women’s history and discuss the parallels between the growth of photography and the late-19th-century women’s movement.
Katherine Manthorne is an art historian at the Graduate Center, City University of New York committed to the study of the art of the Americas (1800-1940) in its hemispheric dimensions. Landscape imagery is a special passion, embodied in publications from Tropical Renaissance. North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839-1879 (1989) and Traveler Artists: Landscapes of Latin America from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (2015) to California Mexicana: Missions to Murals, 1820 to 1930 (2017) and The Rockies and the Alps: Bierstadt, Calame and the Romance of the Mountains (2017). The Caribbean figures in Fern Hunting Among These Picturesque Mountains. Frederic Edwin Church in Jamaica (2010); Nueva York (2010); and Caribbean Crossroads (2012). Working toward the internationalization of American art, she taught courses at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice, Italy; and the Freie Universität, Berlin; and co-organized transnational conferences including Landscape Art of the Americas: Sites of Human Intervention Across the Nineteenth Century at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia (2021). Women’s contributions to visual culture constitutes another theme in her work featured in two books: Women in the Dark: American Female Photographers 1850-1900 (2020) and Restless Enterprise: The Art and Life of Eliza Pratt Greatorex (2020). Intermediality is another interest explored in Film and Modern American Art: The Dialogue Between Cinema and Painting (2019). She received fellowships from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Fulbright and Smithsonian Institution. Currently projects include Sweet Fortunes: Sugar Plantations, Art Collecting and Enslaved Labor; and Fidelia Bridges: Between Fine Art & Popular Culture.

Schenectady Wine Society: February
2024-02-08 18:00 - 20:00
Join us for curated wine tastings by and for local wine lovers. Wine connoisseur Buffy Leonard and city historian Chris Leonard will lead us on a tasting and history tour of their favorite wines for the season.
$33; pre-registration required. Must be 21+ with valid ID. All ticket sales are final.

Lost Voices Tour of Mabee Farm
2024-02-10 11:00 - 12:30
Not everyone at the Mabee Farm was free to live and pass down their stories for posterity. The Farm was also home to generations of enslaved people like Sam, Bate and Cato whose voices have been lost to history. In this tour, we try to see the Mabee Farm as they would have known it- we hope to understand the experiences of hundreds of other enslaved people in Schenectady’s history. This program is offered as part of Black History Month.
Admission is $10 or $5 for members.

Canceled: A Schenectady Valentine
2024-02-13 18:00 - 19:30
Unfortunately, this event has been CANCELED due to the threat of winter storms.

The Museum will be open late for date-night! Join us as we delve into our archives of historic love letters to tease out the passion penned on the pages. So inspired, guests will be invited to hand craft a valentine of their own. Of course, we’ll have chocolate and wine on hand to celebrate Valentine’s Day appropriately.
$12/$5 for SCHS members

"Preserving Family Papers and Photographs: Digitization and Digital Preservation" with Marietta Carr
2024-02-17 14:00 - 15:30
This program is part of our Winter Speaker Series, and will be presented in-person at 32 Washington Ave. No advance tickets.
Preserving your family’s papers and photographs is vital to tracing and understanding your family’s history and connections to local and community history. Digitization and digital tools can be enormously helpful, but how do you know where to start? Marietta Carr, librarian and archivist at the Schenectady County Historical Society, will introduce you to digital preservation tools and techniques you can use for your family’s archives.

Virtual Talk: "Calvinists and Indians in the Northeastern Woodlands"
2024-02-21 19:00 - 20:30
This virtual program is part of our Winter Speaker Series, and will be presented on Zoom. A Zoom link will be emailed to all SCHS members before the program.
Stephen Staggs, PhD is the author of the forthcoming book Calvinists and Indians in the Northeastern Woodlands. He will discuss intercultural relations between the two groups in the 1600s: Native Americans and New Netherlanders hunting, eating, drinking, smoking, and fighting with each other, sharing their faith while traveling in canoes, and sleeping in each other’s bedrooms. Such details emerge in documents written by New Netherlanders like Megapolensis, whose work provides a window into the influence and limits of the Dutch Reformation upon the dynamic, multifaceted relationships that developed in the early modern Northeastern Woodlands. Megapolensis came of age when Dutch Reformed theologians looked to the Bible to incorporate Indians into a Reformed worldview. In so doing, they characterized Indians as “blind Gentiles.” This characterization ultimately informed the instructions given to those heading to New Netherland, raised expectations among the clergy and lay chaplains who served in the colony, and prefigured the reciprocal, intimate relationships that developed between Indians and New Netherlanders.
Stephen Staggs is an independent historian who holds a PhD and graduate certificate in Ethnohistory from Western Michigan University. His research focuses on the impact of the interactions and interrelations between Indigenous, African, and European peoples in early modern Europe, colonial North America, and the Atlantic World. His recently published book is Calvinists & Indians in the Northeastern Woodlands.

Winter Family Day at Mabee Farm
2024-02-23 10:00 - 12:00
Spend the winter break with us! Today the Mabee Farm will host special winter educational activities. Baking on the hearth, colonial crafts and even a behind-the-scenes tour of our artifact collections.
Tickets are $10 for everyone 5 and up; free for SCHS members at Family+ levels, but RSVP required.

Virtual Talk: "Taverns in Upstate New York"
2024-02-28 19:00 - 20:30
This virtual program is part of our Winter Speaker Series, and will be presented on Zoom. A Zoom link will be emailed to all SCHS members before the program.

Using research from over 500 primary accounts of patrons of upstate inns and taverns, Gerald Baum will dig into the valuable contribution the inn made to the development of upstate New York. He will also discuss what a 19th century patron might have experienced staying the night at a roadside inn.
