Columbia County History Events

Upcoming history talks:

Sunday, March 8, 1:00 pm: Kinderhook Library, 18 Hudson St, Kinderhook

Dr. Kevin Bronner, Professor at The University at Albany and author of "Albany During the American Revolution," will lecture on the aspects of the Tories and the Patriots in the Kinderhook area during the Revolutionary War.

Sunday, March 22, 2:00 pm:  Hudson Area Library, 51 N 5th St, Hudson. 

Thomas Shannon, Germantown Historian will present a talk on William Smith, Jr.  

Did you know that one of the most prominent Loyalists, William Smith Jr., spent the early years of the war in self-imposed exile and was later placed under house arrest at the Hermitage, formerly located on Wire Road in Livingston? 

Tom will be covering the highlights of the tremendously insightful diary kept by William Smith, Jr. (1728-1793) from October 1776 through July 1778. This event is now. 

Sunday, April 19, 12:30 pm: Kinderhook Library, 18 Hudson St, Kinderhook

Gregg Berninger, Ghent Town Historian, will explore 250 years of Ghent’s history through the lens of the truths the Founding Fathers declared to be self-evident. Like every town in the county and the nation, Ghent’s history reflects a long and often steady progress toward the principle that “all men are created equal.”

From enslavement to suffrage to wealth inequality, this wide-ranging talk will invite you to reconsider both the past and the present in terms first articulated in the summer of 1776.