The city of Rome, New York, began as a village named after its first Irish settler, Dominick Lynch, around 1796 near Fort Stanwix and along the Oneida Carrying Place, a Native American portage path which connected the Mohawk River to Wood Creek and Lake Ontario. Residents voted to rename "Lynchville" to Rome in 1819, and the New York State Legislature converted Rome to a city on 23 February 1870. Construction on the Erie Canal began in Rome on 4 July 1817, Jesse Williams erected the first U.S. cheese factory in 1851, and Revere Copper Products, Inc., was headquartered in Rome in 1928-29. Rome is home to the Griffiss Air Force Base, which hosted the Woodstock music festival in 1999.

In 1907, Ade Reher, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, purchased the buildings at 99-101 Broadway in Kingston, NY. Her large family operated a kosher bakery downstairs while living upstairs. Each Reher sibling played a different role in keeping the business running. The family ran the bakery from 1908 until 1980.

Over the past four years, Dr. Kathryn Stam, Faculty at SUNY Poly, has been gathering media and multimedia chronicling the lives of Refugees who have settled in Utica NY. This work has been gathered as Refugees Starting Over, which has hosted events, and provides a web presence featuring many images and videos.  We are attempting to meaningfully describe and curate the collection so that materials can lead to further understanding of the culture and customs.

The Town of Red Hook’s earliest Board Minutes record business matters such as the elections of officials, monies to be raised for the poor, and votes on roads, bridges and school districts. Beginning in 1813, the year after Red Hook separated from the Rhinebeck Precinct and became its own Township, meetings were held annually, the first Tuesday in April, at private homes or inns. The minutes begin April 6, 1813, with the first item of business noted as the establishment of regulations to control stray livestock. That same year, eight school districts were established, with families in each school district named. Entries run through Sept 1866, after the end of the Civil War.

When the Town of Red Hook split from Rhinebeck in 1812, it established eight public school districts, each with its own small schoolhouse serving first through eighth-grade ‘scholars,’ as students were then called. For those wishing to go beyond eighth-grade, there were only a few small private schools, such as the reputable Mountain View Academy in Upper Red Hook. In 1905, the Union Free School in Red Hook Village (District #4) was renamed the Red Hook High School and expanded to accommodate all the students from every district who wanted to go beyond the eighth grade. Students came from near and far, by train and wagon, and some even boarded with Village families for the winter term.

On April 2, 1936, the High School burned to the ground. Rather than rebuild it on the same site, the Red Hook School Board proposed centralizing all the district schools. By late 1937, voters in eleven school districts, including ten in Red Hook and Milan, and one in Clermont, Columbia County, overwhelmingly approved the plan. The Union Free School in the Village of Tivoli chose not to centralize. Its students were finally absorbed into the Red Hook Central School system in 1965.

On September 6, 1939, the handsome red brick building on Linden Avenue (known today as the Red Hook Middle School) was dedicated. Built with a grant from the Works Progress Administration, the new school was “designed to meet the requirements of the State Department of Education and provide a maximum of 969 pupil stations… sufficient to provide adequately for the needs of the district for many years to come.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been scheduled to give the dedication address but on September 1, 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland, touching off World War II. Roosevelt stayed in Washington, D.C.

Russell Sage College was founded in Troy, New York, in 1916 by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage and named in honor of her late husband, who had left her his considerable fortune. With Eliza Kellas, head of the Emma Willard School, Mrs. Sage was active in the women's suffrage movement; in founding the new College, they proposed to offer women the means of independence through the combination of broad education in the liberal arts with preparation for specific professional careers. In 1949, an Albany Division was opened, offering two-year, four-year and graduate degrees under the charter of Russell Sage College and extending the College's mission to include the education of men on the second campus. The Sage Junior College of Albany received its own degree-granting powers in 1957.

The Rambler Newsletter, formally known as The Aggazette, changed its name in 1948 and is the current student newsletter for Farmingdale State College students. It shared stories about the students, the college’s history, and stories about alumni. The school expanded its education to include various technology and science programs. The school, itself, was still changing its name multiple times, with it officially being named Farmingdale State College in 2006.