Virtual Programs

Letter, Roelof Josias Eltinge at Achquochkononck, addressed to "Loving Son." HHS Archives. 

Overlapping Histories: The New Paltz Historic Documents Project
A virtual overview of Historic Huguenot Street’s (HHS) three-year NEH-funded project to preserve and digitize significant historical documents from its own archival collections and those of project partners the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection at Elting Memorial Library, the Reformed Church of New Paltz, and the Town of New Paltz. These include legal, financial, and religious records, as well as a wealth of personal letters, which together provide detailed insight into the lives of New Paltz residents and how their communities overlapped and evolved.

Curatorial staff Josephine Bloodgood, Director of Curatorial and Preservation Affairs, Donna Dixon, Digital Librarian and Project Manager, and Beth Patkus, Archivist and Librarian, will provide an overview of the NEH project and its significance in local, state, and national history and demonstrate how to navigate and search the New Paltz Historic Documents online collection, including documents that have been recently translated. To register, click here. 

The Native Community of Packanasinck
A virtual presentation by J. Michael Smith regarding a 1738 Native American deed digitized as part of the New Paltz Historic Documents project, for the land called Packanasinck in what is now known as the Town of Shawangunk, Ulster County, New York. This deed provides ethnohistorical material for a discussion of Native participants mentioned. The talk was originally presented November 30, 2023. To register, click here. 

J. Michael Smith is a native of Beacon in Dutchess County, New York, and a retired media specialist with Vermont PBS. As an independent ethnohistorian he has documented the cultural histories of Munsee peoples and relevant individuals in the mid-Hudson River Valley. He is a contributing author to the New York State Museum bulletins of the Native American Institute Seminar Papers and has published various articles in the Hudson River Valley Review. He is co-editor with Kees-Jan Waterman of Munsee Indian Trade in Ulster County, New York, 1712-1732 (Syracuse University Press, 2013).

Digging into the Documents
A virtual presentation with Dr. Jaap Jacobs & Julie van den Hout, who translated documents from Dutch to English as part of the New Paltz Historic Documents Project. The presentation focuses on how the translated documents shed light on economic and religious aspects of daily life in New Paltz in the 1700s. Translations were funded through the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York. The talk was originally presented November 19, 2023. To register, click here. 

Jaap Jacobs (PhD Leiden, 1999) is affiliated with the University of St Andrews. He has specialized in the early American history, specifically the Dutch in the Americas in the early modern period. He has taught at universities in the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom. His publications on Dutch New York include The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America (Cornell University Press, 2009) and “The First Arrival of Enslaved Africans in New Amsterdam,” New York History, forthcoming August 2023. He is currently working on a biography of Petrus Stuyvesant."

Julie van den Hout is a historian focused on seventeenth-century Dutch New York and the maritime Dutch Atlantic. She is the author of Adriaen van der Donck, a Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-Century America (State University of New York Press, 2018), and is currently working on an article about the roles of Dutch skippers in New Netherland endeavors.

Identifying Esopus Natives in Colonial Ulster Records
A virtual presentation by independent ethnohistorian J. Michael Smith (see full bio above) discussing methodologies for identifying named individuals found in treaty mintues and land cessions, as well as account books of Dutch merchants recording trade with the local Native people. This talk was originally presented on May 19, 2022. To register, click here.