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THE SOJOURNER WEBLOG
The Language of Fun In Schenectady
Celebrate the Freedom of Language in historic Schenectady, New York at the 4th Annual Bastille Day Celebration on July 11, 2009. You heard correctly, Bastille Day Celebration, and it is going to be a hot event that benefits the Language Learning Institute Scholarship Fund. They're going to be dancing in the ...

Dog Wash at New Rochelle Humane Society with Special Celebrity Guest
What a great way to help our canine pals and have a super day out with your pet. A day of fun for you & pampering for your four-legged friend: baths ($20-$40, depending on size), nail clipping ($10), as well as the Canine Good Citizen Test ($10). Come see the many ...

New York's Valley Forge Under Siege
The Hudson River Valley abounds in history. Some of it is very real, some more folklore than reality, and some is just for fun. The Fishkill Supply Depot is very real history and dates back to the founding of our nation and our War of Independence. It is under siege and ...

Crafts In The Catskills
Let's get off of the traditional craft belt and into the Catskill Mountains for a real down home crafts fair. 4th Annual Friends of the Greenville Library Craft Fair- Over 50 vendors will fill the library lawn offering everything from painted glass, leather goods, handmade jewelry, one-of-a-kind pottery, woodcrafts and unique nostalgic ...

Kingston Getting Ready To Whoop It Up!
Anyone who has been to Kingston, New York realizes almost immediately that it is a place where history abounds. From the Stockade District to the Historic Waterfront and from colonial to industrial eras, Kingston has it all. And what a great reason for this proud city to whoop it up. ...

The Hudson Valley

Provided by Wikipedia

The Hudson Valley refers to the canyon of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in New York State, generally from northern Westchester County northward to the city of Albany. Historically a cradle of European settlement in the northeastern United States and a strategic battleground in colonial wars, it now forms a rural enclave on the fringes on the metropolitan area of New York City.

Geographically the Hudson Valley could refer to all areas along the Hudson River, including the Bronx or even northeastern New Jersey. However, this definition is not commonly used.

History

At the time of the arrival of the first Europeans in the 17th Century, the area of Hudson Valley was inhabited primarily by the Algonquin-speaking Mahican people. The first Dutch settlement was in the 1610s with the establish of a trading post (factorij) south of modern-day Albany, with the purpose of exchanging European goods for beaver pelts. During the rest of the 1600s, the Hudson Valley formed the heart of the New Netherland colony operations, with the New Amsterdam settlement on Manhattan serving as a post for supplies and defense of the upriver operations.

During the French and Indian War in the 1750s, the northern end of the valley became the bulwark of the British defense against French invasion from Canada via Lake Champlain.

The valley became of the most important regions of conflict during the American Revolution. Part of the early strategory of the British was to sever the colonies in two by maintaining control of the river.

In the early 1800s, popularized by the stories of Washington Irving, the Hudson Valley gained a reputation as a somewhat gothic region inhabited by the remnants of the early days of the Dutch colonization of the New York (see The Legend of Sleepy Hollow).

Following the building of the Erie Canal, the area became an important industrial center and remained so until the mid 20th century, when many of the industrial towns went into decline.

It also was the location of the estates of many wealthy New York industrialists, such as John David Rockefeller, and of old-moneyed tycoons such as Franklin Roosevelt, who was a descendant of one the early Dutch families in the region.

The area is associated with the Hudson River School, a group of American Romantic painters who worked from about 1830 to 1870.



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Kingston, NY- The Strand
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