Saratoga’s Black Heritage: A Guidebook, a new 64-page book that tells previously-unknown stories of Black achievers, is now available free of charge. Published by the Saratoga County History Center of Ballston Spa, it was researched and written by Field Horne.
Sponsored by Business for Good, the Adirondack Trust Company, and Amsure, the book contains thirty tales, each with an illustration. They range from the 1702 construction of mills at the present Schuylerville by enslaved Africans to the lively Spuyten Duyvil nightclub that operated near the track until 1986. All have been researched in primary sources or reliable secondary sources. `
Among the African American personalities profiled are Frank Johnson, whose famous orchestra played for dancing every summer in the 1820s and 1830s; T.H. Sands Pennington, owner of a drugstore on the site of Uncommon Grounds; Harry T. Burleigh, soloist, composer, and arranger of “Negro spirituals”; Clarence Dart, a Tuskegee Airman; and Hattie Austin, beloved restaurateur who provided summer work for Southern college students.
Copies may be picked up at Brookside Museum during open hours (winter, Saturday and Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.; beginning April, daily except Monday, noon to 4 p.m.). Alternatively, it can be ordered for $6 postage on the museum’s website, https://brooksidemuseum.org/saratogas-black-heritage-a-guidebook/, or by telephone at (518) 885-4000.
