Experts Next Door Series - Saratoga County History Center

Experts Next Door #33

Experts Next Door: Iroquoia: Haudenosaunee Life and Culture, 1630-1783 With Kelly Hopkins

Kelly Hopins

Kelly Hopkins is an Assistant Professor of early American history at the University of Houston. Her book, Iroquoia: Haudenosaunee Life and Culture, 1630-1783 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2025), highlights the innovative strategies of Haudenosaunee men and women to retain their culture, sovereignty, and control of their homelands through more than seven generations of unprecedented social and environmental change that followed European contact and the settler invasion.

Register HERE

Experts Next Door #32

Experts Next Door: I Ride to Win: Isaac Murphy and Civil War America

Katherine Mooney

Isaac Murphy won three Kentucky Derbys and every other major American stakes race of the nineteenth century. He was among the jockeys inducted into the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame in its inaugural class. He was also born enslaved in 1861, the son of a Civil War widow, and he lived through the violent conflicts of Reconstruction to become the first true superstar Black athlete in the United States. This talk examines Murphy’s life and career and the light it sheds on his sport and the history of his country.

Register HERE

Experts Next Door #31

Experts Next Door: Tree by Tree: Saving North America’s Eastern Forests

Scott Meiners

For decades, the forests of Eastern North America have faced pathogen and insect pests that have functionally removed tree species from the landscape. This talk will discuss the ecological roles that trees play, the biology of the threats faced, and the approaches that may remediate the problems.

Scott Meiners is a Plant Ecologist with a primary research focus on plant community dynamics, particularly in the areas of species invasions and succession. He is a Professor at Eastern Illinois University where he has taught for 25 years, conducting research and training graduate and undergraduate researchers. At home, Scott is a tree collector, growing chestnuts, paw paws and producing maple syrup.

Register HERE

Experts Next Door #30

Experts Next Door: African American Women and Expatriate Life in Independent Senegal

Julia Woods

Join Julia Woods via Zoom while exploring Sylvia’s story as an African American woman in independent Senegal’s cosmopolitan capital city of Dakar.

Experts Next Door #29

Experts Next Door: American Women and Expatriate Life in Interwar Paris

Caitlin O’Keefe

March 16, 2026 7pm

Join us for the next installment of Experts Next Door as we consider an important segment of expatriates to Paris post-WWI: American women.

Experts Next Door #28

Experts Next Door: Captain Cook’s Hei Tikî Material Culture, Gift Exchange, and Looting in New Zealand During the Endeavour Voyage, 1768-1771 with Tillman Nechtman

Tillman Nechtman

February 5, 2026 7pm

Join professor Tillman Nechtman via Zoom while exploring his essay that takes one small Māori hei tiki (RCIN 69263) from the Royal Collection as a case study to understand what the decolonization of imperial collections might look like.

Experts Next Door #27

Write, Fold, Seal: Letter Writing in the Victorian Age with Catherine Golden

Catherine Golden

January 22, 2026 7pm

Join us for the next installment of Experts Next Door: Write, Fold, Seal: Letter Writing in the Victorian Age with Catherine Golden on January 22 7pm via Zoom. We will journey to Victorian England to learn about the first adhesive postage stamp, called the Penny Black, and a method for prepayment, which quickly became the model for other nations including the United States. For the second part of this presentation, we will examine Victorian artifacts that accompanied letter writing in the Victorian age.

Experts Next Door #26

Greetings from the Great Camps: The History of the Adirondack Vacation

Connor Williams

January 23, 2025 7pm

In 1850, the Adirondack region was a blank spot on the map, largely unorganized and uncharted.

But, by 1900, the Adirondacks hosted elaborate summer estates for the wealthiest families in America: Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Carnegies, Whitneys and Morgans. Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein summered and sailed on the same mountain lake. Adirondacks were a destination. How did this happen, and why?

Join Dr. Connor Williams, scholar, teacher and the historian at Great Camp Sagamore (where he directs their history programming) as he answers these questions, and discusses how environmentalism, opulence, industry, inequality, architecture and nature all intersected to produce the Adirondack Park (and the Adirondack vacations) we still connect to today.

Experts Next Door #25

The CCC in Saratoga County and the Adirondacks

Marty Podskoch

November 6 2024, 7pm

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) began on March 31, 1933 under President Roosevelt’s New Deal to relieve the poverty and unemployment of the Depression. Workers built trails, roads, campsites, dams, stocked fish, built and maintained fire tower observer cabins and telephone lines, fought fires, and planted millions of trees. The CCC disbanded in 1942 due to the need for men in WW II.

There were over 200 CCC camps in New York State, including one locally in Stillwater, from where men worked developing Saratoga Battlefield as an historic site.

A recording of this event can be viewed on our YouTube page at https://youtu.be/PiXoMKycgX0

Join Marty Podskoch, historian and author of 11 books, as he discusses the role and legacy of the CCC in our area.

Experts Next Door #24

The Rise and Fall of Ballston Spa as a Resort

Ted Corbett

Former director of the Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation

March 21 2024, 7pm

After the Revolutionary War, the new nation’s earliest resorts were spas following the tradition of those in England. Ballston Spa was one of the earliest and soon eclipsed its rivals in terms of springs, hotels and amenities. New York City’s Nicholas Low was the most enterprising of the Spa’s developers. By the 1830s, however, Saratoga Springs’ resort had surpassed Ballston Spa, which continued, using its water power and railroad to establish the mills of the Industrial Revolution.

Experts Next Door #23

Loyalists in the Hudson Valley during the Revolutionary War

Dr. Kieran O’Keefe

Lyon College

January 31 2024, 7pm

Not all New Yorkers were fully supportive of the Patriots during the Revolutionary War. Dr. O’Keefe’s talk will explore Loyalists in the Hudson Valley during the Revolutionary War. It will examine why some colonists remained loyal to the British, what the war was like for Loyalists in the region, and what happened to Loyalists after the conflict.

Experts Next Door #22

A War Against Vegetables, A War Against Women: Haudenosaunee Women’s Experience of the American Revolution

Dr. Maeve Kane

University of Albany

April 26 2023, 7pm

When George Washington ordered the “total destruction and devastation” of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) territories in 1779, the offensive was to that date the largest and most expensive campaign of the American Revolution. What became known as the Sullivan-Clinton campaign aimed squarely at the agricultural heart of Haudenosaunee women’s diplomatic power, cultural status, and identity by burning cornfields and felling orchards. Dr. Kane’s talk will show how Continental soldiers constructed an American identity for themselves by destroying what they called Haudenosaunee women’s “homes of contentment,” and how Haudenosaunee women preserved their nations over the course of the war.

Experts Next Door #21

The Global War for American Independance

Dr. Eliga Gould
Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of New Hampshire

January 31 2023, 7pm

Join Dr. Eliga Gould as he explains the global war for American independence and the role played by the battles of Saratoga in 1777.

Experts Next Door #20

“The Saratoga-Las Vegas Connection”

Dr. Michael Green
The Mob Museum and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas

September 21, 2022, 7pm

Join Dr. Michael Green, Associate Professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Trustee of the Mob Museum in Las Vegas via Zoom, as part of the Expert Next Door series. Las Vegas is famous for its gangster history, but … so is Saratoga County! Hear about these underworld connections.

Recordings for previous Expert Next Door presentations may be found on our YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCwb2Limln6FI5BY0xcPhew

Experts Next Door #19

“The Deepest Devotion (Ulysses Grant)”

Ben Kemp, Operations Manager of Friends of Grant Cottage

April 6, 2022

In April, 2022, we celebrate 200 years since the birth of famed Civil War general, and two-term president, Ulysses Grant, who spent his last days here in Saratoga County at Mount McGregor. Mr. Kemp will portray President Grant’s eldest son, Frederick. Using intimate stories, Fred will show a different side to President Grant, and illustrate the intense devotion his father had for his nation and his family.

Expert Next Door #18

“Coping with Life’s Necessaries”

Ian Mumpton, Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site

Jan. 27, 2022

The Schuyler family enjoyed many luxuries as part of their refined lifestyle, but what might their hygiene practices have looked like? How did their practices differ from or align with those of their neighbors in 18th century Albany? Learn more about the changing practices of this aristocratic, colonial family with Schuyler Mansion’s “Coping with Life’s Necessaries”.

Experts Next Door #17

“Jane McCrea: A Revolutionary Martyr and an Early American Family Story”

Blake Grindon, Princeton University

Dec. 14, 2021

Best remembered as the focus of anti-Indian and anti-British Patriot propaganda that followed Jane McCrea’s death during the Saratoga Campaign in 1777, further investigation reveals her role in an interconnected world of colonial wars and Native politics stretching back long before the American Revolution.

#16

“My Zeal for the Cause of My Country: Benedict Arnold in 1777”

Eric Schnizter, Saratoga National Historical Park

Oct. 12, 2021

Everyone thinks they know who Benedict Arnold was, but maybe they don’t really know everything. Join an expert, Eric Schnitzer, military historian and Park ranger at Saratoga National Historical Park for his talk “My Zeal for the Cause of My Country: Benedict Arnold in 1777” and learn more about this fascinating historical figure.

#15

“Walt and Wall Street”

Jennifer Begakis, Cornell University

Sept. 23, 2021

Learn the exciting and innovative ways that Walt Disney and his brother Roy found the funding for Disneyland and other ventures. Perfectly timed for Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary on Oct 1, 2021.