short version THE ALBANYANY ACADEMIES Archives and Collections 135 and 140 Academy Road Albany, New York 12208 January 25, 2010 200 years at Albany Academy for Girls John T. McClintock II, M. Ed., Archivist. Introduction This is a chronicle of the major events and persons connected to Albany Academy for Girls. A longer, more detailed work, with more analysis, biographical treatment, footnotes, and references is in preparation for the upcoming bicentennial. Your suggestions as to fact, omission, or emphasis are welcome. To denote an attendee’s class year, graduates and other attendees alike, the convention “cy” is used throughout. Hyperlinks in on-line copies open supplementary material from an attached file. © 2010 John McClintock and Trustees of the Albany Academies, Albany, New York page 1
[email protected] www.archivesandcollections.org short version Early Albany, nurtured by trade, was embraced by the huge van Rensselaer domain extending on both sides of the Hudson. Its Dutch and New England inhabitants developed a business acumen that would encourage and supply the explosion in resettlement that occurred after the American Revolution. Adventurous and enterprising newcomers from New England joined Albany’s established aristocratic families, tradesmen, and outlying farmers. They came to the Hudson River Valley to facilitate financial exchange, survey the land, build the infrastructure and write the contracts of a new era: bankers, lawyers, engineers, school masters, printers. After 1797, when Albany became the capital, state officials added to the growing social complexity of the old river town. Little schools had ebbed and flowed throughout the pre- and post-revolutionary period. None became permanently rooted in Albany until the national academy movement coincided with the burst of Albany’s commercial and civic development and its new status as gateway to the west.