Columbia College (New York)
Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college of Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded by the Church of England in 1754 as King's College, receiving a royal charter from King George II of Great Britain, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States. Columbia was ranked as the 3rd best college in the United States by U. S. News and World Report after only Princeton and Harvard; the college is distinctive for its comprehensive Core Curriculum, is among the most selective colleges in its admissions. For the class of 2021, the college accepted 5.8% of its applicants, the second lowest acceptance rate in the Ivy League behind only Harvard. Columbia College was founded as King's College, by royal charter of King George II of Great Britain in the Province of New York in 1754. Due in part to the influence of Church of England religious leaders, a site in New York City in the Trinity Church yard, Wall Street on the island of Manhattan was selected.
Samuel Johnson was chosen as the college's first president and was the college's first professor. During this period and examinations, both oral and written, were conducted in Latin. In 1767, Samuel Bard established a medical college at the school, now known as the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, the first medical school to grant the Doctor of Medicine degree in America. Due to the American Revolutionary War, instruction was suspended from 1776 until 1784, but by the beginning of the war, the college had educated some of the nation's foremost political leaders. At this young age, King's College had educated Alexander Hamilton, who served as military aide to General George Washington and authored most of The Federalist Papers, as the first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton's first experience with the military came while a student during the summer of 1775, after the outbreak of fighting at Boston. Along with Nicholas Fish, Robert Troup, a group of other students from King's College, he joined a volunteer militia company called the "Hearts of Oak" and achieved the rank of Lieutenant.
They adopted distinctive uniforms, complete with the words "Liberty or Death" on their hatbands, drilled under the watchful eye of a former British officer in the graveyard of the nearby St. Paul's Chapel. In August 1775, while under fire from HMS Asia, the Hearts of Oak participated in a successful raid to seize cannon from the Battery, becoming an artillery unit thereafter. In 1776 Captain Hamilton would engage in the Battle of Harlem Heights, which took place on and around the site that would become home to his alma mater more than a century only to be entombed after his dueling death some years at the original home of King's College in Trinity Church yard. With the successful Treaty of Paris in 1783, the domestic situation was stable enough for the college to resume classes in 1784. With the new nation's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, the name of the institution was changed from King's College to Columbia College, the name by which the institution continues to be known today.
The college was chartered as a state institution, lasting only until 1787, when due to a lack of public financial support the school was permitted to incorporate under a private board of trustees. This 1787 charter remains in effect; the renamed and reorganized college, located in the new national capital under the Constitution and free from its association with the Church of England, students from a variety of denominations came to Columbia as a response to its growing reputation as one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the new nation. After a brief period of being housed in another lower Manhattan building on Park Place near the current location of New York City Hall, in 1857 the college moved to 49th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. During the college's forty years at this location, in addition to granting the Bachelor of Arts and Doctor of Medicine degrees, the faculties of the college were expanded to include the Columbia Law School, the Columbia School of Mines.
The Columbia School of Mines awarded the first Ph. D. from Columbia in 1875. At this time, Columbia College was now not only the name of the original undergraduate college founded as King's College, but it encompassed all of the other colleges and schools of the institution. After Seth Low became president of Columbia College in 1890, he advocated the division of the individual schools and colleges into their own semi-autonomous entities under the central administration of the university; the complexity of managing the institution had been further increased when Barnard College for Women became affiliated with Columbia in 1889 followed by Teachers College of Columbia University in 1891. By this time, graduate faculties issuing the Doctor of Philosophy degree in philosophy, political science, the natural sciences had developed. Thus, in 1896, the trustees of Columbia College, under the guidance of Seth Low, approved a new name for the university as a whole, Columbia University in the City of Ne
Leander Babcock
Leander Babcock was a Democratic United States Representative for the 23rd district of New York. Babcock was born in Paris, New York in 1811, he first attended Hamilton College and transferred to Union College where he was a member of The Kappa Alpha Society and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, graduated in 1830. He studied law at Union College and was admitted to the New York bar in 1834. Babcock moved to New York where he practiced law. From 1840 to 1843 he served as the district attorney for Oswego County, he became mayor of Oswego. Elected to the 32nd United States Congress, Babcock served from March 4, 1851 to March 3, 1853. After his term in office, he returned to Oswego and served as president of its board of education in 1855 and as an alderman from 1856 to 1858. Babcock died in Richfield Springs, New York on August 18, 1864, he is interred at Riverside Cemetery in New York. United States Congress. "Leander Babcock". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Leander Babcock at Find a Grave
San Francisco
San Francisco the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th-most populous city in the United States, the fourth-most populous in California, with 884,363 residents as of 2017, it covers an area of about 46.89 square miles at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second-most densely populated large US city, the fifth-most densely populated U. S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the fifth-most populous primary statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area; as of 2017, it was the seventh-highest income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $119,868. As of 2015, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $154.2 billion, a GDP per capita of $177,968. The San Francisco CSA was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2017, with a GDP of $907 billion.
Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the US, the San Francisco CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2017, at $93,938. San Francisco was ranked 14th in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2018. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, all named for St. Francis of Assisi; the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.
It became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes along liberal Democratic Party lines. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, its Chinatown district. San Francisco is the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Gap Inc. Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Reddit, Inc. Dolby, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pinterest, Uber, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Weather Underground.
It is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the California Academy of Sciences. As of 2019, San Francisco is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings; the earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. Seven years on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís, established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system ended, its lands became privatized.
In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, Mexico ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography; the California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849; the promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.
Some of these 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships and hotels.
New York State Assembly
The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York State Legislature, the New York State Senate being the upper house. There are 150 seats in the Assembly, with each of the 150 Assembly districts having an average population of 128,652. Assembly members serve two-year terms without term limits; the Assembly convenes at the State Capitol in Albany. The Speaker of the Assembly presides over the Assembly; the Speaker is elected by the Majority Conference followed by confirmation of the full Assembly through the passage of an Assembly Resolution. In addition to presiding over the body, the Speaker has the chief leadership position, controls the flow of legislation and committee assignments; the minority leader is elected by party caucus. The majority leader of the Assembly is selected by, serves at the pleasure of, the Speaker; the current Speaker is Democrat Carl Heastie of the 83rd Assembly District. The Majority Leader is Crystal Peoples-Stokes of the 141st Assembly District The Minority Leader is Republican Brian Kolb of the 131st Assembly District.
As of July 23, 2018, the following is a list of Assembly committees and committee chairs. +Elected in a special election New York State Capitol New York Legislature New York State Senate Political party strength in New York New York Provincial Congress Official website
New Brighton, Staten Island
New Brighton is a neighborhood located on the North Shore of Staten Island in New York City. The neighborhood comprises an older industrial and residential harbor front area along the Kill Van Kull west of St. George. New Brighton is bounded by Kill Van Kull on the north, Jersey Street on the east and Castleton Avenues to the south, Lafayette Avenue and Snug Harbor Cultural Center to the west, it is adjacent to St. George to the east, Tompkinsville to the south, West New Brighton to the west; the village of New Brighton was incorporated in 1866 out of six wards of the town of Castleton. It stretched four miles long and was two miles wide, encompassing the entire northeast tip of the island from Tompkinsville to Snug Harbor; the current neighborhood includes Hamilton Park, an enclave of Victorian homes built before the American Civil War. The neighborhood includes several older churches, including St. Peter's Church, the oldest Roman Catholic church on Staten Island; the original Village Hall, constructed in 1871 on present Fillmore Street, was demolished in 2004.
New Brighton public housing includes the Cassidy-Laffayette Houses and the Richmond Terrace Houses on Jersey Street. New Brighton is part of Staten Island Community District 1 and its ZIP Codes are 10304 and 10301. New Brighton is patrolled by the 120th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Built in 1871, the New Brighton Village Hall was one of the few Village Halls to remain from the old village system the existed before it was considered to be a part of New York City. In 1898, the villages were incorporated into New York City and the Village Halls were no longer needed as politics became more centralized into the city and they became just one of many under the borough of Staten Island, it has since been used as a local court, a health insurance office, youth activities office, doctor’s office. In 1965 the Landmarks Preservation Commission selected it as an official landmark, it was demolished in 2004. A passage from an anonymous author in an Illustrated Sketch Book of Staten Island, NY: Its industries and commerce, from 1886, describes New Brighton as follows: The village of New Brighton is unique in its attractiveness.
Its public buildings, churches and institutions are all handsome and substantial, its residences the perfection of refined taste. A complete system of sewerage has been adopted; the inhabitants are filled with a sense of local pride, in itself most commendable and leads to the happiest results, the most noticeable of, the great care bestowed upon their private residences. The neighbors seem to vie with each other in friendly emulation as to who shall keep the smoothest lawn, the neatest fence or the most graceful fountain; as a whole, the effect is most pleasing, but when the eye wanders beyond the artificial beauty of its immediate surroundings and rests upon the sparkling waters of the incomparable Bay of New York, with stretches of cultivated landscape in the distance, the picture is singularly lovely and complete. Although Staten Island as a whole remained residential and less densely populated and developed than the surrounding region, the inhabitants of the region favored consolidation with the greater metropolis.
In 1898, Staten Island was consolidated with New York City, this move accelerated development of the region. At this time immigrant groups settled in New Brighton in greater numbers. After the turn of the century, the political and economic center of the island shifted to the northern shore, including New Brighton; the construction of a new civic center and borough hall in St. George provided the impetus for improvements in infrastructure, including road construction and fire protection, two commuter airports, each of which were first established in the 20th century. Navy and Coast Guard outposts could be found on the north shore of Staten Island, each employing local residents in military and civilian capacities; the Staten Island borough hall was built in 1906, while the new courthouse for Richmond county was built in 1919. At this time, the general community of Staten Island and New Brighton thrived due to its economy. Larger manufacturers employed many local residents; the Procter & Gamble factory, opened in October 1907, operated for more than 80 years.
At the end of the 1920s, some of the borough’s first apartment buildings and four-family dwellings were concentrated in New Brighton. However, the livelihood of the community began to change, first after the completion of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, compounded by the economic downturn of the 1970s; the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, completed in November 1964, connected Brooklyn and Staten Island and allowed for a massive population and development boom that continues to this day. This, combined with the closing of many area factories, the construction of housing projects along Richmond Terrace and the surrounding area, an increase in area poverty, have created an area that has changed so drastically. While crime has increased to an extent in the area, New Brighton remains a vibrant neighborhood that contains many historic attractions, as well as a place of community, dedicated to improving and reviving the area. For census purposes, the New York City government classifies New Brighton as part of a larger neighborhood tabulation area called West New Brighton-New Brighton-St.
George. Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, t
Oswego, New York
Oswego is a city in Oswego County, New York, United States. The population was 18,142 at the 2010 census. Oswego is located on Lake Ontario in north-central New York and promotes itself as "The Port City of Central New York", it is the county seat of Oswego County. The city of Oswego is bordered by the towns of Oswego and Scriba to the west and east and by Lake Ontario to the north. Oswego Speedway is a nationally known automobile racing facility; the State University of New York at Oswego is located just outside the city on the lake. Oswego is the namesake for communities in Montana, Oregon and Kansas; the British established a trading post in the area in 1722 and fortified it with a log palisade called Fort Oswego, named after the native Iroquois place name "os-we-go" meaning "pouring out place". The first fortification on the site of the current Fort Ontario was built by the British in 1755 and called the "Fort of the Six Nations". Fort Ontario was destroyed by the French upon capturing it in the Battle of Fort Ontario, during the French and Indian War.
Construction of a second British fort began on the same site in 1759, but Fort Ontario was only used as a cannon emplacement. During the American Revolution, the British abandoned the Fort, in 1778, American troops destroyed it. In 1782, the British reoccupied Fort Ontario, didn't forfeit it to the U. S. until 1796, thirteen years after the cessation of hostilities in the Revolution. During the War of 1812, a weaker American garrison at Fort Ontario was overwhelmed by superior British forces in order to stem the flow of supplies from the interior of New York state, but were defeated near Oswego that month. Throughout the 19th Century, the U. S. military maintained a presence at Fort Ontario. During WWII the Fort was used to house interned persons Jewish refugees. In 1946, the Fort was transferred to the state of New York. At that time, it was used to their families during the post-war period. Development of the fort as a historic site began in 1949, which included the "Safe Haven Museum"; the current fort was built between 1839 and 1844.
Major masonry improvements to the forts outer wall were undertaken, but left incomplete when in 1872, Congress canceled its funding. By 1901, the old fort was abandoned. Today, Fort Ontario is being restored to its 1867–1872 appearance. Costumed interpreters recreate the lives of the officers and civilians who garrisoned the fort in 1868–1869. During the Second World War, the new fort was used as an emergency refugee shelter known as "Safe Haven". A refugee center for victims of the Nazi Holocaust, it was the only one of its kind in the United States. In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the camp for victims of the the Holocaust; this was the only attempt by the United States government to shelter Jewish refugees during the war. 1,000 refugees were transferred to the fort from the Ferramonti di Tarsia, a concentration camp in Cosenza, Italy. The refugees came from 18 different European countries, they were placed in Fort Oswego, behind barbed wire, given no official status, having been required to sign papers accepting their eventual return to their home countries at the end of the war.
Due to political pressure, President Harry S. Truman allowed them to apply for citizenship. Oswego was incorporated as a village on March 14, 1828, the Oswego Canal, a branch of the Erie Canal, reached the area in 1829; the city was incorporated in 1848. When the city incorporated, its area and population were removed from the figures reported for the towns. In the 1850s, at the height of a popular water-cure movement occurring in the United States, in turn stimulating growth, Oswego was the home of the Oswego Water Cure establishment, which Stonewall Jackson visited in August 1850. Oswego is home to the Port of Oswego and once was a major railroad hub for several major railroads: the New York Central Railroad, the Delaware and Western Railroad, the New York and Western Railway railways. Both railways operated a coal trestle for fueling steamships at the Port of Oswego. Former NYC and DL&W passenger stations remain. Nothing remains of the O&W, abandoned in its entirety in 1957; the tunnel from the former O&W is used as a rail trail.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 11.2 square miles, of which, 7.7 square miles of it is land and 3.6 square miles of it is water. Oswego is located on the southeastern shore of Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego River, about 35 miles north of Syracuse, New York and 69 miles east of Rochester, New York; the elevation is 298 feet above sea level. The nearest city is Fulton, located north of Syracuse; as Oswego is located on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, in the center of the Snowbelt, the region sees prodigious lake effect snow accumulations. Oswego is one of the snowiest towns in America, with some winters totaling over 300 inches. In 2007, Oswego gained national attention when 130" of snow fell in a two-week timespan; this broke the record of the Blizzard of 1966. As a result of this storm, the school district closed all facilities for a week shifting the planned winter holiday. Oswego: the town of Oswego Minetto: the town of Minetto south of the city Scriba: the town of Scriba east of the city Southwest Oswego: a hamlet located west of the city Fruit Valley: a hamlet located west of the city New York State Route 481 runs north/south
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was a political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the United States. Four presidents belonged to the party while in office, it emerged in the 1830s as the leading opponent of Jacksonian democracy, pulling together former members of the National Republican and the Anti-Masonic Party. It had some links to the upscale traditions of the long-defunct Federalist Party. Along with the rival Democratic Party, it was central to the Second Party System from the early 1840s to the mid-1860s, it formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party. It became a formal party within his second term, receded influence after 1854. In particular terms, the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the presidency and favored a program of modernization and economic protectionism to stimulate manufacturing, it appealed to entrepreneurs, planters and the emerging urban middle class, but had little appeal to farmers or unskilled workers. It included many active Protestants and voiced a moralistic opposition to the Jacksonian Indian removal.
Party founders chose the "Whig" name to echo the American Whigs of the 18th century who fought for independence. The political philosophy of the American Whig Party was not related to the British Whig party. Historian Frank Towers has specified a deep ideological divide: The Whig Party nominated several presidential candidates in 1836. General William Henry Harrison of Ohio was nominated in 1840, former Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky in 1844, General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana in 1848, General Winfield Scott of New Jersey in 1852 and the last nominee, former President Millard Fillmore from New York in 1856. In its two decades of existence, the Whig Party had two of its candidates and Taylor, elected president and both died in office. John Tyler succeeded to the presidency after Harrison's death in 1841, but was expelled from the party that year. Millard Fillmore, who became President after Taylor's death in 1850, was the last Whig President; the party fell apart because of internal tension over the expansion of slavery to the territories.
With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction prevented the nomination for a full term of its own incumbent President Fillmore in the 1852 presidential election—instead, the party nominated General Scott. Most Whig Party leaders quit politics or changed parties; the Northern voter base gravitated to the new Republican Party. In the South, most joined the Know Nothing Party, which unsuccessfully ran Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election, by which time the Whig Party had become defunct having endorsed Millard Fillmore's candidacy; some former Whigs became Democrats. The Constitutional Union Party experienced significant success from conservative former Whigs in the Upper South during the 1860 presidential election. Whig ideology as a policy orientation persisted for decades, played a major role in shaping the modernizing policies of the state governments during Reconstruction; the name "Whig" repeated the term that Patriots used to refer to themselves during the American Revolution.
It indicated hostility to the king. Despite the identical name it did not directly derive from the British Whig Party; the American Whigs were modernizers who saw President Andrew Jackson as "a dangerous man on horseback"—like a king—with a "reactionary opposition" to the forces of social and moral modernization. The Democratic-Republicans who formed the Whig Party, led by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, drew on a Jeffersonian tradition of compromise, balance in government and territorial expansion combined with national unity and support for a Federal transportation network and domestic manufacturing. Casting their enemy as "King Andrew", they sought to identify themselves as modern-day opponents of governmental overreaching. Despite the apparent unity of Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans from 1800 to 1824, the American people preferred partisan opposition to popular political agreement; as Jackson purged his opponents, vetoed internal improvements and killed the Second Bank of the United States, alarmed local elites fought back.
In 1831, Henry Clay started planning a new party. He defended national rather than sectional interests. Clay's plan for distributing the proceeds from the sale of lands in the public domain among the states was intended to serve the nation by providing the states with funds for building roads and canals, which would stimulate growth and knit the sections together. However, his Jacksonian opponents distrusted the federal government and opposed all federal aid for internal improvements and they again frustrated Clay's plan. Jacksonians promoted opposition to the National Bank and internal improvements and support of egalitarian democracy, state power and hard money; the Tariff of Abominations of 1828 had outraged Southern feelings—the South's leaders held that the high duties on foreign imports gave an advantage to the North. Clay's own high tariff schedule of 1832 further disturbed them as did his stubborn defense of high duties as necessary to his American System. However, Clay moved to pass the Compromise of 1833, which met Southern complaints by a gradual reduction of the rates on imports to a maximum of twenty percent.
Controlling the Senate for a while, Whigs passed a censure motion denouncing Jackson's arrogant assumption of executive power in the face of the true will of the people as represented by Congress. The Whig Party began to take shape in 1833. Clay had run as a National Republican against J
This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress website http://bioguide.congress.gov.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.
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