Reformating Albany Hilltowns web site

The main page of Albany Hilltowns has just been updated. 

I have started adding 18th C. Van Rensselaer survey notes and leases.

 Westerlo barn, by Andy Arthur

The Albany Hillotwns wiki site will gradually be reorganized to emphasize the unity of the Albany hill towns. Now the basic organization of the site is by hill town. This will be overlaid with the same content also organized by subject. Think of the content as being organized on a grid or spreadsheet with the names of the towns heading the columns along the top and the subject matter heading each of the rows going down. Users of the site will be able to choose the subject in which they are interested and go to a page with all the links on that subject regardless of which hill town they are in.


The first subject to be consciously reorganized with this is mind is that of Hill town trails. The thinking is that is if someone wants to Head for the Hills - the Albany Hilltowns for hiking, they don't want to have to look at each of the following pages to find all of the various hiking opportunities:

• Berne visitor attractions and facilities.
• Knox visitor attractions and facilities.
• Westerlo visitor attractions and facilities.
• Rensselaerville visitor attractions and facilities.

This should work as well for history buffs and farm visitors as it does for nature lovers. Folks interested in visiting farms, exploring old cemeteries, or admiring our historic homes don't care in which town they are located, they want to have an easily accessible list of everything in the hill towns of interest to them.


The site will also retain the present organization by town.


 KNOX CEMETERIES

 Dan Driscoll in Elsass Cemetery

A transcription of the stones at the Elsass Cemetery has just been posted. The name was a corruption of Alsace. It is located in the town of Knox at the corner of Pleasant Valley, Witter Road and Route 156. The cemetery has been abandoned and is overgrown. Dan Driscoll tells me that a Boy Scout is planning to clean up that cemetery as a Eagle Scout project.

Other Knox cemeteries transcriptions just posted:

• Frink Cemetery
• No. 13‎
• Barckley Family Burying Ground‎
• Cornell Family Burying Ground‎
• Quay Road Cemetery
• Schoonmaker Family Burying Ground‎
• Jonathan D. Wood Family Burying Ground

Can anyone tell me the name of the cemetery in Knox on Quay Road?

I will be in Berne the last half of April to speak at the organizational meeting of a proposed "Hilltowns Farmers and Business Associati...on" tentatively scheduled for April 17 at the Huyck Preserve in Rensselaerville.

I have also been invited to give a talk on the early settlement of the hill towns at the Berne Historical Society Meeting on April 26 in Berne, place to be announced. The general public is invited, as are folks from all the hill towns.