Tag: National Park Service

Seneca Falls: Women’s Rights

an endangered historic place

My wife and daughter had planned a trip for us to the Finger Lakes region of New York on September 4. Because I was busy, I didn’t even know exactly where we were heading.

It turns out we were going to Seneca Falls. We had been in the village a decade earlier, on the return leg of our 2016 vacation. But when we went to the Visitor Center of the Women’s Rights National Historic Park, it was closed. We did see the wall with the Declaration of Sentiments.

On this return visit, we did get to the visitor center, which was quite interesting. One of the NPS staff, Anha Wilson, led us to the Wesleyan Chapel, the site of the Women’s Rights Convention on July 19-20, 1848, where the Declaration was codified. 

Our guide explained how Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary M’Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright, and Jane Hunt came to Seneca Falls, where none of them grew up, to create the document.

We did not get to the other parts of the National Park, though I did subsequently take a virtual tour. Interestingly, shortly after we returned home, we saw a news story about how the park has experienced $12 million in “deferred maintenance.” 

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has dubbed the Women’s Rights National Historical Park one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2026. One may support the America the Beautiful Act (S.1547). “This bill would provide up to $16 billion of dedicated funding over 8 years to tackle the deferred maintenance backlog of the National Park Service and other federal agencies.”

Dinner 

We headed to our hotel room. On the way, we saw remnants of tornadoes from two days earlier, with large branches and even whole trees in yards and curbs. There were at least a half dozen utility trucks in the hotel parking lot, suggesting a lot of disruption to be rectified.

We went to dinner at Wolffy’s Grill and Marina. It was quite decent place to eat. But the view of Cayuga Lake was EXTRAORDINARY.    

Lindenwald: Martin Van Buren site

National Park Service

For at least two decades, my wife and I have said we should visit Lindenwald in Kinderhook, NY, less than 30 miles (48 km) from Albany. Moreover, we have been in the vicinity of the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site, which the National Park Service runs. Finally, on September 5, we made a visit.

I felt as though I knew quite a bit about Van Buren. A few years back, there was a story about a 12-year-old girl who discovered that all of the U.S. presidents, from Washington through Obama, were related to each other, except one. The one was Van Buren, while the others were connected to John Lackland Plantagenet, King of England (ruled 1199-1216).

Van Buren’s lineage was Dutch, and that was his first language. He was considered the first President born a United States citizen, as his birth on December 5, 1782, occurred after the British surrender in Yorktown in 1781. However, it was before the Treaty of Paris officially ended the war in 1783.

After serving as Andrew Jackson’s second Vice President—John C. Calhoun was Jackson’s first one — Van Buren was elected the eighth President of the United States (1837-1841).

I vaguely recall the Panic of 1837, an economic crisis that started with Jackson’s unstable economic policies earlier in the decade. 

His failed 1840 reelection campaign helped popularize the term OK. In fact, the $800 clue in the  JEOPARDY category on 10/23/2025 under Presidential Facts read: This New Yorker’s bid for reelection was hampered by an 1837 financial panic & a depression that followed.

Really?

There was a lot I did not know about Van Buren. According to the White House Historical Society, “His father, Abraham, owned a successful inn and small farm, along with six enslaved individuals.” Also, “Martin Van Buren owned at least one enslaved person during his lifetime—not wholly uncommon for a man who was born and raised in a state that permitted slavery until 1827.”

The most intriguing story I heard about Martin Van Buren, when he was running for reelection in 1840, was that he ran without a vice presidential candidate. There was opposition to Vice President Richard M. Johnson‘s personal life, specifically his relationships with several Black or mixed-race women, including his common-law wife Julia Chinn.

Martin Van Buren purchased the Lindenwald mansion in 1839 while he was President. It became his home and farm from 1841, when he left the White House, until he died in 1862. He launched unsuccessful campaigns from there in 1844 and 1848, the latter as the candidate of the Free Soil party, which focused on opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United States.

There was no admission. The bigger-named attractions supplement the lesser-known locations.  If you can’t make it to Kinderhook, you can take a virtual tour. In fact, it was a treat for me because the physical tour didn’t include the second-floor bedrooms.