Saratoga’s Black Heritage: A Guidebook, a 64-page book that tells previously-unknown stories of Black achievers, is now available free of charge. Published by the Saratoga County History Center of Ballston Spa, it was researched and written by Field Horne.
The book contains thirty tales, each with an illustration, ranging from the 1702 construction of mills at the present Schuylerville by enslaved people to the lively Spuyten Duyvil nightclub that operated near Saratoga Race Course until 1986.
All have been researched in primary sources or reliable secondary sources. `
Among the African American personalities profiled are Frank Johnson, whose famous orchestra played for dancing every summer in the 1820s and 1830s; T.H. Sands Pennington, owner of a drugstore on the site of the Uncommon Grounds coffee shop; Harry T. Burleigh, soloist, composer, and arranger of “Negro spirituals”; Clarence Dart, a Tuskegee Airman; and Hattie Austin, beloved restaurateur who provided summer work for Southern college students.
The book is sponsored by Business for Good, the Adirondack Trust Company, and Amsure
Copies may be picked up at Brookside Museum, 21 Fairground Avenue in Ballston Spa, NY, during open hours.
It can also be ordered for $6 postage on the museum’s website or by telephone at (518) 885-4000.
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