Event Details - Schuyler's Canal Venture

The History Department has been pleased, over the past five years, to have developed a special relationship with the Saratoga National Historical Park (also known as the Saratoga Battlefield).  We’ve sent some of our best students out to the Battlefield to do research based internships, many of which have been incorporated into the interpretations that visitors to the Park see when they are there.

The Saratoga Battlefield is considered one of the signature pieces of the National Parks Service’s historical parks network, and so we are proud of the work Skidmore students have done to help advance the work done there at the Battlefield.  Not only has the work been academically sound, we believe it has also been a vital part of the College’s commitment to educating students with an eye towards broader civic engagement.

This past summer, History and American Studies double-major Meaghan McDonald won a See-Beyond Grant to intern at the battlefield.  Over two months of the summer, she gave tours of the General Philip Schuyler House and conducted research on the revolutionary war figure and his country estate. As part of that research she read and transcribed his obscure 1802 diary, which details his work on building what would become a significant early canal system in the U.S.

Meaghan will present her work in a lecture entitled, “Schuyler’s Canal Venture: The Hard Work of Building America’s Economic Infrastructure.” The lecture will take place in Davis auditorium beginning at 7PM.  A small reception, hosted by the History Department, will follow.

As part of our collaboration with the National Parks Service, Meaghan’s lecture will be part of the monthly meeting of the Friends of the Saratoga Battlefield Group, which is an advisory council for the park.  We’re happy to welcome the Friends to Skidmore once again, and we look forward to another exciting lecture about the collaborative work that Skidmore and the National Historical Park have been able to achieve.