Thank you Albany Times Union, for helping to ensure that the history and legend of the Snowmen at the Schenectady Stockade Gates, on the night of the 1690 Massacre, will be more widely known and will not be buried or forgotten again. At the top of the Sunday TU Business section yesterday, The Buzz column (Dec. 9, 2018, at E1) read:

History of Snowman, an illustrated view

The current issue of the Smithsonian magazine highlights the Snowman in history, including the failed effort by some human sentinels to protect the village of Schenectady in 1690 while they visited a tavern.

According to the new book, “Illustrated History of the Snowman” by Bob Eckstein  French and Indian forces weren’t fooled by the snowman sentinels the guards had erected in their place, and the night ended badly for the Schenectadians, with 60 residents — men, women and children — killed in the massacre. . . 

After describing the spread of snowmen images thereafter, including widespread use in advertising for alcoholic beverages, The Buzz cheekily points out:

Apparently, they hadn’t learned that alcohol and snowmen don’t mix.

. . [Ed. note] All the hoopla about the craft breweries coming to Schenectady’s Mill Lane Artisan District might be a fateful failure of memory of our local leaders. The 1690 wayward sentinels had, in fact, gone to the Douwe Aukes Tavern at Mill Lane for their tankards of brew, and the Stockade paid dearly for it.

 At this website, Snowmen at the Gates, our title theme of snowmen futilely guarding Schenectady’s gates has its genesis in Bob Eckstein’s original 2007 version of The History of the Snowman, which has a chapter devoted to the 1690 Massacre. That is where I first learned of the scandalous dereliction of duty that led to the horrific  Schenectady Massacre.

• That’s right, after living here in ignorance of that tale for twenty years, it took a NYC sophisticate and author/humorist/cartoonist to teach me the sad story behind the saddest day in the history of my adopted home. As I travel around Town, and when I mention the name of this website, it is clear that most folks still do not know the legend of the Snowmen at the Gates, which I am afraid means that our City has not Learned the Lessons of the 1690 Massacre.

 If you’d like to read Bob Eckstein‘s full discussion of the 1690 Massacre and the impotent snowmen left at an open gate (despite warnings from Albany of a raiding party on the way), go to the Amazon.com page for his new “Illustrated History of the Snowman”, where you can Look Inside the Book, and simply search the word Schenectady. You’ll also see that Schenectady snowmen are the first reference to snowmen in North America that Bob found in his comprehensive research on the history of such frozen aqueous sculpture.

Both editions of History of the Snowman contain the full illustration of the North Wind Archives artwork that adorns our masthead above; that’s where I first saw it and was inspired to contact the good folks at North Wind. Here is another image from the Illustrated History, a snow-globe depicting the 1690 Massacre:

Preparing to write this posting today, I discovered:

1. Exactly a decade ago this weekend, on December 7, 2008, Bob Eckstein visited Schenectady to do a presentation at our Central Library (image at the right) and book-signing at the Open Door for the 1st Edition of History of the Snowman. See “snowman historian blows into Schenectady” (f/k/a, Dec. 7, 2008); and “SnowmanCity, NY“ (Nov. 29, 2008).
2. While Schenectady snowmen were the first reference Bob found to their species in North America, the last two postings at Bob’s decade-long website Today’s Snowman, historyofthesnowman.com, were also about Schenectady snowmen. See “Schenectady’s Stockade Snowman at the Gates” (Feb. 3, 2016); and “Schenectady Snowman from 2009” (Feb. 10, 2016). Here are screenshots of those last two postings; click on them to enlarge.

 . .  .

So, in many ways, Bob Eckstein is the godfather or midwife of this website. Without him, we might be called The Adventures of Mayor McSmarty. Or, maybe “If this is a Renaissance . . . “.