Category Archives: Feature

The 2013 Oswego War of 1812 Symposium

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Oswego Historian

The 2013 Oswego War of 1812 Symposium will be held at the Lake Ontario Conference and Event Center in Oswego, New York on April 5 – 7, 2013. Please visit the Fort Ontario web site for the registration form. Continue reading →

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War of 1812 Symposium Returns to the Port City

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Oswego Historian

The Oswego War of 1812 Symposium returns to the Port City for its third year. It runs from Friday, April 5 to Sunday, April 7 at the Lake Ontario Event and Conference Center, 26 East First Street, Oswego. The event continues the bicentennial commemoration of the historic war that firmly established America’s independence from Great Britain and confirmed its national identity.

Fort Ontario State Historic Site Superintendent Paul Lear is the chairman of the Oswego War of 1812 Symposium Bicentennial Steering Committee and will emcee the event.

Continue reading →

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Oswego: Its People, Places and Events

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Oswego Historian

John O’C. Conway is one of Oswego’s “favorite sons”. He was born on July 26, 1911 in Troy, New York. His parents were Daniel H. Conway and Ellen O’Connor Conway. She was the youngest of 9 children in a family from Oswego and was homesick. While John was an infant, the Conway’s moved back to Oswego.

John’s father was a businessman. His enterprises included a knitting factory that was located on Bridge Street. He also served as Mayor of Oswego in the 1930’s, as a Republican. Conway Terrace, a housing development on the City’s east side, was named after him. Continue reading →

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Tribute to John O’C. Conway

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Oswego Historian

The Oxford Dictionary defines the word “gentleman” this way “A polite, gracious, or considerate man with high standards of propriety or correct behavior”. It also defines politics as “the strife of interests, masquerading as a contest of principle, the study of who gets what, why, when, where, and how. No wonder the computer couldn’t connect the two concepts. But where the computer failed, John O’Connor Conway succeeded, and he was surely one in a million. John was a very rare breed of human being indeed who could combine politics with being a gentleman. In fact, he was the very embodiment, the personification, of those two concepts and he combined them with dignity, quiet compassion, humor, tact and resourcefulness in a way that some say only a true Irish politician can do. Continue reading →

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The Impact of World War I and World War II on Italian Americans in Oswego, New York: A Preliminary View

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Oswego Historian

Strategically situated on the Oswego River where it empties into Lake Ontario, the city of Oswego, New York was originally a small, frontier community that often was a battleground as the French and English forces fought to control the fur trade in colonial days. The port community provided the most economical route to and from New York City, connecting by water, the vast regions drained by the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. So important was it that even after the United States won its independence the British were slow to leave the area until 1796. Oswego was then able to proceed with its commercial development, though interrupted briefly by the War of 1812. The community’s economic growth boomed in the 1820s and 1830s. It was helped along by the building of a number of canals Continue reading →

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History of Riverside Cemetery, Oswego, NY

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Oswego Historian
Riverside Cemetery Oswego NY

This gallery contains 8 photos.

Burton Arnold Thomas (1809-1880) of Sand Bank, Renssalaer County, NY, designed the Riverside Cemetery of Oswego in 1855 in the ’garden style”, a romantic kind of landscape which had become popular in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The park-like setting contrasted sharply to earlier Oswego cemeteries, the first lying west of Fort Oswego in the 1797 plan of Oswego Village, then later cemeteries located where Kingsford Park and Fitzhugh Park Schools are located today.

The Kingsford Cemetery, opened in 1828, received bodies from the old lake shore cemetery and gradually filled as the mid-century mark approached. The Fitzhugh site, opened in 1830, also filled at about the same time. Continue reading →

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The Days When Oswego was a Major Great Lakes Port

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Oswego Historian

By Richard F. Palmer

It is certainly refreshing to look upon the business activity prevailing in our harbor at the present time, after the usual stagnation of the winter months in all northern lake ports. The click of the mallet and caulking-iron resound on every side – the decks of the numerous vessels are manned with busy crews engaged in “fitting out,” and everything presents an aspect of business, and everybody predicts a season of prosperity. May those predictions be verified, and the approaching season redeems the losses of the past. Vessels are arriving and departing daily, and our business men are actively engaged in completing their arrangements for heavy commercial transactions.

— Oswego Commercial Times, April 3, 1860 Continue reading →

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