First, a little humorous aside for you all. The public doesn't see it all that often, but we are constantly engaged at the Gateway in answering research questions for people all over the globe. The most common topic involves bells, largely because this area produced about a hundred thousand of them, and unlike consumer items like horseshoes and detachable shirt collars, which were used up and discarded, most of the bells are still in existence. For example, the latest issue of the alumnae magazine for the Sage Colleges in Troy and Albany has a piece one pages 4 and 5 about their 1940 Meneely bell. We helped the author with the background research, and some of the materials from our collections are depicted in the illustrations in that article. Click here to go to the online version of the Sage bell article (requires Flash player, so it won't work on iPhones or iPads).

Once in a while, though, we get a much more unusual request. A recent one came from a genealogist researching some ancestors from this area who were engaged in what was a common pursuit in the 1800s, but which strikes people today as entertaining. Let's just say that they weren't workin' on the railroad. If you'd like to learn more about this fun caper, look at this Genealogy Blog.

Welcome to the Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway's new web site.

The site at this point is still very much in development, but we've decided to make it public now so you can try it out. Only some of the features are working at the moment, but we'll be adding new content on a regular basis from now on. Do please let us know what you think of it.

Until this site is complete, we'll keep the old site online as well, so you can visit that to find your old favorites there. Eventually, we'll be moving all that content over to this new site. But in the meantime, click here for the Classic Version of the Gateway Site.