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Our classmate, Susan J. Staffa is making history – really! Susan has completed the first of a projected two volume work to be published by Purple Mountain Press. The first volume is titled: Schenectady Genesis: How a Dutch Colonial Village Became an American City.
Susan says the history is both readable and relevant in today's world. "Schenectady survived and prospered because of the diverse community of people that settled here. People with no particular compact among them built a community during a very challenging time. That's the important thing we can learn from Schenectady's history."
Susan started her research 30 ago when she discovered that her house was built in 1703 and served as home the commandant of Queen Anne's Fort.
Her book tells how Schenectady and its 17th-century inhabitants, which included the English, French, Scottish, Belgians, Germans and Norwegians along with the Dutch, managed to survive in the New World.
“In New England they were trying for a religious utopia, and in Virginia it was the plantation state. New York has always been governed by businessmen. That's what the Dutch were, and that's what American culture is all about." It tells an important story of how diverse people came together and worked with each other and the Indians to build a community."
Volume II: The Creation of an American City from an Anglo-Dutch Town, ca. 1774-1810, will take Susan another or six or seven years to complete.
Susan previously designed a multi-media self-guided tour of Schenectady's Stockade Historic District. Entitled Colonial Schenectady: An American Crucible. It focuses on the dynamic character of Colonial Schenectady and illustrates how the colonial community established by the Dutch foreshadowed what much of America was to become as people of diverse ethnic backgrounds expoited their strategic location, local resources, and their own industrial and commercial capabilities to hve a profound impact on the development of the American frontier.
In 1990 Susan initiated The Colonial Schenectady Project, a program developed to stimulate revitalization through tourism.
In 2003 she was named Schenectady County's winner of the Mohawk Valley Heritage Corridor Commission's Heritage Heroes award, given annually to an individual who makes "extraordinary contributions to the heritage of this region." She was also recently featured in a story by Bill Buell in the May 1, 2003 Daily Gazette.
We are all proud of you Susan!
