Wednesday, July 24 at 2 pm

Arkell Museum Great Hall

Join David Brooks, Education Director at Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, as he looks at the similarities and differences between DeWitt Clinton and George Washington as they navigate the waters of internal improvements in early America.

Brooks will examine how Clinton and Washington were confronted by major obstacles in their efforts to connect the eastern waters to the new westward expanding nation. In 1817 Thomas Jefferson wrote to New York State Governor and Erie Canal champion DeWitt Clinton about the “Future Face of America” imagining the internal transportation improvements that would economically transform the early American Republic. Jefferson congratulated Clinton on the progress of a canal “…in a state wise enough to see that the common interest is individual interest, and rich enough to pursue it."
George Washington had also received encouragement from Jefferson for his Potomac Company canal project, but both Clinton and Washington were confronted by major obstacles in their efforts to connect the eastern waters to the new westward expanding nation. Both were successful in the long run in changing the political, economic, and physical landscape of the nation; just in different ways.

This presentation includes a gallery tour of the Portraits and Landscapes exhibition. Brooks will compare the portraits of both George Washington and DeWitt Clinton – noting their clothing, as well as their expressions - and how each of the two men “wore” success as well as failure in politics, personal life, and especially canal projects.

Admission to the talk and tour are FREE.

For more information contact Mary Alexander, Curator of Education and Public Engagement, 518-673-2314 ext. 113.