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Some of the greatest stories in American history begin here – utopian experiments, abolitionism, suffragettism, the Westward Expansion, and the birth of several global faiths. As part of this same tapestry, outsized philanthropists from Upstate and neighboring territories devoted their fortunes to a series of great institutions that would transform the country and its education: to name a few, the Rockefellers of Upstate and the Midwest; the Clark and Singer families of Corning, Cooperstown, and environs; the shareholders in Oneida Limited, a world-renowned silver company, born out of the quasi-religious utopian experiment pioneered by John Humphrey Noyes in Oneida, NY, in the mid-to-late 1800s.
L.L. Nunn, an entrepreneur who brought hydro-electricity to much of the American West, went on to found the scholarship house Telluride Association at Cornell University, as well as Deep Springs College in California. Nunn was one among other dynamic businessmen who wed his fortune to religious ideas of self-improvement and self-government born during one of the most exciting acts in American history, the Second Great Awakening, headquartered in Upstate.
Author and Project Director Mary Eberstadt and the rest of the Leatherstocking team will mine the region’s rich history and its present to bring these and other dormant stories to new, inspiring life.
