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  #    Entered Union     Year Settled 11th           July 26, 1788       1614  Nickname The Empire State  Rank  Population 3rd       19,490,297  Rank  Square Miles 27th           54,556  State Bird  State Flower  State Tree  State Motto Excelsior Ever upward!  The Dutch West India Company established the first settlement at Fort Orange near present day Albany in 1624 and another in New Amsterdam on the site of present day Manhattan a year later. After the English took over in the 1660s, the colony was renamed New York, after the Duke of York.  One of the original 13 states to join the Union (it entered in 1788), New York is known as the "Empire State." The state includes everything from skyscrapers in Manhattan to rivers, mountains, and lakes in upstate New York. Today, New York has the third largest population (after California and Texas), and remains the financial center of the country. The capital is Albany.  The Statue of Liberty Arrived in New York Harbor She is the most famous American lady, but she wasn't born in America. The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor on June 19, 1885, as a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States.  Sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi's Liberty Enlightening the World stands 305 feet high and has come to symbolize freedom and democracy nationwide. Miss Liberty is made of copper sheets assembled on a framework of steel supports. How did the enormous statue emigrate to America?  In order to transport the statue to America, the figure was disassembled into 350 pieces and packed in 214 crates. Four months later, it was reassembled on Bedloe's Island (renamed Liberty Island in 1956). On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty before thousands of spectators. But millions more would meet "Lady Liberty" in a different way.  The nearby Ellis Island Immigration Station, a major reception point for immigrants entering the United States, opened in 1892. Before the station closed in 1943, the Statue of Liberty welcomed more than 12 million immigrants to America. On its pedestal, words by poet Emma Lazarus reflect the hope for freedom and opportunity shared by the millions who see hl after a long ocean journey:  Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. What kinds of things do you think the Statue of Liberty inspired? How about music?  Walking Onto Ellis Island, New York Do you know what important activity once took place at Ellis Island?  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many immigrants came to New York through an immigration station called Ellis Island, near the southern tip of New York City's Manhattan Island. Immigrants, people who leave their home country to live permanently in a new one, have made up a large part of the population of New York City for several hundred years. Irish, Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican, and other people have influenced the cultural makeup of this huge city.  Between 1892 and 1954, more than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island in order to start a new life in the United States. They came to escape religious persecution, political oppression, and poverty in their home countries. Getting through Ellis Island, however, was often a long and grueling process. Newly arrived immigrants had to wait in line for many hours, endure medical examinations, and answer questions from the immigration inspectors  Immigrant Life in New York Almost all of us have relatives who came from someplace other than the United States. People who came to America to live are called immigrants.  From the 1850s through the early 1900s, thousands of immigrants arrived in the United States and lived in New York City. They first came from Ireland and Germany and later from Italy, Eastern Europe, and China, among other places. Because most immigrants were poor when they arrived, they often lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where rents for the crowded apartment buildings, called tenements, were low.  The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is in a building that used to be a tenement and it tells the story of immigrants in the City. It was built in the 1860s and could house 20 families, four on each floor. Each apartment had only three rooms: a living or "front" room, a kitchen, and a tiny bedroom. Often seven or more people lived in each apartment. Not only was the tenement crowded, but also, until 1905, there were no bathrooms inside the building. Residents also did not have electric power until after 1918.  The Museum has re-created the apartments to look like they did when families lived there. Abraham and Fannie Rogarshevsky arrived with their four children from Russia in 1901. Later, they had two more children in the United States. While they lived in this tenement, a boarder (someone who pays for food and lodging in another person's home) lived with the family. That would have made nine people living in a three-room apartment!  New York Stock Market Opened on Wall Street Do you trade baseball cards, videotapes or Pokemon cards? Anything becomes valuable if someone wants it badly enough. Have you heard about trading stocks and bonds on television or at home? Stocks are shares in a business that you get when you invest money in that company. Stocks are traded on the Stock Market and, on this day in 1865, the New York Stock Exchange opened its first permanent headquarters near Wall Street in New York City. What do you think makes the price of stock rise?  The more stocks you buy the bigger the piece of the company you own. If the company becomes popular, many people will invest their money, buy more stock, and the price of the stock will go up. If the company becomes unpopular, the stock price will drop.  Bonds are different from stocks. Bonds are loans, usually made to your city, state, or the federal government, that are repaid with interest at a certain date in the future. Can you guess how the trading of stocks and bonds started?  Although the official Stock Exchange opened in 1865, the trading of stocks and bonds began much earlier. The federal government started the U.S. investment market in 1790 to issue bonds (loans) that would help pay off the debt from the American Revolution against Great Britain, which America won in 1783.  Today the New York Stock Exchange is the biggest stock exchange in this country and it is located just a few doors away from this original stock exchange building.  New York Subway System Opened for Business In London, it's "the Tube"; in Paris, it's the Métro; and in New York City, it's the subway. On Thursday afternoon, October 27, 1904, the mayor of New York City, George B. McClellan, officially opened the New York City subway system. The first subway train left City Hall station with the mayor at the controls, and 26 minutes later arrived at 145th Street. The subway opened to the general public at 7 p.m. that evening, and before the night was over, 150,000 passengers had ridden the trains through the underground tunnels.  If you have ever been to New York or seen it in movies or on TV, you have seen the streets full of cars and pedestrian traffic. New York City, even at the turn of the 20th century, had been in desperate need of a transportation system for years to help ease the congestion of pedestrians, horses, wagons, and carriages.  Finally overcoming legal, political, and financial problems, the Rapid Transit Subway Construction Company was formed and started construction on New York City's famous subway in March 1900. You and your family can see the subway in action only seven months after it opened. Watch the 1904 movie made by cameraman G.W. "Billy" Bitzer.  Born: October 27, 1858, New York City, New York Died: January 6, 1919, Oyster Bay, L.I., New York  Late in his life, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, said "No man has had a happier life than I have led. . . a happier life in every way."  One of his greatest sources of happiness was his family. In this picture, you see Roosevelt with his second wife, Edith, and their five children, Theodore Jr., Kermit, Ethel, Archie, and Quentin. Alice, Roosevelt's daughter from his first wife, is also in the picture. As president, Roosevelt was responsible for the construction of the Panama Canal and increasing the number of national parks and national forests. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War.  In the 1890s, the belief that Americans should avoid getting involved with other countries was slowly fading. Because of its rapid economic and social growth, the U.S. had become a major world power. So when Cuban rebels began a violent revolution against Spanish rule in 1895, and a mysterious explosion sunk the U.S.S. Maine in the Havana harbor, the U.S. entered into what diplomat John Hay called "a splendid little war" with Spain.  Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders Before becoming President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He resigned in 1898 to organize the Rough Riders, the first voluntary cavalry in the Spanish-American War. The U.S. was fighting against Spain over Spain's colonial policies with Cuba.  Roosevelt recruited a diverse group of cowboys, miners, law enforcement officials, and Native Americans to join the Rough Riders. They participated in the capture of Kettle Hill, then charged across a valley to assist in the seizure of San Juan Ridge, the highest point of which is San Juan Hill. The Rough Riders are best remembered for their charge up San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898.  Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were a colorful group of characters. During the war, they received the most publicity of any unit in the army. Have you seen any of those old Westerns where the posse rides after the bad guys in a cloud of dust? That's pretty much how the Rough Riders were portrayed. Of course, the reality was that the Rough Riders didn't win the war on their own. There were many soldiers and cavalry units who fought and died in the war.  A few days after the Rough Riders' charge up San Juan Hill, the Spanish fleet fled Cuba. It was just a matter of weeks before the war had ended and the U.S. was victorious.  Although the Spanish-American War ended relatively soon, issues over ownership of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Hawaiian islands also had to be resolved  From a young age, Elizabeth Cady Stanton learned that girls didn't have the same rights or opportunities as boys. Stanton went to Johnston Academy, a co-ed school. She later wrote that she was "the only girl in the higher classes of mathematics and the languages." She wasn't allowed to go to college because she was a girl, so instead she studied at Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary.  Stanton was a firm believer in individual rights, such as the right to vote or the right to have any job for which you are qualified. Stanton's father was a judge. She read law with him but wasn't allowed to practice because, you guessed it, she was a woman. After all this, what do you think inspired Stanton to fight for women's rights?  In 1840, Elizabeth Cady Stanton attended the World Antislavery Convention in London with Lucretia Mott, an outspoken Quaker abolitionist (someone who opposed slavery), and some other women representatives. She believed that the laws that treated women differently than men needed to be reformed.  Stanton drafted a "Declaration of Rights and Sentiments," which she modeled after the Declaration of Independence. In the document, she called for moral, economic, and political equality for women. In 1848, she presented the document at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York. Whom do you think stood by Stanton and supported women in their fight for equality?  Frederick Douglass, a former slave and abolitionist leader, stood with Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the Seneca Falls Convention and argued for women's right to vote. One hundred people signed the "Declaration of Rights and Sentiments." The Declaration wasn't just about women getting the right to vote. In it and throughout her life, Stanton argued for women's rights to higher education, to professional life, to the ownership of property, and to obtain a divorce.  She wrote The Woman's Bible in which she criticized the treatment of women in the Old Testament. Nowadays women in this country have almost all the same opportunities as men, or do they?  Susan B. Anthony Supports Women's Suffrage Amendment You have probably heard about the $1 coin with Sacajawea on it, but did you know that in 1979 the United States had another dollar coin? That year, the U.S. issued a silver coin worth $1 that had an image of New York resident Susan B. Anthony on one side. Who was Susan B. Anthony? Here's a hint: she helped pave the way to give American women the right to vote.  Chances are that when your great-grandmother was young, she couldn't vote even though your great grandfather could. It was because of the hard work of a lot of women and men that your mom and grandmother can vote today. Susan B. Anthony helped lead that hard work. On March 8, 1884, Anthony testified before Congress supporting women's suffrage (right to vote). She urged senators to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that, she said, "shall prohibit the disenfranchisement of citizens of the United States on account of sex..." In some newspapers, Anthony was called a fanatic and ridiculed for her views.  It wasn't until 1919 that Congress voted to direct the states to consider ratifying a constitutional amendment to allow women to vote. Nicknamed the "Anthony Amendment" in honor of the leader who had died in 1906, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920. For more than 70 years, women like Susan B. Anthony fought for women's right to vote alongside men on Election Day.  Can you imagine an election in which your dad could vote but your mom couldn't?  |
