Editors' Introduction

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Editors' Introduction D.L. Noorlander, Thomas D. Beal, and Susan Goodier In our last issue we announced plans to commemorate transitional moments in New York's history, including the start of construction on the Erie Canal in 1817 and the women's rights victories exactly a century later, when suffrage was finally legalized in this state. Neither topic appears in this issue, but we are in the process of gathering and editing a number of original scholarly articles and "state of the field" essays on suffrage and the canal. The essays in this issue, ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, focus on several other environmental, educational, and political developments in New York. We begin with Dutch settlers and the descendants of the Dutch in the colonial era and early national period. In "Agricultural Wetland Use and Management in the Dutch-Settled Northeast," Chelsea Teale shows how much the Dutch valued wetlands and how they used them for access to game, water power, construction materials, and livestock fodder. In "Studying Objects, Objectifying Students," Andrew Fiss explores pedagogical methods at four women's colleges in the nineteenth century, arguing that some students were critical of the new "familiar science" because, they worried, they themselves were becoming specimens or exhibits for the outside world. In "William Phelps Eno: New York's Architect of Traffic Safety," Louis Arthur Norton describes the life of a man whose innovations and contributions were so many, he sometimes bears the title, "Father of Traffic Safety." His influence, Norton shows, extended far beyond New York. Derek Stadler studies New York City's politics in roughly the same period. In "Greater New York and Its Silver Jubilee," Stadler uses the 1923 Jubilee to examine the growing strength of political and business relationships and the influence of William Randolph Hearst in particular. Finally, in "The Path Not Taken," Richard F. Hamm writes about an understudied aspect of the famous flag salute controversy of the 1930s, when Grace Sandstrom, a thirteen-year-old Jehovah's Witness, refused to salute the [End Page 175] American flag, as the law then required. Hamm sets aside the usual constitutional issues and instead shows that the Jehovah's Witnesses and their allies sought a solution in administrative law, which had only become a major part of the American legal framework in recent decades. Producing New York History is both a privilege and a challenge, and the editors cannot do it alone. Peer reviewers, colleagues, friends, and especially a hardworking and committed group of Research Assistants (Giovanna Di Filippo, Matthew Hitchen, Elise North-Kirkman, Amanda Barbuto, Waldo A. Espinosa, Tierney E. Lynch, Meagan R. Moore, Sean Prahalis, Brittany E. Williams, and Jennifer A. Yung) have made valuable contributions to the issue. We thank them and the readers who have sent words of criticism or encouragement; they help us produce a better product. If you have questions or comments about the journal's contents, we encourage you to contact us by electronic mail at publications@fenimoreart.org. [End Page 176] Copyright © 2017 Fenimore Art Museum