Documenting Labor Inside and Out:

Entry 41 -- 1840 Henry Highland Granet, a close friend of Frederick Douglass and early Black nationalist theorist, lived in Troy between 1840 and 1848 where he served as a minister.

Entry 82 -- 1866 On March 17, owners of Troy foundries locked-out workers in an attempt to break the Iron Molders International Union.

Entry 87 -- 1868 Collar Laundry Union head, Kate Mullany of Troy, was nominated in 1868 as the only woman Vice-President of the National Labor Union.

Entry 89 -- 1869 In May, the collar laundresses of Troy went on strike and organized a cooperative to supply union members with work during the strike. Employers finally defeated the women when they introduced a new product--disposable collars and cuffs made of paper.

Entry 90 -- 1870s Established in 1811, the Cohoes Manufacturing Company had become the largest cotton manufacturer in the world by 1870. In 1830 the company built Harmony Mills, one of the earliest "company towns" in the country.

Entry 125 -- 1884 In 1884 Leonora Marie Barry, a millhand in Amsterdam, New York, joined the Knights of Labor. In 1887 she became the KoL's Director of Women, and organized co-operative shirt factories.

Entry 176 -- 1903 James Connolly, Irish Socialist Leader and founder of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, organized workers in the Troy area while employed by an insurance company.

Entry 184 -- 1906 On December 10, during an Industrial Workers of the World organizing drive at the General Electric plant in Schenectady, three thousand workers sat down inside the plant refusing to work--the first recorded sit–down strike in American history.

Entry 197 -- 1912 Workers at the Phoenix and Gilbert Knitting Mills of Little Falls walked off work in October in protest of pay cuts engendered by state legislation mandating a reduced work week for women.

Entry 268 -- 1937 The Textile Workers Organizing Committee issued its first charter to Bigelow-Sanford carpet workers in Amsterdam. Carpet workers, many of them Italian, Polish, and Slovak immigrants became the best-paid and among the best-organized workers in textiles.

Source: "The History of Labor in New York State" map, New York Labor History Association, 1998.