One Foggy Christmas Eve Eve at the Spa State Park

The weather outside is delightful, may not be holiday season weather, but, I'll take it. The fog rolled in over night and hung around all morning, which made for some good photos, check it out!

                                        SPAC's lawn is looking quite amazing!!!

                         
                                                            Geyser Creek is flowing fierce!

         
                                                      Beech Constrictor

                                                       RB2 quitely sits and waits........

                    ALL PHOTOS BY GEORGE DEMERS

                                        Thanks for taking time to read my blog!

One big family

 Judge Henry Walton moved to Saratoga Springs in 1790, buying up large parcels of land, two years after he studied law under Aaron Burr, vice president to Thomas Jefferson. Aaron Burr is most famous for his duel with Alexander Hamilton, the man on your ten dollar bill, who Burr shot over politics and slander in 1804. 

 In 1833 Burr married Madam Jumel, who soon after divorced him in 1836, spitefully using Hamilton's son as her lawyer.

Jumel's personal cook was Anne Northup, wife of Solomon Northup, a black man kidnapped and sold as a slave in 1841. He was taken  at Mongomery Hall, bar front later to be a part of the Grand Union Hotel. Both Anne and Solomon worked at the hotel.

 Judge Walton sold the property now known as Skidmore College to A.T. Stewart, who willed it to the attorney who produced the will (?) Judge Henry Hilton in 1879.

Judge Henry Hilton established it as ''Woodlawn Estates'' adorned with statues and winding trolley paths. 

Judge Henry Hilton at the time, through the will deal, also managed/owned the Grand Union Hotel, and was part of a national controversy in 1877, after not allowing Jews to stay at the 1,000 room hotel, which, at the time, is was the largest in the world.

 So, basically, a judge sold property now known as Skidmore College, to a bigot judge, who also owned a hotel that used to employ a couple, where the wife, also worked for a wife, of a guy who taught law to the judge who sold property now known as Skidmore College.

Notice, the stone fence is the only thing left from the old property!