Roscoe Conkling made his name in Utica before he ran the Senate
Conkling came to Utica at 17 to study law, became mayor and district attorney, and grew into one of the most powerful senators of the 1870s.
Features
Neighbors, founders and figures from Clinton, Kirkland and Oneida County history.
“Sunny Jim” Sherman, the vice president from Utica
Sherman graduated from Hamilton, served as mayor of Utica and in Congress, and was vice president under William Howard Taft.
Gerrit Smith, Hamilton’s first valedictorian, gave his fortune to abolition
Born in Utica and educated in Clinton, Smith became one of New York's richest men and one of the country's best-known abolitionists.
Skenandoa, the Oneida chief buried on College Hill
The Oneida leader sided with the colonists in the Revolution and asked to be buried next to his friend Samuel Kirkland.
Samuel Kirkland, the missionary who started a school for Oneida and white boys
Kirkland founded the Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1793, the school that became Hamilton College. The town of Kirkland is named for him.
Asa Gray, the Sauquoit boy who became the country’s great botanist
Born in Sauquoit in 1810, Gray read his way through the Hamilton College library as a teenager and became Darwin's leading American ally.
Elihu Root was born on College Hill and came back to it
The Nobel Peace Prize winner and secretary of state was the son of a Hamilton math professor and grew up in Clinton.
Local Painter Uses Art to Bring Awareness to Environmental Issues
Jenna North's paintings at the Kirkland Art Center draw on a research residency in the Maldives and rising sea levels.