Autumn '25 Issue of The Review

Autumn 2025 Issue of The Hudson River Valley Review

As scholars continue to ask new and more nuanced questions about slavery in New York, Debra Bruno examines the journal of Alexander Coventry (1765-1831). Entries recorded by this young immigrant doctor and aspiring enslaver offer revealing insight into the situational and evolving dynamics of one person's involvement in the instiution of slavery in the state between 1785 and 1831. Today, the Catskills are regarded as a wild haven, just as they were often portrayed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, that image ignores the region's significant extractive and industrial history. Samantha Misa examines this oft-ignored aspect of the Catskills' history as the epicenter of the leather tanning industry throughout the Civil War and how it led to today's Catskill Park. Have you ever wondered how much history you can tease out of an old painting? Bruce Weber traces the story of Saugerites -- from its early development to its twenty-first century renaissance -- by studying the details of a nineteenth-century canvas hanging in its Village Hall. 

The Regional History Forums in this issue focus on two very different Hudson River estates. Leonardo Carini presents the life and legacy of Robert R. Livingston, Jr. -- "The Chancellor" -- at Clermont in Columbia County. Born into the colonial artistocracy, he helped establish a new nation through his political, diplomatic, and entrepreneurial endeavors. Grace Naccarato illustrates how Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to formulate his twin passions for conservation and preservation -- essential aspects of the New Deal programs initiated by the future president -- at his family's Springwood estate downriver in Hyde Park. Together, the articles reveal that despite the centuries and miles that separated these two visionary shapers of our nation's history, they shared a lifelong love for the region they called home.

The Hudson River Valley Review

Volume 42, Number 1, Autumn 2025

(Click here for PDF preview)

Alexander Coventry’s Life as a Slaveholder in a Changing New York, Debra Bruno

The Soles of the Catskills: The Civil War, Tanning, and the Leather Industry that Changed New York’s Catskill Mountains, 1818–1885, Samantha Misa

Notes & Documents

A Fine Prospect: Charles Edward Townsend’s Catskill Mountains from Barclay Heights, Saugerties, New York, Bruce Weber

Regional History Forum

Robert R. Livingston Jr., the “Chancellor,” at Clermont Manor, Leonardo Carini

FDR at Hyde Park: Through the Lens of Conservation, Grace Naccarato

Book Reviews

Hopewell Junction: A Railroader’s Town by Bernard L. Rudberg and John M. Desmond, reviewed by Robert Chiles

Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt by Charlotte Gray, reviewed by Tisha Dunstan

From the Hudson to the Taconics; An Ecological and Cultural Field Guide to the Habitats of Columbia County, New York, by Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program and Hudsonia, Ltd. reviewed by Steve Stanne

Back to the Land: A New Way of Life in the Country by Pieter Estersohn, reviewed by Cara Lee

Songs and Sounds: The Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York by Nancy Newman, reviewed by Joshua Groffman

New & Noteworthy Books

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