We wanted to share the article that appeared in the Register Star newspaper about the Prison Public Memory Project. Thanks to reporter John Mason for writing this piece and letting others know about our work.
Project Recovers Prison’s Memory, October 1, 2013
Columbia-Greene Media: News / Register Star
By John Mason
“When artist Alison Cornyn and filmmaker Tracy Huling started the Prison Public Memory Project, they figured they would be in Hudson about a year. Their idea was and still is to use their work on the Hudson Correctional Facility and its predecessors as a pilot site for a national project on recovering and preserving the histories and memories of prisons.
Now they’ve been here more than two years, and the project is richer than they had ever expected….”
2 comments
Liz Barranco says:
Jan 23, 2014
After my grandma died, her cousin told me that when she was between 12 and 16, my great grandparents sent my grandma to some kind of reformatory in NYS. Her “crime” was that they caught her kissing a boy or something. My grandma was living on a farm in Hanover, NY, in Chautauqua at the time so I’m think the Training School is the likely place she would have been sent. The time period would have been 1930-ish. My grandma had quite an interesting life and I’m trying to document it for future generations. Do you know how I can find out if she was there or not and whether any records remain?
Editor says:
Jan 23, 2014
Thank you, Liz, for writing to us about your grandmother. We have a team member who is currently doing research on the Hudson Girls Training School at the New York State Archives in Albany, NY. If you would like to share with us the name your grandmother went by when she was at the Training School, and any other identifying information (the name of the county from which she was committed, birthdate, photograph of her around the age she was committed or shortly after getting out, race/ethnicity, etc.), we can add your her name to the list of people about which we are doing research. Or, you could plan a trip to the Archives to do some research yourself. Here is the link to their website. http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/research/index.shtml
If you do decide to go to the Archives yourself, let us know when you will be coming as we would be glad to be of any assistance we can while you’re there.