Hudson NY
Incorrigibles

Incorrigibles

Please take the time to visit our sister project, Incorrigibles. The Prison Public Memory Project started out working with communities to unearth the history of local prisons, to imagine what...

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Nina Bernstein and the 'mystery' of Shirley Wilder

Nina Bernstein and the ‘mystery’ of Shirley Wilder

In the mid-1990’s, while researching her first book, Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care (Pantheon, 2001), New York Times reporter Nina Bernstein went to Hudson, NY.  There she discovered a treasure...

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Will You Take a Summer Time Trip with Me to the New York State Training School for Girls, Hudson, NY?

Will You Take a Summer Time Trip with Me to the New York State Training School for Girls, Hudson, NY?

Sue Tenerowicz  of Hudson, NY shared her grandmother, Bessie Butt’s, photo albums with the Prison Public Memory Project. The first 20 or so pages (before those depicting Boonesville where she was...

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Who Is Training Whom?

Who Is Training Whom?

The Prison Public Memory Project recently received a note from Frances Drabick, a poet whose mother worked at the New York State Training School for Girls in Hudson, NY in...

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Black Child Savers Along the Hudson

Black Child Savers Along the Hudson

By Geoff K. Ward When Dr. M. E. Ross’s yacht pulled into the Hudson, NY harbor in July of 1936, few likely realized that it carried something other than an...

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The “Ungovernable” Ella Fitzgerald

The “Ungovernable” Ella Fitzgerald

By Russ Immarigeon On April 10, 1933, according to records at the New York State Archives, Westchester County judge George W. Smyth sentenced a fifteen-year-old “colored” girl named Ella Fitzgerald...

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The Training School For Girls:  Punishment or Protection?

The Training School For Girls: Punishment or Protection?

In November 1905, Minnie B. Wade, a parole agent for the newly established New York State Training School for Girls located in Hudson, NY, addressed participants at the Sixth Annual...

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Where is Margo Bake?

Where is Margo Bake?

According to this undated article from Newsday, a newspaper based in Long Island, NY, ‘Missing Person’ Margo Bake, ran away from the NYS Training School for Girls in 1949.  She...

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If These Walls Could Talk: Life in a Girls’ Prison

Please join the Prison Public Memory Project and Historic Hudson for “IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK…” an exploration of life inside the New York State Training School for Girls (1904-1975) in...

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Delinquent Girls Need to Farm

Delinquent Girls Need to Farm

Fannie French Morse became Superintendent of the New York State Training School for Girls in 1923 and shortly thereafter she began stirring things up. Morse was an advocate of reform,...

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Gloria Hollenbeck's Memories

Gloria Hollenbeck’s Memories

Unable to attend our Story and Photo Share at the Hudson Area Library on November 18, 2013, yet wanting to share her memories and photographs, Gloria Hollenbeck had an envelope delivered to the Library adressed to...

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Suffer Little Children

Suffer Little Children

Marion Palfi (1907 – 1978), an immigrant photographer and member of the New York Photo League, a pivotal organization in photography and U.S. history, took photographs of girls at the...

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