Cpl. Jacob Henry Sager

 This post was written by library volunteer Gail Denisoff

 

Jacob Henry Sager was born into a farming family on May 18, 1844 in the town of Princetown.  He was the son of Peter and Helen Sager, part of a family of early settlers of Schenectady County. When he was 19 years of age, he enlisted in the Union Army. Mustered in on October 10, 1863, Jacob was assigned to Company C, Heavy Artillery, 16^th New York Volunteers.

 

During his service, he fought in many major campaigns including the battles at Chapin's Farm, Fort Fisher, Wilmington NC, and Andersonville. He spent six months in the hospital with a serious illness during his service. Jacob narrowly missed being shot when a bullet passed through the collar of his coat when he was on picket duty at "Fort Hell" (Fort Sedgwick) in Petersburg VA. He was also part of a large contingent of soldiers who dug the "Dutch Gap Canal" seven miles from Richmond VA.

 

After he mustered at the end of the war, on August 21, 1865 in Washington DC, Jacob returned home to work the family farm. He married Jennette Weast and together they raised six children.

Jacob was active in the Horsfall Post 90 Grand Army of the Republic. He was senior vice-commander and held many other offices in the post.  When he died at age 86, on November 24, 1930, he was one of just six remaining Civil War veterans in Schenectady County. He is buried in Viewland Cemetery. 

 Cpl. Sager was featured in the 2025 Schenectady Hometown Heroes Banner Program: https://downtownschenectady.org/portfolio/2025-hometown-hero-banner-program/ His banner hung at the corner of State and Barrett Streets from May to November 2025.

Frost Papers - Examples from the collection

The James Frost Papers comprises papers created by James Frost (1783-1851), a surveyor who worked in Albany, Schenectady, Montgomery, and Schoharie counties. James Frost lived in Duanesburg and most of his work was done in that area. The collection includes copies of survey sketches, maps, leases, receipts, legal documents, and other materials related to Frost’s work. This post highlights a few examples from the collection. 

D-9: Survey for Ebenezer Lockwood, 12 March 1842.

D-35A and D-35B: Textual documents and visual documents complement each other.

D-35A: Lease between William Thomas and William McClumpha and John Brown for the use and occupancy of the mills and lands called the Blooming Vale Mills and Farm, (4 March 1824)

D-35b: Map of wood lots at Blooming Vale Farm, surveyed 22 August 1848

D-61: Thomas W. Patterson to Benjamin Lockwood – Bond 1840

M-34: Map of Lot # 49 in Corry’s Patent, Charleston, surveyed for James Ingersol, 7 April 1825

M-34 detail of orchard and spring.

M-77: Map of the lands formerly of John Wemple near Fort Hunter, surveyed 15 November 1844

M-77 detail of Lot No. 1 and No. 2.

Misc-47: List of expenses for Schenectady and Duanesburg Plank Road Company, 22 March 1848 – 27 February 1849

To learn more about this collection, view the finding aid on the Collections and Catalog page of our website: https://schenectadyhistorical.org/admin/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/2006.2.19-James-Frost-Papers.pdf

Schenectady County Church Records

St. Luke's Church in Schenectady. The Grems-Doolittle Library has records of baptisms, marriages, and deaths in St. Luke's Church from 1916-2002. Photograph from the Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection.

The Grems-Doolittle Library has copies of church records - including records of births/baptisms, marriages, deaths/burials, and church membership - from a number of churches in Schenectady County. Such records are extremely helpful to genealogists in substantiating family connections, and provide important biographical information for those interested more broadly in local history. These records are especially useful in tracing the lives of people who lived in the area before 1880-1881, when New York State first required records documenting births, marriages, and deaths.


Page from the baptismal register of Woestina Reformed Church in Rotterdam. These records, like most of the church records in our collection, are transcribed and indexed.

There is a quick-reference guide to Schenectady County church records available in our library. This guide at a glance includes information about the city or town, denomination, church name, and the date ranges for various types of records associated with each church. This guide to Schenectady County church records at a glance can be found here.

Records from German Lutheran Church, 1800s.

If you're not sure what church records to check in looking for ancestors, our staff and volunteers can help you. Also, if we do not have church records available for a congregation you are looking for, we may be able to provide you with a referral to locate those records. We also have church histories, clipping files, and other resources regarding local churches if you are looking for more information about the ethnic community or neighborhood the church was associated with.  

In addition to church records for Schenectady County, the Library also has holdings of church records for other counties in New York State. Stop by, give us a call, or send an email to ask about our holdings for other counties you might be interested in!

Working on the James Frost Papers

Map of Lot #2 in Currysbush Patent, surveyed by James Frost, file number P (Princetown) 168.
Many of the materials in the Frost Papers document Frost's work in Duanesburg, Princetown, and Montgomery County.

This entry is written by Robert J. Jones, a volunteer in our library.

I am a relatively new volunteer in the Grems-Doolittle Library, and a couple weeks ago, I finished my first big project.  For several months I worked on creating the electronic finding aid for the James Frost Papers.  James Frost was a surveyor and attorney living in western Schenectady County at the end of the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth century.  Frost’s work was largely in Albany and Schenectady counties, but he also did much work in Montgomery County, and to a lesser extent in Schoharie.  The collection is in remarkably good condition considering its age.  Most of the documents date to the early decades of the nineteenth century, so we are dealing with two-centuries-old documents.  The quality of his work is very good; Frost has a careful hand, and many of his surveys include maps with very minute details.

Not all the surveys are of farms, as one might expect, but at times whole villages and also large tracts of territory in the northern areas of the state which had yet to be widely settled at the time of his life.  As I worked with the material, it was fun to imagine Frost setting off on horseback or on foot with a mule to carry his surveying equipment.  Travel to some of these locales must have been quite challenging as there were few roads and even fewer railroads, even toward the end of his life, and not all his jobs were in the four county region mentioned above; some of his jobs took him down river to North Jersey and to territory further west along the Susquehanna.  Beyond imagining Frost setting out across the relative wilderness of upstate New York, the names of some of the characters he worked for were also amusing; by far, my favorite is one Mr. Cornbury Clapp!

The last time anyone had seriously looked at the collection appears to be 1980.  Considering more than 30 years had passed since the collection was organized and first catalogued, relatively little was misplaced or missing (although sadly, a very few documents have gone missing).  At the time of the original catalog, several hundred documents were unidentified.  Over the years many of those documents found homes.  Thanks to other electronic finding aids, the library’s card catalog and the internet, I was able to identify several dozen other documents and move them to their proper places.  Considering how many times I did rely on electronic sources, I doubt that these particular documents could have been reasonably traced in the past; even searching the original print catalog would have been a daunting task as it comes to nearly 50 pages.

This collection includes copies of survey sketches, maps, leases, receipts, legal documents, and other materials related to Frost’s work.  The papers are not only useful in their documentation of Frost’s work as a surveyor; the papers are also very useful for genealogical and historical research in identifying where people lived in the area. Click here for a complete finding aid for the collection.