2026 Sloan Lecture Series
We offer lectures each month on a variety of topics. Our theme for 2026 is Rooted. Throughout its history, the Erie Canal has been an agent of change and transformation. Through this lecture series we aim to explore the many facets of this transformative waterway's history. We look forward to sharing these stories with you throughout the year. All Sloan Lectures are available both in person and via Zoom. Everyone who registers will also receive a recording of the talk. Registering for the Annual Pass registers you for all talks for the remainder of the year, as well as provides access to all previously recorded talks for the year.
Thank you to the Winifred & DeVillo Sloan, Jr. Family Fund for supporting this series.
If you have difficulty registering please call 315-471-0593 or email educator@eriecanalmuseum.org
Current Schedule of Lectures (more lectures and information will be added soon!)
January 15 @ 6:30 PM- The Making of Flower City: The Erie Canal, American Empire, and the Horticultural Transformation of the Country
Born of the Erie Canal, Rochester, New York exploded from a small village into a boomtown. Developing into a prominent hub for flour-milling, Rochester was an icon of America’s market revolution. But when the Panic of 1837 struck the region, the economic foundations of the city collapsed. In the wake of collapse a new group of horticulture reformers sought to reform the city, region, and their residents. By the middle of the decades of the nineteenth century, they city became home to a group of plant nurserymen and seed dealers whose transnational reach remade the North American landscape and transformed Rochester from the Flour City into the Flower City.
February 12 @ 12PM- "Freedom For All: Civil Resistance and the fight against slavery in Antebellum Syracuse”
This presentation examines the work of a small but dedicated group of abolitionists in Syracuse, New York, led by Rev. Samuel May and Rev. Jermain Loguen. Loguen, a man who escaped his own enslavement in Tennessee and settled in Syracuse in 1841, became one of the era's most successful and well-known Station Masters on the UGRR. These men and their compatriots helped make Syracuse a center for abolitionist activity and organization and were primary participants in of the era's most significant acts of civil disobedience, the Jerry Rescue, in October 1851. Additionally, the talk will place the efforts of local reformers in the larger national context of the growing sectional controversies over slavery, which ultimately resulted in the Civil War in 1861.
February 28 @ 12PM- Mules and Melodies: The Erie Canal's Impact on Music Commerce and Culture in Upstate New York
Laurence Libin, former curator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will discuss how the canal helped spread piano culture and Anne Laver, associate professor of organ at Syracuse University will talk about the canal's impact on regional organ building and share clips from a new documentary film, The Organ in America.
March 19 @ 12PM- Dr. Mary Edwards Walker - Radical Reformer
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919), surgeon, abolitionist, suffragist, and dress reformer, spent her life advocating for human rights and equality of the sexes. She is the only woman to date who has been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Born in the Town of Oswego, she graduated from Syracuse Medical College in 1855 and volunteered in the Civil War until she was recognized for her skill and hired as a contract surgeon for the Army. She was captured and held prisoner by the Confederates, and in 1865 was awarded the newly created Medal of Honor for her heroism. She spent the rest of her life campaigning for reforms, especially the right for women to wear pants. The lecture will touch on her life, the dramatic story of her Medal of Honor which was taken away and later restored, and how we honor her in the United States today.
April 16 @ 12PM- The Great Steam Canal Boat Race of 1873
Nearly as soon as the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, inventors were already dreaming about powering canal boats by steam. Early attempts proved hopeful but not practical as the canal was not wide enough or deep enough to accommodate the heavier boats. With completion of the first enlargement by the 1860s many believed that steam-powered canal boats were possible. New York State agreed, and in 1873 sponsored a competition of steam canal boats from Syracuse to Utica for a prize of $100,000. Five boats competed to demonstrate how steam could revolutionize canal traffic. The trials and tribulations of that race would give rise to the motivation of modernizing the canal to allow for motor power on the canal. It was the construction of the barge canal in the early 20th century that would retire the horses and mules and welcome motorized boats on the canal system. The Great Steam Canal Boat Race of 1873 helped make it happen.
May 28 @ 6PM- Making Humans More Humane—Henry Bergh and the Birth of Animal Rights in 19th century America
In Gilded Age America, people and animals lived cheek-by-jowl in environments that were dirty and dangerous to man and beast alike. The industrial city brought suffering, but it also inspired a compassion for animals that fueled a controversial anti-cruelty movement. When Henry Bergh founded the ASPCA in 1866, he launched a campaign to grant rights to animals that was applauded by many, and ridiculed by many more. Bergh fought with robber barons, Five Points gangs, and legendary impresario P.T. Barnum, as he came to the defense of trolley horses, livestock, stray dogs, and other animals. He also challenged the use, and abuse, of horses and mules on the Erie Canal, a showdown that engaged the nation and, some argued, threatened to shut down a crucial link in the national economy. This talk is based on Freeberg’s 2020 book, A Traitor to His Species, that tells the story of a remarkable man who helped to shape our modern relationship with animals.
August 19 at 6PM- Canal Dreamers: The Epic Quest to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the Age of Revolutions
Description: In the 1820s, there was a little-known quest to unite the world by building a waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Central American isthmus. As Spanish American nations declared independence and new canals intensified US expansion and British industrialization, many imagined the construction of an interoceanic canal as predestined. For example, New York Governor DeWitt Clinton envisioned himself presiding over a project even more significant than the newly opened Erie Canal. With dreams substituting for data, he joined an international cast of politicians, lawyers, philosophers, and capitalists who sent competing agents on a race to transform Lake Nicaragua, the San Juan River, and the terra incognita of Central American forests into the world’s first global waterway. Although the idea of literally changing the world by connecting the oceans proved too revolutionary for the Age of Revolutions, the quest itself changed history. Jessica M. Lepler tells the captivating story of this global journey in her new book, Canal Dreamers: The Epic Quest to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the Age of Revolutions.
