Join the Erie Canal Museum for three fun and informative nights exploring the Erie Canal’s rich history with hands-on activities throughout the Museum, music, refreshments, and educational talks from award winning historians Ernest Freeberg and Jessica Lepler.
This event is funded in part with support from the NYS Canal Corporation and the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor.
May 28 @ 5PM
2026 Sloan Lecture Series Event at 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 Ernest 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
**Registering for History at the Weighlock on 5/28 includes registration for Sloan Lecture Series**
July 22 at 5PM-
Celebrate the 1850 Syracuse Weighlock Building's 176th birthday with us! More event details to come soon.
August 19 @ 5PM
2026 Sloan Lecture Series Event at 6PM-**
Canal Dreamers: The Epic Quest to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the Age of Revolutions
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.
**Registering for History at the Weighlock on 8/19 includes registration for Sloan Lecture Series**
Keep an eye on our page for more details!
