Pope's Appointee Educated in Rensselaer

A famous alumnus of St. Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary was appointed by the Pope to lead the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. St. Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary was run by the Franciscans in Rensselaer, NY, and was closed in 1989.

Catholic News Service: Pope names Ghana's Cardinal Turkson head of justice, peace council

During a special synod dedicated to peace and justice in Africa, Pope Benedict XVI named African Cardinal Peter Turkson as head of the Vatican's justice and peace council.
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Born Oct. 11, 1948, in western Ghana, he studied at St. Theresa's Minor Seminary in Amisano and Pedu before attending St. Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary in Rensselaer, New York, where he earned a bachelor's degree in theology.

Ghana Business News: Ghana’s Cardinal Turkson gets closer to becoming first black pope

Ghana’s first Catholic Cardinal, Peter Appiah Turkson is closer to becoming the first black pope ever of the Catholic Church.

A few reference links:

• Republic of Ghana (Wikipedia)
• Catholics by country (chart)
• World Catholic population (map)

Fame: Bradford R. Lansing

Bradford R. Lansing was the First Mayor of Rensselaer - twice over. Born in 1860 in Niskayuna, he moved with his parents in 1870 to Clinton Heights. Two years later (at age 12), he went to work in Schodack, beginning his work day at 3am. He started his own business in Greenbush in 1882.

Lansing started public service in 1894 as Assessor in the Village of Greenbush. He became Police Commissioner in 1896, and then was elected the first Mayor of Rensselaer (presumably when Rensselaer was incorporated in 1897). In the 1899 election, the Republican Lansing lost by 49 votes to Democrat James I. Miles. But in 1901, Lansing was "elected as first Mayor of Greater Rensselaer, after the annexation of Bath, East Albany, and a portion of East and North Greenbush".

In 1906 Lansing was elected to the state Assembly. The 1910 New York Red Book carries his biography - he was such a prominent member of the Rensselaer community that they didn't need to mention what kind of business he ran. (Elsewhere in the book it lists him as a retail grocer.) An April 10, 1909 article in the Rensselaer Eagle said that "Assemblyman Lansing knew a great deal about the butcher trade, having been brought up in it...".

Lansing died Feb. 4, 1912, and the New York Times had a short obituary (must register to read full article). The 1912 Journal of the Assembly of the State of New York includes a transcript of the resolution and remarks upon Lansing's death.

UPDATE: Advertisement from the Directory for the year 1907 of the cities of Albany and Rensselaer

Fame: Tia Bates

Here's another famous local woman: Anna Monteith, also known as Tia (Aunt) Bates, a renowned innkeeper in Arequipa, Peru, who hosted the likes of Clark Gable and Noel Coward. A Letter to a Friend in South America (1949) describes a "charming, hospitable, scandalous, autocratic, capable, generous, vituperative old lady":

The journalists have reported that she was born Ana Monteith in what was then called Bath-on-Hudson in upstate New York. She went to South America with her father, a railroad engineer, who had an assignment in the Chilean nitrate fields.

There was controversy over whether Tia Bates was even American, but our 1880 Census lists 12-year-old Anna Monteith whose father was an engineer. The ages match the 1953 obituary of the "Legendary Innkeeper" in Time Magazine. A letter from a guest, also in Time, says:

There was always some kind of ruckus in progress, usually a battle between the fiery old mistress and the servants, accompanied by strikes, walkouts [and] petty jealousies . . . Tia, with her salty tongue, was a joy to listen to. She'd fire half the force, and hire them back next morning.

Here's a sample of Noel Coward's lengthy tribute poem "The Quinta Bates":

Tho' Tia is completely kind,
She has a keen and lively mind,
And when things seem too hard to bear,
She'll soundly and robustly swear
She's learned her life in Nature's School
And isn't anybody's fool.

(From Noel Coward Collected Verse - I don't recommend buying it unless you want a lot more of that kind of poetry - I'll donate my copy to the Rensselaer library.)

Fame: Edmonia Lewis

I discovered Mary Edmonia Lewis while reading up on the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago (she was the only local artist who exhibited). Edmonia claimed she was born in Greenbush, NY on July 4th, 1844, but this may or may not be true. There's a discussion of her New York State connections in the Hudson River Bracketed blog: Inventing Edmonia Lewis and Inventing Edmonia Lewis II.

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library says of her:

Riding the crest of the neoclassical revival in the 1870's, sculptress Edmonia Lewis attracted wide notice in a field generally dominated by men. She was, in fact, the first African American sculptor to achieve international distinction.

See some of her sculptures in this Smithsonian online exhibition: Cleopatra Lost & Found. ("Cleopatra" currently is displayed on the second floor of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where we snuck this cell phone photo).

Cleopatra's story is told in Smithsonian magazine, September 1996: The Object at Hand:

The circuitous route of Edmonia Lewis' masterwork, a controversial portrayal of Cleopatra at the moment of death, included stints as decor in a Chicago saloon and as a grave marker for a racehorse

Another lost Lewis sculpture, "Veiled Bride of Spring", was found a few years ago in a public library in Kentucky (check your attic - you never know!).

UPDATE: See article "City of Rensselaer Awarded “Honor Roll of Abolitionists” on the last page of this PDF file of the Sept. 2007 The Informed Constituent.