⚠️ NoticeMotorcycle parade on Route 40 today. The Toys for Tots ride from Brunswick Harley-Davidson is expected through Speigletown, Melrose and the village of Schaghticoke from late morning into early afternoon on Sunday, October 18. Expect a long column and short waits at side roads. What to expect.
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Town of Schaghticoke

The Town Historian

Chris Kelly has been digging through deeds, wills, muster rolls and gravestones for the town for years, and publishing what she finds. This page follows her work.

Who she is

Christina "Chris" Kelly has been Town Historian of the Town of Schaghticoke since 1986, forty years this year, which makes her one of the longest-serving municipal historians in the county. The post is one New York requires every town to fill; it is part time, with a small stipend ($1,205 in the 2026 salary schedule), and most of the work is her own: answering family-history and cemetery questions, keeping records, giving talks, and reporting to the Town Board most months on what she has been doing. A retired teacher, she wrote a weekly local-history column for the Mechanicville Express beginning in 2010 and started her research blog, History of the Town of Schaghticoke, in 2011; it is the deepest single source on the town's past that exists anywhere. In 2017, for the World War I centennial, she compiled the stories of about 150 Schaghticoke men and women who served, the work her current veteran biographies grow from.

Her own statement of purpose, from the blog: "I have a strong belief that all history is basically local." She writes that online archives have opened up "lots of new primary information to correct or confirm what was written before," and that seeing how earlier residents dealt with the same problems we have "hopefully can help us deal with new problems."

Reach her: historian@townofschaghticoke.org or 518-235-5813. She answers genealogy and cemetery questions, and she is the person to call if you turn up old photographs, letters or records of a Schaghticoke family.

What she is working on

  • Every World War I veteran from Schaghticoke. The long project of 2025 and 2026: short biographies of each man and woman from the town who served, worked alphabetically from draft cards, service records, census pages and newspapers. The series reached the S's this fall; she turned up one soldier, a Major Lloyd, she had not known about at all. Before that she did the same for the town's World War II veterans.
  • The Peace Tree at 350. She was a speaker at the August 1 ceremony under the oaks at the Knickerbocker Mansion, received the Abenaki Council of Odanak's resolution on the town's behalf, and in September attended Historic Deerfield's conference on King Philip's War, where a paper by Karim Tiro of Xavier University dealt with the creation of Schaghticoke. She told the Town Board in October that the conference raised the possibility the 1676 tree was a metaphorical one, "which adds a whole other layer to hundreds of years of history."
  • Gravestones. She guided Civil War reenactors through Elmwood Cemetery to the roughly 20 stones of men from the 125th New York, which they are restoring, and attended the October 2 rededication of the restored Buckley Cemetery on Kardas Road, resting place of the Revolutionary War veteran Jabez Buckley.
  • America 250. With Village Historian Linda Bunk, a display of local Revolutionary War soldiers at the Strawberry Festival, and research on the 14th Albany County Militia.
  • The Evans grist mill. The mill that stood across from the Hoosic Valley Rescue Squad was dismantled around 1989 and moved to a barn in Massachusetts, where it is for sale, complete, for $95,000. The Times Union put the story on its front page and the Berkshire Eagle has interviewed her for its own.

Her reports to the Town Board

The historian reports under "department heads" at most regular Town Board meetings. These are from our minutes archive; each links to the meeting summary.

  • Oct 14, 2026 Civil War reenactors restoring the 125th New York gravestones at Elmwood Cemetery; the King Philip’s War conference at Historic Deerfield; the Buckley Cemetery restoration ceremony on October 2; the Evans grist mill, still for sale in Massachusetts; and Knick at Night. Meeting summary →
  • Sep 9, 2026 The Peace Tree 350th celebration, and the Odanak Band Resolution presented to the town, to be framed at Town Hall. Meeting summary →
  • Jul 8, 2026 The 350th anniversary of the Witenagemot Peace Tree, and the story of the grist mill that once stood across from the Hoosic Valley Rescue Squad. Meeting summary →
  • Jun 10, 2026 A Revolutionary War soldiers display at the Strawberry Festival with Village Historian Linda Bunk; the Hoosick history fair. Meeting summary →
  • May 13, 2026 The 250th anniversary and the 14th Albany County Militia. Meeting summary →
  • Apr 8, 2026 World War II veterans with a Schaghticoke connection, and the coming Peace Tree anniversary. Meeting summary →

On this site

If you have a question for the historian, or a story we should follow, send it to us and we will pass it along.

Sources: the historian's blog and its About page; the Town Board's 2026 organizational meeting minutes for the stipend; the Times Union, "Schaghticoke ties to World War I recalled," by Kenneth C. Crowe II, May 26, 2017, for her start year and the 2017 veterans project; our Town Board meeting summaries for her reports. "Retired teacher" is from her own 2011 introduction on the blog, which says she took up the research in earnest after retiring.