New Free Book About Saratoga’s Black Heritage Published by the Saratoga County History Center

BALLSTON SPA — A new 64-page book “Saratoga’s Black Heritage: A Guidebook,” was published by the Saratoga County History Center of Ballston Spa, and is available free of charge. 

The book contains 30 tales, each with an illustration and tells stories of Black achievers. 

Among the African American personalities profiled are Frank Johnson, whose famous orchestra played for dancing every summer in the 1820s and 1830s; T.H. Sands Pennington, owner of a drugstore on the site of Uncommon Grounds; Harry T. Burleigh, soloist, composer, and arranger of “Negro spirituals”; Clarence Dart, a Tuskegee Airman; and Hattie Austin, beloved restaurateur who provided summer work for Southern college students.

Copies may be picked up at Brookside Museum during open hours (currently Saturday and Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. Alternatively, it can be ordered for $6 postage on the museum’s website, brooksidemuseum.org, or by telephone at 518-885-4000.