Thomas Capuano — Race and history in Altamont

Tom Capuano, who grew up in Altamont, has a strong sense of place and the importance of history. Capuano founded Historic Altamont to spread that love, he says on this week’s podcast. The not-for-profit group has started a cemetery preservation project and would like to learn of area cemeteries that are now nearly forgotten. Capuano discovered a list of cemeteries made in the 1940s by the late Guilderland town historian William Brinkman who visited family plots and noted burial grounds — often with unmarked graves — of enslaved African Americans. This led Capuano to produce a mini-documentary, with his son, on the foundational role of African Americans in the Altamont area. He tells the story of an enslaved man, named Sam — only his first name survives — who saved the life of Revolutionary War hero Jacob VanAernam. He also tells of the African-American stable master who tended to the horses of Frederick Crounse, Altamont’s first doctor. That was one of the reasons Historic Altamont had tried to save the 1833 Doctor Crounse House, which the town and village jointly own and plan to demolish. “It had the bedroom of an African American who was daily tending to Dr. Crounse’s needs,” says Capuano. Retired from his career teaching Spanish and Portuguese at Truman State College in Missouri, Capuano now lives in an historic house on the outskirts of Altamont where he raises sheep from a reclaimed Dutch barn. In 2013, Capuano published a book-length poem, an epic, on the history of the area. Whether the topic is racism, or sexism, or immigration, history “has a lot to tell us about our present times,” says Capuano.

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