Mabee Farm Historic Site

At the Mabee Farm Historic Site, you can learn first-hand about the life of one of Schenectady County’s early families. After purchasing land from his former neighbor Daniel Van Antwerpen in 1705, Jan Mabee relocated his family from Schenectady to the beautiful riverside farm that still stands today. For nearly three hundred years, the family owned, worked, and lived on the land that now makes up the Mabee Farm Historic Site.

Today, visitors can walk in the footsteps of Jan and Annetje Mabee and their children in the original family home, try their hand at pulling weeds in the field garden, imagine threshing grain in the 1760′s Nilsen Dutch Barn, or simply sit and watch the beautiful Mohawk River flow alongside the site. Tied to the dock or parked behind the Dutch Barn sit our reproduction 18th century bateaux, the De Sagar and the Bobbie G, giving visitors an idea of how goods were shipped up and down the river. The new George E. Franchere Educational Center, opened in October 2011, offers modern exhibit spaces, artifact storage, programming space, a catering kitchen, and staff offices.

The Mabee Farm Historic Site is part of the larger Schenectady County Historical Society, which was founded in 1905 to preserve the history of the area, promote historical research, disseminate historical knowledge, and preserve items of local significance. The Society’s museum and local history and genealogy research library (Grems-Doolittle Library) have been located at 32 Washington Avenue in the Stockade neighborhood in Schenectady since 1958.