Photo: Asa Twitchell (1820–1904), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. His father’s business failed, and the family moved to Albany, where his father died in 1832. Money was tight, and young Herman worked as a bank clerk and in his brother’s fur store.
In 1838 his mother moved the family to a house in Lansingburgh, a village north of Troy that is now part of the city. Melville studied surveying at the Lansingburgh Academy, hoping for a job on the Erie Canal, but it did not come through.
To sea and back
In 1841 he shipped out on the whaler Acushnet. He deserted in the Marquesas Islands and spent time among the people there before making his way home in 1844.
Back in Lansingburgh, he wrote Typee, an account of his time in the islands. It came out in 1846 and was a success. Omoo followed in 1847.
The house today
The Melville House on 114th Street and First Avenue in Troy is home to the Lansingburgh Historical Society, which opens it for events and tours.
Moby-Dick came in 1851, written in the Berkshires. It sold poorly in his lifetime, but the books that started it were written in a small house just up the Hudson from Albany.
