Richard MacAlpine is a member of the board of directors of the Yates County Genealogical and Historical Society. He is the editor of and writer for Yates Past. He has also been published in Life in the Finger Lakes magazine. He is a retired high school teacher in the Oneida school district. He also writes a weekly column in Penn Yan's Chronicle Express for the Civil War Sesquicentennial committee, and a bimonthly local history column for Finger Lakes Times.