150 Years Ago (January 1874)
The editor of The Cold Spring Recorder, citing the burglary of Seth Secor’s store on New Year’s Eve and “satanic” vandalism inside the Rock Street schoolhouse, lamented: “Our village had a most unenviable reputation between the years 1865 and 1870; but, for several years past the public order has been comparatively well preserved. We regret to be compelled to record our conviction today that we, as a community, are relapsing into the former lawless and shameful state.”
The three young men accused of breaking into Secor’s store offered to meet with an informant at the depot to sell the looted cigars, but only one showed up and was arrested. A second was arrested five days later in Dutchess County; the third remained at large.
A resident who wrote an anonymous letter to the Recorder claimed he had opened the door of the saloon that doubled as the entrance to the courthouse and encountered three officers and the suspect arrested at the depot standing at the bar. The prisoner, in handcuffs, was sipping from a glass of rum.
After transporting the two burglary suspects to the county jail in Carmel, Officer Morrison and Undersheriff Dykeman had a chilly return. Their driver, after leaving the turnpike, made a wrong turn in the dark and the officers didn’t arrive home until 4 a.m.
Brian Dailey, coming out of Patterson’s store with a paper bag of flour, had confidently swung it over his shoulder when it burst.
After three boys, ages 6 to 11, were convicted of stealing brass from Paulding, Kemble & Co., a judge sentenced them to nine days in the Town Hall jail.
A police officer from Boonton, New Jersey, visited the village looking for a house painter who fled in a stolen horse and buggy valued at $300 [about $8,000 today].
Detectives from Dutchess County traced Thomas Hicks, accused of robbing and killing his employer in Stormville, to Cold Spring. Hicks was arrested while waiting for his breakfast at Mrs. Welch’s boarding house on Market Street. Police said he had the victim’s pocketbook with $120 [$3,100] inside. [Hicks was sentenced to 15 years in Sing Sing.]
An 18-year-old student was arrested at the schoolhouse in Fort Montgomery and taken to Albany to face charges by a 28-year-old woman that they had been married in 1872 and he was obligated to support her. He provided an alibi and was released.
The Recorder reported: “The regular, weekly deposit of mud has again made itself manifest upon the boots of our men and boys and upon the shoes and dresses of our mothers and our village. Indeed, the same omnipresent stickiness is distributed upon every threshold, tracked through kitchen and parlor, and lies in brown flakes by the bedside when we wake in the morning.”
Petitions circulated for and against a proposal by residents who lived south of Indian Brook to secede from Philipstown.
125 Years Ago (January 1899)
The directors of the Cold Spring National Bank declared a semiannual dividend of 2 percent.
Mr. Muller of Hoboken, New Jersey, leased the saloon and cigar store from the estate of the late G. Snider.
The Recorder opined about Gov. Theodore Roosevelt, who took office on Jan. 1: “The new executive has been called erratic, but if he lives up to his message New York State will have a fair governor and the charge will fall.”
The temperature on Monday, Jan. 2, fell to 16 degrees below zero, the coldest day recorded since Jan. 30, 1873, when it reached 28 degrees below, and a day in 1835 when it hit 29 degrees below.
After John Delaney fell ill with the grippe [flu], Frank Early filled in for him as the Main Street railroad gate tender.
The Recorder noted a state court ruling that allowed people to keep dairy cans if they were so old or worn they could no longer be used to store milk.
Dr. John Holland, a graduate of the University of Munich in Bavaria who had worked at hospitals in St. Petersburg, London and Paris, joined the practice of Dr. G.W. Murdock. Dr. Holland was also said to be a talented violinist and pianist.
Navigation of the Hudson River between Newburgh and New York City closed for the season because of the ice.
Caroline Augusta Mekeel of North Highlands developed the grippe and three weeks later was dead of pneumonia at age 45. Her husband, Harrison Mekeel, was too ill to attend the graveside service.
The body of Franklin Williams, a member of Company E Engineers of the 5th Army Corps, who died of a fever contracted in Cuba while fighting in the Spanish-American War, arrived for interment at Cold Spring Cemetery. Sixteen of the surviving members of Company E, based at West Point, marched over the soft and spongy river ice to attend the service. After a procession up Main Street, Williams was buried with Masonic and military honors.
Howard Treat, who was working for Ferris Jaycox, resigned to become a full-time dog trainer. He had his own pack of 37 animals.
Speed skaters Howard Mosher and Al Morgan were training on the ice south of the Foundry Dock for an upcoming race in Cleveland. Soon after, they nearly lost their lives while sailing off Storm King. A rope became caught in the boom of the main sail and they lost control; when the boat plunged, they were thrown 50 feet, landing in the water close to the edge of the ice. Morgan climbed onto the ice and pulled out Mosher with his overcoat.
Sheriff Donohue discovered that an old building owned by Jacob V.B. Olcott had been claimed by squatters who had installed a stove. The sheriff had the structure torn down and its contents discarded.
Town Justice John Riggs heard the case of a woman who allegedly threatened to shoot a man, but since she had moved away, he dismissed it.
Samuel Sloan, who had a home in Garrison, retired as president of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. At 81, he was the country’s oldest railroad president.
G.W. Mosher was the first person of the season to cross the river ice with horse and sleigh when he drove to West Point on a Wednesday afternoon.
Rep. John Ketcham, whose district included Philipstown, was one of two members of Congress from New York to employ a secretary, whom he paid $1,200 annually [$46,000].
A widow reached a settlement with the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Co. over the death of her husband in a wreck on Oct. 27, 1897, near the Garrison station. Algernon McKay was the stenographer to the railroad superintendent and riding in the cab of the engine. Sarah McKay had asked for $50,000 [$1.9 million] in damages.
The tax rate for the Town of Philipstown was 73 cents per $100 [$3,800] of assessed value and 66 cents per $100 in the villages.
John Mullin, the landscape gardener at the Rhinebeck estate of magnate John Jacob Aster, visited his daughter in Cold Spring. [Astor died in 1912 in the sinking of the Titanic.]
William Jaycox, who suffered from lung trouble, returned from a trip to Colorado where he had gone to convalesce. He died soon after. After graduating in 1887 as valedictorian of Union College in Schenectady, Jaycox worked for two years as a lawyer in Brooklyn before his health declined.
The New York Board of Health added typhoid fever and chicken pox to the list of infectious diseases that must be immediately reported by physicians to the state to avoid a $10 fine. They joined Asiatic cholera, yellow fever and diphtheria.
Frank Johnson of the West Point Band, who had recently married a Cold Spring woman, rigged up a bicycle to ride on the river ice. He removed the tube from the rear wheel, inserted a rope and drove a number of nails through the wooden rim so the points protruded.
Soon after competitive bicyclist Will Ladue rode from Cold Spring to Fishkill Landing on the river ice in 40 minutes, he left for an extended vacation in Jacksonville, Florida, taking his bike with him.
Haldane was designated by the state Board of Regents as a high school.
The Haldane Board of Education thanked Capt. Metcalfe for paying half the cost of repairing the school microscope.
George Livingston, a Cold Spring native, was re-appointed as New York City’s school commissioner.
While the river was frozen solid north and south of Cold Spring, line work by the Highlander crew managed to keep a ferry channel open to West Point.
The Haldane school held state Regents exams in the cafeteria for German, algebra, English, rhetoric, geography, civics, economics, writing, geometry, New York history, spelling, bookkeeping, American literature, trigonometry, U.S. history, Latin, drawing and physical education and hygiene.
George Stapf of Continentalville was admitted to the Helping Hands Hospital in Peekskill for the treatment of an eye that had been badly affected by the grippe.
James Carrigan, an employee at Charles Miller’s meat market, nearly lost his thumb while cutting up a beef carcass.
Patrick O’Donnell, a native of County Limerick who settled in Cold Spring in 1855, died at age 73. For 30 years he ran a grocery store at the corner of Main Street and Kemble Avenue, along with a milk route.
100 Years Ago (January 1924)
James Bailey, a Cold Spring attorney, represented William Russell, a former auto dealer, in a Poughkeepsie lawsuit against Stuart Bates for alleged “alienation of Mrs. Russell’s affections.” Bailey told the court that he wanted to depose Bates to ask about a locket owned by Mrs. Russell that had his photo inside.
Janet Fish, who served in the Red Cross in France during World War I, was named superintendent of nurses at St. Mark’s Hospital on the Lower East Side in New York City. The 6-foot-tall former socialite was the daughter of Hamilton Fish II, former speaker of the state Assembly.
The Board of Education apologized and rescinded a Dec. 27 resolution that named the boys accused of breaking the gate on the Haldane property on Paulding Avenue after evidence emerged pointing to others.
The Rev. Elbert Floyd-Jones, rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, reported that he had only three copies left of his book, A Relic of the Highway: The Origin and Use of Mile-Stones.
Ling, the Cold Spring laundry man, announced he had changed his mind about returning to China and would remain in business.
Beverley Robinson, who ran a taxi service based in Garrison, purchased a seven-passenger Buick sedan.
R.M. Fleming left the J.T. Robinson & Son button factory after eight years as superintendent.
The Cold Spring National Bank began offering American Express traveler’s checks.
The Cold Spring Fire Co. purchased a set of Presto chemical fire extinguishers manufactured in Beacon.
The Philipstown board was asked to consider an expansion of Town Hall to include an auditorium on the ground floor and a dance hall upstairs.
75 Years Ago (January 1949)
A 66-year-old Philipstown man was killed when he was struck by a car while walking across Route 9 after retrieving his mail.
50 Years Ago (January 1974)
Jimmy Budney of Nelsonville received an appointment to West Point.
A bill sponsored in the state Assembly by Willis Stephens, whose district included Philipstown, would allow schools to cut 10 days from the 1973-74 academic year because of gasoline and oil shortages. However, schools would be required to make up the time by extending the length of other days.
The Zoning Board of Appeals received a petition from 275 residents objecting to an application from the Leemac Sand & Stone Corp. to construct a hot-mix asphalt plant on its Route 9 property.
A 6-year-old Philipstown girl was killed when her mother skidded into a parked tractor-trailer at a highway rest stop in Sullivan County.
Three storms that hit 24 hours apart forced Haldane to close school on Wednesday and Friday and dismiss students early on Thursday.
Phil Cotennec scored 22 of his 26 points in the second half as the Haldane boys’ basketball team came back from a 15-point deficit to defeat Millbrook, 67-64.
25 Years Ago (January 1999)
The county Department of Health held a hearing in Brewster to allow Philipstown to respond to alleged violations involving a temporary, above-ground water pipe that froze at Garrison’s Landing, but no town officials showed up. County officials said they would issue a subpoena; the town said it did not own the Garrison’s Landing water supply and had no responsibility for it.
A 5,000-gallon water truck was brought to Garrison’s Landing by the New York Army Reserve National Guard at Camp Smith to bypass the frozen pipe and allow residents to fill their storage tanks. The water lasted about three days.
The Nelsonville Fire Department donated its 34-year-old “Old 09” pumper as the first piece of equipment for a fire department being created in the community of Santa Bárbara in northwest Honduras. The shipment was arranged by the Salvation Army.
Ken Tomann, the town building inspector for 12 years, and Pauline Constantino, the clerk at the assessor’s office for 33 years, each retired.
Garrison residents delivered a petition to the Philipstown supervisor seeking a referendum on incorporating as a village. The signatures had been gathered by members of the Garrison Village Association.
