Editor’s note: Beacon was created in 1913 from Matteawan and Fishkill Landing.
150 Years Ago (February 1874)
Lewis Tompkins of Matteawan planned to start a hat factory at Fishkill Landing. He proposed to spend $25,000 [about $675,000 today] of his own money and raise $30,000 from residents in investments of $500 [$13,500] and $1,000. Tompkins had already built the carpenter shop and purchased 13 carding machines in Boston.
The ferryboat Union attempted to cut a channel through the ice between Fishkill Landing and Newburgh but after 3½ hours it had gotten only a third of the way across. A few passengers got off the boat to walk.
Following speeches by Henry Ward Beecher and William Cullen Bryant at the annual banquet in New York City of the Rural Club, its president asked each guest to name a favorite tree. Beecher cited the tulip tree but suggested that someone should compile a guide to all the best trees in the country, including an elm he admired in Fishkill Landing.
Charles Sales of Fishkill Landing was accused of stabbing a man named Graham in the cheek during a fight on Liberty Street in Newburgh.
The Fishkill Standard reported that a farmer named Hoyt, driving from Matteawan to Glenham, pulled so hard on the bit that he broke his horse’s jaw. A skeptical reporter followed up and learned that G.W. Haight of Glenham had only presumed he broke the animal’s jaw because it did not eat for several days after his hard tug.
Three years after Nelson Luckey sold the 180-acre Mercellus farm to Chauncy Knapp for $40,000 [$1.1 million], he bought it back at a foreclosure sale for $10,000 [$270,000].
State officials stocked 3,000 salmon from the McCloud River in northern California, 15,000 salmon trout and a healthy number of black Oswego and rock bass in Sylvan Lake, Wappingers Creek, above the dam at Wappingers Falls and above the dam at Brinckerhoffville.
G.W. Valentine, who ran the stages from Matteawan to the Fishkill Landing ferry, applied to the state Legislature for a 20-year monopoly.
Patrick Balton was finishing a two-story brick dwelling at Fishkill Landing measuring 33 by 37 feet, and with a French roof.
The Fishkill Landing Machine Co. received an order for a 125-horsepower steam engine with a 22-inch cylinder.
The morning after Joseph Anderson’s wife, Clara, asked him for a spoonful of medicine from a bottle borrowed from a Fishkill Landing neighbor with a label that read “paragorie” [a patent medicine that was 4 percent opium] she was found dead in bed. The liquid was instead laudanum [a pain reliever that was 10 percent opium].
W.H. Lyon, a Newburgh jeweler, owned a model of a steam-powered fire engine that was less than a foot long. It could propel water 10 feet through 3 feet of hose and a pin-head nozzle.
Prof. Franklin, an “itinerate phrenologist,” according to the Fishkill Journal, was hustled out of a boarding house on a Sunday because of his obscene language at the supper table. He left Fishkill Landing that evening on the milk train after being pelted with eggs that the newspaper said stuck in his “luxuriant, flowing hair.”
In its “Horse Notes” column, The New York Herald reported that Willard Mase of Matteawan had purchased a 6-year-old trotting gelding named Mountaineer that had been raised by Charles Schofield in Putnam County. The horse was 15 hands and 3 inches high [63 inches] and could run a mile in 2:30.
125 Years Ago (February 1899)
Matteawan officials were courting Richard Croker to locate his new automobile factory in the village.
Two Chinese businessmen from Cold Spring opened a laundry in Matteawan and cut prices so low that they angered all their competitors.
The Rev. R.F. Bates of Fishkill Landing wrote to a New York City judge on behalf of his brother, Cary, who had been convicted of assault for shooting two men during the “race riots” in August at 39th Street. At sentencing, Cary’s lawyer argued that his client had acted in self-defense and was convicted because he was Black. The judge interrupted: “Stop there! I never knew of a case in this court in which race, color or creed ever influenced a jury in rendering a verdict. In this very case there were only two Negroes on the [potential] jury panel, and you got both of them.” The Rev. Bates asked the judge to suspend sentence, saying that he had brought Cary to the city for missionary work and that he was “an obedient Christian” and family man. The judge called it “a pretty strong appeal” but noted that one of the victims had lost a leg and sentenced Cary to five years.
The Rev. Benjamin Hall of Fishkill Landing, after accepting a temporary call at the Calvary Episcopal Church in Americus, Georgia, had a severe attack of vertigo at the pulpit and immediately resigned and returned to New York, according to the Savannah Morning News.
The state Senate committee on villages advanced a bill that would merge Matteawan, Fishkill Landing and Glenham.
William Budd, a longtime brick manufacturer from Matteawan, died at age 75. In 1848 and 1849 he had assisted in the construction of the Hudson River Railroad and was one of the first men to ride from Fishkill Landing to New Hamburg. He was formerly a Democrat, later a Whig and in 1860 voted for Abraham Lincoln.
Groveville Park was sold at the Matteawan Town Hall in a foreclosure sale for $2,000 [$75,000] to a Philadelphia man. It had an outstanding mortgage of $4,000.
Hilda Peterson, a Swedish servant who three years earlier had been convicted of strangling her 3-year-old daughter and sent to the Matteawan Insane Asylum for Criminals, was released after regaining her sanity.
100 Years Ago (February 1924)
Frederick Goodfriend, who owned bakeries in Cold Spring and Beacon, purchased Beacon Bakeries Inc. He moved its operations to his Bank Square location and planned to distribute by automobile.
Following the arrest of Mrs. Theresa Flowers in New York City on narcotic charges, authorities began an investigation into the sale of dope in Beacon. Three years earlier, Flowers had been suspected of selling drugs to workers at the brickyards but was not prosecuted.
Ernest White, a plumber from Poughkeepsie working on the Memorial Building, was arrested in Beacon on charges of abandoning his children. He and his wife had divorced two months earlier but he allegedly had not been paying the $25 per week [$450] alimony.
The Dutchess County sheriff and a deputy searched the Fishkill Mountains for four weeks after receiving a tip that Edward Sands, 26, accused of killing motion picture director William Desmond Taylor in Los Angeles on Feb 1, 1922, was hiding there. Detectives in LA contacted the sheriff after receiving a letter from a Beacon woman who said a hermit on the mountain resembled Sands, who had been Taylor’s valet. Despite the snow and ice, the officers located the hermit, who looked like Sands but was able to provide an alibi that satisfied them.
Police were searching for Michael Banek, 65, who had left home saying he was going to Poughkeepsie but had not been seen since. Banek had just completed a six-month jail sentence there for “failure to provide for his sick wife within the limits of his means,” according to the Beacon Daily Herald. She died while he was incarcerated and officers brought him to Beacon for the funeral.
Several residents managed to walk or skate across the river to Newburgh on the 8- to 10-inch-thick ice. Although the steamer Poughkeepsie had cut channels, the floes quickly refroze.
Two Beacon players were “banished” by the referee during a high school basketball game that ended in a 38-11 victory for Poughkeepsie. The Eagle-News complained that the visiting Beacon players used “rough tactics” and noted that, “with four minutes to go in the last quarter, and the game getting rougher and rougher, the tension broke and the crowd swarmed the floor. A few blows were struck but it was all over in a minute and the game was resumed.”
75 Years Ago (February 1949)
A 36-year-old Beacon woman was killed at 2 a.m. on a Monday in a crash at the intersection of River Road and Route 9D in Cold Spring. The victim, a mother of three employed at the National Biscuit Co. plant, was a passenger in a 1937 Plymouth sedan that collided with a 1948 DeSoto.
The Poughkeepsie Journal profiled David Mohurter, a mechanic at MacAvery Garage on Main Street who had constructed three moveable mechanical puppets from discarded oil cans and automobile body putty. One was an unnamed drum major and the others were known as Joe Goof and Luby.
The Beacon City Council approved a $75 annual fee for trailers used as dwellings.
The Dutchess County sheriff sent deputies to Derby, Pennsylvania, to retrieve a 25-year-old veterinarian who had waived extradition on charges of abandoning his two children in Beacon.
50 Years Ago (February 1974)
The Hudson River Sloop Restoration, which operated the Clearwater, called for a moratorium on the construction and operation of nuclear power plants. It warned: “If present plans are implemented, by the year 2000, 1,000 nuclear power plants will be operating across the nation.” The group also opposed the operation of existing plants such as Indian Point.
25 Years Ago (February 1999)
The Howland Public Library mounted an exhibit of Black memorabilia owned by Dutchess County Legislator Mario Johnson, a Democrat from Poughkeepsie. His grandmother, Wanda Marable of Beacon, had given him her collection of postcards, figurines, toys and advertisements four years earlier, and he expanded it.
Both the boys’ and girls’ Beacon High School basketball teams were having difficult seasons. After losing to Poughkeepsie, 63-43, the boys dropped to 1-18; following a 58-43 win over Pine Plains, the girls improved to 2-16.
The City of Beacon received a $21,375 [$40,000] state grant to investigate how best to clean up hazardous waste at the former Brunetto Cheese factory site on Oak Street. Five underground fuel tanks were discovered when the building was demolished.
Beacon firefighters expressed concerns about a new countywide 911 system, arguing that having calls broadcast in real time over loudspeakers in the city’s three fire stations allowed for a quicker response.
Martinia Heath, a senior at Beacon High School, cleared 5 feet, 6 inches at the winter track and field championships at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse to win the high jump title. She was the school’s first state champ since 1984, when Dorothy Vereen won the 100-meter dash.
