Editor’s note: Beacon was created in 1913 from Matteawan and Fishkill Landing.
150 Years Ago (July 1874)
A brickyard laborer at Fishkill Landing, while drunk, went into a home and tried to steal clothing. The woman of the house caught and beat him.
Fishkill Landing implemented a license fee of $5 [about $138 today] for hack drivers, $10 for stage drivers and $10 for peddlers.
The Newburgh Telegraph reported: “The boat race and foot race that was announced to take place at Fishkill Landing did not come off. It is said that the announcement was made to get a crowd of people over there. It was a complete humbug.”
A horse owned by Lewis Tompkins at Fishkill Landing was “sun struck” [suffered heat stroke] and died in great agony.
A drunk couple stopped at the Fishkill Landing home of Miss Newlins selling what they said was soap. Miss Newlins told them to leave, but the man lingered until a neighbor, Mr. DeWhittemore, took him by the shoulders to guide him away. At the same time, the wife struck Miss Newlins over the head with a branch, knocking her down. Husband and wife were each sentenced to a year in jail.
John Seeley, while drunk, jumped 25 feet from the Fountain Street bridge into the creek but was not hurt.
The assets of the Sluthoun & Son’s Circus were seized at Fishkill Landing by Andrew Tubbs of Schuylerville, to whom the concern owed a great deal of money. Tubbs had learned the circus was leaving horses behind to pay its bills, so he came to Fishkill Landing to secure the remaining property.
A former captain of the ferryboat Union was declared the champion clam-eater of the central Hudson Valley after a competition at Denning’s Point. He ate 160. The current captain of the Union was second with 147.
The steamer William Baxter, built at Fishkill Landing, made 16 stops over six days during an efficient delivery run to Buffalo from New York City. Powered by coal, its fuel cost was calculated at 4 cents [$1] per mile.
While Misses LaForge, dressmakers at Fishkill Landing, were engaged in their work, a man walked into the parlor, picked up a roll of silk from a table, neatly wrapped it in paper and walked out.
125 Years Ago (July 1899)
Leonard Livingston, a hatter in Matteawan, inherited $25,000 [$946,000] as the sole heir of a wealthy aunt.
After “a bitter canvass,” according to the New-York Tribune, a vote on whether to merge Fishkill Landing and Matteawan failed with 65 percent against. The Tribune said Fishkill Landing residents didn’t want to live in a village called Matteawan and Matteawan residents didn’t want to live in a village “with people who would let a name stand in the way of improvement.” The vote was 164-72 in Matteawan and 91-65 in Fishkill Landing.
Edith Ramsey, who killed her husband at the Garden Hotel in New York City while he slept, was committed to the Matteawan Asylum for the Criminal Insane. She said she cut his throat because of his snoring. A jail physician testified that Mrs. Ramsey danced a jig and asked if she would be electrocuted.
Walter Keene, of the Leader Baseball Club of Glenham, broke his arm while throwing a curveball.
After a riot involving about 200 Black and Arab brickmakers at Freeman & Hammond’s in Dutchess Junction, the sheriff organized a posse to prevent further violence. The brickyard owner, Michael Freeman, said the trouble began when two Black workers hit an Arab peddler over the head with a brick. The Arabs, he said, skipped work the next day to buy guns, which they fired that night into the Black shanties. In the morning, most of the Black workers left to find work on Long Island. The Arabs, however, thought they had gone for their own guns and prepared for a showdown, while the Arab peddler boasted that he was a former circus strongman and could lick every Black man in town if no bricks or razors were allowed. Freeman thought he might just hire a whole new crew. The sheriff warned that his officers would shoot to kill anyone who started trouble.
The cornerstone was laid for the St. Francis Catholic Church at Timoneyville, the home to workers at Francis Timoney’s brickyard. Timoney donated the plot and materials to St. Joachim’s Church in Matteawan, which built the structure.
100 Years Ago (July 1924)
Two hundred people celebrated at a Victory Supper after raising $113,244 [$2 million] to expand Highland Hospital to 75 beds.
A crowd of 3,000 people gathered at the Workmen’s Cooperative Association camp in Dutchess Junction for a campaign stop by Communist presidential candidate William Z. Foster (below) but he had been delayed in Boston. [Foster, the author of Toward Soviet America, received a state funeral in Red Square when he died in Moscow in 1961.]
While at summer camp, two Boy Scouts from Beacon, Happy Mayen and Robert Gage, helped rescue a swimmer in Lake Walton in East Fishkill who had gone under three times. The Scouts encouraged her to go back into the water so she didn’t develop a phobia about swimming.
Clarence Baring of White Plains arrived at the Matteawan asylum after being arrested on a complaint by his wife that he was feeding her arsenic because he felt it would make her younger. A doctor noted that Baring’s parents, two siblings, an aunt and a cousin all had been committed to institutions.
More than 1,000 Elks from around the region descended on the Holland Hotel for a ceremony led by James Hallinan, the Exalted Ruler of New York state, to open a Beacon lodge.
Sgt. Gilbert of the state police shot a prisoner in the back as he attempted to escape. Harry Tuttle, who had been accused of abandoning his family, jumped from a squad car at Elm and Main streets and ran. When Tuttle ignored a command to halt, Gilbert fired. Tuttle was at Highland Hospital with a bullet lodged near his liver but was expected to survive.
John Lisko was struck and killed near his home in Groveville by a truck driven by Elmore Tallmadge that had been commandeered by a Beacon patrol officer to pursue a drunken driver. The death was ruled an accident.
Five Beacon men were charged with manslaughter following a collision that killed a Wappingers Falls man. The men conceded a hubcap found at the scene matched one missing from their Durant but denied involvement.
75 Years Ago (July 1949)
The Beacon Theatre hosted a Saturday morning, all-Technicolor cartoon festival with 17 features. Admission was 25 cents [$3].
William and Anne Hussey of Cairo, Egypt, were spending several weeks with her parents on Lafayette Avenue. William worked for TWA Airlines.
Robert Pendell, the chair of the Beacon Democratic Committee, issued an appeal for candidates for the November election, conceding he had only one name for 10 open positions. Three days later, at a heated committee meeting, Pendell said he had managed to recruit a full slate, but one was a Republican and others insisted they would only run if the Democrats didn’t challenge Mayor Lewis Bolton.
The committee instead endorsed Ennis Skelton, who was on vacation in Texas, for mayor. When Skelton returned, he turned down the nomination, so the Democrats recruited Arthur Seal, a retired accountant. The next day, Seal withdrew, expressing concerns that the job would be too taxing for a 71-year-old.
Notably, the Democratic slate included a woman: Lillian Hassett, the widow of Judge Thomas Hassett, for commissioner of public safety.
More than 90 Girl Scouts from Beacon, ages 7 to 15, were attending Camp Foster, with swimming, cookouts and crafts such as mat weaving, cork work, basketry, Aunt Jemima dolls and finger painting.
Officer Cruzie was on patrol when he saw a man and two boys breaking into the former Paragon Theater. He grabbed the boys but Alfred Conley, 19, took off, stopping only after Cruzie fired a shot into the air. While arresting Conley, he let go of the two boys, who fled. They were later picked up at their homes.
50 Years Ago (July 1974)
A group of parents petitioned the City Council for a lower speed limit in the Mount Beacon Park development, noting that the residents included 174 children.
More than 800 people participated in the Elks’ 50th anniversary parade.
Firefighters from Beacon and Glenham spent a good part of the night battling a brush fire on a steep incline on Mount Beacon, 300 feet below the trolley building.
Officer Herbert Snook was assigned to transport a snake that had bitten a 16-year-old girl at Fishkill Rural Cemetery to a veterinarian. He placed the limp snake in a plastic bag and drove off. En route, the snake crawled from the bag. Startled, Snook parked, got out and called for backup to remove the snake from his patrol car.
25 Years Ago (July 1999)
Robert Polhill, a former resident who had been held hostage in Beirut for more than three years, died at age 65 of throat cancer. The 1952 Beacon High School graduate was an accounting professor at Beirut University when he and three other faculty members were kidnapped on Jan. 24, 1987, by members of the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine. He was released in April 1990 and returned to Beacon that fall. In 1993, Polhill attended the signing at the White House of the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. “Even people who have fought for centuries have to stop fighting sometime,” he said.
The City Council approved a permit for Scenic Hudson to build a trail and 20-car parking lot and install kiosks and a portable toilet at the base of Mount Beacon.
City Administrator Joe Braun suggested three changes to the city charter: (1) Hire an administrator for the fire department, (2) require a majority vote by two consecutive councils to amend the charter and (3) allow the city administrator to hire and fire city staff.
“E-sau jud,” a German slur that translates as “a pig Jew,” was painted in large white letters on the Beacon Hebrew Alliance. It was first spotted by Dr. Simon Gottfried, who said he had seen the same graffiti when he was growing up in occupied Poland. He considered not reporting the vandalism to avoid giving it publicity but decided that “waking people up is better.”
In a letter to the Poughkeepsie Journal, a Garrison resident recalled a similar incident in 1965 that occurred shortly before her Beacon High School prom. For some reason, she said, the school district said the prom would be canceled unless the graffiti was cleaned up. “I don’t know who the culprits were, or what the graffiti said, or how the school administrators decided the perpetrators were Beacon High School seniors,” she wrote. “But, much to my shame, it was the Jewish kids who cleaned up the temple so we could all enjoy our prom.”
Beacon was told that, because of technology upgrades, firefighters would lose the ability to hear emergency calls through speakers at the firehouse. But searching online, Chuck Pisanelli, 14, the son of the city attorney, discovered that firefighters near Boston had managed a workaround with a signal booster.
Dutchess County approved spending $290,000 [$547,000] to expand the Beacon office of its Probation and Community Corrections department. “Unfortunately, we’re a growth industry,” said Director Patricia Resch. Legislators declined to approve $55,000 to add air conditioning to the mental health office on the second floor.
Following complaints, the City Council approved a four-hour limit on weekday parking near the train station and daily on Main Street between South Avenue and East Main. It removed a two-hour limit on Main between North Avenue and Herbert Street, where there were no businesses.
The Philip Morris tobacco company provided a $26,000 [$49,000] grant to the Martin Luther King Cultural Center to purchase a 12-passenger van for seniors.
The city held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for four buildings redeveloped by Doug Berlin on the east end of Main Street. The $1.3 million project was funded by the city, county and Community Preservation Corp., a consortium of banks and insurance companies. A fire had gutted the buildings in 1995.
Six weeks after a woman reported being raped at 2 a.m. inside her car in a parking lot on Main Street, police asked for assistance identifying two suspects. The 27-year-old victim said the men followed her out of a bar.
John Walls, 55, competed in bowling, shot put, discus, javelin and archery at the 19th National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Puerto Rico. It was his 15th year at the games.
The City Council planned to ask 35 residents who lived on Wolcott Avenue between Fishkill Creek and Prospect Street whether they would be willing to pay to connect their homes to buried utility lines. The city said it was concerned because the poles were unusually close to the road.
