Editor’s note: Beacon was created in 1913 from Matteawan and Fishkill Landing.
150 Years Ago (October 1874)
A son of W.H. Rogers threw a ball at Fishkill Landing that hit Alex Mohurter as he drove past. Mohurter stopped his wagon, climbed out and struck the boy with his whip. The boy’s father sued for assault, but a jury found no cause for action.
A man who said he was a boatman brought a 13-year-old girl named Mary Jane Clark to John Flannery’s hotel at Fishkill Landing and paid for her room and breakfast. The girl said her mother lived in Rondout. The next morning, Flannery telegraphed Rondout and put the girl on the 12:55 p.m. train.
The Fishkill Landing Machine Works cut operations back to eight hours a day.
While students at the Matteawan Free School were playing “snap the whip,” a girl named Tiee had her arm broken.
Two men from Newburgh were sentenced to six months in prison for robbing merchant A.P. Geenug at Fishkill Landing. They had asked him to show them shirts, and when he turned, one hit him in the head with a slug shot, knocking him senseless.
A Fishkill Landing hotel badly damaged by fire was sold at auction for $3,150 [$87,000] to Lewis Tompkins of the Dutchess Hat Works.
125 Years Ago (October 1899)
The Tiger football team of Fishkill Landing announced it would play any squad in Dutchess, Putnam or Orange counties whose players averaged 125 pounds.
The body of Andrew Mihalov, a native of Hungary, was found on the New York Central tracks a mile north of Fishkill Landing. His neck and back were broken, but the bottle of whiskey in his pocket was intact.
An appeals court heard a dispute over the late Thomas Aldridge’s brickyard property at Dutchess Junction, valued at $250,000 [$9.5 million], that was to be sold and the proceeds divided when his widow died. A son, William, died before his mother, and the question was whether his 1/8th share passed to his children. The court ruled it did.
A police officer shot Harry Owen of Matteawan, who worked as a railroad towerman in Hastings, by mistake. After a holdup, officers had been assigned to watch for the suspects near the tracks. Shortly after 9 p.m., as Owen ran toward the station to catch a train home, he heard a cry, “Hold up your hands!” from behind. Assuming it was highwaymen, he ran faster. An officer fired, striking Owen in the cheek near his ear. Doctors said the bullet missed killing him by a 1/16th of an inch.
Rebecca Case, 35, had been missing from her home on Davis Street in Matteawan since Sept. 1, although her husband believed his father-in-law, Franklin Mitchell, a jeweler in Newburgh, knew her whereabouts.
Nola Pauline “Polly” Gordon of Matteawan, a local author and poet, published an unusual notice in the local papers announcing that her two-week-old engagement to Harry Theall of Fishkill Landing had ended. The notice was a public letter to his mother, whom she had never met. “Mr. Theall scarcely reaches my standard in affinity socially, or as a gentleman of fine, true principles,” she wrote. Gordon told a reporter from the New York Evening Journal that she had “given up my literary work because Mr. Theall wished it, but now I shall devote much time to it.”
Two weeks later, the gossip page of the Evening Journal reported that Gordon had cornered her cousin, James Langman, at a stationery store because he had insulted her the evening before. According to its account, Gordon struck him with a horsewhip she had hidden beneath her overcoat. Because Langman grabbed her arm to stop the attack, she filed a criminal complaint that he had assaulted her.
The details differed in a story the next day in the New York Journal and Advertiser. It reported she told Langman: “I’m not going to be scandalized by you or anybody like you.” The version in The World did not mention a whip, only mutual slaps. The New York Herald said the incident involved a revolver in a tobacco store and that Gordon told Langman, “You are no gentleman” before dropping the gun, which fired and shattered a mirror behind his head.
Ella Cable and James Ketchum, both in their late 50s, married and moved into a home on Grove Street. They had known each other since childhood. While Ella lived in Glenham and worked at the General Hospital at Fishkill Landing, James moved out west. The previous winter James was treated for frozen feet and the two were reacquainted, although they initially did not recognize each other.
Grace Ramsey, sent to the Matteawan Insane Asylum after she cut her husband’s throat in June while he slept in their New York City apartment, gave birth to a daughter. Her husband was Harvey Ramsey, assistant treasurer at Madison Square Garden. Doctors said that, after the birth, her reason returned.
The steamer James Rogers, while at the Fishkill Landing wharf, was struck by a railroad freight boat at 2 a.m. Loaded with 1,200 barrels of cement, it sank quickly. The crew escaped overboard.
After tying the night watchman to a chair, masked burglars blew up the safe at Leicht’s brewery in Matteawan and stole $1,000 [$38,000].
100 Years Ago (October 1924)
The weekly Beacon Independent began publication.
Col. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the Republican nominee for governor, gave a short address in Beacon from the rear of his train during a stump tour. “Of course, I honor my father and endeavor to follow his ideals,” he said. “But there is a belief in my family that every tub should stand on its own bottom.”
In response to a deadly explosion that caused $10,000 [$188,000] in damage to nearby homes, the Common Council banned the manufacture or storage of fireworks.
John Jakubiel and Alphone Petrowski appeared in City Court after being arrested for selling illegal booze. The evidence was stored in the vault of the Matteawan National Bank because, as the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News reported, “liquor taken by authorities in other cities has been known to ‘evaporate.’”
Amos Mosher, 80, of Beacon, and Hannah Mosher, 79, of Lucas, Kansas, were married at the Methodist parsonage in Fishkill. Hannah was the widow of Amos’ brother, whom she had married at age 59. The romance developed after she came to Beacon in June to visit relatives. The couple planned to live in Lucas.
The Beacon Rubber and Tire Co. closed for the winter, but its owner said it would reopen in the spring as the Keystone Rubber Tire Co.
75 Years Ago (October 1949)
The Beacon Junior Social League welcomed seven members, then pledged $100 [$1,300] for welfare work, $100 for an emergency polio drive and $100 for the St. John’s church building fund.
The Beacon Civic Music Association announced it would host four concerts at Beacon High School, beginning with a performance by Phillip Kinsman, baritone of the Metropolitan Opera.
The Republican-controlled City Council approved a request from the City Democratic Committee to string an election banner over Main Street.
The city sold 13 parcels it had seized for unpaid taxes, but the commissioner of accounts told the Poughkeepsie Journal “he did not recall” the amounts received.
Traffic on Main Street was stopped for 10 minutes for cleanup after a case of bottled soda fell from a Royal Crown truck making the turn at Teller Avenue.
Stephen Bulmer, a vegetable peddler for over 60 years, died at age 81. He had a two-acre garden where he grew cotton, rice, okra, corn, sorghum, peanuts and Indian coffee.
The City Council added a $250 [$3,300] cost-of-living bonus for every city employee to the 1950 budget.
A 17-year-old Kent Street boy was arrested for driving without a license after he ran a car into a light pole on Fishkill Avenue. He and another boy had hitched a ride from a 38-year-old Wappingers Falls man arrested at the scene for public intoxication. The car overturned and burned. The boy was fined $10 [$130].
District Attorney W. Vincent Grady said during a speech to the Mount Carmel Catholic War Veterans that a Beacon mother told him that a Communist organizer offered her 16-year-old son “all kinds of inducements” to join the party.
The Beacon High football team played its first night game in school history under the arc lights at Highland Falls.
Main Street was blanketed with flour after Halloween pranksters threw small bags at passersby. Police said they received over 25 complaints.
50 Years Ago (October 1974)
The Mays Department Store at Dutchess Mall had its grand opening. “It is an interesting coincidence that the site upon which we stand was used in the American Revolutionary War as the Army’s War Supply Depot,” said Max Shulman, the president and chairman. “Now, almost 200 years later and under vastly different circumstances, we have erected a modernistic supply depot to service the civilian needs of this great community.” The opera singer Patrice Musel sang “God Bless America,” said to be the theme song of Mays’ late founder, Joe Weinstein.
Beacon High School inaugurated its new electric scoreboard before the Bulldogs defeated Poughkeepsie, 34-6, following a scoreless first half.
The Planning Board voted 4-2 to reject an application from the Hi-Land Gas Co. to build a propane facility on the west end, 300 feet from a cardboard box factory.
Beacon High School announced that the wrong student had given the valedictorian speech at graduation. Principal Edwin Stevens said that, after a final check of grades, Jeffrey Gunn was valedictorian and Beth Pearson was salutatorian, not the other way around.
A 30-year-old Rende Drive man was found guilty of selling $7 [$45] worth of marijuana to a co-worker who was a police informant. The jury twice asked the judge to clarify the meaning of “entrapment.”
A prisoner at the Fishkill Correctional Facility being escorted by a guard jumped over a half door and punched a Beacon woman who worked there as a secretary in the face. She required 20 stitches.
In response to a question at a City Council meeting from Patricia Lewis, who said she represented West End residents, Mayor Robert Cahill said the abandoned Aero leather goods building would be demolished within six weeks. Lewis complained that the building had become “a haven for winos and dope addicts.”
Judith Becker, 26, a psychologist who worked with criminally insane inmates at the Fishkill Correctional Center, was found strangled in her Yonkers apartment. [Two decades later, in 1995, a serial killer named Ricardo Caputo pleaded guilty to the murder. He and Becker allegedly had a romantic relationship, and she supported his transfer to a lower-security facility, from which he escaped.]
25 Years Ago (October 1999)
The Dutchess County Economic Development Corp. announced a plan to convert the former Dutchess Mall into a “small city within a building” known as the Hudson Valley Metro Centre.
The newly created Comite Mi Gente honored four people at a ceremony at the Howland Public Library: Gonzalez Quintana, who founded the school district’s bilingual program; Roman Viera Fontanez, a city resident since 1955; and Carmen Constanino and Maria Marrero, choir members at St. John’s.
A Poughkeepsie man who parked his car on the Newburgh-Beacon bridge and threatened to jump snarled traffic for five hours and contributed to a three-vehicle crash that killed a New Jersey woman. After being talked down from a steel support, he was charged with reckless endangerment.
A 20-year-old resident pleaded guilty to kicking and punching a man as he left a convenience store on East Main Street until he gave up his 18-pack of beer.
The family of Robert Ray, 39, the special prosecutor assigned to complete Ken Starr’s investigations of President Bill Clinton, had a Mount Beacon summer home on stilts beginning in the early 1970s. “I used to run him down the mountain for supplies to Bob’s Corner Store,” recalled Jim Bopp. “He was a good kid.” [In 2020, Ray served on Donald Trump’s defense team before the president’s first impeachment trial.]
Melissa Holland, a singer, songwriter and flutist, hosted a release party at the Howland Cultural Center for her debut album, Moving Away.
The state Job Development Authority sold two former Braendly dye works mills at East Main and Leonard streets to Ron Sauers and Gary Pavlovic for $1.4 million. Sauers already owned the Braendly roundhouse on the north side of Fishkill Creek.
Every seat on the City Council, including the one held by the mayor, had a Democratic and Republican candidate, including three Republican incumbents.
