Looking Back in Beacon

Editor’s note: Beacon was created in 1913 from Matteawan and Fishkill Landing.

150 Years Ago (February 1875)

A three-card monte man charged with cheating young men at the ferry dock was ordered to refund their money and pay $4 [about $115 today] in court fees.

A kerosene lamp exploded at about 9 p.m. inside Jared Webb’s home, setting fire to the lampstand, carpet and baseboard. No one was injured.

After a drunken hack [taxi driver] hit a woman at Fishkill Landing, he was severely thrashed with his riding whip by one of her friends.

Eddy Winans, 14, while coasting down Glory Hill, went over the railroad tracks and cut his chin on the ice. After having it harnessed with stitching plaster, he returned to the run.

Smith Sherman, the principal of the Glenham school, resigned to become a farmer.

A bill to merge the villages of Fishkill Landing and Matteawan into the City of Matteawan died in the state Legislature in favor of a competing bill to create the Town of Wappinger from the northern portion of Fishkill. There had been an effort to create three towns — Wappinger, Fishkill and Matteawan/Fishkill Landing — but the City of Matteawan proposal complicated matters to the point that Assembly Member James Mackin, who represented Dutchess County, withdrew his support. [Three months later, the governor signed the bill to create the Town of Wappinger.]

John Noble, a freight conductor on the Dutchess & Columbia Railroad, was killed near Matteawan when his head struck a bridge.

About 3,000 people skated on a Saturday afternoon on Newburgh Bay and Alfred Moshier of Breakneck won $9.50 [$275] from a purse raised for an impromptu series of races — best of three over a 3½-mile course.

The Rev. Philip Germond of the Methodist Church in Fishkill Landing was surprised to find under his dinner plate a gift from his congregation of $150 [$4,300]. “Since then, his family never touches a piece of crockery but they look under it,” said The Daily Freeman.

The Fishkill Journal began using a steam-powered press.

As the night express train passed through the station at 30 mph, its conductor tossed the mail bags destined for Newburgh toward the platform. A southbound freight was passing at the same time, and the bags fell between its wheels. Early the next morning two station employees collected about 80 letters and a mangled $250 check from along the tracks.

Fishkill Landing had 45 widows who paid property taxes.

Some Matteawan residents called for a night patrol to discourage arsonists.

According to a news account, two weeks after a well-dressed woman named Mary Palmer, who said she was from Fishkill, began work at a Newburgh saloon, she surprised her employer by giving birth. Mother and infant were sent to the poorhouse. Palmer refused to reveal her true identity but apparently had fled New York City. “She is in deep distress over her sad fate and weeps almost continually,” the newspaper said.

125 Years Ago (February 1900)

Lemuy Lin Chung, 45, a native of China who lived in Vermont, died aboard a train just after it passed Fishkill Landing. He had been traveling with $350 [$17,000] to New York City for treatment of consumption [tuberculosis]. His body was removed at Peekskill.

The Fishkill Local Union of Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor held its quarterly meeting at the Presbyterian Church.

About two weeks after he arrived at Sing Sing to serve a 14-year sentence for kidnapping a toddler in Central Park for ransom, George Beauregard Barrow became so violent he was put in a straitjacket in a padded cell, then transferred to the state asylum at Matteawan.

While butchering a cow, a farmer found six nails and a harmonica in its stomach.

A fisherman at Fishkill Landing reported watching a man wearing ice skates float by in the Hudson River on a cake of ice, going from one side to the other crying for help. A New York Central conductor said he too had seen the man about a mile south, waving his hat. His fate went unreported.

John V. Storm, a native of Stormville and the oldest man in Dutchess County, died in Fishkill at age 99 years and two months.

100 Years Ago (February 1925)

The city agreed to take over the Memorial Building from the American Legion. The annual maintenance was expected to be $2,730 [$49,000].

Two public health nurses drove as far as they could — stopping to dig through snow drifts — before trekking to a home in the Fishkill mountains where a woman had given birth a few days earlier.

The Beacon Outing Club hosted a fox hunt at the Haight Farm in Glenham overseen by a representative from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The first of the 28 hounds to finish the 1⅝-mile route was Foley, owned by John McFarland of Beacon, but it failed to go to the box holding the fox and was overtaken by Kentucky Fred from Wappingers Falls.

The family of Isadore Wise, a partner in the Wise Straw Hat Works who had disappeared while bringing $1,200 [$22,000] from New York City to Beacon, received a letter suggesting he had been robbed and killed. It read: “We had been waiting for the payroll for the past three weeks. The dam fool put up a fight and we had to throw him in the river.”

Central Hudson asked the Public Service Commission for approval to purchase and absorb three Beacon firms — one that ran the streetcar service and two that provided gas and electric.

The Duffney Brick Co. of Mechanicsville purchased the 226-acre Belle Isle Brick Yard from the Verplanck family, which had owned the property for centuries.

After Stanley Angelo was arrested for stealing coal from railroad cars, police searched his home and found a still in his cellar.

The Kiwanis Club hosted a forum to discuss changing Beacon’s commissioner form of government to a city manager plan. [This would happen in 1989.]

The state Assembly passed a bill to fund a highway from Beacon to the new Bear Mountain Bridge.

75 Years Ago (February 1950)

Lowell Thomas Jr., 26, spoke at Beacon High School about his journey in 1949 to Tibet. He and his famous father were among the few foreigners permitted to enter.

University Settlement celebrated its 64th anniversary with a $100-a-plate [$1,300] dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria to raise $100,000 [$1.3 million] for its 225-acre summer camp at Mount Beacon for 700 underprivileged children.

A 22-year-old Wolcott Avenue man was killed when his car left the road at 3 a.m. on a curve on South Road in Poughkeepsie where the highway narrowed from four to three lanes.

Police said someone lit a bundle of kerosene-soaked paper outside a woman’s back door on Fishkill Avenue that scorched the wood but burned out.

Oliver Nerrie, 64, a firefighter and father-in-law of District Attorney W. Vincent Grady, had a fatal heart attack while backing his car out of his Orchard Place driveway, accelerated and hit a telephone pole.

Was That an Electric Car?

Q: When I was a young man, in the late 1930s or early 1940s, I was with my father on Main Street in Beacon when we saw a black, boxy car driven by an old lady. At the time, my father told me it was an electric car, driven by one of the Lamont sisters, who lived in an apartment in the Holland Hotel. Have you come across anything that would explain this?    – Ian MacDonald, Poughkeepsie

A: Electric vehicles, popular between about 1910 and 1930, were marketed to women because they didn’t require a crank start like gas-powered motors. Once the electric starter became standard, they fell out of favor because gas cars had better range. But for many years, there were still early electrics on the streets.

50 Years Ago (February 1975)

William Guilbault, who began washing cars at Ketcham Motors in 1955 after graduating from Beacon High School, had risen to be the fifth-best salesman among 2,878 Fiat dealers nationwide.

A 24-year-old mother of four was found guilty of dealing heroin and cocaine; her public defender argued she had been entrapped by a police informant.

Glenn Houghtalin (R-Beacon), chair of the county Legislature, called for a study on whether to dismantle the executive branch and create the first full-time county Legislature in the state. He said that, in the seven years since Dutchess replaced its Board of Supervisors with executive and legislative branches, spending had increased by 400 percent.

The union for City of Poughkeepsie police officers said that while they “do more work and make more arrests” than other departments, their salaries maxed out at $11,000 [$64,500] annually, compared to $13,000 in Beacon [$76,200].

Sandy Cochrane, a junior at Beacon High School, was crowned the Queen of Hearts at the 12th annual Heart Ball at the Poughkeepsie Elks Club. The queen acted as an ambassador for the Dutchess County chapter of the American Heart Association.

The Family Cinema at 383 Main St. was showing Airport 1975.

The mayor appointed John Lamoree, past president of the Beacon Jaycees, as chair of the city’s American Revolution Bicentennial Committee.

The City Council approved 13 priorities for $2.7 million in federal community development funds, including redevelopment in the blighted Bank Square area; development of a riverfront park; a feasibility study for a community center; a parking lot in the Cliff Street area; a minibus public transit system; turning a junkyard on Churchill Street into a park; and adding a fountain to Fountain Square.

Charles Trongone, 25, who escaped from the Fishkill Correctional Facility inside a canvas bag in a laundry truck, was arrested 33 hours later in Brooklyn.

A 14-year-old girl died during an early morning fire in Glenham. Her older brother, twin brother and father suffered burns.

Forty Beacon High School students held a walk-a-thon, each covering about 15 miles, and raised $801.75 [$4,700] for the SPCA.

25 Years Ago (February 2000)

A Beacon man pleaded guilty to entering an apartment at 129 Main St. while fleeing from police and holding the occupant at knifepoint.

A Peekskill man was charged for the fourth time with driving while intoxicated after leading police on a chase through Beacon. He was arrested after he struck a police car blocking the entrance to Interstate 84.

Jack Dexter, one of two Beacon representatives on the county Legislature, said he might join the Democratic caucus to break a 5-5 split over leadership positions. Dexter was a registered Democrat but won his seat without the party endorsement.

The Planning Board withheld approval for the proposed Dia Beacon, saying it had concerns about the entrances, exits and parking.

The Beacon High School boys’ bowling team won the sectional title, edging Hendrick Hudson by seven pins.

A 30-year-old Newburgh man convicted of arranging for a 16-year-old girl to bring a half-pound of cocaine from New York City to Beacon on Metro-North was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

About 50 union members picketed on Matteawan Road to demand the district pay at least $30 [$55] an hour and benefits to laborers hired to build the new high school.

The Beacon High School girls’ basketball team qualified for the Section I, Class B tournament for the first time in 11 seasons. The Bulldogs defeated Pelham before losing to No. 1 Pearl River.

Theresa McFaull, 23, of Beacon, became the third woman to roll a perfect game at Southern Dutchess Bowl. During her final frames, the bowling alley fell silent as nearly everyone came to the lane to watch. “I knew there was a crowd behind me, but I wouldn’t look,” she said.

The former president of Beacon Junior League Baseball admitted to stealing $8,148 of its funds. A judge said he could avoid jail time by returning the money within 60 days.

Devine Campbell, a junior at Beacon High School, won the Section I wrestling title at 103 pounds. He had lost in the finals the previous two seasons.

Police arrested a 30-year-old Beacon man on charges that he carjacked a vehicle at gunpoint on Main Street near North Elm at noon on a Tuesday.

Metro-North said it would begin offering free bus service from its parking lot next to Dutchess Stadium to the Beacon train station to resolve a parking crunch. It said the station had 948 spots for 1,200 commuters.

The Hudson Valley Housing Development Fund asked the City Council to rezone a parcel across the street from the site of the new high school so it could build a federally subsidized 66-unit complex called Meadow Ridge. It said the target household income of tenants would be $28,000 to $45,000 [$51,000 to $82,000] annually; the median in Beacon was $34,000 [$62,000]. A two-bedroom unit would rent for $690 [$1,300].