150 Years Ago (March 1875)
Three of the four children in the James Robinson family of Garrison — John (16), Willie (10) and Jennie (19) — died of diphtheria over 10 days. Shortly before she died, Jennie asked for James Meade, her Sunday School teacher: “Tell my young friends to seek the Lord, while he may be found, and meet me in heaven.”
After a storm, a classified ad appeared in The Cold Spring Recorder offering a reward for a Smith & Wesson seven-shooter with plated barrel and rosewood stock lost in the snow, probably on Main Street between West and Church.
Because of the snow, Garden Street was reduced to a single lane, forcing Charley Warren to load one side of his wagon with bystanders to turn around, “like a sailor does the windward gunwale in a gale,” according to The Recorder.
Mr. VanWinkle complained that a transcript of his lecture on Egypt and the Nile, reprinted in The Recorder, contained many errors, including “some of words altered to others that were not dreamed of when writing.”
After poultry went missing, Theodore Adams, his father and his brother-in-law found the dead birds buried near the Fishkill line. They set a steel trap and returned to find it gone. They followed the path of bushes where the trap had snagged and branches chewed off to release it. At Kings’ Chest Cave, by smoke and bullets and dogs, they drew out and killed a 33-pound wildcat with the trap around its foot. The men had it stuffed and brought it to the village.
A burglar broke into the slaughterhouse of Charles Miller and stole $5 [about $150 today] worth of pork, beef and veal.
Burglars stole $50 [$1,450] worth of liquor and cigars from Tevan’s basement saloon by breaking a window. To add insult to injury, the culprits uncorked and spilled the demijohns and smashed the glass bar backing.
The Rock Street door of Baxter’s Hardware was jimmied and the money drawer relieved of $4 [$115] in change.
In a letter to The Recorder, a resident called for $500 of the $1,000 [$29,000] allocated by the Cold Spring Village Board for streets instead be spent to install kerosene lampposts on every corner to “keep our stores from being plundered night after night.”
Milton Lawrence’s hay and William Odell’s red cow were seized for back taxes.
A young man who raised alarms when he walked down Main Street at 5:30 p.m. on a Thursday with a bandaged head and bloody clothes said he had been injured working at Miller’s slaughterhouse.
The Library Association hosted a discussion of the question: “Will the centennial of a republican form of government be celebrated by the United States, as a unit, more than once?” The Glee Club also sang.
P. Nichols of Parrott Street said his 17 hens produced 118 eggs in 12 days.
Thomas Richards was killed at Croft’s Mine in Putnam Valley when he drilled into an unexploded ordnance.
A year after Michael O’Brien broke his arm in a fight near the depot, he was finally able to return to his job at the foundry, where a hoist rope broke and a casting crushed his arm.
A police officer from Orange County came to Cold Spring to arrest John Wyant on a charge of bastardy. Wyant returned home after posting a $1,000 [$29,000] bail.
In Nelsonville, Charles Van Voorhis sold 50 chances at $1 [$30] each to win a scene he crafted with stuffed birds and squirrels.
Elijah Warren of North Highlands, at 70, took his first train ride, from Cold Spring to Garrison. He said his daughter told him to keep his head inside the window. “Dear Lord, how we did sail!” he said. “After I got settled, I could have rode clean to [New] York.”
125 Years Ago (March 1900)
Michael Pendergrast, 48, the brother of George Pendergrast of Cold Spring, was killed in the railroad tunnel south of Anthony’s Nose. He was clearing the ceiling of hanging ice when he was struck by a southbound express. Pendergrast had been employed by the railroad for 25 years and left a widow and eight children.
Iona Island, the popular picnic resort, was purchased by the federal government to use as a Navy powder magazine.
An outbreak of measles was reported at MeKeel’s Corners.
Emma Scott, 37, died at her home on Market Street. She was survived by her husband and 4-day-old daughter.
The Recorder reminded candidates to file election expense reports.
Emily Brown, 18, of Cold Spring, completed a 14-day fast at her sister’s home in Fishkill. She had suffered for three years from nervousness, hysteria and crying spells, which she blamed on a fall into the Hudson. The fast was prescribed by Dr. D.O.K. Strong, who allowed her to break it with a daily orange.
Mrs. S. Barnhatt, the village milliner, returned from New York City with the latest ladies’ spring hats for her store at Main and Church streets.
The Recorder editor opined: “If McKinley should be re-elected [as president], the prospects are that the government would be run by a number of multimillionaires who would look upon the U.S. as a vast syndicate which might be conducted for their personal benefit.”
James Gore, the adjutant general of Illinois, visited his native Cold Spring for the first time in 38 years.
Mr. Taylor, an 87-year-old Black resident of Newburgh well-known in Cold Spring and Nelsonville for selling vegetables from a basket, was confined to his home with a slight illness.
A notice in The Recorder: “Will the finder of $20 kindly return it to the owner, Benjamin Foreman?”
Someone rifled through the trunk of Sam, the coachman for Dr. Giles, in the barn where he lived.
The Recorder reported: “There was quite a lively scene at the depot last night when a married woman of this village entered the building and saw her husband talking to a single woman who resides out of town.”
William Denns, of Sunk Mines in Putnam Valley, was arrested on charges of selling hard cider. He pleaded not guilty but admitted to selling sweet cider.
A 30-year-old woman who had been wandering around Garrison for a few weeks was arrested, judged to be insane and sent to the Poughkeepsie State Hospital.
100 Years Ago (March 1925)
Milton “Mit” Smith, president of Nelsonville “from time immemorial,” according to The Recorder, was challenged by a popular young man named David Hustis. Smith kept his seat, 116-104.
The Julia L. Butterfield Memorial Library, built on the foundation of the former Dutch Reformed Church, opened to the public at 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 28. Many of its oil paintings came from the Butterfield estate.
At 6 a.m. on a Monday, Sylvanus Ferris and Row Merante rowed for the first time since the fall toward West Point, where they both worked. (Over the winter, they took the train to Beacon, the ferry to Newburgh and another train to the academy.) As they passed Constitution Island, the men realized an approaching floe of ice was going to hit them and paddled for shore. An observer raised the alarm when the boat floated past with a man clinging to its side in the frigid water. It took West Point cadets in two canoes nearly three hours of hard paddling through narrow channels to reach the craft. They rescued Ferris, a carpenter and father of two, but he died at the hospital at 10:45 a.m. It was supposed that Merante, a tinsmith and father of three, was lost.
The Highlander, the historic ferry that for many years plied between West Point and Garrison, sank in her slip at Garrison.
75 Years Ago (March 1950)
The March issue of Today’s Woman featured photos of the Robert Jahn’s experimental home in Garrison constructed with panels of Durisol, a mixture of wood shavings and Portland cement. Jahn was the president of Durisol, Inc.
James Barrett, 64, of Lane Gate Road, the former city editor of the New York World, was injured when struck by a delivery truck in New York City.
Seth Dennis, while visiting his sister, Mrs. Charles Stearn of the Bird & Bottle Inn, offered cash for odd-shaped roots. The Connecticut resident was known for his helter-skelter artifact collection. He went home with six unusual specimens.
Navy veterans Dave Brockway and Eddie Steinmetz performed trampoline stunts during a Haldane assembly.
Donato “Tony” Yannitelli, who ran a general store in Garrison for 25 years, a delicatessen in Cold Spring for 26 years and a liquor store in Cold Spring for 17 years, died at age 63.
Tony the Tailor, owned by Anthony Mazzuca, opened at 145 Main St.
John Wilson Cutler, an investment banker with Smith, Barney & Co. who had a home in Garrison, died at 63. He had been the quarterback of the undefeated Harvard football squad of 1908.
50 Years Ago (March 1975)
The Hand-to-Mouth Players of Garrison presented “Cycle of Seasons,” a play of scenes inspired by poems by Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office arrested a Rock Street man on charges he burglarized the Wagon Wheel Restaurant on Main Street and stole $150 [$885]. He was identified when he spent an inscribed bill he removed from a frame.
A resident complained to the Village Board about ongoing television interference on Garden Street. Five years earlier, Central Hudson had checked every home but found nothing to explain it.
Leo Saposnick, a Haldane Middle School teacher, attended a school board meeting dressed as a Revolutionary War patriot to describe plans for eighth-grade students to reenact the Battle of Gettysburg (from the Civil War).
25 Years Ago (March 2000)
The Open Space Institute announced it had preserved 291 acres adjacent to Fahnestock State Park with a grant from the founders of Reader’s Digest.
The United War Veterans’ Council of New York County picketed Town Hall to support a proposed retirement village that it was told would provide affordable housing for veterans. A Garrison resident noted the group apparently had been lured to Cold Spring with misinformation because the developer said rent for the luxury units would start at $2,000 [$3,700] per month.
The state Department of Transportation rejected a petition from residents who asked for a traffic light on Route 9 at East Mountain Road South.
The Haldane girls’ basketball team (25-3) won the Class D state championship, the school’s fourth title.
Rep. Sue Kelly, a Republican whose district included Philipstown, visited Haldane Elementary to see how federal funds had been used to expand computer literacy.
Cold Spring officers arrested a 23-year-old woman from Chelsea for driving 59 mph on Morris Avenue. Her license had been suspended four times since August.
Visitors from Ramapo, New Jersey, purchased 3-inch-diameter balls at Bijou Gallery on Main Street that turned out to be cluster bombs. The Westchester County bomb squad destroyed the items at Camp Smith. In an email to the Putnam County News & Recorder, Jane and Michael Timm wrote: “We want to assure our customers and neighbors that cluster bombs and other dangerous objects are not part of our regular inventory.” The explosives had been on display for several years on consignment for a Long Island man.
The Haldane principal told the school board she took issue with a Newsweek rating of the best schools in the U.S. that omitted Haldane, so she called the writer. Based on the magazine’s formula, he said Haldane should have been ranked No. 190.
The Garrison school board voted 6-5 to grant tenure to a special education teacher. One board member who voted no said he didn’t believe in tenure.
The North Highlands Fire Department took delivery of a new tanker/pumper to replace its 1973 Ford.
Cold Spring police arrested a waitress at the Depot Restaurant for allegedly stealing a purse that a customer left behind.
Local firefighters contained a grease fire in the ductwork of the kitchen hood at the Bird & Bottle Inn, possibly saving the structure.
