Editor’s note: Beacon was created in 1913 from Matteawan and Fishkill Landing.
150 Years Ago (April 1875)
Israel Knapp of Fishkill, who had been unable to work for about six months after being kicked by his favorite horse and breaking his wrist, was kicked again by the same horse, breaking his arm.
After H. Knapp of Fishkill was awakened by his dog barking outside, he saw in the moonlight a man trying to persuade the animal to be quiet. Knapp carefully positioned a gun loaded with double B shot on the windowsill, but the movement caught the man’s attention, and he bolted. Knapp found the thief had taken a plaid shawl, a green overcoat, a bunch of padlock keys, a jackknife, a blade, a bag with four dead fowls, a 1½-bushel basket lined with feathers and two live fowls.
The new issue of Potter’s American Monthly had a cover story about a farmhouse built by Judge Samuel Verplanck at Fishkill Landing that in 1782-83 had been the headquarters for Gen. Friedrich von Steuben of the Continental Army. [The structure burned down in 1931 but was reconstructed as Mount Gulian, which opened to the public in 1975.]
John Erwin, 18, was found dead in an outhouse, a victim of an intentional overdose of morphine or arsenic after he was caught stealing dry goods from the store where he worked. Letters in Erwin’s trunk revealed he was being blackmailed by someone in Lowell, Massachusetts, who demanded payment of cash or merchandise for an unknown discretion.
Nine train cars filled with coal were sent south from Fishkill Landing: three for Dutchess Junction, one for Cold Spring, four for Peekskill and one for Sing Sing. Another 19 empty cars waited to be loaded with coal coming from Newburgh.
Owen Grady, a telegraph operator at the Grand Central depot, returned home to Fishkill Landing to recover from smallpox.
John Clifton of Matteawan sued M.H. Milham for unpaid rent of $56.20 [about $1,600 today]. In response, Milham submitted an invoice for $101 [$2,900] for a fixture that he said Clifton had taken as security but rented out in the meantime and would not return. A jury ordered Clifton to pay Milham $30 [$872] in damages.
According to the Fishkill Standard, Newburgh officials often accused Fishkill Landing of putting paupers on the river ferry to get rid of them. But according to a report by Newburgh’s Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor, it had supplied at least 23 tramps with ferry tickets to Fishkill Landing. “No wonder tramps are so numerous in our village about breakfast time,” said the paper.
William Wood shot a bald eagle with a wingspan of nearly 6 feet.
Foundry workers tested a system to rescue stranded boats by firing 32 one-pound mortars with ropes attached from the highway over the bow of a vessel anchored a mile away.
125 Years Ago (April 1900)
The Matteawan Journal doubled its price to 2 cents [about 75 cents].
Officer McCaffrey received a phone message in Cold Spring to be on the lookout for a “slightly deranged” man who disappeared from his Fishkill Landing home.
The New York Sunday World published a photo of Mrs. James Macklin, a former member of Fishkill and Newburgh society who moved to France after her husband’s death and became Countess Sally Britton Spottiswood Mackin. She had been recognized for her charitable work with the poor by the pope and King Humbert of Italy, in 1897 wrote a memoir, A Society Woman on Two Continents, and in 1898 founded a convent in Paris.
Village officials in Fishkill and Matteawan were deciding if they should purchase seven U.S. Standard voting machines. The machines were about 4 feet square and had curtains that closed around the voter.
Methodists in Matteawan decided to economize by shutting off the sexton’s salary and doing the work in relays of a month each. The treasurer took the first month.
A forest fire was raging near the Matteawan reservoir, where the keeper and his family with six small children lived in a frame house. Men were sent to bring the children to Fishkill Landing, about 5 miles, but it is feared the fire would make the journey perilous.
William Reilly, 35, a Boston painter, was arrested by the constable, Abram Wiltse, on a Saturday night and placed in the jail in the cellar of the Eureka engine house, in a remote part of the village. On Wednesday, Charles Sparks was passing the jail when he heard groans. He filed off the lock and discovered Reilly in a cell, nearly dead. He had no food or drink for four days and exhausted himself shouting. Wiltse, who was also a butcher, said he simply forgot about Reilly.
A week later, a more-attentive Wiltse delivered a hot breakfast to another solitary prisoner, John Wiley, but found that Wiley had sawed through a bar of his cell and escaped. He left a card that read: “Wiley is not Riley. Good-by!”
Daniel Flannagan died at Fishkill Landing. Three years earlier, he had been badly beaten in a boxing match that left him paralyzed.
Catherine Neary, a native of Ireland who was the oldest woman in Dutchess County, died at Fishkill Landing at age 100 years and two months.
A man arrested at Fishkill Landing for public intoxication identified himself as William Ashley of Foxboro, Massachusetts. When the police chief searched the suspect, he found a canvas bag with $4,000 [$152,000] in cash. Ashley said he had fled Massachusetts because his family, including his son, a physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, wanted to check him into an asylum because of his drinking, appoint a guardian and take his money. He sold some securities and headed toward Canada but was waylaid in Fishkill Landing. By the time his family members arrived the next day, Ashley had hired a lawyer and deposited the cash in the First National Bank.
100 Years Ago (April 1925)
The Epworth League Dramatic Circle presented The New Minister at the Masonic Hall, followed by a dance.
Lawrence Hoban, the state inspector of motor vehicles, was injured in Beacon when a car whose driver was being tested crashed into a tree.
By one account, there were 22 living daughters of soldiers who fought in the American Revolution, including Jane Squire Dean, 94, whose father, Jonathan Squire Jr. (1763-1842), at age 15 joined Col. Goosen Van Schaick’s First New York regiment. He moved his family to Matteawan after the war and died when Jane was 11. [By 1928, Jane was believed to be the last surviving “real daughter of the American Revolution.”]
75 Years Ago (April 1950)
Euphemia Cargill, who moved to Beacon eight years earlier and operated a confectionary and variety store, died at age 64. Her husband lived in Nelsonville.
Central Hudson released a sketch of the steam-generating, $12 million [$159 million] electric plant it planned to build on the Hudson River at Danskammer Point, 6 miles north of Newburgh.
The state Department of Public Works awarded a $1.18 million [$24 million] contract for additions and renovations of Disturbed Patients Buildings 4A and 7A at the Matteawan State Hospital.
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lauritsen left with her father, Bertram Tompkins of Beacon, and his mother, Andrea Lauritsen, to drive to Amarillo, Texas, and California.
A 5-year-old Verplanck Avenue girl was killed while riding her tricycle during a visit to Newburgh when a 1949 coupe involved in a collision jumped the sidewalk.
Twenty-two commuters were stranded for two hours on the river when the Beacon-Newburgh ferry, The Dutchess, grounded on a mudflat at 7 a.m., despite the high tide. The passengers were taken 300 feet to the Beacon dock on lifeboats. Twenty-four hours later, two tugboats pulled the ferry free.
Frances Seymour, 42, the estranged wife of Henry Fonda, killed herself in her room at the Craig House sanatorium in Beacon, where she had been a patient since January after being diagnosed with “psychoneurosis with depression.” A private service was held at MacGlasson Funeral Home, attended only by Fonda and his mother-in-law, before the actor returned to New York City, where he had been appearing on Broadway for two years in the title role of Mister Roberts. Frances was the mother of actors Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda.
A 16-year-old who had gone missing from his aunt’s home on Beacon Street was spotted three days later in Syracuse when he tried to sell a motorbike he had purchased for $199.50 [$2,650] on the day he left. The teen said he was headed to Detroit.
A 2-year-old who wandered out of a Catherine Street store while his mother was checking out was found three hours later by a police officer in a backyard sandbox with another toddler at 278 Mill St.
Louis Budenx, a former editor of The Daily Worker who became an economics professor at Fordham University, warned in a talk that Communists planned “a series of educational ventures in the form of camps from Beacon to New Rochelle through the medium of labor unions.” At the same time, Camp Beacon was sold for $125,000 [$1.7 million] to a New York City corporation that vowed to end any Communist affiliation. [Camp Beacon, also known as Camp Nitgedaiget (Yiddish for “no worries”), was founded in 1922 by the United Workers Cooperative Association, which had its roots in the Communist Party.]
50 Years Ago (April 1975)
Beacon elementary and middle school students helped plant the first 600 white pine, Norway spruce and Douglas fir trees of 3,000 planned on the grounds of the former Matteawan State Hospital, owned by the school district.
The Friendly Town Committee of the Beacon-Fishkill Fresh Air Fund was accepting applications from families interested in hosting a needy child from New York City for two weeks in July so he or she could “enjoy some time in the sunshine and fresh air.”
The Dutchess County Youth Board asked Beacon and other municipalities to contribute funds for a shelter for runaways. It estimated a nine-bed house would cost $72,000 [$428,000] annually to operate.
25 Years Ago (April 2000)
An 18-year-old was charged with assault after a scuffle with a police officer who injured his knee and hand. Police said the teen ran after patrol officers saw him selling marijuana on Eliza Street at 3 a.m.
After being found guilty of parking in a handicapped zone, driving on a suspended license and giving a false name, a 40-year-old man was arrested during his court appearance on assault charges when he shoved a police officer.
The City Council approved spending $761,000 [$1.4 million] to upgrade the sludge press at the sewage treatment plant on Dennings Avenue.
Scenic Hudson was looking for a developer to transform 8 acres of a waterfront property known as Beacon Landing into a mixed-use project.
Beacon and Washingtonville batters combined for 14 home runs during a high school baseball game at Humeston Field.
Firefighters rescued four adults and an infant from a fire at an East Main Street apartment house. It began when a former firefighter who lived on the first floor fell asleep while cooking french fries. He tried to put out the fire while his son ran next door to the Beacon Engine Co.
