Editor’s note: Beacon was created in 1913 from Matteawan and Fishkill Landing.
150 Years Ago (July 1875)
The Matteawan supervisor, highway commissioners and town clerk, meeting at Ambler’s Tavern, voted to assess taxes to purchase 33 gas streetlamps at $24 each [about $700 each today] and to sign an 18-month, $495 [$15,000] maintenance contract. “Quite a number of our citizens talk of getting an injunction to stop the tax — not because they are opposed to improvement, but because they have not been consulted in the matter,” wrote the Matteawan correspondent of The Cold Spring Recorder.
The Fishkill Landing coroner held an inquest into the death of a 14-year-old student from Newburgh who drowned after falling overboard from an excursion boat on the Hudson River. His Catholic school was on a field trip.
William Henry was brought before Justice Schenck of Fishkill Landing, accused of assault. James Hunt said he had visited the Henry home to call on a young lady, and that Henry and his wife objected. Henry told him to leave and threatened him. “As all the assault and battery seemed to be on the part of the complainant, the case was dismissed,” according to The Recorder.
Seventy cases of machinery arrived for a new carpet mill at Glenham, the first installment of 400 to be shipped from Leeds, England.
At about midnight, Starr Knox of Fishkill Landing heard a crack in a cherry tree outside his home. He saw dark objects in the branches and, raising his gun, ordered the trespassers to come down and stand in a row with their hands above their heads. They said they were from Newburgh, but a news account offered no further explanation for their presence.
Two laborers shoveled 80 tons of coal from a boat on Long Dock in 4½ hours.
The Lone Stars of Matteawan, in Catskill for a baseball game, complained about their treatment. After the Lone Stars broke two bats, the hosts refused to lend them new ones and offered refreshments to only half of the players.
The Fishkill census-taker recorded Aunt Katy Reynolds, a 106-year-old Black woman. She had been born in the West Indies in 1769.
A dental patient in Newburgh, under the influence of gas, punched the doctor and went “cruising about the house tops,” according to The Recorder.
The Hartford Post reported that, in the office of the Hartford, Providence and Fishkill Railroad Co., was “a rare museum of curiosities” left by passengers, including fur muffs and collars, boots, shoes, overcoats, parasols, a box of musical instruments, carpet bags, music rolls, storybooks, false teeth, dolls, a cavalry saber, a little brown jug, a white hat and hundreds of umbrellas.
Three thieves arrested for “tapping the till” of a Matteawan baker admitted to being members of a gang from Tenth Avenue in New York City that had been preying on Highlands residents. The officers who took the men to the Albany penitentiary said the prisoners unburdened themselves along the way.
125 Years Ago (July 1900)
A southbound express train hit a brickyard laborer, Thomas Martin, 55, near Dutchess Junction. He was brought aboard the train but died while being removed at Cold Spring. His home and relatives were unknown; he was interred in the Cold Spring cemetery.
The Mount Beacon-on-Hudson Association issued $150,000 [$5.7 million] in capital stock. It planned to build a summer hotel on Mount Beacon accessible by an incline railway.
Brickyard owners in Fishkill Landing asked the Dutchess County sheriff to send officers to stop workers armed with sticks, clubs and stones who were visiting each yard to persuade the others to strike. A leftist newspaper in New York City alleged that the owners, to make trouble to justify police intervention, told saloon-keepers to keep the free beer flowing. The strike ended suddenly when its leader, Patrick McCann, was hit and killed by a train.
The Melzingah chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution dedicated a 27-foot-high stone monument on July 4 on top of Mount Beacon, 1,600 feet above the Hudson River. Afterward, beacon fires were set, as they had been by the Continental Army, prompting responses from West Point, Newburgh and Gen. Daniel Butterfield’s home in Cold Spring. Passing boats also turned on their searchlights.
While walking down Wardwell Peak, near Fishkill, M.B. Benton spotted a silver spoon sticking out of the ground. After digging, he uncovered more silverware, each inscribed with the name Coleman. Benton knew a wealthy family had been burglarized 18 years earlier and contacted Mrs. Robert Welsh, formerly Miss Coleman, who said when she saw the loot, “That’s our silver!”
Maj. Henry A. Greene, who had been serving in the Philippines, returned to Matteawan to visit his wife and parents. He was Gen. Elwell Otis’ assistant secretary and press censor for the islands. The New-York Tribune called his reception “the largest public affair ever witnessed in these villages.”
Dr. M.B. Heyman, the physician at Matteawan State Hospital, was a witness to the execution of Joseph Mullin in the electric chair at Sing Sing. Mullin had been convicted of killing his wife in New York City in an attempted murder-suicide but declined to plead guilty to a lesser charge to avoid the death penalty.
100 Years Ago (July 1925)
Two sisters were married on the same day by the Rev. Theodore Brinkerhoff at the First Methodist Church. Elizabeth Tiel married first, to Paul Eliot, and, while guests gathered for a reception, Winifred wed Donald Thew.
Charles Stotesbury was arrested in Beacon on a complaint by Mary Roberts, who stated that he had deceptively exchanged her Standard Oil Co. gold bond for a bond from the bankrupt Morosco Holding Co.
John Nichols, 23, who was visiting relatives, lost his right thumb and two fingers on July 4 when a firework exploded in his hand.
Forty Boy Scouts from Beacon and Poughkeepsie, camping at Lake Walton, were treated to a moose roast. The animal had been killed in New Brunswick, Canada, by the Scout commissioner.
Doctors at Highland Hospital saved a 29-year-old South Street man who tried to kill himself by drinking iodine. Judge Thomas Hassett then sent him to jail overnight on a charge of attempted suicide.
Three men were accused of robbing a fourth man of $147 [$2,700] he won from them in a craps game by the river.
Police arrested two men who attempted to rob a Beacon couple parked on a back road. The men, who used a toy pistol, said it was a practical joke.
Elmer Swallow, accused of having a revolver without a license, refused to have his Bertillon measurements or mugshot taken, arousing suspicion.
The Rev. James Sheerin, of the Beacon Christ Episcopal Church, spoke in Poughkeepsie on the Scopes trial in Tennessee, in which a high school teacher was convicted of instructing his students about evolution. Sheerin said the verdict had “set scientific civilization and religious faith back a generation” and insisted “there is no real conflict” between the two.
The Federal Board of Hospitalization reopened a hearing in Washington, D.C., on the site of a proposed 1,000-bed neuro-psychiatric hospital. It had been planned for Northport, Long Island, but residents there objected so strenuously that the board decided to reconsider Castle Point, near Beacon. Northport residents at the meeting accused John Ryan, the copper king, of pushing the site because he would receive $100,000 [$1.8 million] of the $197,000 [$3.6 million] deal. A Beacon delegation argued that the Castle Point site, near the veterans’ hospital, would cost $73,000 [$1.3 million] less.
The Memorial Theatre opened in the auditorium of the Memorial Building to show movies by Paramount Pictures. The City Council had agreed to lease the auditorium for $3,500 [$64,000] annually to an entrepreneur — money it said was needed to maintain the building — although it created competition for the two theaters on Main Street, the Paragon and the State.
75 Years Ago (July 1950)
The mother of a 2-year-old boy who fell from a third-story window carried him two blocks to police headquarters, where officers rushed him to Highland Hospital. He had squeezed through a 13-inch opening and landed on a pile of building materials. He was in fair condition.
A 29-year-old Beekman Street woman was arrested after she allegedly stabbed a man near his left eye during an argument in the back seat of a car owned by Loyal Royal. A passerby alerted a patrol officer.
Claud Adams, a World War II veteran who worked at a paint and wallpaper store on Main Street, built a 2-foot-wide flying saucer from balsa wood that could soar, flip, fly upside down and nosedive. The blue disc was controlled by two wires attached to a hand reel and could climb up to 110 feet.
The New York Rubber Corp. announced that it would begin producing life rafts for Navy and Army forces fighting in Korea, while the Aviation Clothes Co. was filling orders for flight jackets.
According to the 1950 census, Beacon had 14,110 residents, representing a 12 percent increase since 1940.
The Beacon Red Sox fell, 6-0, to Poughkeepsie in the title game of the National Baseball Congress state tournament.
50 Years Ago (July 1975)
Many streets in Beacon flooded after nearly 8 inches of rain fell over three days.
Rumors circulated that the USS Beacon, a 165-foot gunboat, would be sold to the Greek Navy only six years after its launch. [The ship was decommissioned in 1977 and, after 12 years in storage, sold in 1989 to the Greeks, who renamed it Hormi.]
The Cecilwood Theater on Route 52 called on beekeeper John George to remove 25,000 bees from its roof. He did so barehanded and took the honeycomb hives home in his station wagon.
James Cagney, 76, greeted visitors at his 500-acre cattle and horse farm in Stanfordville, which was a stop on a farm tour. He purchased the property in 1955 because a friend, actor Robert Montgomery, a Beacon native, owned land nearby. [Cagney died at the farm in 1986.]
Lt. Gov. Mary Anne Krupsak toured the Fishkill Correctional Facility, seeking out inmates who had written to the state with complaints. When she asked the director of nursing, Mary Tourville, what she needed, Tourville replied: “The five nurses we lost because of budget cuts and the 15 that were promised for next year.”
Responding to complaints from neighbors, the City Council ordered the Chetwynd Corp. to remove its propane gas business from 53 Eliza St. within 10 days. The owner, Guido Capolino, was expected to take the city to court.
25 Years Ago (July 2000)
City officials vowed to crack down on speeders approaching the train station. Although the limit on West Main Street was 30 mph, a traffic count by the Highway Department of 5,108 vehicles over four days found that nearly 20 percent were speeding, including 21 drivers traveling at more than 60 mph.
The Poughkeepsie Journal named La’Shawn Martinez of Beacon High School as its female track and field athlete of the year. The sprinter was headed to Temple University in Philadelphia to study psychology.
With Venus and Serena Williams facing each other at Wimbledon, historians noted that Dutchess County has its own famous tennis sisters. In 1890, Ellen Roosevelt was ranked No. 1 by the National Lawn Tennis Association and her sister, Grace, was No. 3; that year, they won the Women’s National Doubles Championship. The sisters were first cousins of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was then 8 years old.
Orange County gave Newburgh $25,000 [$47,000] for a feasibility study of a light-rail line that would extend from the Beacon train station and over the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge to Stewart International Airport. However, the New York State Bridge Authority stated that the bridge was not wide enough for a light rail and not equipped to have one hung underneath.
A representative of Operation Christmas Child visited the Beacon Correctional Facility to show the women inmates videos of children opening 42 shoeboxes they had prepared after raising $423 [$790] to buy gifts.
Police were sorting out the details after officers found a man at 3:20 a.m. on a Wolcott Avenue lawn with a gunshot wound to his stomach. He said he had been carjacked, but his wife later arrived at St. Luke’s Hospital in Newburgh in the car he reported stolen. Police suspect he may have been one of two prowlers who entered a home on Kristy Drive. The homeowner said he scuffled with one man and heard a gunshot that prompted them to flee.
A 10-year-old from Northern Ireland spent six weeks with the McVicker family as part of Project Children, a program to allow Catholic and Protestant youngsters to escape the violence in the country temporarily.
Donna Gallery lost her dog, Boomer, on July 1 at the Memorial Park fireworks. Nearly a month later, a family from Newburgh spotted a poster in a Beacon shop window and called Gallery to report they had seen Boomer in the woods near Mount Saint Mary College. Gallery found Boomer in the Newburgh pound, where he was two days from being euthanized.
