150 Years Ago (July 1874)
Returning from Newburgh to Garrison, John Schouter found himself stranded at Dutchess Junction with two hours until the next train. He decided to walk to Cold Spring; as he neared the tunnel, three strangers stole his hat, knife, tobacco box, new pair of boots and pocketbook.
During a trip upriver, the steamer Mary Powell carried its largest group of passengers for the season, including a Russian woman who sat in the pilothouse smoking cigarettes and speaking in French while taking in the scenery.
The fastest train on the Central Hudson River Railroad, the St. Louis Express, could travel from New York City to Buffalo in 13 hours and 55 minutes.
Legrand Wilson, the superintendent of the Presbyterian Sunday School, constructed a model of the Temple of Jehovah based on descriptions in Exodus and Leviticus, including a tiny Ark of the Covenant.
Charles Brown, 14, drowned on Long Island while visiting his grandparents for the summer. His parents in Cold Spring were alerted the next day by telegram. The Cold Spring Recorder reported that Charles had developed “quite a passion for studying the habits of birds” and kept a journal with his observations.
Sylvenus Mekeel reported he had killed seven crows, 22 squirrels and a fox at his farm since the corn planting.
Dr. Griffin was injured when a horse, startled by the sound of a hand organ, stepped on his foot.
A man with a wooden leg was arrested by Officer Delanoy for public intoxication. When he couldn’t pay the fine, he was sent to the county jail for 10 days.
Samuel Warren showed off a flint arrowhead he found on High Street.
The Recorder noted that the last loads of iron ore had likely passed through Cold Spring because the Sunk Mine had been sold to a company that planned to move its product by rail rather than river. On the plus side, it would mean less wear on village roads from the heavily laden wagons.
Officer McAndrew obtained an arrest warrant for a painter named Benneway who was accused of stealing a watch from Jacob Ireland’s wrist as he napped on the grass near his North Highlands home. Ireland was awakened by someone examining his pockets but thought his wife was playing a joke and didn’t open his eyes until he felt the thief cut the chain on his watch.
A thief apparently entered James Delaney’s house through a window and slipped a pocketbook with $600 [about $16,500 today] from under his pillow — which Delaney was sleeping on.
The Rev. Charles Carroll Parsons resigned as rector of St. Mary’s after receiving a call from the Church of the Innocents in Hoboken, New Jersey.
The Fishkill Journal described the machinery at a factory owned by Thomas Avery, formerly of Cold Spring. (He and a partner had planned to open the factory in the village but found the rents too high.) “The machines are the most ingenious pieces of mechanism that we ever saw. The paper is taken into the machine from a large roll, and it comes out a perfect bag, pasted on the sides. One of these machines can be run so fast as to require the entire time of one person to take the bags.”
A mossbunker, a saltwater fish also known as a menhaden, jumped through a dining cabin porthole of the Mary Powell on a return trip to New York City.
John Deyo, 50, a Cold Spring tailor who was walking to Breakneck to see a customer, was killed by an express train near Stony Point. The engineer said he blew the whistle and applied the emergency brakes when he spotted Deyo on the tracks but that he kept walking. Deyo was survived by his wife and five children.
Tim Sullivan, 24, of Kemble Avenue, suffered fatal injuries when he fell from a cherry tree in Mrs. Dalton’s yard on Market Street. He was picking fruit during a break from washing wagons at William Nelson’s livery. After falling, Sullivan crawled to a bench and told Mrs. Dalton he had hurt himself badly.
John Meisenbacher and Henry Hafkenschiel opened a shaving and haircutting saloon near the railroad station.
Lightning struck St. Mary’s during a wedding. The shock extinguished the rose gas burner in the ceiling, but no one was injured.
Charles Palmer, whose father in Rhode Island was celebrating his 92nd birthday, reported that no one had died in the family in at least 50 years.
M.L. McCormick opened an undertaking business on Main Street at “the second door above Garden Street,” noting he had recently purchased a hearse and had a fine assortment of rosewood, mahogany, black walnut and white wood coffins.
Ralph Blakelock, the noted palette knife artist, sketched Indian Falls and other points of interest while staying with a friend in Cold Spring.
According to Dr. Murdock, Edwin Tonking, who worked at the Sunk Mine, was relieved of a 50-foot tapeworm.
After noticing the horses in front of the district attorney’s office were restless, Charley Warren found a wasps’ nest inside the iron tying post.
George Hewitt had his arm broken and suffered a serious head injury from a kick by a steer he was roping at the slaughterhouse on the Fishkill road.
Two hot-air balloons, thought to have been part of P.T. Barnum’s Hippodrome shows, passed over the village, heading north. One was low enough that residents could converse with the occupants, the other at a great height traveling at steamboat speed.
125 Years Ago (July 1899)
An immense granite eagle arrived by boat to be installed on the grounds of Cragside, the residence of Gen. and Mrs. Daniel Butterfield [now the Haldane campus].
Russell Sage, the well-known financier, was a guest of the Butterfields for five days. [Sage today would be worth about $2.5 billion.]
The Recorder commended the Cold Spring board for ordering 150 yards of crushed stone to replace the gravel and sand on village streets.
Everett Green shot himself in the hand on July 4 but Dr. Murdock could not find the bullet and had to take the boy to West Point for X-rays.
James Allen, 27, formerly of Nelsonville, where his parents still lived, died in Manila of varioloid [smallpox]. He served with Company G, Third Artillery.
The kissing bug reached Cold Spring. One landed on the arm of Mrs. Daniel McElroy Jr. but did not bite her. It was preserved in a bottle of alcohol.
Stephen Mekeel, chair of the Nelsonville school board, denied a claim by the principal, O.N. DuEsler, that he promised to increase his salary to $50 if he kicked back $25. Calling the accusation “wickedly and maliciously false,” he said DuEsler had made the offer, not vice versa.
Van Rensselaer Gifford, of Northfield, Minnesota, visited his niece, Mrs. L.W. Jaycox, in Nelsonville. Gifford, born in 1837, claimed to be “the youngest living son of a Revolutionary soldier.” [In 1904, Crosby Perry, born in 1838 to a 77-year-old veteran, disputed this in a letter to The New York Times.]
John O’Mara was sentenced to six months in jail for assaulting his mother.
The Highway Commission placed 50 directional signs at town intersections.
Nelsonville turned on its first electric streetlights.
A chicken thief broke into the roost of Leander Huston and stole his entire brood.
100 Years Ago (July 1924)
With the pending arrival of the Butterfield Memorial Library, the Lending Library suspended operations and donated its 2,500 titles.
Mrs. Herman Smith and Miss Alice Casey attended the Democratic convention in New York City. On the 103rd ballot, the party nominated diplomat John Davis of West Virginia for president and Gov. Charles Bryan of Kansas for vice president.
The Putnam County inspector of jails presented a report on the three cells in the rear of the first floor of Town Hall. He recommended removing the bar from the inside of the entrance door to permit officers to bring prisoners to the lock-up without walking through the caretaker’s apartment.
The Cold Spring Fire Co. prepared a resolution to thank the Rev. E. Clowes Chorley for his gift of a pool table.
A 10-year-old Chevrolet roadster owned by Charles Selleck had been driven more than 75,000 miles.
Officer Reilley arrested two hikers for illegally bathing in the river.
75 Years Ago (July 1949)
Two girls from Glenham, daughters of firefighters who marched in the July 4 parade in Cold Spring, were slightly injured when one was struck by the bumper of a car and knocked over her friend.
John Jay, a noted skier, author and photographer, shared movies at the Highlands Country Club in Garrison that he shot at the Winter Olympics at St. Moritz in 1948. He had been skiing with his color movie camera since 1936.
The Modern Home Center of Peekskill opened a store in Cold Spring at 81 Main St. with the finest in refrigeration, washing machines, ironers, ranges, sinks and kitchen cabinets, home freezers, dishwashers, air conditioning, fans, lawn mowers and power mowers, typewriters, outboard motors and radio and television receivers.
The election of board members of the Central School District No. 1 of Putnam Valley, Philipstown and Fishkill, held at the Haldane school, saw a record turnout because of rumors of a write-in challenge to incumbent Bertha Tait. It didn’t materialize and Tait received every vote except for two spoiled ballots.
Marie Rohrberg, the Cold Spring correspondent for the Putnam County News & Recorder, wrote that she wished the village officials “who inflicted this parallel parking on us would go one step further and mark out the spaces as is usually done in such a set-up…. It seems that properly marked and supervised diagonal parking would be the solution to our traffic problem, considering the limited space and increased summer visitors.”
The remains of Pvt. Anthony Nastasi arrived for interment at Cold Spring Cemetery. The Haldane grad was killed in action in France in September 1944.
A large barn owned by Susan Curtis on Route 9D in Manitou was destroyed by fire after being hit by lightning. The Garrison Fire Department, which was in Cold Spring in a parade for the Nelsonville Fire Department carnival, responded, along with Cold Spring firefighters. It was the second time the barn had burned down.
A Nelsonville mother sued a Nelsonville driver for $75,000 [$1 million] after her 9-year-old son was hit by a wheelbarrow that had been hit by the car, breaking his right leg.
Robert Patterson of Philipstown, the former secretary of war, was among the names floated to succeed the late Associate Justice Frank Murphy on the U.S. Supreme Court. [President Harry Truman nominated Attorney General Tom Clark.]
The 15th Garrison Horse Show was held at Saunders’ farm on Old Albany Post Road to benefit the Butterfield Memorial Hospital. It was the first Garrison Horse Show since 1941, when it was held at Brownsdale Farm.
Hamilton Fish, a Garrison resident who was the former chair of the U.S. House Committee to Investigate Communist Propaganda and Activities (1930-31), wrote a letter to the editor of the PCNR calling on President Truman to “cooperate with the Un-American Activities Committee in helping drive every last Communist and fellow traveler out of the State Department and other positions within the federal government.”
The Haar Agency announced it was offering a two-year polio policy that covered the entire family for $10 [$132].
50 Years Ago (July 1974)
Thirty-two students graduated from the Garrison School. The class motto was “Nobody ever had a rainbow until he had the rain” and the class color was “rainbow.”
Pearl Smith of Albany Post Road donated funds to the Butterfield Hospital to purchase a LifePak 911 for its emergency room. The unit included a defibrillator, cardioscope, ECG recorder, heart-rate monitor and automatic synchronizer.
The Garrison-on-Hudson Volunteer Ambulance and First Aid Squad placed an emergency portable oxygen unit at the Garrison’s Landing store of Jim Guinan, a squad member.
Colin Faulds, a history professor at Rockland Community College, purchased the Old Homestead Club at 144 Main St. and moved into the top floor.
25 Years Ago (July 1999)
Because it was becoming a challenge to find parts for its mechanical voting machines, Putnam County replaced them with touch-activated, computerized units.
Mike’s Video Madness at Grand Union Plaza offered five-day rentals for $2.99.
An apparent lightning strike caused a 30-acre wildfire in Garrison that kept volunteer firefighters busy for a week.
The Tiny Tots Park reopened after being relocated to the center of McConville Park from its southeast corner.
A 19-year-old Beacon resident and his 30-year-old Philipstown girlfriend were arrested after he purchased a used motorcycle with six money orders she had stolen from Dairy Mart in Cold Spring.
The Cold Spring Fire Co. christened a new boat, Cold Spring Marine 1, by rescuing a family whose pleasure craft was stranded on a rock. A member of the boat club noted that three or four boats were caught on the rock each year but that the Coast Guard had ignored requests to mark it. The boat floated off the rock at high tide.
