Tin Horn
Observations and Discoveries
Your contributions to this blog are welcome. Please contact us with questions, discoveries, or musings related to Middletown history.
Celebrate The Great Outdoors!
Your presence is requested Saturday, May 19 from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Open House at our new home (778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville). We’ll have food and door prizes, a wonderful raffle for an original painting by Michael Fauerbach, and an exhibit, “The Great Outdoors,” a tribute to the Catskill Mountain Chapter of the [...]
Many hands . . .
. . . make light work, and indeed it was true April 28 when several HSM board members and supporters showed up at our new hall to help reorganize and spruce the place up in preparation for our Open House May 19. Earlier, Nick Verni had supplied the equipment, and his considerable know-how as a [...]
Diner detective
Michael Engle, who maintains a site about classic diners at www.nydiners.com, wrote to ask if we knew of any photos of a diner that was incorporated into Bowl’s (Kelly’s) Hotel on Main Street in Margaretville. A bit of searching in the Catskill Mountain News and a phone call to long time resident Alton Weiss turned [...]
Genealogy Roundtables
Mark your calendar for two Genealogy Roundtables happening Saturdays, March 24 and April 14 from 10 a.m. to Noon at Fairview Library Community Room, Walnut St., Margaretville. Sally Elliott Scrimshaw will talk about Elliott, Squires, Long and related families on March 24, and on April 14, Ed Stewart will present on Fairbairn, Todd and related [...]
The Irish of Clovesville
There is a small burial ground in Clovesville that harbors a forgotten immigrant history of our area. Known locally as the “Irish” or “Catholic” cemetery, it is located across Old Route 28 from the larger Clovesville Cemetery. Whether those interred wound up there by choice, or because they were denied admittance to the Protestant burial ground [...]
Buried, and uncovered, by Dry Brook
The waters were cruel in our region late last summer. They claimed buildings, land and one precious life, and left a legacy of ruin that will take months, even years, to repair. But the flood also uncovered a bit of the past in a section of Dry Brook on the property of Gene Rosa. [...]
What’s going on here?
The image above left is one of 21 glass plate negatives found above Miller’s Drug Store in Margaretville years ago and donated to the Historical Society of Middletown by Al and Naomi Weiss. Several of the negatives were scanned and restored by Ed Kirstein of Roxbury. They were printed and [...]
Ethel Bussy remembers the Flood of ’50
Floods have always been a part of the history of Margaretville. A devastating flash flood, called “the rain makers flood,” supposedly caused by chemical seeding of the clouds over this area to make rain after an extended period of dry weather, was one of the worst in the history of this area. It occurred on [...]
Listening at Thanksgiving
The 4th Annual National Day of Listening, promoted by Storycorps, is Friday, Nov. 25. Ignore the hordes of holiday shoppers and offer the best gift of all to someone you care about – the gift of your time and attention. Use a digital or old-fashioned cassette recorder, your telephone, or a pen and paper to [...]
Redkill memories
I was happy to come across your website and to read about the history of the Middletown area. For nearly 40 years, my family owned property in “Redkill Valley,” in the town of Roxbury on Red Kill Road. It was purchased from Pete Dezaro, a former dairy farmer whose house and barn were located at [...]