Historical Society of Middletown
Town of Middletown, Delaware County, NY
Welcome to the home of the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM)
The only website dedicated to the history of our town, located in Delaware County, in the Central Catskill Mountains of New York State
HSM is dedicated to preserving the heritage of the villages, hamlets and the contiguous area of Middletown:
The Town of Middletown, in eastern Delaware County, includes two incorporated Villages, Margaretville and Fleischmanns; several hamlets — Arkville, Dunraven, Halcottsville, Kelly Corners, and New Kingston; and outlying settlements with their own unique histories — Redkill/Bedell, Millbrook, Dry Brook and the Denver Valley.
Because history doesn’t always follow political boundaries, HSM also collects and preserves stories and historic materials from contiguous towns — Roxbury and Andes in Delaware County, Hardenburgh and Shandaken in Ulster County, and Halcott in Greene County (which can only be reached through Delaware County). And of course we seek to preserve the heritage of a Middletown community that is no more — Arena, lost more than half a century ago to the Pepacton Reservoir.
WE ARE BUILDING HISTORY
Please support the campaign for a Middletown History Center!
Recent Updates…
NEWS:
Recent Press Releases
Cauliflower Festival is Sept. 23
Margaretville’s annual celebration of agriculture and rural life takes place Sat., Sept. 23 when the 19th Cauliflower Festival enlivens the Village Park with food, music, farm products and fun for all ages – including the first-ever Festival Cornhole Tournament! A...
Great Middletown fires topic of illustrated talk
ARKVILLE – Fires that transformed the business districts of Margaretville, Arkville and Fleischmanns, and laid waste barns, hotels and other structures in the countryside, will be the subject of a slide presentation by local historians Diane Galusha and John Duda...
Cemetery Tour: Turning Lemons Into Lemonade
MARGARETVILLE – Our 10th Living History Cemetery Tour was an example of making lemonade from lemons, or in this case creating a special theatrical experience despite a weekend of wet weather. The June 17 tour was moved from Margaretville Cemetery to the comfort of the...
Cemetery Tour Reservations Open
MARGARETVILLE – Reservations for the Historical Society of Middletown’s 10th Living History Cemetery Tour are now open. The popular tour will be held Saturday, June 17, 2023 at Margaretville Cemetery. Rain date is June 18. In addition to the one-hour walking tour,...
TIN HORN:
Observations & Discoveries
In The Prime of Their Lives
Young people in the prime of their lives are reflected in these undated portraits, c. 1870, from an album scanned by Steven Morse. The cigar-smoking men are cousins Eugene Crosby and William M. Bellows and the women are Will’s sisters, Sarah Idell Bellows and Orrie...
WARK: Home-grown TV
WARK: Home-grown TV Back in the Dark Ages, before you could whip out your cell phone, shoot some video and in an instant post it on the internet for all the world to see, there was ‘local access’ cable television. In the Margaretville-Arkville area, it was known as...
Home from The War
Orville Baker led an ordinary life. One of six kids in an ordinary family who grew up in an ordinary town, his death was ordinary, too, for the times. Orville succumbed in 1918 to pneumonia in the murderous worldwide influenza pandemic while serving with thousands of...
EVENTS:
2023 Calendar
JUNE 17
10th Living History Cemetery Tour
AUGUST 5
Middletown Ablaze! Illustrated talk on major fires.
SEPTEMBER 23
19th Annual Cauliflower Festival
OCTOBER 21
“The Hardenburgh Patent: A Surveyor’s Journey” An illustrated Talk.
OCTOBER 22
Field Walk with Surveyor Richard Brooks
NOVEMBER 4
Annual Meeting and Open House
FEATURES
Middletown Family Farms, c. 1950
This map was produced by Ira McIntosh who in 2006 worked with local elders in each section of town to identify the locations of dairy farms that were operating in the late 1940s-early 1950s. It shows 187 family farms. In 2015, there were just two dairy farms still...
Obituary For a Newspaper: History As It Happened
HISTORY AS IT HAPPENED A program presented by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown on August 12, 2017, and posted on its website March 27, 2020 in tribute to the Catskill Mountain News which ceased publication January 15, 2020. INTRODUCTIONA weekly...
Images of Historic Arkville
Take a look at these wonderful pdf documents of historic Arkville photos! Enjoy this peek back in history — 138 photos are divided in to 5 pdf documents to help speed up your download time!
Start Exploring…
Collections
Publications
Our Town
Civil War Soldiers
History Links
Projects
“Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.”
W.H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand
Follow Us on FACEBOOK: