You’ll enjoy this video, created by Fred Margulies, of a program we held in April 2016. We asked the audience to chime in with info about people and places highlighted in a slideshow.
Hope you enjoy this communal trip down memory lane. Please contribute your own recollections if the spirit moves.
Kids and their dolls in Margaretville captured c. 1950 by Ethel Bussy
HISTORY OF LIGHT 2015 PHOTO GALLERY
Click for a larger view of each image…
Native Americans, and pioneers, burned strips of pitch pine to illuminate small areas
Q&A followed Paul’s presentation
An early ‘flashlight,’ equipped with a cover, proved especially useful in police stakeouts.
Examining lighting artifacts
A tin backboard and a crystal globe projected and enhanced light from a candle
Was this the George Green house?
A recently discovered photo of a grand old house that once stood in Dunraven has shed a bit of light on 19th-century doctoring.
When this photo was taken by the NYC Board of Water Supply in the late 1940s, the house was part of the Bruce and Cora Kelly farm. The buildings and 18 acres of the 128-acre farm were claimed for the tailwaters of the Pepacton Reservoir and the site is now a vacant lot where Delaware County Route 3 and NYS Route 28 intersect just west of the Route 28-30 divide.
The 1869 Beers Atlas shows a house in that location (look beneath the large Clarks Factory PO) belonging to Dr. G. H. Green. We think this could be the Kelly house — it certainly looked like the home of a prominent person.
Dr. Green was born in 1808 in Franklin to Solomon Green, Jr., a physician who by 1840 was practicing with John Ferguson, Jr. in Bovina. That’s about the time his son began practicing in Middletown, in an area then called Clark’s Factory. This was a booming locale with a big tannery that employed many people. The good doctor was a busy man.
The Dec. 14, 1951 issue of the Catskill Mountain News ran excerpts from his account book from 1858-61 (the book was then in the hands of Hillis Judd of Fleischmanns – does anyone know the whereabouts of this book?) Dr. Green did everything from deliver babies (a girl, to the wife of Abram Wilson, for a fee of $1.50), to extract teeth (Hannah Owen paid 13 cents for his services, Philo Dickson was charged a quarter for two teeth pulled.) Treatments included ‘bleeding,” castor oil, and “acid for teeth” given to Ransom Sanford. Warren Dimmick was treated with “sugar of lead,” or lead acetate: It was once prescribed for intestinal troubles, sore nipples and poison ivy. It was eventually shown to be toxic, so essentially Mr. Dimmick and others thus treated had been poisoned!
Then as now there was the spectre of malpractice. In 1856, George Green’s father and partner were taken to court by Thomas L. Scott of Bovina 15 years after Scott fell off a horse as a child and broke his arm. He claimed the physicians didn’t set or treat his arm correctly. The court deliberated from Saturday morning to Monday night before finding the defendants guilty of malpractice and ordering them to pay their former patient $450 in damages.
Indeed, even doctors cannot cure everything. Dr. George and wife Nancy Roberts Green outlived all three of their children. They lost an infant, Warren, in 1849; a teenage son, also named George H., in 1870; and a daughter, Mary Amanda, who was 32 when she died in 1881. Nancy passed away in 1886.
Dr. Green, who had served two terms as Town Supervisor, lived to the ripe old age of 87, passing on in 1896.
An illustrated talk on the Delaware County Poorhouse will be presented Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown’s annual meeting and luncheon.
The event begins at noon at the HSM hall, 778 Cemetery Road, Margaretville. It will include a report on HSM’s activities over the past year. Current and prospective HSM members are most welcome.
Admission is $20 and reservations are required for the luncheon of roast turkey with dressing or vegetarian lasagna. Call 845-586-2860 by Oct. 14 to reserve your seat.
The program, which follows a short business meeting and HSM trustee election, will be given by Delaware County Historian Gabrielle Pierce. “Down and Out at the Delaware County Poorhouse” will reflect on lives lived (and lost) during the years that the Home existed, c. 1828-1965.
Pierce has been County Historian since 2010 and has done considerable research into this almost forgotten Delhi institution where hundreds of area residents spent months or even years. Her presentation will utilize narration, photographs and interviews with individuals who lived and grew up at the Home, and will also cover the cemetery at the site.
The Poorhouse, located on Arbor Hill Road, was home to poor, homeless, and indigent families and adults from all over the county, including Middletown. It also housed the “feeble and insane,” the disabled and the sick (there was a special section for those with tuberculosis).
Unmarried pregnant women and those whose husbands had left them lived there with their infants and children, many of whom were born and died there. In later years people without heat who could not stay in their homes during the winter found shelter at the Home.
The facility was believed built in 1828. It burned in 1862 but was immediately rebuilt with residents moving back in in 1863. It ceased to operate in 1963 when the buildings and 100 surrounding acres were sold. A new county infirmary was built in 1964 on Route 10, Delhi.
A look back at the mid-20th century when there were nearly 200 family farms in the Town of Middletown will be offered in the History Tent at the Cauliflower Festival Saturday, Sept. 24 from 10 to 4 in Margaretville Village Park.
Sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown, the tent will feature an exhibit that highlights farming in the 1950s. A numbered map of the town, created ten years ago with input from several area elders pinpointing the locations of some 188 farms, is accompanied by a key with the names of farm owners. Photos from the era will also be on display.
An exhibit on the history of the cauliflower industry in the region will once again be mounted.
The eagerly anticipated DVD of the Fifth Annual Living History Cemetery Tour, held in June at Halcott Cemetery, will be available for purchase.
A sales table of glassware, home decor, history books and other items will help raise funds for HSM, as will ticket sales for a “Lottery Tree” raffle. The winner of $100 worth of Lottery tickets will be drawn at the end of the festival.