Season preview!

Mar 10, 2013 | Tin Horn

It’s just starting to feel like spring but we’ve been busy firming up plans for a jam-packed season of programs and activities.

Details will follow on this website, and in a flyer to be sent with the Spring Bridge to our members. For now, a partial preview:

The first program of the year will be April 20 when homeowners in Margaretville and Halcottsville share the secrets of their houses and the people who lived there.

Vintage postcards and ephemera will be offered at a show and sale at the hall June 8.

The second annual Living History Cemetery Tour will be June 29 in Clovesville. Ten former residents will be profiled, including a 10-year-old girl, the last of the stage coach drivers, and famed bear hunter Mike Todd!

Come see local faces of the Civil War at our summer exhibit July 4-Sept. 1. The hall will be open every Saturday. Five outstanding Civil War programs are scheduled throughout the summer, from battlefield medicine, to women’s roles and a reading from local letters and diaries. A horse named Rebel will tell his story on July 13.

Mark your calendars for a community picnic Sunday of Labor Day weekend, with the music of the 77th Regimental Balladeers.

We’ll have the History Tent at the Cauliflower Festival Sept. 29. The event will feature a sheep and wool exhibit and demos this year!

Entertaining speaker “Big Chuck” D’Imperio will talk about “Fascinating Facts of the Empire State” at our Annual Meeting Oct. 27.

Want to volunteer at any of these events? Email us! We could use your help!

The Stone family saga

Feb 13, 2013 | Tin Horn

This is the tale of a Clovesville family whose name has faded from the Catskills because the men who carried it left to find their fortunes and meet their destinies more than 130 years ago.

Clovesville native John Stone’s burial place in Arizona. The “Col.” title was honorary, and the term “supposed to be” shows some uncertainly about his remains, which were reburied here a year after his death at Apache hands in 1869.

They were the Stones: John, William, George and Rutson, sons of Caroline and Robert. Their father died in 1849 at the age of 47, leaving a 40 year old wife and 9 children, from infant twins, Rutson and Jutson, to eldest son Augustus, 19. Caroline apparently maintained a store to support the family, which was scattered at the coming of the Civil War.

John Finkle Stone was 21 when he enlisted as a musician in the Regular Army’s 5th Infantry in 1857. He was sent to Washington Territory, then New Mexico Territory where he spent most of the war years, before being posted to Kansas, mustering out in 1867. Some sources say that after his discharge he became U.S. Marshall and was later appointed Collector of Customs for the District of El Paso Del Norte and relocated to Tucson, Arizona. He helped organize the Apache Pass Mining Company in 1868 to develop the Harris Lode Gold Mining District near Fort Bowie. On October 5, 1869, he boarded a stage for Tucson with a driver and a four-soldier escort. All were killed that day in an Apache ambush near Dragoon Springs. His body rests in the cemetery at Fort Bowie, a National Historic Site.

William Henry Stone joined the Army as captain of Company G of the 144th New York Volunteer Regiment. Born in 1841, he was just 21 when he led the Middletown-raised company off to war in September of 1862. A little more than a year later, he succumbed to chronic dysentery contracted in camp. He had managed to get home to his mother, who we can assume nursed him until he passed away October 17, 1863. He is buried in the Clovesville Cemetery.

William’s younger brother George saw active duty after enlisting in the 14th Cavalry in June of 1863. Seven months later, he was captured at the Battle of Mansfield, Louisiana during the Red River campaign, and spent six months interred in the Confederate prison, Camp Ford in Tyler, Texas, until the following November, when he was exchanged. In the same month he was appointed a captain in the 18th New York Cavalry, became ordnance officer of the Department of the Gulf, and commanded the San Antonio arsenal from September, 1865 until June 1866 when he was mustered out of service. After the war George Stone was a civil engineer on the Union Pacific Railroad until its completion in 1869. The following year he went to California, and worked on a number of railroads as superintendent or contractor. In 1901, he organized the Pacific Portland Cement Company, and had a comfortable life with wife Annie Burr Jennings, and their three daughters. He was California state chairman of the Republican party, and prominent in San Francisco, where he died in 1915.

Rutson Stone was born Oct. 21, 1848 in Clovesville. His twin, Jutson, evidently died as an infant. Rutson was left at home to be with his mother as one by one, all his siblings departed or married. The 1870 Middletown census said he worked in a print shop. He was 21, his mother was 61. In 1878 she died, leaving Rutson free to roam. He followed big brother George to California, where he was a surveyor in San Francisco in 1880, a clerk in 1888, and a “papermaker” in Lynwood in 1890. He and wife Annie had two daughters and a son, Robert, who does not appear to have survived to adulthood.

We don’t know what happened to her eldest son Augustus, but between 1849 and her own death in 1878, Caroline endured the loss of her husband and five other boys – one an infant, one in the Civil War, one to Indian attack and two more to the siren song of California. Unless Augustus raised a family somewhere, there were no boys to carry on Robert Stone’s name, though his daughters married local men and left descendants who remain in these parts today.

You can learn more about this family at the Living History Cemetery Tour of the Clovesville Cemetery June 29 when Caroline will be portrayed, and at the Historical Society of Middletown’s Civil War exhibit at the HSM Hall July 4-August 31, where John, William and George Stone will be profiled.

A new pair of boots — a shop local story

A new pair of boots — a shop local story

Dec 31, 2012 | Tin Horn

In researching the lives of Middletown’s Civil War veterans, I came across an interesting letter to the Catskill Mountain News published April 8, 1960. B. C. Todd wrote in to share memories and stories that old-timers had passed on to him, including this one about Calvin Crosby, a Clovesville merchant and tanner (and Civil War vet) who enjoyed almost instant gratification when he went looking for a new pair of boots. DG

Clovesville, from the Beers 1869 Atlas of Delaware County. Note the tannery, house and store of Orrace Crosby and son Calvin along Main Street to the right of Red Kill stream, and the shoe shop, presumably Mr. VanBramer’s, across the street, to the left of the stream.

In researching the lives of Middletown’s Civil War veterans, I came across an interesting letter to the Catskill Mountain News published April 8, 1960. B. C. Todd wrote in to share memories and stories that old-timers had passed on to him, including this one about Calvin Crosby, a Clovesville merchant and tanner (and Civil War vet) who enjoyed almost instant gratification when he went looking for a new pair of boots. DG

“Thinking of my leather boots with red tops recalls a true story which I often heard father and others tell. For many years, before shoes could be purchased in stores, men wore for dress-up what were called “fine boots.” These were made from light, soft calf skins. In Griffin Comers there was, during this period and afterwards, a boot and shoe maker, one Jacob VanBramer. He was considered to be a craftsman at his trade. There was a Calvin Crosby who operated a grocery store where the home of the late John Curtis now stands. Mr. Crosby at one time owned and operated the tannery located on the present Jimmy Pavlos property below Clovesville , . . This farm was spoken of for years and years as the “Tannery farm.”

Mr. Crosby had occasion to go to Kingston on business. He discovered that his fine boots were not fit for further use. He went to VanBramer’s shop and asked if he had fine boots on hand that would fit. Mr. VanBramer replied that he did not, but said “if you have a couple of good calf skins at the tannery and will bring them, I will make you a pair of boots.” Mr. Crosby said he needed them by the time the stage came along about daylight next moming. Mr. VanBramer repeated that he could make a pair of boots and have them ready saying that he would leave them outside his shop door before daylight. This was in the early evening. Mr. Crosby said, “Man, you can’t possibly do that. I tell you I must have them to wear on the stage in the morning.”

However, Mr. Crosby went to the tannery and brought the calf skins. Before daylight the next morning, he found the boots setting outside the door, ready to pull on.”

HSM seeks Civil War photos, information

Dec 12, 2012 | news archive

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM) needs the public’s help in documenting the Civil War experience of people from Middletown and adjoining areas.

HSM is collecting photographs, letters and material about veterans, their families and local residents for an exhibit to be mounted next summer. The Delaware County Historical Association will loan its exhibit, “Delaware County in the Civil War,” and HSM will augment the show with local images and information, in observance of the War’s sesquicentennial.

“By ‘local’ we mean Margaretville, Fleischmanns, New Kingston, Arkville, Halcottsville, Dunraven, Kelly Corners, Dry Brook, Halcott, Denver-Vega, Hardenburgh, Weaver and Canada Hollows, Redkill, Clovesville and the farms and crossroads in between,” explained HSM President Diane Galusha.

“We are hoping there may be photographs of soldiers in uniform or of elderly veterans, and portraits of their families tucked away in attics and dresser drawers that we might scan for this exhibit. We can also copy letters, discharge papers or other memorabilia and return them quickly.”

The exhibit will be on display in HSM’s hall on Cemetery Rd., Margaretville from July 4 through Labor Day. It will be complemented by several Civil War related talks and programs, including a reading from wartime letters to and from local soldiers. If you have letters you would be willing to make available for this program, please email HSM, history@catskill.net.

In addition to putting together the exhibit, the Society has been collecting the service records of more than 300 veterans who were reported as living in Middletown in 1866, the year after the War ended. Research volunteers are needed to help flesh out the personal lives of these men: Did they have families? What did they do before and after the war? Did they have farms or businesses? Did they go West? How did their wives and children manage while they were away?

If you would like to help with this fascinating exploration, please contact Galusha at cybercat@history.com, or 845-586-4973. Much of the research can be done online.

 

Hey, check out our new wood splitter!

Hey, check out our new wood splitter!

Nov 14, 2012 | Tin Horn

That’s what these young men may have had in mind when they posed for a photo on the Robertson farm in New Kingston with a monumental stack of perfectly proportioned wood in 1922. If anyone can identify these guys, or explain how the wood splitter worked, or how the pieces of firewood could have been so identical, or why they were stacking it in the doorway of a barn, please let us know!

Photo courtesy Gary Robertson