Stroll three blocks of Margaretville’s Main Street and SEE what you’ve been missing . . . Click on this link, print it out and take an awesome visual scavenger hunt. It’s fun, challenging and could win you a ticket to our Labor Day concert and community picnic! Thanks to Sharon Suess, Ros Welchman, Larraine Dunham, Becky Hubbell and our own HSM Trustee Anne Sanford for putting this together.
The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM) will host a Vintage Post Card and Ephemera Show and Sale Sat., June 8 from 10 to 3 at the HSM hall, 778 Cemetery Road, Margaretville.
Admission for HSM members is $2; all others $4. Light refreshments will be available.
Several vendors will offer old post cards, documents, maps, advertisements, flyers and other paper items. While the focus of the show is on old New York State views, dealers will also have topical, foreign, and holiday cards.
At 1 p.m., the dealers will provide short talks on distinct aspects of post card production and collecting.
The show is coordinated by John Duda of Fleischmanns, Secretary of the Kaaterskill Post Card Club.
“Barns of Middletown” an exhibit documenting the remaining barns in the town, will be on view, a last opportunity to see it before a new exhibition on Middletown in the Civil War opens July 4.
The public is welcome to spend a pleasant Saturday browsing among historic post cards, and strolling around the beautiful pond and grounds.
There is a mystery in Dunraven: Why would an iron jail cell have been set atop a concrete bunker built into a stone retaining wall on the old Smith farm on New Kingston Road (now the Blue Deer Center)?
The cell was made by the E. T. Barnum Wire and Iron Works Company in Detroit, which made all kinds of ornamental and functional tems, from fences to fire escapes, park furniture to mausoleum doors. Apparently, they were famous for their lattice work jail cells (“Highest award received at World’s Fair for Jail Cells” the company boasted in a 1924 catalogue.)
Barnum made double decker or single cells, equipped with food openings or hinged bunks, forged of “tool proof steel.” “A secure lockup or jail will conserve morals and lessen crime in your community,” claimed the catalogue, which offered a list of customers, including the City of Oneonta, and the villages of Deposit, Schoharie and Tannersville. In 1902, these cells cost about $217.
But why would one have ended up on the Smith Farm in Dunraven? Maurice J. Smith settled the place in 1821 and ran a prosperous farm and mill there, leaving the property in 1890 to his son Olney, who turned it into a popular boarding house which operated through the mid-20th century. A jail cell isn’t exactly a tourist draw.
Was this cell ‘rescued’ from a town that was tearing down its jail? Was it used as secure storage for valuables, explosives, livestock? The bunker below cannot be accessed by the cell above, but it contains a toilet and sink, purportedly for use by farm workers.
Ideas, anyone?
The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown has announced the cast of the 2013 Living History Tour of Clovesville Cemetery to be held Saturday evening, June 29.
Rain date is Sunday afternoon, June 30.
Area residents will portray ten people who are interred in the main cemetery, and in the Irish burial ground across the road. The players, some of them descended from their subjects, will step briefly into the past lives of these historical figures to describe their families and work, struggles and joys.
Costumed docents (Barbara Atkin, Jackie Purdy, Harriet Grossman and Anne Sanford) will lead tour goers through the cemeteries to meet each character.
Tickets to the tour ($10) will be available by reservation only this year. Early birds can come to the HSM table at the Fleischmanns Street Fair May 25; phone reservations only will be taken from May 26 through June 24 at 845-586-4736.
Welcoming folks to the cemetery will be Matthew Griffin, lawyer, politician, postmaster and founder of Griffins Corners (now named Fleischmanns). He will be portrayed by John Bernhardt.
Caroline Stone, widowed mother of ten who nursed soldier son William through the illness that killed him during the Civil War, will be played by Agnes Laub.
Revolutionary War soldier and local pioneer Samuel Todd (John Hartner) will converse across the decades with grandson Augustus Todd, Fleischmanns entrepreneur, played by descendant Ward Todd.
Talman Beadle, one of the last Kingston-to-Delhi stage coach drivers, will be played by descendant Ken Taylor.
John M. and Delia Garrison Blish, who were closely tied to the Fleischmann family after selling the Blish homestead lands to them for their elaborate family compound, will be played by Fred Margulies and Anne Saxon-Hersh.
Mike Todd, legendary Catskill mountain man, will be played by Joe Hewitt, who will be remembered for his portrayal of timber raftsman Erastus Clute in the popular 2012 cemetery tour.
The last stop on the Clovesville tour will be the tiny Irish cemetery where visitors will meet a pair of immigrants from the olde sod: 10-year-old Maggie McGuire, who perished with two siblings during a disease outbreak in 1877, and 34-year-old Thomas Dwyer, a worker at a local tannery, who died in 1868. They will be played by Niamh Walsh, and her father, Brian Walsh, a native of Ireland.
The tour program will include information about adjacent Bnai Israel Cemetery and its most famous occupant, Gertrude Edelstein (radio personality and TV star Molly Goldberg), but out of respect for the Jewish Sabbath, the tour will not enter this cemetery.
Bill Tari of Jefferson will coach and direct the players. Scriptwriters are Beth Sherr, Anne Saxon-Hersh, Amy Taylor and Mary Barile.
Sponsors of the tour and the video that will be produced of the event include the Catskill Mountain News, Ulster County Chamber of Commerce, Phil O’Beirne, Purple Mountain Press, the Elliott Family, Miller’s Drug Store, Spillian, MTC, Riverside Pizza, Sluiter Insurance, NBT, the Flour Patch and the Cheese Barrel.
For details on programs and activities of the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown, and to contribute toward the preservation of local history, please visit www.mtownhistory.org.
Got plants?
The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown is seeking perennials from area gardens to populate new beds being established around the HSM hall.
Gardeners are invited to drop off plants at the HSM table at the May 11 all-day Margaretville Garden Fest. Both shade and sun loving plants are welcome; irises and day lilies that would thrive along the pond would also be appreciated.
Plants can also be dropped off at the hall, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville, on Saturday, May 25 from 9 to noon.
Those who stop at the HSM Garden Fest table will also have an opportunity to pick up a new Visual Scavenger Hunt of Margaretville. Players of all ages can test their observational skills by identifying 16 photographic details of Main Street buildings for a chance to win tickets to a Labor Day weekend concert by the 77th Regimental Balladeers.
The winning entry will be drawn July 4 at the opening of “Middletown in the Civil War,” an exhibit which will run through September 2.