The Pakatakan-St. Augustine connection

The Pakatakan-St. Augustine connection

Jun 5, 2011 | Tin Horn

More on the Native American conversation:

Ethel Bussy, in her 1960 book History of Margaretville and Surrounding Area, noted that “In 1949, Willard Sanford (former Village Historian) took a piece of stone from the site of the ancient Indian village of Pakatakan near Arkville and it was sent by express to the Lightner Museum at St. Augustine, Florida. The stone was to be engraved with the name of the donor and the site from which it was taken and was to be inserted into a stone bridge being built near the museum. The bridge was to be made up of stones from each battlefield and historical site in the US.”

An inquiry sent to the Lightner Museum (www.lightnermuseum.org) yielded the following reply from Irene Lewis Lowrie, Registrar at the museum: “The good news is that we do have a list from 1948 showing that Willard F. Sanford of New York donated ‘a stone from the Pakatakan Indian village in the Western Catskill Mountains.’ Additionally, there are many small pencil drawings of the various rock columns showing numbers on various shaped rocks. The bad news is that here is no paper record indicating which number corresponds to which name. We can only assume Sanford’s rock is out there, somewhere on posts at the base of the bridge. . . . A photograph in Hobbies, July, 1948, p. 102 shows that the original four foot wide short block walls at both ends of the bridge were to be surfaced with historical rocks. Probably due to a lack of enough rocks, the block walls were greatly scaled down to be more column sized. They are covered with various rocks, stones and a few bricks.”

Ms Lawrie passed along this photo of the bridge, with the Pakatakan rock embedded somewhere. The whole story of the Native American village – whether it was indeed a settlement, or a seasonal camp, and precisely where it was located — remains a topic for debate and wonder.

The bridge at Lightner Museum, with Pakatakan rock embedded, somewhere.

Honoring Civil War dead

May 24, 2011 | news archive

Annual Memorial Day observances at Fleischmanns and Margaretville on May 30 will include a reading of the names of 35 men from the Town of Middletown who died during the Civil War. The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM) has prepared this tribute to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the war. Local citizens will read the names, and a bit of information about each person – age, parents’ names, military unit, when and where they served, and how they died. The readings will follow parades and services that begin in Fleischmanns at 9:00 and Margaretville at 11. In case of rain, the Fleischmanns parade will be cancelled and a single ceremony will be held in the Margaretville Central School gym. The primary source of the information is an 1866 accounting of Civil War veterans compiled by the Middletown Town Clerk at the time, William O’Connor. This period record listed 346 Middletown men who had served in the war, which raged from 1861 to 1865. HSM, which two years ago compiled comprehensive lists of veterans of all wars buried in local cemeteries, will now attempt to develop as thorough a record as possible of Middletown Civil War veterans, including those who migrated here in the post-war years. Volunteers who would like to work on this ambitious project, researching source materials, transcribing records and compiling a database which can be utilized by genealogists and historical researchers, are urged to contact Diane Galusha at 845-586-4973 or history@catskill.net.

Andrew Miller’s heartache

May 11, 2011 | Tin Horn

Got a problem? Has a pile of woe been laid upon your doorstep? In a funk about life? Read on to learn what stoicism and perseverance mean.

John Miller of Tijeras, New Mexico, is writing a book about his forebears who emigrated from Scotland to Bovina in 1819. He sent us the chapter about Andrew Miller, the second son of James and Grace Archibald Miller, born in Scotland, in 1814.

Andrew was 32 when he married Christian Scott, whose family came from the same Scottish parish as the Millers. Christian Scott Miller bore seven children on the couple’s New Kingston farmstead. None of them lived to age 20.

A lung ailment claimed seven-year-old James in 1860. On September 30, 1865 contagion claimed two-year-old John, followed within hours by the toddler’s mother, Christian. 15-year-old daughter Grace died six days later. Sons David and William also died in the mid-1860s, before they had entered their teens.

With no boys left to help him worked the farm, Andrew sold 125 acres to his brother Walter, and then remarried Dorothy (Dolly) Swart of New Kingston who helped him raise his two remaining daughters: Mary, who married Andrew Hewitt in 1868, and then passed away seven months later at the age of 20; and Magdalene (Matty), who at age 16 married Reed Dumond, and died in childbirth just two weeks after her 17th birthday.

Andrew had survived his first wife, their children, and all of his siblings when he himself left a sorrow-filled life on New Years Day, 1892 at the age of 84.

John Miller welcomes contact with anyone interested in his genealogical research: celtic@wildblue.net.

Those Indian caves

Those Indian caves

May 5, 2011 | Tin Horn

From time to time, tales have been told about ‘Indian caves’ in our area, rock shelters where Native Americans reputedly stayed while traveling through on seasonal hunting and fishing expeditions (see the Our Town page of the Communities section on this website for a bit about the first occupants of the East Branch Valley.)

Mike Kudish at another sheltering overhang

David Rubenstein in Arkville ‘Indian’ cave

David Rubenstein, a student of Native cultures of the Northeast, wanted to know if the Historical Society had ever ascertained the location of any of these caves. Had artifacts or petroglyphs been discovered? Where was the “ancient village of Pakatakan” (spelled many different ways), as mentioned in Ethel Bussy’s History and Stories of Margaretville and the Surrounding Area?

A search of the Catskill Mountain News turned up a 1934 article that an Arkville cave had in fact yielded stone implements and arrow points for many years. The article said Roxbury lawyer Ralph Ives and sons Charles and Ralph Jr. unearthed a fire pit in this cave containing broken pottery, flint scrapers, a hammerstone, pestle, stone sinkers and other implements, along with animal bones made into needles and awls. Ives, who exhibited some of the items at a meeting of the Oneonta Kiwanis Club in June of 1934, claimed the material to be of Algonquin origin, perhaps dating back 2,500 years.

This type of activity is prohibited today, out of respect for the people who left behind traces of their lives, and of the stories they could tell us if left in place. Does anyone know where these artifacts may have landed?

Using information from the article, David Rubenstein, forest historian Michael Kudish and I went to have a look at the cave in early May, but we found nothing to indicate prehistoric occupation. The cave (actually an overhanging rock ledge) is spacious, but not the 30x20x8-foot high cave described in the newspaper account. Big enough to keep modern day hunters and woodwalkers out of the elements though, and clearly a few have taken advantage of that.

We checked out two other likely “Indian caves” and the surrounding forest. Dr. Kudish thinks the combination of tree species – white oak, mountain laurel, black birch, American chestnut and others, indicate the probability of repeated burns, suggesting that Indians may have found shelter in southeast-facing caves and cleared some of the prime flood plain land to grow summer crops.

Intriguing. We’ll likely never know for certain. But as woods walker and writer Peter Manning wrote following a recent tramp with Bovina historian Ray LaFever to “Indian Rocks” in that town, “It’s good to have timeless places that set our imaginations at play.”

If you have a similar story or would like to respond to this one, let us hear from you.

Diane Galusha

History Hike

May 1, 2011 | news archive

Hikers, nature lovers and history buffs are invited to tramp to the summit of Balsam Lake Mountain Saturday, May 14 in an outing sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM).

Laurie Rankin, volunteer coordinator at the Balsam Lake Mountain Fire Tower, and her husband, Tom will offer a tour of the tower and the observer’s cabin and will discuss the history of the tower, which was used to spot forest fires in the surrounding Catskills for 100 years.

In the event of heavy or steady rain, the hike will be held Sunday, May 15. The group will set off promptly at 10 a.m. and expects to return at 3 p.m.

This is a moderately difficult, six mile round-trip hike to the 3,723-foot summit in the Town of Hardenburg. Participants are advised to bring a lunch, appropriate footwear and layered dress and to meet at the trailhead parking area on Millbrook Rd. Take Dry Brook Rd. off Rte 28, Arkville six miles, turn right on Millbrook Rd., and go 2.3 miles to the trailhead.

This event is free for HSM members, $2 for all others. Pre-registration is not necessary. For more information or weather questions, call 845-586-4973.

A log tower was originally built on the mountain in 1887 by members of the Balsam Lake Club to protect its hunting and fishing lands. Fire tower historian Marty Podskoch says that when that tower burned, a second was built on the site in 1901. It was later taken over by the State and replaced with the current steel tower. A cabin for the observer was built by the Conservation Department in 1919; and was rebuilt in 1931.

Laurie Baker Rankin spent a lot of time on the mountain as a child, because her father, Larry Baker, was the last full time observer there, serving from 1958 to 1972. Other observers included Edward Avery, the legendary Mike Todd and Gus Stewart. Ken Kittle and Tim Hinkley also manned the tower before the DEC discontinued its use in 1988.

In the 1990s, the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development and the DEC reached an agreement to refurbish five fire towers in the Catskills and to have volunteers man them as observers once did. A tremendous local volunteer effort was successfully accomplished in 2000.

Please join us for a look at the current state of the tower and cabin. The rich history of both, some artifacts, some delightful memories, some hiker education and we hope fabulous views await all!

More information on the towers can be found at www.catskillcenter.org/towers.

For information on HSM events and activities, please visit www.mtownhistory.org.