Win this quilt!

Win this quilt!

Jun 14, 2011 | Tin Horn

A colorful queen-sized quilt in the log cabin design has been donated to the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown to raffle as a fundraiser.

The quilt can be seen this Saturday at the HSM table at the Pakatakan Farmers Market at the Halcottsville Round Barn. The more tickets you buy, the better your chance of winning this hand-stitched beauty! The winning ticket will be drawn at the HSM annual meeting October 23.

The Catskill Mountain Quilters, which meet every Monday at the Erpf House in Arkville, completed the quilt which had been started by Jackie Reither of Margaretville. Jackie, with several other quilt enthusiasts, had pieced the top during a workshop sponsored by Cornell Cooperative Extension several years ago. Recently, she gave the partially finished bed cover to the local quilting group to complete. Peg Barnes, who led the Extension workshop, is a member of the Catskill Mountain Quilters.

The group has made and donated countless quilts to area non-profit groups and institutions to help them raise funds. “The Historical Society is grateful to all of the talented women who worked on this beautiful quilt, which is destined to be a family heirloom for the lucky winner,” commented HSM President Diane Galusha.

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.