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.