Events | Historical Society of Middletown

“Private Side of History” readings in Margaretville Sept. 8

Sep 11, 2024 | 2024 News, Events

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM) will stage an informal reading from a dozen diaries, letters, and memoirs in a Second Sunday program at the Middletown History Center September 8 at 1 p.m.

The Center is at 778 Cemetery Road, Margaretville. Admission is by donation.

“The Private Side of History” features four local residents reading excerpts from diaries and letters written between 1863 and 1960, and from memoirs written and recorded more recently.

Readers will be Bill Birns of Fleischmanns, John Exter of New Kingston, Tina Greene of Dry Brook and Annie Pevear of New Kingston.

Revealing their hopes, loves, pranks, aspirations, worries and everyday activities are the following former Middletown residents: Dry Brook hunter Nina Kittle Haynes, man about town James Utter, farmers Willard Hendricks and Will Tuttle, artist Arabella Locke Wyant, New Kingston mother Elizabeth Forrest Scott, Halcottsville sisters Nettie and Sarah Kelly, Margaretville constable George Gilbert, hotel keeper Lore Heppenheimer, four-time Fleischmanns mayor Heinz Pasternak and Charles Snyder, Jr., remembering Arkville of the 1920s.

For information on HSM programs and activities, along with historical articles and photos, visit mtownhistory.org.

Nina and Orson Haynes at Hermit’s Cave, Haynes Hollow

Author discusses history-based novel at August 11 talk in Margaretville

Jul 26, 2024 | 2024 News, Events

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM) welcomes Halcott resident and author Peg DiBenedetto who will discuss and read from her book “Silver Dollar Girls” in a Second Sunday program at the Middletown History Center August 11 at 1 p.m.

The Center is at 778 Cemetery Road, Margaretville. Admission to the illustrated talk is by donation.

The book, published in 2023 by Full Court Press, is a combination of World War II history and a fictional family narrative set in a rural valley during the 2020 COVID lockdown.

DiBenedetto, the daughter of Ruth Frankling Reynolds, who had served with the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during the war, had been looking for a way to incorporate her mother’s aviation experiences into her writing, which heretofore had focused on nature essays and children’s stories.

The novel features a young woman, Mae, who flees New York City during the pandemic to her great-grandparents’ abandoned farmhouse in the Catskills. There she discovers a box of papers describing how her great-grandmother Ruth became a pilot at a young age and then joined the prestigious WASP. She, with over a thousand other women, contributed to the war effort by ferrying aircraft from factories to airfields. In the book, Mae learns the reason Ruth’s aviation history was kept quiet for decades.

Ruth Franckling grew up in Woodstock and graduated from Kingston High School when she was 16. She’d wanted to fly since childhood but couldn’t afford the lessons, so she worked at the Kingston Airport and got paid in air time. By the age of 21 she’d gotten her pilot’s license. Soon afterward she received her commercial rating and then her instructor’s certification, all of which contributed to her earning a spot in the brand new WASP program.

She married another pilot, Ward Reynolds. The duo kept a pair of Piper Cubs in a level field next to their Halcott farmhouse and flew regularly around the valley and beyond.

Using occurrences from her own youth on her family’s dairy farm, along with valley lore, DiBenedetto weaves in “Silver Dollar Girls” a realistic tale of friendship, hardship and the rewards of life in a rural farming town.

The book will be available for purchase at the August 11 talk.

HSM offers talk on history of Denver-Vega Valley July 14

Jul 2, 2024 | 2024 News, Events

An illustrated talk, “Homesteads to Go-Karts: A History of the Denver-Vega Valley,” will be presented at the Middletown History Center in Margaretville July 14 at 1 p.m.

This is the second of five ‘Second Sunday’ events sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown, whose president, Diane Galusha will be the speaker. Admission is by donation. The History Center is located at 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

The program, first delivered to Roxbury Senior Citizens in 2023, describes the hamlets of Denver and Vega and the farms, schools, churches, stores and post offices around which valley life centered.

The talk will span 270 years, beginning with land leases of early homesteaders in the 1790s, and stretching to the Denver Go-Kart Speedway of the 1960s. Stories recounted in the program were taken from diaries, newspapers and other period sources, including former residents recorded by HSM and the Open Eye Theater in separate oral history projects.

This bucolic valley, which traverses Middletown and Roxbury, once had 50 farms, a creamery, three schools, two churches, an active Grange, a ski center, a hopping dance hall and several busy boarding houses. A fire decimated Vega in the 1930s, farms ceased operating, vacationers went elsewhere and the schools and general stores closed. Today the valley is the quiet home to many full-timers, retirees and weekend residents.

FMI: 845-586-4973 or history@catskill.net. Information about HSM events and programs can be found at mtownhistory.org.

This was the hamlet of Denver, with the general store at the intersection of Denver and Dimmick Mountain Roads, and the Finch farm on the hill.

HSM to open Middletown History Center

Jun 5, 2024 | 2024 News, Events

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown will hold an Open House at the new Middletown History Center, 778 Cemetery Road, Margaretville, on Sunday, June 9 from 2 to 4 p.m.

The celebration will begin with a 2 p.m. ribbon cutting on the doorstep of the expanded facility which includes an archives and reading room named for HSM benefactor Nicholas J. Juried.

HSM President Diane Galusha will express appreciation for the many donors, volunteers and board members whose faith in and commitment to the organization’s mission resulted in this achievement. Middletown Supervisor Glen Faulkner and Margaretville Mayor John Hubbell will also share remarks.

The L-shaped addition was designed by Paul Gossen of Vega. General contractors were Cole & Griffin of Arkville. Twenty-four local contractors, tradesmen, craftspeople and suppliers lent their talents to the project.

The archives contains physical and digital photos, documents and other artifacts which will be accessible to researchers and genealogists in the coming months. Open House visitors are invited to see the climate-controlled storage and work room and the adjoining library and reading room where books and binders on local historical topics can be viewed.

The lobby of the addition features several special items. A map of Middletown, created and hand painted by local artists, pays tribute to the town’s 10 hamlets and villages. Beams from the oldest house in Margaretville frame the doorway into the program hall. The roll-top desk used by three generations of Catskill Mountain News publishers is on prominent display. And life-size photographs of two figures from Middletown’s past welcome visitors into the archives.

An office and an accessible rest room complete the lobby area. An artfully designed acknowledgment wall lists nearly 200 donors whose gifts, large and small, made the Middletown History Center possible.

Open House guests will enjoy libations in the program hall while viewing wall and cabinet displays showcasing items from the HSM collection.

The next program at the History Center will be July 14 at 1 p.m. when an illustrated talk on the history of the Denver-Vega Valley will be presented as the first in a series of four Second Sunday events.

For more information on HSM and its upcoming programs, visit mtownhistory.org.

Volunteer Randy Moore helps Deb Fleming of Sign Design in Delhi install the sign on the front of the new Middletown History Center. Steve Fleming is at left.

Carl Grocholl has been busy bringing to life the landscaping plan of Birgitta Brophy at the Middletown History Center on Cemetery Road, Maragretville. Come to the Open House Sunday (2 to 4 ) to see what they’ve achieved, including Carl’s gorgeous bluestone entryway!

Sat. July 31 — Giant Jumble Sale

Jan 6, 2022 | Events

Books, antiques, housewares, baked goods, gift baskets, plants, quilt raffle, door prizes. HSM hall and grounds, 778 Cemetery Road, Margaretville. 9-3.

Sat., July 10 — 8th Living History Cemetery Tour