A family Bible worth $350,000. A first-edition classic found at a flea market. A 500-year-old German book of woodprints stored under a bed for 40 years. Mark Twain’s personal book collection, many with penciled comments, questions and witticisms, stashed in barrels in a California garage.

These and other remarkable biblio-tales will be the featured program at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown’s Annual Meeting and Luncheon Saturday, Oct. 22.

Rebecca Rego Barry author of “Rare Books Uncovered: True Stories of Fantastic Finds in Unlikely Places” will speak at the Margaretville Fire Hall on Church Street in the village. The meeting begins with lunch at Noon, catered by Mary’s Cookin’ Again, followed by a business meeting and Rebecca’s presentation.

Reservations ($20) are required by October 15 and can be made by calling 845-586-3630.

Rebecca Rego Barry is the editor of Fine Books & Collections, a quarterly magazine for booklovers. Her writing on books, history, and culture has appeared in Smithsonian, Financial Times, Literary Hub, CrimeReads, Atlas Obscura, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Guardian, Slate, Art & Object and other publications.

Her chapter on the literary Warner Sisters appeared in From Page to Place: American Literary Tourism and the Afterlives of American Authors (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017).

Rebecca graduated from Syracuse University with a dual bachelor’s degree in English and magazine journalism. She earned a master’s degree in book history from Drew University where she then served as the preservation and archives associate in charge of the university archives. She also took additional courses at the American Antiquarian Society and at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School.

Rebecca lives in Chichester where she and husband Brett Barry run the audio production company “Silver Hollow Audio.”

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown will revisit a unique time in New Kingston Valley history, one documented by photographer Irene Fay, in an illustrated talk Saturday, Oct. 1 at 3 p.m. at the New Kingston Presbyterian Church.

“World of my own: The New Kingston photographs of Irene Fay” focuses on the residents and landscapes of this Middletown hamlet where the artist lived from the 1960s through the 1980s. It was a period in which long-time locals were welcoming urban newcomers who were purchasing homes and farms as summer and weekend retreats. A number of those newcomers were, like Irene Fay and her husband Stefan, European Jews who had fled the Holocaust and World War II and who found a measure of peace in the bucolic Catskills.

Irene Fay was born in Russia, raised in Germany and escaped from Poland. She trained with eminent photographers in Switzerland and emigrated to New York City in 1948. After becoming a US citizen in 1954, Irene worked as a freelance photographer. From 1937 to 1984, she created an estimated 3,000 privately commissioned studio portraits.

In 1962, Irene and Stefan purchased a Thompson Hollow farmhouse in New Kingston where she found inspiration and many willing subjects for her camera. Irene once said, “Perhaps it is my dream to possess a perfectly arranged miniature world of my own, always at my command.”

A large collection of her New Kingston images is preserved at Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, which has provided HSM with 50 photographs to be shown at the October 1 presentation. Irene’s history and the stories of some of those she photographed, will inform the slide show.

The public is most welcome to this event. Admission is by donation.

The 18^th Cauliflower Festival will be held Saturday, Sept. 24 from 11 to 4 in Margaretville’s Village Park, sponsored by the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce.

Pure Catskills, the Catskill Forest Association and the Historical Society of Middletown will be key components of the family-friendly festival which also features many community organizations, vendors and artisans. 

Food – from barbecue and cauliflower specialties, to take-home produce – will top the festival ‘menu’.

Performing from noon to 3 will be a favorite from past festivals, blues guitarist and vocalist Mike Hermann.

In the CFA Tent of Knowledge, Dr. Michael Kudish, noted Catskills’ forest historian, will speak at 12:30 on “Sawmills, piano bars, log roads, sugar maple distribution, and first growth forest.” At 1:30, the NYS DEC’s Bryan Ellis will discuss “Forest carbon and the impacts of climate change on NY forests,” followed at 2:30 by Lindsay Baxter of Cornell University on “Lyme and other tick-borne diseases of the Northeast.”

Agricultural and community history exhibits can be found in the HSM History Tent. This year’s featured display will focus on farm-based boarding houses. At 1:30 p.m., folklorist Ginny Scheer will lead a conversation on that topic with several individuals whose families either operated or visited these once ubiquitous tourist havens. HSM will also share photos and artifacts from the cauliflower growing industry which flourished in the Catskills from the 1890s through the 1950s.

The Catskills Conquest Endurance Run for vintage automobiles will again make the Cauliflower Festival one of the stops on their route from Mt. Tremper along the Catskill Mountains Scenic Byway. The run commemorates a 1903 test of endurance among early car makers and drivers who traversed the Catskills along what is now NYS Route 28. Cars are due to arrive around 11 a.m.

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown will hold another of its popular History Hikes Sunday, Oct. 2 when historians John Duda and Diane Galusha will lead a walk on the former Ulster & Delaware (U&D) Railroad tracks from Highmount to Pine Hill.

Reservations are $10 per person and are required as attendance is limited. Call 845-586-4973 to save your spot. This is not a developed rail trail and the terrain is uneven and wet in places. Appropriate footwear is a must. Heavy rain cancels.

The 3.3 mile round trip walk begins at 1 p.m. in the parking lot opposite the Highmount Post Office just off Route 28. It will traverse the famous Double Horseshow Curve and will visit the ruins of the Crystal Spring Water Company’s massive rail-side loading dock.

Participants will hear about Highmount’s heyday in the era of the elegant Grand Hotel and the estates of wealthy notables. They’ll learn how pure spring water was bottled and shipped to New York City long before the city built its own reservoirs to supply the masses. And they’ll see first-hand how surveyors, engineers and laborers designed and built the U&D up and over Pine Hill, elevation 2,000 feet. 

That climb was a special feature of the U&D, eagerly anticipated by passengers on the ride over the divide between Ulster and Delaware Counties. A 1904 railroad booklet included this description: 

“The hissing locomotives plunge boldly into the final climb. The air-line distance to the summit (from Pine Hill Station) is not over half-a-mile but there are 226 feet to climb and the track curves sharply around the arcs of a double horseshoe for three times that distance. You see the engines laboring heavily as they almost double up on the train, and the front end of the coach is visibly higher than the rear.”

Photographs of trains navigating this section, as well as images of both the Grand Hotel and Pine Hill Stations, the Crystal Spring Water Company and of some of the hotels and estates in Highmount will be shared on the hike, which is estimated to take three hours.

Family Fun Day at the Old Stone Schoolhouse in Dunraven, two miles west of Margaretville, will be held Saturday, Aug. 20 from 10 to 3. In case of heavy rain, the free event will be held Sunday.

While there is no admission fee, donations towards the upkeep of this historic site – former District #10 — are most welcome. Family Fun Day is sponsored by the Old Stone School Association and the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM).

There will be lessons with costumed teachers through the day. The 20-minute lessons, conducted in the two-century-old one-room school where grades 1 through 8 were taught the three Rs for 140 years, will include arithmetic, reading and writing.

Youngsters will use slates to practice ciphering and will stitch their own copy book to demonstrate penmanship and spelling. They may even be asked to read a poem aloud. Fun classroom games like “Button, button, who’s got the button?” will engage the students.

“Recess” will include old fashioned outdoor games like hoop rolling, catch, tag and three-legged races. Quieter activities, like butter making, cat’s cradle, checkers, marbles and dominoes will be offered beneath a tent.  Nature walks in the immediate vicinity of the school may prompt artistic activities as well.

Traditional music will be performed by Eli and Lillian Taylor.

Visitors are invited to bring a lunch and picnic on the grounds. They can ring the school bell, see what it was like to carry pails of water from the pump, and imagine going to the outhouse when nature called (it still works!).

The 1820 structure located adjacent to the former Delaware & Northern Railroad tracks, will be open all day. Exhibits will highlight its colorful history as well as the stories of some of Middletown’s other one-room schools. The Stone Schoolhouse is on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

Coloring books will be offered for sale, and raffle tickets for a basket of Catskills products will be available to purchase, proceeds benefitting the Historical Society.