An illustrated program by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM) on the roles, work and lifestyles of women at the turn of the last century will kick off a series of July programs observing the centennial of women’s right to vote in New York State.

“A Woman’s Place,” with presenter Connie Jeffers, will be offered Sunday, July 9 at 3 p.m. at the HSM hall, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville, 12455. Admission is $5 and includes tastings from several recipes drawn from the 1886 Woman Suffrage Cookbook. An abridged reproduction of the cookbook, compiled by designer Trish Adams, will be available for purchase.

The program will look at the lives of women, both urban and rural, from 1880 to 1920, when the decades-long effort to gain access to the ballot box culminated in the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing this right nationally. New York women had won the vote in 1917.

Connie Jeffers will discuss gender roles, women’s work both in and outside the home, domestic and social mores as depicted in magazines of the times, and how the industrial revolution, politics, the economy and war changed society and propelled the advance of women. A slide show will include photos of area women at work in the home and on the farm.

The talk will also explain how cookbooks were used to generate both revenue and support for the Suffrage movement and for charities. A description of the physical kitchen in the age before electricity will place in context the look and flavor of foods to be tasted after the program.

Connie Jeffers is a retired elementary school principal who moved to Margaretville from California nine years ago. She and husband Tom lived in an historic home in the village where they are often seen toodling about in a 1930 Model A named Henry.

The third in a series of Sunday Cemetery Strolls will be offered by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown Sunday, June 25 at 2 p.m. at Bedell Cemetery, Little Redkill Road, outside the Village of Fleischmanns.

Admission is $5 per person; children 12 and under may take the tour for free.

Reservations are not necessary. Participants are advised to wear sturdy shoes and expect some uphill walking.

Guides from HSM will introduce tour-goers to several cemetery residents, including legendary outdoorsmen Burton Tubbs, a licensed guide who sold hunting and fishing supplies from his Margaretville Army-Navy store; hunter and trapper Luman Searle, and Bryan Burgin, a state Conservation Officer who starred in a 1955 short film, “The Game Warden” with other local residents.

Bedell is also the resting place of renowned fiddler Hilton Kelly, Denver farmers and boarding house keepers John and Martha Hewitt, and many others whose lives added color and character to our community.

The last Sunday Cemetery Stroll in the series will take visitors to a pair of cemeteries in Dry Brook and Millbrook on August 27.

The surprising history of Highmount, known to most as the Route 28 jumping off point for Belleayre Ski Center, will be the topic of a free illustrated presentation in Margaretville Saturday, June 17 at 7 p.m.

“Before Belleayre” will be offered by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown at the HSM hall, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville as part of Headwaters History Days and the state-wide Path Through History Weekend.

Actress Julia Marlowe’s Wild Acres

The talk will also feature two short film clips – a 1906 train ride around the famous double horseshoe curve on the Ulster & Delaware Railroad between Pine Hill and Highmount, and a 1930s spring outing by intrepid skiers who first had to climb up the Peekamoose Trail on Belleayre Mountain before schussing back down through the trees.

Meet Civil War soldiers and shopkeepers, artists and musicians, speculators and industrialists in this lively presentation. The talk will introduce viewers to wealthy summer residents like shipping executive John Munro, his fellow Scotsman and neighbor, physician Alexander Skene, newspaper publisher Herbert Gunnison, brewer George Jetter, and Manhattan real estate tycoon Harris Mandelbaum.

A series of four Sunday Cemetery Strolls will be offered by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown starting Sunday, April 30 with a guided walking tour of the Clovesville Cemetery just west of the Village of Fleischmanns on old Route 28.

The one-hour tour begins at 2 p.m. and includes the adjoining Bnai Israel Cemetery and a small burial ground where several Irish immigrants are interred. Tickets are $5 per person; children 12 and under may take the tour for free. 

Reservations are not necessary. Participants are advised to wear sturdy shoes and expect some uphill walking. Please park in cemetery driveway off Grocholl Road.

Guides from HSM and the Clovesville Cemetery Association will introduce tour-goers to 20 cemetery residents, including Revolutionary War veteran Samuel Todd Jr. who lived to be 101; circuit riding Methodist preacher Joseph Green who died of pneumonia as the Clovesville church was being built in 1842; miller Erastus Doolittle; boarding house owner Jane Morrison and members of the Mayes family of builders.

Meet fire watcher and mountain man Mike Todd, and hear the story of local man John Finkle Stone who was killed by Apaches in 1869 as he carried the proceeds from his Arizona gold mine. On the tour route are two veterans whose lives ended in the Philippines a generation apart and who now lie near one another: Richard Kittle died of starvation on the island of Samar in 1902, and William Todd, the first Delaware County man to die in World War II, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.