From the Archives
HSM COLLECIONS OF HISTORICAL MATERIALS
Pictured here are a few of the thousands of items in the HSM collection of historical materials. The collection includes photographs, diaries, store ledgers, business records, school documents, yearbooks, maps, letters, records of civic organizations, advertising items and the like. The collection includes some artifacts too, such as signs, small tools, housewares, toys and the like.
It is the only history collection dedicated to Middletown and the surrounding area. HSM is committed to preserving these treasures, adding to the collection and documenting our holdings so that researchers may make use of them. These materials will also inform our programming and exhibitions into the future.
To donate items relevant to the history of Middletown and contiguous towns, please contact us:
history@catskill.net; 845-586-4973.
Return of the Victory Garden
The battle against COVID-19 has prompted the return of an initiative that helped the US get through two previous wars of the shooting kind: The victory garden. Whether fearful of shopping amid crowds at grocery stores, wary of coming food shortages, or desirous of...
La Grippe of 1890
“’La Grippe,’ or the Russian Influenza, is heard from all parts of the world and creates the greatest public interest,” reported the Delaware Gazette January 1, 1890. “The fatal cases are very few, but the number of cases is very great and many of them very...
A priest with a flair for design
In early 1937, the Catskill Mountain News gave us a glimpse of one man’s efforts to brighten up two local churches and a cemetery. “The interior of the church of the Sacred Heart at Fleischmanns (now a private home) is being repainted and made ready for the summer....
The day after Thanksgiving
This interesting article was taken from the Delaware Gazette, Nov. 16, 1825. Except for the Thanksgiving balls, it all sounds so familiar . . . The editor of the Connecticut Mirror makes the following remarks, introductory to the Proclamation of Gov. Clinton, setting...
The Ruffs go to Florida
As half the Catskills prepares to load up the car to head to the Sunshine State for the winter, it’s fun to look back half a century or more to see what that trip used to cost. A penciled accounting of the pennies spent on the round trip from New Kingston to Orlando...
Fleischmanns businesses, c. 1950
Marilyn Mayes Kaltenborn spoke recently at a Fleischmans history program at Skene Memorial Library. She is the author of “An Unconventional Childood,” a memoir about growing up in Fleischmanns in the 1950s and ’60s, the daughter of Murray and Bertha Mayes. She was...
Stranded in Greenland
So you think it’s cold in the Catskills? Consider the case of Louis A. Lane, who was stranded on a 7,800-foot ice cap in Greenland 70 years ago and lived to tell the tale.Louis Arlington Lane was the son of Louis R. and Mary Quick Lane who lived in Arena and ran a...
A young doctor faces diptheria
The year 1879 was a traumatic one for several local families and, we suspect, for one young doctor who tried to keep their children alive during an outbreak of diptheria. Dr. James L. Allaben was one of half a dozen physicians working in Middletown that year, when ten...
MAC — where major leaguers got their start
In a slide talk given June 8 at Skene Memorial Library in Fleischmanns, baseball historian Bob Mayer provided insight into the baseball-loving Fleischmann family and some of the men who played for the Mountain Athletic Club (MAC).The club was started by Julius...