HISTORY CORNER:
Tin Horn
OBSERVATIONS AND DISCOVERIES
The Battle of Shacksville, March 14, 1845
This is the general area where the Battle of Shacksville is presumed to have happened. That’s the East Branch of the Delaware River at center left crossing under the bridge on what is now Briggs Road. Town of Roxbury collectionThe Battle of Shacksville, March 14, 1845...
In The Prime of Their Lives
Young people in the prime of their lives are reflected in these undated portraits, c. 1870, from an album scanned by Steven Morse. The cigar-smoking men are cousins Eugene Crosby and William M. Bellows and the women are Will’s sisters, Sarah Idell Bellows and Orrie...
WARK: Home-grown TV
WARK: Home-grown TV Back in the Dark Ages, before you could whip out your cell phone, shoot some video and in an instant post it on the internet for all the world to see, there was ‘local access’ cable television. In the Margaretville-Arkville area, it was known as...
Home from The War
Orville Baker led an ordinary life. One of six kids in an ordinary family who grew up in an ordinary town, his death was ordinary, too, for the times. Orville succumbed in 1918 to pneumonia in the murderous worldwide influenza pandemic while serving with thousands of...
Hard luck brings out the neighbors
If you live in the Catskills chances are you’ve attended a benefit supper, concert or ball game to help a sick neighbor or a family fallen on hard times. It’s what we do. Sometimes it’s all we can do. ‘Twas ever thus, it appears. In 1909, Margaretville came together...
Cemetery Drive Tour Offers Escape
Looking for a reason to get out of the house without worrying about catching or spreading COVID 19? Our self driving tour of 9 cemeteries in and around Middletown is just the ticket. Scenery, history and freedom on four wheels! This poignant memorial to a child can be...
Win This Painting!
This lovely winter view from atop Palmer Hill, Andes looking east towards the central Catskills was painted by the late John Hopkins and is this year’s prize in HSM’s annual raffle. Donated by Meg Hopkins, the acrylic on canvas in white frame measures 9″x12″. Tickets...
Leslie the Lamplighter
Among HSM programs and events canceled by the COVID 19 pandemic was the Living History Tour of Margaretville Cemetery. Among the characters who had planned to greet visitors on June 20 was Arthur Leslie Dumond, stone carver, lamplighter and school janitor. Leslie (he...
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...
A few images from Headwaters History Days, 2018
HHD 2018 PHOTO GALLERYClick for a larger view of each image...