HISTORY CORNER:
Tin Horn
OBSERVATIONS AND DISCOVERIES
Genealogy Roundtables
Mark your calendar for two Genealogy Roundtables happening Saturdays, March 24 and April 14 from 10 a.m. to Noon at Fairview Library Community Room, Walnut St., Margaretville. Sally Elliott Scrimshaw will talk about Elliott, Squires, Long and related families on March...
The Irish of Clovesville
There is a small burial ground in Clovesville that harbors a forgotten immigrant history of our area. Known locally as the “Irish” or “Catholic” cemetery, it is located across Old Route 28 from the larger Clovesville Cemetery. Whether those interred wound up there by...
Buried, and uncovered, by Dry Brook
The waters were cruel in our region late last summer. They claimed buildings, land and one precious life, and left a legacy of ruin that will take months, even years, to repair. But the flood also uncovered a bit of the past in a section of Dry Brook on the property...
What’s going on here?
Mystery photo, What's happening here?The image above is one of 21 glass plate negatives found above Miller’s Drug Store in Margaretville years ago and donated to the Historical Society of Middletown by Al and Naomi Weiss. Several of the negatives were scanned and...
Ethel Bussy remembers the Flood of ’50
Mystery photo, What's happening here?Floods have always been a part of the history of Margaretville. A devastating flash flood, called “the rain makers flood,” supposedly caused by chemical seeding of the clouds over this area to make rain after an extended period of...
Listening at Thanksgiving
The 4th Annual National Day of Listening, promoted by Storycorps, is Friday, Nov. 25. Ignore the hordes of holiday shoppers and offer the best gift of all to someone you care about – the gift of your time and attention. Use a digital or old-fashioned cassette...
Redkill memories
I was happy to come across your website and to read about the history of the Middletown area. For nearly 40 years, my family owned property in “Redkill Valley,” in the town of Roxbury on Red Kill Road. It was purchased from Pete Dezaro, a former dairy farmer whose...
Searching beyond Middletown
Looking for relatives or historical information from the Towns of Denning (Ulster County) or Neversink (Sullivan County)? How about the South Kortright-Stamford area? You may find what you’re looking for at a new history center in Grahamsville, or onlin, in a...
7th Annual Meeting a happy success
Mix a sunny autumn day, a beautifully prepared meal served on fine china, an awesome art exhibit and 35 local history lovers and you have the ingredients for a wonderful event. It was indeed a great day October 23 when the Historical Society held its seventh annual...
History repeats itself
1933 flood, Margaretville, Bridge Street It has been painful to watch the tragedy of Irene unfold – lives lost, people uprooted, businesses stopped in their tracks, buildings rearranged. Our hearts are with all of those whose lives have been profoundly changed. This...
Where was this school?
Unknown school and children This wonderful undated photo postcard of a one-room schoolhouse, with the teacher in the center of 17 students, was loaned for scanning by Bob Vredenburgh. His mother was a Shultis, and they had a farm on the Denver Road a mile or so up...
It was easy to know you were in Bedell . . .
I lived in Bedell, just “over the hill” to the west of Halcott. There were (and are) several ways to get to Bedell from Halcott. From the old Halcott Store and post office you could go west then north over the mountain into the head of Bedell, and Big Red Kill Road,...
Win this quilt!
A colorful queen-sized quilt in the log cabin design has been donated to the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown to raffle as a fundraiser. The quilt can be seen this Saturday at the HSM table at the Pakatakan Farmers Market at the Halcottsville Round Barn....
The Pakatakan-St. Augustine connection
More on the Native American conversation: Ethel Bussy, in her 1960 book History of Margaretville and Surrounding Area, noted that “In 1949, Willard Sanford (former Village Historian) took a piece of stone from the site of the ancient Indian village of Pakatakan near...
Andrew Miller’s heartache
Got a problem? Has a pile of woe been laid upon your doorstep? In a funk about life? Read on to learn what stoicism and perseverance mean. John Miller of Tijeras, New Mexico, is writing a book about his forebears who emigrated from Scotland to Bovina in 1819. He sent...
Those Indian caves
From time to time, tales have been told about ‘Indian caves’ in our area, rock shelters where Native Americans reputedly stayed while traveling through on seasonal hunting and fishing expeditions (see the Our Town page of the Communities section on this website for a...
Maypole Dance, Helen Ives
Maypole Dance, Helen Ives
The News, from 1863
Orson Allaben was an educated, principled and influential man. A man with character. Money. And opinions. An early developer of the Village of Margaretville, he was a doctor, a businessman, and, in the 1860s, started a newspaper called The Utilitarian, “A Family...