Episodes from a Hudson River Town

Clesson S. Bush

Description

Winner of the 2012 Award for Excellence presented by the Greater Hudson Heritage Network

The seemingly unremarkable Hudson River town of New Baltimore has had its ups and downs, you could certainly say that. Here, generations of families have worked the fields until the yield tapped out, built and repaired ships and barges until the steam age died, and harvested ice until refrigeration made "icebox" a quaint colloquialism. Yet despite the various economic, social, and military forces that have transformed the town, New Baltimore and its residents have endured, celebrating their triumphs and enduring their tragedies. Drawing on original town board minutes, Greene County surrogate and land records, federal and state military records, land patents, colonial documents, conversations with local residents, censuses, and period newspapers, town historian Clesson S. Bush provides an authentic portrait of a small-town community, making the routine—and drama—of small-town life on the Hudson River come alive.
Introduction

1. Prehistoric Times: Our Landscape and First People

2. Europeans Settle in Greene County

3. Revolution Opens the Door

4. New Baltimore is Born

5. Town Growth and Another War

6. Life on the River

7. The Train Arrives in New Baltimore

8. War and Modern Times

9. Off to School

10. The Road to New Baltimore

Notes
Index

Sujets

• Local history
• Region
• History of the Americas
• Regional

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438440354
• Langue: English

Extrait

Episodes from a Hudson River Town

New Baltimore, New York
Clesson S. Bush

Cover photo from the town of New Baltimore, New York, photograph collection. The cover map is an excerpt from Beers, Frederick W. Atlas of Greene County, New York (New York: Beers, Ellis, and Soule, 1867).
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2011 Clesson S. Bush
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bush, Clesson S.
Episodes from a Hudson River town : New Baltimore, New York / Clesson S. Bush.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4033-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. New Baltimore (N.Y.)—History. I. Title.
   F129.N48B87 2011
974.7'37—dc22                                                                                                                    2011014225
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Introduction
New Baltimore is a small Hudson River town, not famous for anything in particular. No world-renowned people have lived here. No spectacular events occurred here. No magnificent skyscrapers have been built here. Nonetheless, townspeople have lived their lives, worked hard, endured tragedies, and celebrated triumphs. It is precisely the kind of place that needs to have its history documented, described, and preserved for the sake of remembering the common man and woman, their daily activities, and the impact that economic, military, and social circumstances have had on them. New Baltimore is typical of other river communities, but holds its own unique niche in history.
In constructing this narrative, I have attempted to place the episodes of town history within the context of significant national or state events: the innovations of steam-driven vessels and ice-harvesting on the river, the coming of the railroad, the building of roads from the earliest turnpikes to the New York State Thruway, the establishment and loss of the key community function of schooling, the terrors of war, and the demands of women's suffrage and prohibition.
If we look closely at the history of any small town on the Hudson, a picture of how it lived and, in certain senses, died is presented in clarity. The thread of routine life interweaves with the stories of a bigger picture. While the outside world was intruding, people were farming, rearing children, and socializing. They were making shoes and dresses; buying and selling meat, groceries, cigars, candy, and hardware; running boarding houses, hotels, and taverns; mining stone, gravel, and sand; shoeing horses; milling grains; constructing houses, barns, and stone walls marking out fields that filled with crops; building, loading, and piloting sloops, steamboats, and barges to carry people and products; and going to church, barn dances, and grange meetings. It could be a hard but spirited existence. A continuing theme is the community's dependence on agriculture. At its heart, New Baltimore was a farming town, at least until the costs outstripped the benefits and left a bare minimum of workers laboring in the fields.
We will look in a degree of depth at the time before the statutory town of New Baltimore came into being in 1811, starting with early geologic events that formed the land and the evidence of prehistoric life found within the town's borders to the days of the Mohican Indians' presence through the mixed blessing for the native populations of the coming of Europeans. The French and Indian Wars, the beginnings of the era of road building, the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the start of the influx of people of diverse backgrounds and religions will be covered generally in the topical chapters that follow.
The town founders completed a number of rudimentary tasks in setting up the government of their new municipality. Two measures had long-lasting effect on the residents and will be analyzed in detail in two chapters. When the newly elected officials came together for the first time at the beginning of April in 1811, one of their first actions was to create twenty-nine road districts and assign overseers to ensure their maintenance. Two years later, in the town's annual meeting, the men outlined a series of nine school districts. This was shortly after the State had passed a law promoting a system of common schools.
The coming of the railroad and the plotting of a more regional road network helped change the fundamental character of the town, opening up new, more convenient transportation outlets that could be used all year. These aspects of modern progress drew people away from the river industries that supported them for nearly two centuries. The accessibility provided by the New York State Thruway that slashed its way through New Baltimore may hold the keys to a commercial renaissance that is viewed with skepticism in some minds.
The town in the mid-1860s had seventeen school districts that were centers of community activities. Today, the only school in town is run by a local church. Otherwise the children ride the yellow buses to different towns for their education.
Regrettably, an all-too-significant part of New Baltimore's history is war, starting with the early settlers who were caught among dueling Europeans, Mohicans, and Mohawks. We will follow our valiant warriors from the colonial strife on their doorsteps to the Civil War horrors of Gettysburg, Petersburg, and southern prison camps to the European battlefields of two World Wars.
Home front events in and around the conflicts will be covered, looking at people's support behind the war efforts and the effects of contemporary social and political factors like women's suffrage, prohibition, and the 1929 and 1936 fires that virtually destroyed what was the remaining nerve center of nonagricultural commerce in town.
Throughout the narrative, we will introduce an array of characters who made town history, starting with the original landowners, the tavern-keepers Pieter and Hilletje Bronck; the miller Barent Coeymans; the land-speculating Marten Gerritsen Van Bergen; and the earliest settlers whose names resonate throughout town history, the Van Slykes, Vanderzees, and Houghtalings.
Paul Sherman traded goods as far away as the West Indies, sometimes even building vessels and selling them in distant locations. Charles Titus was a Quaker who parlayed a series of occupations into becoming the richest man in town in the 1830s. Samuel Van Slyke was an African American volunteer for the Union Army who spent his last days tending a garden near the banks of the Hannacroix Creek. Martinus Mulder made his living toiling in a handful of the mammoth ice houses that dotted the Hudson shoreline but also registered patents that greatly improved the storage and handling of ice harvests. William Baldwin supervised the building of about a hundred steamboats and barges and was renowned for his knowledge of vessel construction. Clifford Armstrong was a World War II hero who came back home to farm.
Outsiders also played important but less recognized roles. Daniel Drew and Cornelius Vanderbilt were the railroad barons who commanded the laying of track through land that had been in some families' hands for decades, dividing into separated parcels valued crop and grazing areas. The roaring steam engines could carry people and goods to far reaches of the country but the wary farmer now had to ensure that the stray cow did not wander into the speeding path of a stream of loaded freight cars. Colonel Frederick Stuart Greene pushed New York State toward modernizing its highway system between the World Wars, resulting in roads that could carry people further and faster. Governor Thomas E. Dewey spearheaded the building of the Thruway that now carries his name. These roads helped make New Baltimore a present-day commuter suburb of the state capital, Albany.
While the text may be of an episodic nature, there also is a chronologic coherence that provides a flavor of the whole history of New Baltimore. Looking at the larger picture, this also could be the story of any Hudson River town and how outside economic and social pressures and local hard work, biases, and personal interests can build a lasting community.
Despite New Baltimore's relatively small size, a wealth of resources is available to tell its story. J. B. Beers's History of Greene County and the New Baltimore Bicentennial Committee's 1976 The Heritage of New Baltimore are two fundamental resources. The original board minutes still are kept under lock and key at the Town Hall. Estate and land records are available through the Greene