By Bill Jeffway, Executive Director
We are proud to report a banner year on all fronts at DCHS. Our first full year in our new location has raised our visibility and improved access to the entire dynamic and varied “society” of our members, donors, business sponsors, collections donors, and growing paid staff and volunteers.
Finances
Regarding the $103,000 operating budget for 2024:
We expect our 2024 breakeven operating expense goal will be met on December 31. We do tend to have some very last minute gifts which can make all the difference!
We have nearly doubled our income from endowments. Through the generosity and leadership of Rob and Sue Doyle, and those they inspired to give, DCHS has almost doubled the amount of income we can rely on annually from endowments. The Doyle Endowment Fund, in excess of $200,000 at the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, now supports DCHS in addition to the longstanding Denise M. Lawlor Fund, also at the Community Foundations.
Our online auction, in its third year, broke prior records by generating in excess of $25,000 after expenses. This is roughly double what we had come to expect from our annual gala dinners before COVID. Through the generosity of item donors (there were 155 lots) 124 bidders turned into 64 winners. We are grateful for the generosity of AAR Auctions who donate their platform, time, expertise and buyer’s fees.
Our spring Historic Preservation Celebration and Awards income broke any prior event income by a factor of two. Over 150 tickets were sold and a record number of businesses were sponsors. Above all, we had the opportunity to celebrate and thank three generations of the Hill family who continue to support DCHS, and who hosted us at their extraordinarily historic home.
Firefighting Has Been a Big Focus
Among our most visible work this year has been telling the stories of those involved in the essential service of firefighting. Prompted by a significant collections gift from the Rhinebeck Fire Department, combined with existing collections, and a great deal of interest from the local DCHS Vice Presidents representing the cities and towns of the county, firefighting is the topic of the forum section of the DCHS 2024 Yearbook (expected to be published in March 2025).
We developed the traveling exhibition, Firefighting in Dutchess County: a Greater Calling, in partnership with the Rhinebeck Fire Department and the Firefighting Museum of Dutchess County. The exhibition was featured at the inaugural opening of the museum at the Dutchess County Fair in Rhinebeck. Please let us know if you would like to borrow the exhibition for a school, library, firehouse, or other public space.
Above: Inset shows the exhibition opening at DCHS Rhinebeck among images and stories presented on banners and digital presentations. The exhibition is designed to travel.
Public Engagement
Another high-profile exhibition and series of programs was related to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Revolutionary War Major General Lafayette’s local visit. In 1824, as the United States approached its 50th anniversary (the way we approach the 250th anniversary today) Lafayette’s progressive views on the abolition of slavery, the role of women in society, and attitudes toward Indigenous peoples and the impoverished, among other views, gave us the chance to use Lafayette as a kind of litmus test of progress of the realization of American ideals. This turned into our coming to understand the extraordinary story of local persons, like the free Black couple Tom & Jane Williams of the town of Washington. They named their son, Lafayette Williams, shortly after the visit in 1827. The Bard College playwright, DN Bashir, turned this story into a short play performed at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in September.
In addition to the background talk given at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum, the narrative Why Lafayette Endures was presented as four classes at both Bard and Vassar College Lifetime Learning Institutes.
Above: Inset shows, left to right, Chuck Schwam, American Friends of Lafayette Executive Director; Aaron Morton who performed as Tom Williams; Bill Jeffway, Executive Director, DCHS; Alexis Braxton as Jane Williams; DN Bashir, lead artist; Michael Halbert as Lafayette; Patti Maclay, National Co-Chair, AFL Farewell Tour Bicentennial Committee. At the anniversary performance September 16 at FDR Presidential Library & Museum.
DCHS Trustee and Civil War specialist Dr. Michael Boden continued his series of Civil War talks, A Long & Fatiguing Campaign: The 150th New York Regiment in the Atlanta Campaign can be viewed at DCHS Virtual Event Space.
DCHS Trustee David Turner drew from his own vast image collection to present How the Automobile Changed the Hudson Valley Landscape through Vintage Postcards, also available online.
The Executive Director’s series for Black history month continued with Free Black Communities and Maritime Adventure Before the Civil War.
Collections
There is nothing as fundamental as our responsibility to be stewards of thousands of important documents, photographs, clothing and textiles, and objects. Our new location with its open bigger and environmentally controlled space, has allowed for better management and access.
The greatest contribution comes from the appointment of Collections & Archives Manager Aidan Chisamore, who will move to a full time position in the New Year.
In terms of items themselves, some highlights of new acquisitions include a DeLaval separator, a new-found Caroline Clowes painting, photos of Poughkeepsie in the 1888 blizzard, and a 1706 deed important to the settlement of Rhinebeck.
Above left to right: Aidan Chisamore, Collections & Archives Manager, is responsible for the care, preservation, and management of collections. Cosette Veeder-Shave volunteers in collections data entry and management. Charlotte Hampton, Vassar ’25 (Art History), is a volunteer this semester through Vassar’s Office of Community Engaged Learning which has grown into a reliable and important source of talent for DCHS.
Publications & Publishing
We expect to publish the DCHS 2024 Yearbook in March of 2025 and continue to expand print on demand through Amazon books. We are grateful to the Northern/Southern Dutchess News / Beacon Free Press which hosts our Decoding Dutchess Past every two weeks in their newspapers.
Above left to right: DCHS’s book about the Rhinebeck Post Office murals was featured at a recent Kwanza celebration of Celebrating the African Spirit. The 2024 DCHS Yearbook featuring firefighting and other histories is due out in March. A growing number of recent DCHS publications are available through Amazon books through their very cost-effective print-on-demand capabilities. Sample “Decoding” articles.
Library Services
Our focus in library services has been and continues to be the creation of easy to use, online catalogues for both the Butts Research Library and the Kelly Library.
Above: We are grateful to library specialist Carolyn Cook, who has been leading DCHS into the digital access age by working with special library “apps.” We expect to be able to launch these services in the New Year.
Membership
Our membership now exceeds 200 for the first time in many years. We are grateful for this important means of support.
2025, Briefly
The celebration of the 250th anniversary of our country’s 1776 founding is becoming an increasingly large part of our focus. We do this work in partnership with the Dutchess County (Gov’t) Historian, Will Tatum, and DCHS “local” Vice Presidents.
Above: As we begin to focus on the 250th anniversary of the founding our country, we expect a mix of the old and the new, the traditional and the innovative. From our collections, a June 1777 letter from Henry Livingston of Poughkeepsie saying it would be “madness” for the British to come up the Hudson and the beam from his house showing the Bdamange from the British cannon ball lobbed in October of 1777. Also in our collections all the correspondence and British ship logs requested by then President Franklin Roosevelt of the British admiralty related to those very ships. Shown is an image from Al Rosenblatt’s The Fateful Hour which we hope to be an important partner in distribution. More about this in the New Year
Above: In the New Year we are engaging highly specialized services to convert the recent gift of local movies from 1919 to 1921 of local scenes. We have not been able to view much given the delicate condition of the movies. Again, watch for progress on this in the New Year!
Help us continue our work!