Towns

Resource Links: GENERAL HISTORY Ancient Astronomy Along the Hudson by Glenn Kreisber Wappinger Native Americans The Legend of Danskammer Podcast Henry Hudson Rombout Patent General New Hamburg History Historic District Stone Street Historic Area Records of First Presbyterian Church, New Hamburg LDS Records of First Presbyterian Church of Wappinger Creek (New Hamburg) THE PLACE / ITS BUILDINGS 1804: Survey Under Water: Drake & Bogardus Mary Hornbeck’s Blog Post Place to live New Hamburg, NY Timeline of Dutchess County Town Creation Gomez Mill House Wheeler Hill Historic District (Farmer’s Landing) Main Street Historic District Union Free School Sears & Roebuck Home Kits Train Station   THE RIVER 19thC Hudson River Sloops Ice Boat Racing on the Hudson River Mary Powell Steamboat Seth Green, Fish Culturist Fishing at “Diamond Reef” New Hamburg, NY New Hamburg Yacht Club history THE CREEK Origin of the Wappingers Creek “Drakes Drawbridge” INDUSTRY UK: Lime Burning Vermont Archaeological: Lime burning Walpole MA: Lime overview South Devon UK: Lime kilns overview DISASTERS 1871 “Human Holocaust on the Hudson” May 3rd 1871 New Hamburg Fire IN TRANSIT WW 1 Whitman Training Camp MARINAS White’s Marina: Since 1959

This is the online version of a traditional exhibition called You are here! that was designed to be viewed onsite at Red Hook Village Hall, the geographic location of the original Hardscrabble, on September 18, 2021, Hardscrabble Day. References in the text that reflect the assumption that the viewer is in that location. You Are Here! focuses on the history of the immediate area, or “four corners” of the Village of Red Hook. No one is quite sure why it was first called Hardscrabble in the late 1700s, a word suggesting poor soil, and tough work. Perhaps this is why the term went to quickly and completely out of use in the early 1800s. David Van Ness, whose Maizeland home still stands adjacent to the Red Hook Central School on West Market Street, started to name and operate the Red Hook Post Office out of this area and the original Red Hook hamlet, three miles north, was forevermore relegated to the relative position of Upper Red Hook. A letter to the editor in the July 22, 1859 Red Hook Weekly Journal scolds the paper for not mentioning the original name of Hardscrabble in a recent historic profile, but then acknowledges, “Why this harsh name was applied to our beautiful village I have been unable to ascertain from tradition or historical sources.”  So the origin of the story was lost by 1859. This exhibition examines the intersection of the north/south and east/west roads that were central in establishing Red Hook’s purpose, identity and growth. We are introduced to the members of (and extant buildings related to) the Massonneau family, who were important business and civic leaders in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Maps Show Longstanding “Four Corners” ABOVE: Maps of the vicinity over generations. Contemporary map shows the location of the three extant commercial buildings related to the Massonneau family. North/South: From Footpath to Highway Several thousand years ago, the Indigenous peoples living in this vicinity were more accurate in the name they gave the enormous waterway a few miles west of today’s Red Hook village. We incorrectly refer to it as a “river,” which by definition means that it would flow in one direction. But the Indigenous Peoples’ descriptive name, Muhheakantuck, referred to the alternating flow of the massive tidal estuary, put in motion by the moon’s gravitational pull. This dual directional force was particularly handy in the days before the 1807 invention of steamboats. Red Hook sits roughly halfway between the massive waterway’s connection to the sea (New York City) and its connection to the east/west oriented Mohawk River (near Albany). This “in between” nature of the area was accelerated with the 1825 opening of the Erie Canal which amplified the Mohawk River so that canal boats could connect to Lake Erie at Buffalo. Route 9, which had been known as the Albany Post Road (connecting Manhattan and Albany), and before that in colonial times known as the King’s Road, was originally a footpath created by Indigenous people. Until a century ago, the Hudson River froze for several months in the winter, giving preference to the path or road, another reason the road grew, and was maintained parallel to the river. By 1864, the railroad between New York City and Albany stopped at Barrytown and Tivoli. The area that is today Red Hook approximates a border area between the Mahican, whose large civilization extended north from the area of the U-shaped Roeliff Jansen Kill, a stream that is the settlement area of today’s Columbia County – and the Wappinger or Delaware, whose large civilization extended south from the area of the y-shaped Wappinger Creek, a stream that is the settlement area of today’s Dutchess County. Water was so important you can feel the surveyors stretching as much as they could to include large spring-fed lakes leaving Red Hook today with a little bump on its eastern border! The Profound Influence of Water on Settlement Above: Indigenous people did not draw lines or think of land “ownership” in the way that arriving Europeans did. But waterways did influence settlement and was an organizing factor among cohesive groups. Water was so important you can feel the surveyors stretching (far right image above) as much as they could to include large spring-fed lakes leaving Red Hook today with a little bump on its eastern border! Hamlets generally emerged organically along streams The Village of Red Hook grew out of one of the several hamlets in the Town of Red Hook. Typical of the Hudson Valley, this is in contrast to the early New England approach of centrally planned towns. Although Sharon, Connecticut and Amenia in eastern Dutchess County are only eight miles from each other, they are classic examples of the difference. A High Profile Area In Between ABOVE LEFT TO RIGHT: The area that is today Red Hook, was a kind of “in between” area separating the massive Mahican civilization northward, and Wappinger or Delaware southward. Photo of a typical point that is several thousand years old, with a contemporary assembly for demonstration purposes. From Deer Terrace exhibition. Courtesy of Bard College Archaeology Field School, Christopher Lindner, Director. Images of the 1940s Rhinebeck Post Office murals by Olin Dows depicting the enslaved coachman of the family of Chancellor Robert Livingston. A newspaper ad from 1800 reflects the typical method that men, women and children were bought and sold as legal “property.” In 1790, Red Hook/Rhinebeck (one municipal unit at the time) had a population of 421 enslaved men, women and children and 66 “Free Persons of Color.”  Thomas Jefferson and James Madison passed by this place on the Albany Post Road on the morning of May 23, 1791, on a tour of the Hudson Valley. Their coach was driven by Jefferson’s slave, James Hemmings, half-brother to the better known Sally Hemmings. They had left Poughkeepsie that morning, and spent the evening in Claverack, Columbia County. A few days before Christmas in 1912, as a warm-up to the massive April 1913 march to Washington D.C. as a demonstration for women to gain the right to vote, General”