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FDR Local Historian This page is dedicated to Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was (to say the least) an extraordinary DCHS founder and lifetime enthusiast (member, VP for Hyde Park, book author, Yearbook author, financial supporter, collections donor, among other roles. We are grateful for the foundations he laid and for the contributions that still inspire us today! Bill Jeffway, DCHS Executive Director The exhibition panels below were exhibited at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum’s Wallace Center in 2022 No mission too big. No detail too small. Band of LocalsFDR & friends: origins of the Dutchess County Historical Society This exhibition looks at the handful of Dutchess County friends, among them, FDR, whose lifetime interest in local history was wide-ranging and comprehensive. We look at some of the missions they undertook, and their collective legacy. All were early and influential founders of the Dutchess County Historical Society. One of the group’s missions involved the President of the United States leaning on the highest echelons of the British Admiralty to procure the log books of British ships engaged in the Revolutionary War on the Hudson River. They were published in the 1936 DCHS Yearbook. Another mission involved the New York Governor promoting restoration of indigenous wildflowers as part of a roadside beautification plan, parallel with a public awareness program explaining why it is important to do so. Through Dr. J. Wilson Poucher’s newspaper articles that were published as a book, we learn things like the date and location of the first arrival of the invasive plant species we contend with today, purple loosestrife. (The answer is, it arrived on the banks of the Wallkill in the mid 1860s and was called “rebels weed” being erroneously attributed to Civl War soldiers returning home and bringing it with them). In the introduction to the 1929 book, Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley before 1776, FDR said what he found most interesting about his collaboration with researcher/writer Helen Wilkinson Reynolds and photographer Margaret DeMotte Brown, was his discovery of his ancestors life saying, “From high to low their lives were the lives of pioneers, lives of hardship, of privation, and often of danger.” Using words like “simple” and “modest” he applauded a life of hard work, and moderation. Since FDR’s ancestors were of the “higher” order, it was no doubt beneficial to his political reputation to describe them in such terms. We hope this exhibition illuminates the rich and varied influence they felt local history could bring to our present and future. And gives you an idea of the tools they created and left for us to use today, should we choose to. Above left to right: Photo of FDR in WWI Homecoming Parade, September 24, 1918, Main Street Poughkeepsie, when Assistant Secretary of the Navy. John Mylod was born in Hyde Park in 1861 of Irish immigrant parents. He became a distinguished and accomplished lawyer, Catholic, Democrat, and Poughkeepsie City Historian. Helen Wilkinson Reynolds bears two well-known, local family names. Born in Poughkeepsie, her obituary noted she “leaves no immediate relatives.” Margaret DeMotte Brown arrived in Poughkeepsie in 1917 and set up a successful, professional photographic practice, becoming close to the Roosevelt family. She was frequently the photographic partner to researcher/writer Helen Wilkinson Reynolds. J. Wilson Poucher was born in Columbia County and educated in medicine in both New York and Germany. He became what was described as a local “pioneering surgeon.” Like Reynolds, he was a researcher/writer as well as steward of the emerging Dutchess County Historical Society (DCHS). FDR, born into
 an historic family and region, is quick to talk (and write) of it! FDR’s  father, James, told him stories of his Dutch and English ancestry. FDR, while attending Harvard, wrote a paper for an assignment in 1901 entitled, The Roosevelt Family in New Amsterdam before the Revolutionary War. In the paper he emphasizes his family’s “good breeding,” suggesting that the mix of old Dutch and more recent English ancestry resulted in “the [Roosevelt] stock kept virile and abreast of the times.” By 1914, FDR had persuaded his mother to remodel “Springwood” from the style of an Italian villa to a Georgian style that would incorporate fieldstone gathered from the surrounding farmland. Fieldstone was frequently used by the founding Dutch to build their homes. This would remain his preferred exterior building material for local buildings, private and public. Photo right: December 1901 paper FDR wrote at Harvard, “The Roosevelt Family in New Amsterdam Before the Revolution” where among other virtues, he noted the advantages of a solid Dutch ancestry that had married into the English, creating a “virile” stock. Revolutionary War era ancestor, Isaac Roosevelt. Courtesy the FDR Presidential Library & Museum. FDR with is father, 1895. Courtesy the FDR Presidential Library & Museum. FDR, 1900. Courtesy the FDR Presidential Library & Museum. FDR’s father James Roosevelt. Courtesy the FDR Presidential Library & Museum. The Roosevelt home prior to FDR’s 1915 renovation . Springwood renovation showing use of rough fieldstone. The Dutchess County Historical Society is Born 1914 with a calling to “great usefulness” and warned of the dangers of banquets! On April 28, 1914 there was a meeting at the Pleasant Valley Free Library billed as a discussion on whether to create a Pleasant Valley Social History Club. This led to a discussion and subsequent meeting on May 26 at the same location on a bigger idea. At this meeting the Dutchess County Historical Society was created with the local library’s H. N. W. Magill as president. Unlike the Dutchess County Society in the City of New York, the organization would have women as members and founders. Starting in 1926, FDR served as DCHS Vice President for Hyde Park until his death. On December 10, 1914, FDR wrote to the head of the Pleasant Valley Free Library, H. N. W. Magill, who emerged as the first President of DCHS, saying he is unlikely to be able to make a meeting of the emerging organization, but wished to share ideas.

Milan 1947          

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