Rhinebeck Rises

The Dutchess County Historical Society is showing extraordinarily rare local films from 1918 and 1919 at, and in partnership with, Upstate Films’ Starr Cinema in Rhinebeck, on Wednesday, November 11, Veterans Day, at 5 pm. The films have not been seen in 107 years. Recently discovered and restored, they illuminate the unprecedented involvement of the men, women and children of Dutchess County in support of the two million Americans who were in Europe by the end of the war.

The effects of the war and the simultaneous flu pandemic were devastating; yet the films also show joyous small-town celebrations, the breakthrough of women gaining the right to vote, and the 1919 inauguration of the Rhinebeck fairgrounds as the home of the Dutchess County Fair, which has been held there ever since.

Often overshadowed by the more recent World War Two, this war was so devastating, and so unprecedented in scale, that at the time it was called the Great War, and the “war to end all wars.”

The films show Boy Scouts, Junior Red Cross girls, aging Civil War veterans, families, politicians and community groups. All segments of society endured the hardships of a war that saw women breaking barriers out of necessity, and children raising money and helping on farms, because so many men and women were abroad or at domestic camps at home. On top of this, at the height of the fighting, the world encountered the horrors of a global flu pandemic.

The making of this movie has prompted other discoveries. A resident has come forward with the trunk of the man you will see flying a biplane, Lieutenant Arthur Haen of Rhinebeck, who died from the pandemic three months after the films were taken. The Museum of Rhinebeck History brought forward the propeller broken in his forced landing at Springbrook Park. Rhinebeck Bank shared the ledgers naming the individuals we see giving to the bond drives in the films. We were able to take full advantage of the Rhinebeck Historical Society’s incredible stewardship of the Rhinebeck Gazette, including both original copies and its searchable fully digitized library.

There is a small transaction fee to secure tickets through Upstate Films’ website for Starr Cinema.