The ‘‘Our towns’’ column is compiled each month by Carol Johnson of the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection. The entries have been copied from the May issues of the New Paltz Independent. To get a closer look at these newspapers of the past, visit the staff of the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection at the Elting Memorial Library at 93 Main Street in New Paltz, or call 255-5030.
Harry Dubois is very busy these days with his chickens. He has 800 little ones. However, he put them all to bed early Saturday night and attended the Junior Prom at the Normal.
Leland Silliman was elected Captain of the baseball team for the 1924 season. This is a fine start and should result in the making of a team that should hold its own during the season. Leslie Oakley, manager of the team, is arranging a schedule that will bring many fast games here.
Last Friday the children of the Kindergarten celebrated the coming of the real first month of spring. Dainty paper baskets of the various spring shades were artistically filled with the early May flowers which the children had gathered. The little ones tip-toed gaily around the building like fairies, hanging their tokens of spring on each supervisor’s door. The supervisor’s look forward to this annual spring custom. It brings so much delight to them as to the children.
On May 6 the Ku Klux Klan held a great convention in Walden. The number of visitors is estimated at 10,000. There was a parade of 700 clansmen followed by ceremonies at the Driving Park. The first speaker was the state King Kleagle. He was followed by Dr. Calvin Johnston of Massachusetts, who outlined the aims of the Klan as “free speech, a free press, free schools, distinct line of cleavage between church and state and the sanctity of American womanhood.”
The cut glass factory on Brodhead Avenue is running. Joseph Hinsberger, the proprietor, has been in the business at 408 West Street, West Hoboken, New Jersey for ten years. The factory is one of the many concerns that are migrating from the city to the country to secure better living conditions, lower taxes, etc. Mr. Hinsberger himself has five children who will attend the Normal School; and his employers, also, prefer New Paltz to most other country towns on account of the school. The factory in Hoboken did not blow glass, nor will the factory in New Paltz. The blown glass is, to a considerable extent, imported from Czecho Slovakia, formerly a part of Austria, and Bacarat, France; but the greater part comes from manufacturers in Libbey and Toledo, Ohio. The domestic blown glass is nearly if not entirely as good as the imported but some people prefer the imported. Mr. Hinsberger has employed as many as twenty-five men at Hoboken. His beginning here is on a modest scale, but will gradually be enlarged, depending largely on the cut glass market. Mr. Hinsberger’s factory has years done work for Tiffany’s and Wanamaker’s New York City and also ships its products to other cities.
Everyone is working overtime now days, but none are working harder than Mr. Bennett and his assistants from the Normal School on the work of the Pageant. It is a big proposition to display in pageantry the settlement of New Paltz, but when it is undertaken in the spirit and with the vim that it is being shown in school, the result can be nothing less than a masterpiece. Millard DuBois, who in the pageant will represent the original Louis, will carry the actual gun that Louis carried in September 1663, when he went to rescue Katherine.
On Pageant Day time will turn backward in its flight. The hum of the spinning wheel will be heard again on Huguenot Street, and people there will dress in ways that were the latest style when the old houses were new. All the old stone houses will be open to guests both before and after the pageant, which is to begin at 2:30. At every house there will be a hostess to receive and guide visitors. At the Memorial house, besides the articles always in the museum, there will be on that day beautiful china and silver of historic interest, as well as rare counterpane. Across the street at the Deyo house, now the home of Frank J. LeFevre, there will be quilting on the lawn, also refreshing drinks on sale. At the Old Fort (the DuBois House) there will be a collection of samplers, tea on the lawn, and spinning; — yes, they have found somebody who knows how to spin. At the Elting House — the house with the sub-cellar — several rooms have been furnished as in the very earliest colonial days. There will be a spinning room, candle-dipping, and switchell for sale. The sub-cellar will be open, but the good rum from the West Indies which it is said, used to be kept there safe from away from the slaves, is now all gone. But would you like to attend an early wedding? One will be enacted in the garden of the Abraham Hasbrouck House directly after the pageant. In this house, which is now the home of the artist Ivar Evers, there will be early industries shown-carpet weaving and the making of hooked rugs. The flagged kitchen of this house is of special interest. Last of all at the north end of the street is the Freer House where there will be churning by hand power and fresh buttermilk for sale.
Postmaster Krom has been able to obtain an initial supply of the Huguenot-Walloon postage stamps in 1c and 2c denominations which are now on sale at the post office.
Back in the Plutarch mountains last Monday night a gang of men attacked the home of Edward Payson Weston, 86-year-old world famous pedestrian who resides on a farm in that section of this county back of New Paltz. Mr. Weston, with his housekeeper and son reside on a farm which he purchased some time ago, when he retired. The boy, a young lad whose family was wiped out at the time of “flu” epidemic, was adopted by the famous pedestrian. A gang of men armed with sticks and rocks and at least one gun came to the place and stormed the house. The old man made what resistance he could unarmed and finally barricaded himself in one room in the upper part of the house. The gang continued to throw rocks as big as a man’s head and club at the windows of the house until not a single pane of glass remained. Then they beat down the door with a sledge hammer. During the attack Weston was shot in the leg. The attack was reported to the authorities and Sergeant Cunningham with other State Troopers has been making an intensive investigation.
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