USA > New York > Dutchess County > The history of Dutchess County, New York > Part 20
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Value of lot for Academy Building $ 2,000.00
building thereon
11,128.15
library
169.00
Philosophical Apparatus
167.50
Academy Furniture 300.00
Total $13,758.65
There was a debt of $5,540.51 for the payment of which, with in- terest and insurance, a fund of $400 was set apart from the receipts each year, while the balance went to the principal, who paid from it the assistant teachers. That the principal made no great fortune from the arrangement is evident from the statement that the receipts for the year amounted to $1,514.12. There were all together five teachers during the year, but only four at any one time. R. E. Rob- erts, a graduate of the University of Cambridge, England, taught languages. For the first three months he received $66. "For the next six months his compensation was $200 for five hours' service each day. About two weeks from the close of the term Mr. Roberts was removed from the Academy by his death in the twenty-seventh year of his age. He had been a teacher about two years." Ansel H. Tobey, aged thirty-one, taught penmanship and natural sciences. He re- ceived $125 per term of twenty-two weeks and had been a teacher about five years. Darwin Canfield, aged twenty-two, taught English and Arithmetic and received $400 a year. Luther Northrup, forty- three, taught history and geography and was paid $400 a year for teaching one-half of the hours. William Jenney, the principal, was a graduate of New York University, twenty-nine years of age, and of fours years experience. He was the first principal in the new build- ing. One of the last in the old building was Eliphas Fay and he and William MacGeorge were perhaps the most notable of the principals
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of the Academy. Fay afterwards conducted a private school in Union street. Following were the rates of tuition in the Academy in 1839- 1840, per quarter :
The Common Branches, including reading, spelling, writing, gram- mar and arithmetic $4.50
The Common Branches with history 5.00
The above with chemistry, book keeping, philosophy and Algebra 6.00 The higher branches of Mathematics 7.00
Greek and Latin 8.00
French and Drawing, extra per quarter 5.00
The terms were of twenty-three weeks and began the first Wednes- days of May and November, each preceded by a vacation of three weeks. Board in the family of the principal, including stationery and all necessary expenses, was $90 a term, and it was stated that good board in families in the vicinity of the Academy could be obtained at $3.00 a week. The report was adopted by A. G. Storm, John Brush, Alexander Forbus, Thomas L. Davies, Richard D. Davis, Peter P. Hayes, Frederick Barnard and Leonard Maison, trustees. The Academy finally had to be given up on account of the progress made by the High School. In 1866 the Academy building was rented to the city, and the High School, after having been discontinued a year, was re-opened there. It is a matter of some regret that the city authorities did not see fit to continue it in the old building, but a more central location was demanded and in 1870 the building was sold to Jonathan Warner, founder of the Old Ladies' Home, and the money received was donated by the Academy trustees to the Board of Edu- cation to be used in the construction of the present High School.
The reputation of being "the City of Schools" came to Pough- keepsie mostly through the institutions founded during the improve- ment party's best days, and the Poughkeepsie Collegiate School, founded in 1835, was the greatest of them and has left the most con- spicuous monument-the Grecian temple which still crowns College Hill. This school was opened in 1836 with Charles Bartlett as prin- cipal and it was soon attracting boys from all parts of the state and nation. Mr. Bartlett ranked as a leading educator of his time and the Collegiate School was regarded in its day as quite as impor- tant and quite as much an object of local pride as Vassar College is
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to-day. Charles Bartlett died in 1857 and the school was continued by Otis Bisbee and Charles B. Warring, who had been among his lead- ing teachers. Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War Mr. Bisbee and Mr. Warring dissolved partnership and the latter erected a build- ing on Smith street and opened the Poughkeepsie Military Institute, the first military school in Poughkeepsie. Mr. Bisbee introduced the military drill on College Hill a year or two later and remained there until 1867, when the property was sold to settle the estate of Charles Bartlett. He then erected the present Riverview Academy in the southwest part of the town and it has continued an excellent and popu- lar school under the management of his son, Joseph Bartlett Bisbee. The Warring School continued for a considerable number of years and its building is now a public school. Riverview is the only sur- vivor of the institutions of the Improvement Party, but Lyndon Hall dates almost to their time. It was organized in 1848 as the Pough- keepsie Female Collegiate Institute by Dr. Charles H. P. Mcclellan, who conducted it for about ten years. His successor was Rev. C. D. Rice. Prof. G. W. Cook bought the property in 1870 when the school became known as Cook's Collegiate Institute, a name which it retained until purchased by its present principal, Samuel Wells Buck, who christened it Lyndon Hall.
The Poughkeepsie Female Academy, one of the most important in- stitutions of the improvement party, erected the large building on Cannon street, now owned by the Women's Christian Temperance Union. This academy was founded in 1836 and was for many years the largest of the boarding schools for girls in the city. The last principal was Rev. D. G. Wright, who discontinued the school in 1885.
There have been probably not less than fifty private schools at various times in Poughkeepsie, some of them rather large institutions. The Cottage Hill Seminary, on the east side of Garden street where the Shwartz block now stands, was an important school for girls for many years and the building was last used as a boys' school under the principalship of John Miley for a few years in the early eighties. Lydia Booth, a step niece of Matthew Vassar, was one of the early proprietors of the girls' school there. A school of some renown was conducted by the Friends for a number of years in a building still standing on Mansion Square. It was one of the places visited by Henry Clay when he came to Poughkeepsie in 1839. The present
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Putnam Hall School for girls occupies a building erected soon after the war by Mr. and Mrs. Edward White. It was for a long time known as Brooks Seminary. Space will permit only mere mention of other private schools long since gone, like the Pelham Institute, Bish- op's or Leslie's for boys, Miss Bosworth's School, Butler's and Bockee's for girls and the Quincy, the latter only recently given up.
An institution of much importance for a time was the "State and National Law School," brought to Poughkeepsie from Ballston in December, 1852. Its president was John W. Fowler, a man of con- siderable prominence as a lecturer, and was located in the building at 233-235 Main street. A good many lawyers of wide reputation were educated there, including several who became prominent on the bench. Judge Conklin, of Utica, father of Roscoe Conklin, Judge Henry Booth, of Chicago, and Matthew Hale were for a time among its professors. This institution was crippled by the Civil War and soon closed.
Eastman College was started in a very small way by Harvey G. Eastman in the autumn of 1859. Its first quarters were in the same Main street building, then called the Library Building, where the law school was located. Eastman was a wonderfully clever advertiser and soon drew students, although he had almost no equipment. He made a specialty of reaching the young men whose terms of enlistment were expiring in the army and at the close of the Civil War so many of them had come here that they taxed his ability and the resources of the city to care for them. Two or three old churches, the upper floor of the City Hall and all the unoccupied rooms that could be ob- tained were rented and fitted with desks, and the 1,800 students were scattered all over town wherever they could find a place to board. Though his equipment was scanty, Eastman infused some of his own energy into his students and brought the most eminent men of the day here to lecture to them. The number of students never again approached the crowd that came here following the war, but the college has always been a most important institution and seldom has less than four or five hundred students. After Mr. Eastman's death it was conducted by Ezra White, who erected the present college build- ing on Washington street. Clement Carrington Gaines has been the president since 1884 and has considerably widened the course of study.
Away back before 1830 Poughkeepsie had a Lyceum Association
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POUGHKEEPSIE.
and a Mechanics' Literary and Benevolent Association. The latter had a library of about 270 volumes and a cabinet of minerals. These Associations were united and incorporated in 1838 as the Pough- keepsie Lyceum of Literature, Science and Mechanic Arts." The Ly- ceum Association was for many years a very active and important educational force. It did not attempt to make money and the price of the lectures was put so low as to be in the reach of nearly every- body, but it brought here many of the leading men of the times. It is still in existence, though its lecture course was given up in 1889 and its annual income, now about $125, is devoted to the purchase of books for the City Library.
The Public Library, which brought together the books of this older Association and of earlier circulating libraries, was moved into what was called the Library Building, already mentioned, 233-235 Main street, early in December, 1852. The Library had been formed under the school district library law in 1835. With the exception of a year or two in the court house, it remained there until the Library and High School building was erected in 1872 and gradually grew to be a large library. In October, 1898, it was removed to the beautiful Adriance Memorial Library building, which had been erected and pre- sented to the city by the children of John P. Adriance as a memorial to their father and mother. The Library soon afterwards was taken out of the control of the board of education and given to a board of library trustees, first appointed in 1899. In 1872 the Library con- tained not quite 5,000 volumes and the number of books loaned was less than 20,000 per year. In 1908 the number of volumes was 44,577 and the number loaned about 112,000.
The public schools are now, of course, the schools in which the citi- zens are most interested, but they were not among the first. There was a school of some kind in Poughkeepsie certainly as early as the Revolution, and on a map made in 1790 the Church street lot, on which public school No. 2 now stands, is marked "the school house lot." A school building has been located there ever since. It was the site for many years of the Lancaster School, founded in 1811, a school which in a sense was the forerunner of our present public school system, though it was only partly a free school. A few free pupils were educated in the Dutchess County Academy and in the other incorporated schools and there were at an early date what were
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called "common schools," partly supported by subscription. The free public schools of Poughkeepsie, entirely supported by taxation, date from 1843, when the first board of education was created by act of the Legislature. David L. Starr, Ira Armstrong, Thomas Austin, Benjamin Gile, Isaac Platt, Egbert B. Killey, George C. Marshall, Barnett Hawkins, James Reynolds, Jr., William P. Gibbons, Christo- pher Appleton and Matthew J. Myers constituted the first board. They were given authority to borrow $12,000 and to raise $6,000 by taxation. On January 29th, 1844, the first grammar school for boys was finished and opened on the corner of Mill and Bridge streets. Josiah I. Underhill was its principal. The public school system de- veloped slowly, the private schools and academies receiving for many years most of the patronage of those who were able to pay. Until the incorporation of the city in 1854 the village constituted only a single school district and received but small share of the state money. The collection of school taxes up to that time remained with the town authorities. Under the city administration the High School made a beginning in 1859, but it was moved about to several locations until the sale of the Dutchess County Academy when the present High School building was erected in 1872. The central Grammar School addition was made to the building in 1899. New school buildings have since been erected on Lincoln avenue, on Delafield street and in place of the old No. 1 school on Mill street. Important improve- ments have been made in the courses of study and the High School some years ago was made a college preparatory school.
A few words should be said about what was widely known as the "Poughkeepsie plan." This had reference to two school buildings erected by the Roman Catholics for parochial schools. They were taken by the city at nominal rental. The teachers in them were nearly all members of religious orders, but were paid by the city. Outside of school hours the buildings were used for religious services. The plan worked well enough during most of the long and able pastorate of the Rev. James Nilan at St. Peter's Church, but was finally given up in 1898, at a time when there was much turmoil in the school board. For a few years after this one of the buildings was rented to the city for $1,000, but has recently again been made a parochial school.
THE OLD LIVINGSTON HOUSE, POUGHKEEPSIE. Now the office of the Phoenix Horseshoe Co.
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POUGHKEEPSIE.
VASSAR COLLEGE.
Vassar College, the first of woman's colleges, founded by Matthew Vassar, was chartered by the Legislature, January 18, 1861. There were twenty-eight trustees, of whom about half were residents of Poughkeepsie. Benson J. Lossing and others have so fully written the history of the college that it is unnecessary to go into details here. Matthew Vassar at the beginning gave the site, about two hun- dred acres of land, part of which had once been a race track, and he added some $400,000. James Renwick, Jr., was the architect of the main building and William Harloe, of Poughkeepsie, the contractor. As the work of construction was done during the war, at constantly rising prices, Mr. Harloe lost heavily by his venture. The college was opened in September, 1865, with 353 students. There were no college preparatory schools for girls at that time and these first students were of all grades, a few of them pretty well advanced, but by far the greater number not qualified to enter according to the present standards. It took most of the first year to clasify them, and when the second catalogue came out, 1866-1867, four had been found fit to rank as seniors and they constituted the class of 1867, the first class to graduate at Vassar. Even in that catalogue seventy- eight students were put down as unclassified and 189 as "specials." During that year, however, the preparatory department was organ- ized and it numbered seventy-five students in the third catalogue. The fact that Vassar maintained a preparatory department won her the enmity for a number of years of all the proprietors of higher grade collegiate and classical schools for girls. It was deemed necessary, however, to maintain the department and it was not abolished until 1887, the year after President James M. Taylor took charge. Under his vigorous management the growth of the college has been con- tinuous, until in 1905 the trustees found it necessary to limit the number of students for a term of five years to one thousand. That number has been several times slightly exceeded. The college has been almost completly transformed, so that the early graduates hardly know it when they return to reunions. Five new dormitories, a chapel, library, recitation hall, infirmary and two science buildings have been erected during Dr. Taylor's term. The death of Matthew Vassar occurred in June, 1868, when he was addressing an annual meeting of the trustees. His nephews, Matthew Vassar, Jr., and John Guy Vas-
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THE COUNTY OF DUTCHESS.
sar, continued his interest in the institution. The former died in 1881 and the latter in 1888. Both left the college considerable sums of money and John Guy Vassar made it one of his residuary legatees. His estate was in litigation until 1891, when the college obtained a large addition to its endowment. Others came forward to take the place of the Vassars, and John D. Rockefeller and Frederick F. Thompson have been large benefactors. The new chapel, erected in 1904, was the gift of two graduates, Mrs. Mary Thaw Thompson, "77, and Mrs. Mary Morris Pratt, '80. The magnificent library is the gift of the widow of Frederick F. Thompson, the infirmary of Mrs. Edward S. Atwater, of Poughkeepsie, the New England Build- ing of the New England Alumna and the latest building completed in February, 1909, is the Sanders Memorial Laboratory for Chemistry, given by Henry M. Sanders, one of the trustees, in memory of his wife.
TRADING AND MANUFACTURING.
Soon after the incorporation of the Village of Poughkeepsie there was considerable activity on the part of the town authorities in laying out new roads and streets. Main street was extended through to the river "at or near the place commonly called Caul Rock Landing." In 1800, and in 1802 the eastern end of the street, beginning at the court house, was surveyed as a part of the new Dutchess Turnpike, leading to the eastern boundary of the county. The maps made by the turnpike surveyors are still in existence. About 1806 the Post Road north and south was re-surveyed and its location changed in many places as the Highland Turnpike. It continued as a turnpike until 1833 and there was once a tollgate on the South Road, about at the present city limits. The Dutchess Turnpike became at once a most important stage route from Connecticut, bringing much trade to Poughkeepsie. Great loads of country produce were brought here for shipment to New York and the freighting business on the river made much progress. In 1813 eight sloops were sailing weekly to New York from Poughkeepsie and three steamboats also landed each week at the foot of Main street. In 1814 Poughkeepsie became a steamboat terminal, the Firefly, the smallest boat of the Fulton and Livingston fleet, sailing three times a week from "Pardee's dock" at the foot of Main street. The Main street landing seems to have been called by several names, but most of the land around it had been pur-
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POUGHKEEPSIE.
chased in 1800 by William Davies. The upper landing had been the site of a mill since the first settlements, as we have seen, and the ferry was established there as early as 1798. A group of industries grew up about the neighborhood soon after 1800. The Oakley, Hoffman, Reynolds and Innis families were engaged in freighting, milling and manufacturing there and the mills afterwards became the Gifford, Sherman and Innis Dyewood Mills, one of the most important of the city's industries, but discontinued some fifteen years ago. The Ferry Company was incorporated in 1819 and at that time the old periauger, or sail ferry, was superseded by a "team ferry," or horse boat, which in turn gave place to a steamboat in 1830. The ferry landing was moved to Main street in 1879, by which time the upper landing had lost most of its business. Two of the old Dyewood buildings remain, one of them in use as a chair factory. The mill itself was sold to the railroad company and was torn down. The old wooden building, originally Oakley's nail factory and afterwards for many years Ar- nold's chair factory, was burned in 1908 and replaced by a brick building. The power house of the electric lighting company was erected on the site of one of the old upper landing storehouses in 1894.
The lower landing, foot of Pine street, and the Union landing, foot of Union street, were for many years very busy places, particularly the former, and there was also in early days a landing still further south, in the neighborhood of the Separator Works, called John Reed's Landing and later Holthuysen's. Sloops ran from all of these for the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when they began to be super- seded by "towboats," or barges, towed to New York by steamboats. The New York and Albany steamboats selected Main street as their point of call from the first and gradually drew business from the other landings. As time went on, however, lines of steamboats were es- tablished with their headquarters at the upper, lower and Main street landings, and there was at one time also a steamboat from the foot of Union street. The lower landing was abandoned as a terminus in 1872 and the upper landing in 1873 by a consolidation of the various local freighting interests. The Union street landing in 1848 had passed into the hands of the Poughkeepsie Iron Company, when the first local blast furnace was erected there. William Bushnell, Joseph Tuckerman and Edward Beck were early proprietors of this furnace, with Albert E. Tower as superintendent. The ores were brought
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from Sylvan Lake, in Dutchess County, and fluxed with Barnegat limestone. Mr. Tower afterwards became owner of the furnace, which was long called the Lower Furnace. The Upper Furnace, still stand- ing, was built in 1859, near the old Whale Docks. The lower fur- nace was dismantled in 1885 and the Poughkeepsie Yacht Club House now stands on its once busy wharf, in old times piled high with coal, limestone and pig iron.
The Fall Kill for many years was an important factor in the business development of Poughkeepsie. The first large mill pond was that above Smith street, known as the Red Mill pond, and known in later years as Winnikee Pond. Possibly the first dam was constructed there as early as 1730 by Frans LeRoy, though there seems to be no definite record of it until it came under the ownership of Bartholomew Crannell, as shown on a map made in 1770. There was a small mill pond above the falls, near the mouth of the stream before 1800, but the first large storage reservoir there was built by George Booth about 1803. This was later known as Pelton's Pond and was the last sur- vivor of the Fall Kill mill ponds. This dam was finally taken down in 1899. Booth is said to have brought from England the first wool carding machinery used in this country. He conducted a woolen fac- tory also near Wappingers Falls. Not far above Booth's pond on the Fall Kill a cotton factory was established about 1811 by David and Benjamin Arnold, and just beyond the Post Road bridge was Ellison's mill, afterwards Parker's. There were a number of cotton and woolen factories in the town of Poughkeepsie down to the close of the war of 1812, but most of them were ruined by the period of free trade that followed the declaration of peace, in 1815. Spafford's Gazateer says that there were also fifty looms in families producing 20,000 yards of cloth, and says there were fourteen 1grain mills in the town at that time. Not more than four or five of these mills could have been in the village. One was at the mouth of the Spacken Kill and is still stand- ing; several were on the Caspar Kill and most of the rest probably on the Wappingers, though very small streams like the one flowing through Vassar College Lake turned mills in those days.
1. Spafford speaks of the success of Dutchess County agriculture as due largely to the fact that this county was one of the first to use gypsum as a fertilizer. Old residents say that the gypsum was imported in rock form from Nova Scotia and ground in the same milis that ground grain, the mills grinding the rock for "land plaster" part of the year, then cleaning out and grinding grain later in the season.
JOHN E. MACK.
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There was an iron foundry in Poughkeepsie as early as 1814, located on the corner of Main and Washington streets, and opposite, on the west corner, was Ebenezer Badger's tannery. Later foundries were established from time to time further up Main street, and one of them, started in 1831 by Solomon B. Frost and Benjamin Vail, survives to-day as the Poughkeepsie Foundry and Machine Company, with a large new plant north of the Central New England Railroad.
The first Vassar Brewery was built about 1802 by James Vassar and was burned in 1811. A larger building took its place and the management fell to James Vassar's son, Matthew Vassar. This brew- ery was on the site of Vassar Institute, but extending through to Bridge street. By 1830 it had become a very profitable industry, occupying a group of buildings, and in 1836 the brewery at the river, still standing, was erected. It was here that most of the fortune was accumulated that went to the founding of Vassar College. The for- tunes of Matthew Vassar, Jr., and John Guy Vassar, nephews of Matthew Vassar, were only partly made in the brewing business, most of them resulting from fortunate investments in outside enterprises.
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