Hacketts and Cunneens

were educational exercises for children during the day at the Collingwood Opera House (now the Bardavon Theater), and an illustrated lecture. I only wish I could report these events in depth. That evening there was another exercise in history for adults, plus orchestral and vocal music. There was also a grand opening illumination of the city (probably including the "Court of Honor" which will be mentioned later) and of Eastman Park. This was described as "the most elaborate and beautiful spectacle" ever seen in the city. October I saw the community go into high gear for the celebration. In the morning there were opportunities to take passenger trains over the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge. Trolley cars were available for exciting trips around the city. In addition, the old Toonerville Trolley went all the way from the West Shore Ferry Landing to the West Shore Railroad tracks. After a short walk across the tracks, a main line trolley car transported the adventurous up the hill to Highland; thence for miles and miles to New Paltz - a true landmark of history, itself. In the afternoon, one could attend Poughkeepsie Day at the great Dutchess County Fair. Its location was the Hudson River Driving Park at Hooker and Grand Avenues. There were to be trotting races, steeplechases, running races, Wild West exhibits, bands, and a military drill staged by a whole battalion of infantry. You can be sure the trolley cars on the South Side line took multitudes of passengers to the fairgrounds - Bill Smith and I can remember them going by our homes on Hooker Avenue, packed full and hanging on during Fair Week each summer. In the evening, all the lodges, fraternal organizations, churches and orders held open house and there was - think of it - a magnificent electrical display utilizing over 80,000 candle power. No mention was made as to who paid the bill or if Central Hudson picked up the tab. Ernest Acker assures me that it was then the "Light, Heat and Power Company." Saturday, October 2nd, marked the arrival of the flotilla; Half Moon and Clermont, with a guard of honor that was still composed of a magnificent array of battleships representing the United States and other nations, plus yachts, tugs and other floating items. They were due at 1:30 p.m. and no record tells us just when the anchors splashed down, nor is there a report on how wind and tide affected the timing. The flotilla was officially received by Mayor Sague, plus a real retired Rear Admiral. Present also was Peter Troy - as chairman of the executive committee. The reception was held on board the Steam Yacht Nourmahal - belonging to John Jacob Astor and loaned for the local effort. Evidently all the important officers and participants joined in this event. Remember, there were people included who took the parts of Henry Hudson, Robert Fulton, his fiancee (Miss Livingston) and other historical personages. They were, of course, dressed in suitable costumes. The entire fleet remained at anchor off the city for two days and on the first evening, search lights and other illuminations constituted "an interesting feature." There was a magnificent display of fireworks at Kaal Rock at 8:00 p.m. The advance publicity assured us that "the pyrotechnics will consist exclusively of aerial pieces and will be the finest

ever seen in Poughkeepsie." The display required at least one and a half hours. If you had no radio, T.V., talking pictures or other diversion, there's no question where you'd go to get some action that night - especially the excitement publicized as "the finest ever seen in Poughkeepsie." Any place commanding a view of the pyrotechnics must have been jam-packed. Poughkeepsie was well prepared and ready for a celebration and for the reception of the great naval parade. There was a Court of Honor in Market Street from Main to about Cannon Street. It consisted of six or eight great white fluted columns standing at about the street gutters between the Courthouse, Post Office and Nelson House on the West side and Smith Brothers' Restaurant, Fallkill Bank, the Poughkeepsie Savings Bank and the Collingwood Opera House on the East. The columns were tied together with strings of lights - substitute "magnificent illumination" - as a focal point of the whole affair. The Light, Heat and Power Company must have worked overtime. There was undoubtedly a great deal of evening activity - especially among the boat crews on lower Main Street. Tim Haggerty's saloon at 67 Main must have taken care of a large and varied clientele. There were many other social centers that helped out and gave the city a reputation for hospitality. However, after sundown, there appears to have been no great civic endeavor and, probably, after two weeks of celebrating, the honored passengers and crews were happy to have a good night's sleep. Sunday, October 3rd, had the overtones of the quiet Sabbath of our youth, plus as much planned activity as could be tolerated. The Reverend Dr. Alexander G. Cummins held a special service (with important visitors) at Christ Church. St. Mary's Church and Vassar College participated in a fresh air exercise on College Hill (I believe the Poughkeepsie Collegiate School in that location had not burned yet). The 21st Regiment Band played selections including "Nearer My God to Thee". After the religious exercises, the Germania Singing Society, plus Euterpe and Orpheus, held forth with inspriational choral music. Following this - in due observance of the Sundays of that day, things - at least officially - quieted down to get ready for Monday. And Monday was the day that was to be the climax in Poughkeepsie. Starting at 9:00 a.m. there were band concerts. Five of them. The printed announcements say they were held simultaneously in Cataract Square, Union Square, Mansion and Trinity Squares and Eastman Park. In the afternoon there was a great parade - divisions assembled in various streets on the North side of town - Mill, Vassar, Bridge, Bayeux (or North Perry) Streets and Dutchess Avenue. The parade line of march was up Mill Street to North Hamilton, around Mansion Square Park, down Mansion to Conklin to Mill to North Clover. This in itself was quite a trek, but then they marched to Main and up Main to South Hamilton to Montgomery and west to Academy, north to Main to Market and through the Court of Honor to the Soldiers Fountain. After brief exercises there, all adjourned to Eastman Park where the four to five hundred band musicians mobilized and saluted Governor Hughes. Before the platform, on which Governor Hughes was the

central figure, there was a flag demonstration representing the Spirit of 1776 and of 1909 (War and Peace). The closing feature of this striking picture was to be a rendition of the Stars and Stripes Forever, Hail to the Chief, and Columbia the Gem of the Ocean. After Governor Hughes' brief address it was all concluded with the Star Spangled Banner. The alfresco exercises were over and the excitement moved inside. Now Poughkeepsie was to be host to the whole entourage. So many people were involved that two great banquets must be held. The Nelson House (our premier hostelry) had the following menu:

Caviar Sea Puits Celery Radishes Green Turtle a l'Anglais Salted Nuts Olives Broiled Pompano Maitre D'Hotel Julienne Potatoes Sweetbreads - Larded - Macedoine Half Moon Punch English Golden Plover French Peas Sweet Potato Glace Crab Flake Mayonnaise Peach Ice Cream Cake Camembert Water Crackers Coffee Cigars Appolinaris Sherry Haut Sauterne Champagne

Governor Hughes dined there and gave his speech which was, we are assured, well received. There was music of course, and the piano was loaned by the manufacturer, Harry Bayer of Poughkeepsie. Flowers were furnished by the Saltford Flower Shop. Shortly, the Governor must go and give a speech (the same one, perhaps?) in the Pompeian Room at the Morgan House. For your information and delectation, the menu there was:

Oyster Cocktail Olives Celery Radishes Green Turtle au Quenelles Boiled Kennebac River Salmon, Anchovy Sauce Pomme Natural

Broiled Venison Steak, Londonderry Sauce Pomme Paille Roast Jumbo Squab

Glaced Sweet Potatoes Asparagus on Toast Lettuce and Tomato, Mayonnaise

Individual Ice Cream Petit Fours Fruit

Roquefort Cheese Bent's Water Crackers Demi Tasse

To Order Moet and Chandon White Seal

Many names - prominent then and sometimes remembered now, took the lead in the Poughkeepsie involvement: There were, of course, John K. Sague, mayor at that time, George V.L. Spratt - mayor at a much later date - and Peter H. Troy who was always in the limelight. They were important in

arranging the affair. But well-known and influential people like the Adriances, Charles Cossum, Howard Platt (of Luckey Platt), Frank Van Kleeck (Baltus' father) are mentioned. Names like Perkins, Butts, Frank, Otis, Valentine, Vail, Sherman, Hinkley, Overocker, Grubb and Guernsey were leaders in the affair. The committee published 10,000 booklets, contacted expatriates trying to get them to come home for the event, arranged essay contests for school children (the prizes were trips to Kingston on the "Clermont"), and a considerable educational exposure for local citizens. Just to show the changes in our commercial life in less than 70 years, listen to the names of advertisers in the local booklet: Central Hudson Steamboat Rose Brick - Roseton Schrauths Ice Cream A.V. Haight - Printers Hickock Music Day Line - Steamers Albany, Mary Powell, Hendrick Hudson, Robert Fulton Nelson House and Palatine Hotels Eastman Business School Scott's Emulsion of Cod Liver Oil W.T. Reynolds & Co. - Wholesale Grocers Sic Transit Gloria Mundi! At the end of the reception at the Morgan House, the big event in Poughkeepsie went, finally, into eclipse. Local celebrities returned home and shed their full dress and white ties. A great event had been planned and carried out. The suits could go back to the tailors, whence many had been rented. Poughkeepsie's effort - matching those in many places along the river - had reached its climax. The flotilla went to Kingston on October 5th and thence - by degrees - to Albany and Cohoes, the end of navigable water. The great parade - with its ancillary land parades, receptions, lectures, illuminations, fireworks and all the other exciting events, came to an end. When you study this explosion in celebration, you wonder how it happened. You ask, why did a whole population devote so much effort to a remembrance of things past? You begin to understand how much effort was given to an odd sort of memorial. And then you realize it had never happened before or since. It becomes patent that such an outburst of enthusiasm will probably not happen again in our lifetimes, or, maybe ever. But, my gracious, now that you know something about this pageant and, hopefully, can visualize it and, maybe, have the echo of the band music in your minds, aren't you glad that this country, only a generation or so ago, put on such a great show as this?

Among families which have contributed to human and business values in recent Mid-Hudson history, the Hacketts, related by marriage to the Cunneens of Albion, are of considerable interest. While they made their mark significantly in the field of law, one of them brought to the area the strong social interest and energy of his bride Charlotte Cunneen. In the manner of so many Americans, these families grew from small immigrant beginnings to positions of leadership in their communities. John Hackett was born in Clonmell, Ireland, in 1845 and immigrated to Hyde Park with his family when he was seven years old. His father was employed by owners of river estates and young John graduated from local schools and from Eastman Business College. By 1865 he had read law, had passed the Bar and was beginning practice as an attorney. In 1868 there was built for his widowed mother and himself a house which is today the headquarters of the Boy Scouts on East Park Road just east of the Village of Hyde Park. A large house costing $1500, it originally had eight rooms and was heated by wood stoves, lighted by oil lamps, and water came from a pump on the back porch. Later there were the additions of inside water and plumbing, fireplaces, gas light and finally electricity. In 1880, John Hackett married Harriet V. Mulford and soon the household included their two sons, John Mulford and Henry Thomas, as well as John's mother and his mother-in-law. It was also family home for a brother of John's who was employed in New York City. Needless to say, additional bedrooms were built and the kitchen was expanded. John Hackett was one of the most respected attorneys in Poughkeepsie history. His practice was both private and public, as he was District Attorney for a number of years. He customarily commuted by horseback each day from his Hyde Park house to his law office at 226 Union Street in the center of Poughkeepsie. During the great Blizzard of 1888 he hired a draft horse in order to return home with food and supplies for his isolated family. When John Hackett died in 1916, the Poughkeepsie Eagle wrote of his "nigh imperishable record of glory and honor and love in the annals of the legal profession in Dutchess County" and called him "the most revered and beloved of all the members of the Dutchess County Bar." Hattie Mulford Hackett survived her husband by ten years, spending the rest of her life in the Hyde Park house as did her son Henry, a retiring lawyer who was a close friend and personal attorney of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Executor of his estate. Son John and his wife Charlotte lived in Poughkeepsie until after the death of Henry in 1951, at which time they became the new occupants of the house. John Mulford Hackett's legal career was very successful and he was also an effective Republican politician who represented the County's Second Assembly district from 1922 to 1930. In 1919, John M. Hackett had married Charlotte Cunneen whom he met while vacationing at lake Chateaugay in the Adirondacks. They were together for what has been described as a "35 year love affair," ended by his death in 1954. Charlotte Cunneen Hackett was in many ways a chip off her father's block. John Cunneen, like John Hackett, had

come to this country from Ireland, but when he landed in 1862, he was fourteen years old, pennyless and quite alone. Fortunately, he was taken in by relatives in Albion near Buffalo where, with extraordinary drive, he educated himself, ran a newspaper, passed the Bar and eventually became a leading attorney and political figure among Democrats in New York State. John Cunneen married Elizabeth Bass of Albion, a member of the distinguished Bass family of Boston, descendants of Priscilla Alden. He joined one of Buffalo's finest law firms in 1890, forged an outstanding career as a trial lawyer and was Attorney General of the state from 1900 to 1904. His professional nickname, "Old Cunnin," was close to being a household word even as far away as Poughkeepsie. John Cunneen was also known for having as many non-paying as paying clients. Charlotte Cunneen Hackett was born in Albion in 1884 and grew up in Buffalo where she was educated at the Normal School of Music, the Seminary and, after her father's death and in order to contribute to the family's support, from Buffalo Law School. She was admitted to the Bar at age 30, a quite unusual achievement for a woman at that time. Five years later she married John M. Hackett who thoroughly shared her enthusiasm for outdoor life: dogs, horseback riding and driving, which she did herself, fishing, canoeing, swimming, hiking, and simple enjoyment of nature. Charlotte became known for prose and poetry marked by the romanticism, patriotism and optimism. Witness these words from her hymn in honor of the Centenary of the nation: Girded by the mighty Hudson spanned by bridges high and broad Raise we high our spirits to Thee, give we thanks to Thee, Oh God. For the open road to progress in a land the people rule. For the precious gift of freedom, for the church, the house, the school. Childless, Charlotte became a leader of a large number of community organizations reflecting her diverse interests and her own extraordinary drive. Covering the gamut from social to civic and too numerous to recite here, they were in large part directed toward education, religion and care and encouragement of the young. On May 4, 1969, the Hackett house was christened The Cunnett House and dedicated to the Boy Scouts of America in Dutchess County. A plaque by the front door, reads: In memory of John Cunneen 1848-1907, John Hackett 1845-1916, John Mulford Hackett 1881-1954, Henry Thomas Hackett 1885-1951 However, the dedication of the family house to the Boy Scouts was just one example of Charlotte Cunneen Hackett's foresight. In 1968, she established the Cunneen-Hackett Charitable Trust for varied purposes and the trustees have administered it in accordance with her civic interests. A recent and notable contribution of her Trust is the CunneenHackett Cultural Center. Formerly the only partially used Vassar Home for Aged Men, the building was purchased and redesigned to provide low-cost office space and meeting rooms

for charitable and cultural organizations. Fully tenanted and actively used, it is an important adjunct of the MidHudson Civic Center complex. Charlotte Cunneen Hackett died in 1971 and the end of her life concluded the activities in this area of a family ingrained in the business and civic fibre of the community.

HISTORICAL TALK ON THE OCCASION OF THE INAUGURATION OF JACK ECONOMOU AS MAYOR OF THE CITY OF POUGHKEEPSIE, NEW YORK, JANUARY 1, 1972

By Clyde Griffen,

Lucy Maynard Salmon -

Professor of American History;

Vassar College

"Suburban homes with city comforts and conveniences, on the Hudson, in the most delightful residence city of America, Poughkeepsie, New York, the city of schools. . . ." This description appears on the title page of a brochure published one hundred years ago to promote a new experiment in housing here, the Eastman Terrace. Harvey Eastman had planned a block of elegant homes to attract well-to-do New Yorkers wishing to escape from the big city. Thirteen years before, Professor Eastman himself was new to Poughkeepsie, a stranger from upstate New York who previously launched a business college in St. Louis, Missouri, and in 1859 returned East to start another one in a rented room here. In less than a decade, the stranger had become one of the leading citizens of his adopted town and probably its most eager promoter. Some old-timers felt he was too pushy, but that common complaint against aggressive newcomers soon diminished. His business college proved a great success. More than a thousand students from all over the nation were enrolled by the end of the Civil War, providing extra income for the townspeople who boarded these young men as well as annoyance for those in the vicinity of their occasional sprees. The Professor won election as Mayor of the city in 1871 in a campaign reminiscent of the Improvement Party of the 1830's. He prophesied that Poughkeepsie would become a city of eighty to one hundred thousand people by the turn of the century and urged rapid prosecution of civic improvements to ensure that growth. During his first administration the city spent nearly a million dollars, a staggering sum then, for public sewage and water systems and filling in the mill ponds on the Fallkill. The Eastman Terrace project expressed the same high optimism about the city's future. But by the summer of 1873 an unsuccessful auction of the first ten houses foreshadowed financial loss on the project for Eastman. A few months later the beginning of economic depression throughout the nation ended the second boom in Poughkeepsie's history and the last period of rapid population growth before the coming of I.B.M. High hopes gave way to sober second thoughts as the city began a painful, though temporary, adjustment. One hundred years later what can incidents like these say to us? What can a city's past say to its present? At the least, such incidents remind us how much a community changes, how often our hopes and expectations are defeated by events even in the short run, and how seldom our actions result in the long run in just what we intended. Far from realizing Eastman's dreams of rapid growth, the city was not much bigger in 1900 than it was in 1870. Recently, in the wake of I.B.M. and the expansion of the New York Metropolitan Region, the attractiveness of the mid-Hudson valley

for suburban living has been exploited; but not quite in the way Eastman envisioned. Instead of clustering in parklike settings not far from the center of the city, with its concentration of shops and churches and its then easy access to New York City by steamer or by railroad, suburban housing since World War II has taken advantage of the automobile to sprawl across the landscape in every direction. The new developments in the Poughkeepsie area, as elsewhere, have provided comfortable homes for a much greater proportion of the population than Eastman ever imagined. But their ever widening consumption of open space coupled with decline in the heart of the old city make some citizens now question the very ideal of continuous growth which town promoters, past and present, have proclaimed. Within the old city, Eastman Terrace remains. Poor families now live with a spaciousness and a decor, however deteriorated, which were designed for rich merchants and gentlemen of leisure. Given the present revival of interest in things Victorian, the Terrace may become the subject of restoration, preserving some reminder of the past and some pleasing architectural diversity on a part of the river slope where most of the buildings inherited from the nineteenth century have been torn down for the arterial highway and for urban renewal. If there is restoration, let us hope we do not repeat the history of so many other restorations by driving the present poor inhabitants into more cramped quarters elsewhere. Even where the physical shell of Poughkeepsie one hundred years ago seems most intact - as in parts of Main Street above the modernized store fronts - the turnover in the enterprises in which citizens have earned their living is awesome. In retailing, the kinds of shops are not so different, but few of the families which ran them then are in the same line of business now and many no longer have any descendants in the city still bearing the name. In manufacturing, the change is almost total. All of the big factories of Eastman's day have gone out of business long since. Who now remembers the dye wood mill, the mower and reaper works, the chair, carpet, shirt, and skirt factories, and - except for Vassar students - Matthew's brewery. The only big employer now which antedates the twentieth century is DeLaval, opened in 1892 as an American branch of a Swedish firm. And DeLaval no longer is located close to the old city. If any one theme is continuous in the city's history, it is change itself - change in the people who make up the city, change in the enterprises in which they earn their living, and change in the neighborhoods in which they reside. But the moment you look closely at this process of change, you discover repetitiousness. To rephrase an old saying, the more things change, the more some things remain the same - or very similar. Always there have been newcomers in the community and, at the most general level, they have been welcome. Poughkeepsie, like most American towns in most times before the present, equated progress with growth in population and economic activity. It also shared the national faith that America is the land of opportunity and the corollary that moving around in search of the best opportunities is a good thing. But, in practice, the welcome given newcomers has

varied greatly, warmest toward those who fit in most easily, coolest toward those who seem too different or who challenge existing leadership. Throughout the nineteenth century there was a steady stream of young men from farms and villages throughout Dutchess County coming to try their luck in its chief trading center. That stream of migrants seemed so natural and so easy to assimilate that no one in the city questioned its desirability although there were instances of friction when talented but brash newcomers asserted themselves too strongly.

Possibilities for friction were compounded when large numbers of newcomers arrived in the city within a short period of time, all the more so when their outlook differed significantly from that of natives. However much they mingled in work and business, their social lives tended to remain separate for some time. The restless, aggressive Yankees who brought the improving spirit of New England into the Hudson valley during the early decades of the nineteenth century often annoyed the slower-paced and more traditionminded Yorkers of Dutch and English descent. And vice-versa. In those decades of the city's history which saw the greatest influx of immigrants from Europe - the 1840's and 1850's for the Irish and Germans, the 1900's and 1910's for Italians, Poles, Russians, and other groups from eastern and southern Europe - some natives saw the presence of so many aliens as threatening the very character of the community, its moral and religious values, as well as posing direct competition for jobs. Faced with so many strangers, natives of the city tended, as people have throughout history, to think about the newcomers in stereotypes rather than to try to understand and appreciate their differences. The Catholic Irish of the time of the great potato famine got talked about as the stock figure of Paddy - brawny, high-spirited, an easy spender, prone to drink and riot, not likely to rise above working on the railroad or day labor. When a son of Erin didn't fit that stereotype, the standard comment was, he's not like the rest of his people. Long after the stereotype of Paddy had ceased to be even a half-truth about the Catholic Irish in America, it continued to haunt them. Stereotypes about other immigrant groups - like the Italians or the Jews, whether from Germany or from Eastern Europe - have been just as prevalent and persistent. In retrospect, the surprising thing is not that there was prejudice or exploitation of one group by another, but that people of alien backgrounds did adapt to each other and to their changing positions within the life of Poughkeepsie. When newcomers succeeded in terms the community respected, most often by making money, then sooner or later the community recognized their success by accepting their participation, even their leadership, first in civic occasions and then in fraternal associations. Few people rose from poverty to riches in Poughkeepsie, butthere was enough movement up the ladder, mostly in small steps, to make men believe they could improve their position in life. Change in position between generations was much more frequent. Half of all the sons at midcentury would hold better jobs than their fathers had, like the laborer's boy learning a trade such as bricklaying or blacksmithing

and the son of a machinist becoming a bookkeeper. Where you began did make a difference; the son of a merchant started out with advantages in education and access to capital which a shoemaker or a factory worker lacked. When there was not much difference in talent or effort, those who had more to begin with, also got more. To that extent, the cards of economic reward were stacked, then as now, in favor of those already well-established in the community. European peasants who came without skills useful in a city had the greatest handicap; it took a generation or two of struggle and sacrifice before they advanced as often as Americans born of native parents. Even those immigrants who came with skills or previous experience as shopkeepers, but with no capital, usually had a harder time getting credit to start their own businesses. No wonder so many of them began with modest, part-time ventures in their own dwellings, catering to their fellow-countrymen. Looking back on the handicaps which faced these strangers in the city during their early years, what impresses you most is not the difference between their economic success and that of natives, but the comparative speed with which they narrowed the difference. Some persons in every immigrant group, and especially less skilled workers during the first years of heavy migration, found little demand for their labor. Even where there was no overt antagonism and discrimination against them, they tended to be among the last to be hired and the first to be fired, as black people have been for most of their history since emancipation. This precariousness in employment meant that they were the least stable people in the city, the most likely to move around from town to town in search of jobs. Those who were poor, but struggling to improve their lot, tended to band together to help each other through the needs and crises of life as best they could, whether help meant speaking a good word for a neighbor or a relative when jobs opened up where they worked, or taking up a subscription for a friend whose shop had been burned out, or joining together in mutual insurance schemes so families could be sure they would bury their dead in dignity. This kind of banding together to help neighbors or countrymen mitigated some of the hardships of a society where the majority of people were below or not much above what we would regard as bare subsistence. There were other hardships which working people endured, sometimes protesting them, but mostly just suffering them with no sense of alternative because their society as yet had not fixed responsibility or provided remedies for such personal disasters. Workmen, especially on the railroad and in furnaces and foundries in Poughkeepsie, frequently were killed or maimed on the job without any required compensation from employers. When a firm closed because of bankruptcy or laid off workers unexpectedly for any reason, there was no unemployment compensation to tide them over, to protect their hard-earned savings. In a general depression the situation was a little different. So many were hurt and could not expect to find work anywhere that some of the rich, whether moved by sympathy, conscience, or a sense of noblesse oblige, stirred themselves

to open soup kitchens or to sell coal at cost. The city government found a little extra public work to be done. But in so general and profound a crisis, these gestures only eased the situation slightly. For the least employable persons, the usual desperate alternatives were the overcrowded Poor House or flight from the city, often to drift from place to place seeking even temporary employment. There were signs by the 1870's that at least one numerous group was learning from hard experience that one way to make some modest gains in opportunity and security for themselves was to make their numbers count in public life. The Irish, coming in such large numbers and so often as unskilled workers, discovered how important political influence could be in gaining access to municipal jobs that could make the difference between survival or not, whether the city itself be the employer or contractors who worked for the city. In 1874 there were complaints that Paddy had gotten far more than his share of public jobs in this first year of depression. The same growing self-assertion of Irish-Americans which influenced this preference in municipal employment also influenced the response of the city's Board of Education to an extraordinary petition in the spring of 1873 from the rector of St. Peter's Church. Father Edward McSweeney proposed that the Board accept financial responsibility for two previously parochial schools without changing the staffing of those schools. Despite some bitter criticism from militant Protestants, the Board of Education, whose members were themselves Protestant, thoroughly respectable, and mostly rich, agreed to this precedent-setting arrangement. For more than two decades the Poughkeepsie Plan, as it came to be called, permitted nuns to teach the children of their fellow religionists under public auspices. In the 1840's when the great migration from Catholic Ireland began, such an arrangement would have been unthinkable. The Board's decision apparently was prompted in part by a sense of fairness, of commitment to the principle that all children were entitled to share in the city's common schools without prejudice to their own religious convictions. But it also is true that the Board did not consider the issue until it was forced upon them. They responded to a kind of political pressure, for St. Peter's Church had indicated its intention of closing down its parochial schools unless the Board came to their aid. And that would have affected all taxpayers. As the chairman of the Board said privately, the Catholic children "had all been enumerated in the school census, and we were drawing School money for them." If their parochial schools had been closed, "these seven hundred children would have come knocking at our schoolroom doors for admission, without the possibility of [our] finding room for them, and yet not daring to turn them away." In the same year, 1873, there was another challenge to the Board's and the city's commitment to the principle of equality of opportunity in education. The differences between these two cases say a good deal about how Poughkeepsie, like other American cities, usually has dealt with people who seem very different from the majority and yet who do not have the power of numbers or wealth to assert themselves effectively in community affairs. Ten years after Lincoln's

Emancipation Proclamation, New York State finally enacted a Civil Rights Act which prohibited discrimination on grounds of race in a variety of public accommodations and in public schools. Joseph Rhodes, Pennsylvania-born proprietor of a bleaching and dying shop and one of the few Negro businessmen in Poughkeepsie, chose to test that act locally. He protested publicly that Poughkeepsie's segregated grammar school for Negroes provided an inferior education and announced that he would send his daughters to the previously all-white public schools in his district. The challenge proved less eventful than some feared; the lady principal went out in person to meet the girls and conduct them into the school. Despite a few jeers and some threatened withdrawals of white students from the school, the girls remained. The next year the Board of Education abolished the "colored school," as it was called, and permitted black students to enter the other public schools. What is most impressive about this successful challenge is not the influence black people - a small minority in the population of Poughkeepsie then - could exert. Rather it is how long delayed and how reluctant this recognition of the educational aspirations of black people was. Unlike the Catholic Irish-Americans, blacks had been in Poughkeepsie since colonial times, many as slaves; most of the black population here in the 1870's had been born in Dutchess County and like white natives were Protestant in religion. Some prominent white citizens had been ardent abolitionists long before Emancipation and preached the dignity and rights of black people during the Civil War and after. Yet in 1870 a convention of local black people protested not only the inferior condition of the "colored school," but also the lack of attention to its needs by the Board of Education. Even at the time of Rhodes' challenge they could not get the Board to replace the white teacher at the "colored school" with a black candidate whom they brought forward. The admission of black children to the predominantly white public schools in the poorer neighborhoods where they lived did not materially change their situation or alter the community's attitude toward them and the kinds of jobs deemed appropriate for them. The publicity for an outstanding exception like Gaius Bolin, first black lawyer in Poughkeepsie as well as the first black graduate of Williams College, confirms the rule. Not until nearAr a century later would there be much change in these views and then such change as we have seen came about partly through the pressure of blacks themselves, strongly aided by the minority of white Americans who took the national faith in equality of opportunity most seriously. All of which reminds us that most of the people in any community who are "haves" rarely are willing to do anything for "have nots" which requires obvious material sacrifice to themselves. Which means that the process of spreading the benefits of a democratic society to newcomers - or to oldtimers like the black people who have been excluded from them previously - tends to be a very slow process. It moves fastest and farthest when there is a combination of pressure from those who have yet to benefit and some assistance from the more conscientious minority among those who already have benefitted from the city's opportunities.

The process of city government is analogous. Through most of Poughkeepsie's history, the policies pursued have reflected the interests and attitudes of those groups in the community rich or numerous enough to seem of consequence to Mayors and Councilmen. Sometimes those groups or the office-holders themselves transcended, if only temporarily, narrow and short-run views of their own interests pursuing a vision of the city's welfare which looked to the needs of the future as well as of the present, of the poor as well as of the powerful. There was that kind of vision behind the expensive but intelligent projects for public water and sewage systems one hundred years ago. And a similar awareness of broad social principles and needs helped inform the thinking of the Board of Education in responding to the petition of St. Peter's Church, even as the increasing influence of the newcomers made this decision more feasible politically. The first task of politics is to reconcile diverse interests. If the reconciliation is guided by a vision, the result may be far-sighted planning rather than short-sighted compromise. In welcoming the new administration of Mayor Economou, I am optimistic that he has that kind of political wisdom and extend my warmest good wishes. And I am grateful to him for this opportunity to say a little about some of the kinds of people who have made this city in the past. The city is its people, not its monuments. For a very long time now, the names of our Mayors - Irish, Polish, Italian, and now Greek - have indicated how much this has been a city of newcomers, a city where sooner or later immigrants from other places have found not only a place for themselves but prominence. But we have not acknowledged often enough how much these newcomers - whether the farm boys of the last century, immigrants from Europe, or the more recent IBMers - have contributed to the city. Our sense of history tends to stop with the Revolution, with Glebe House and Clinton House, or at the latest, with the Civil War. Worthy as remembrance of our more distant past is, it should not obscure for us how much this city always has been in the making, always has been receiving newcomers, sometimes with warmth, often with indifference or hostility, but ultimately with some mutual accommodation and, however unacknowledged, with some contribution by the newcomers to the character of the whole. We should be proud of names like Van Kleeck and Livingston, but just as proud of Mylod, Morschauser, Bolin, Torsone, DeGiglio, Waryas, Effron, and Economou. And the fact that we were all strangers once, however long ago, should remind us to be more considerate of strangers now, including those who have lived among us for years without ceasing to be strangers. It is worth remembering that on the one-hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, in 1876, the representatives of Poughkeepsie's citizens' committee who marched in the city's Fourth of July parade included Irish-born Michael Plunkett, German-born Andrew King, and Oneida-County-born Harvey Eastman, newcomers all.

Clyde Griffen is Lucy Maynard Salmon, Professor of American History, Vassar College. He and his wife Sally, who has taught at colleges of the State University of New York, have written "Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in Mid-Nineteehth-Century Poughkeepsie", which has been published by the Harvard University Press.

THE FREIGHT TERMINAL AT FISHKILL LANDING By Eunice Hatfield Smith Assisted By Collin M. Strang

The shore of the City of Beacon from Denning's Point north to Main Street is almost completely "made land," most of the earth moving having been done by the railroads. There were only two sites, at the Lower Landing and the Upper Landing, where docking facilities had been possible, the rest was mud flats, a hinderance to navigation with the result that most freight landed at Newburgh, then was reshipped to Fishkill Landing by ferry. On the 1867 Beers Atlas Map only the one track of the Hudson River RR is indicated; however, in 1864 not only was the Dutchess and Columbia RR buying rights of way along the south side of Fishkill Bay, but the Boston Hartford and Erie RR were acquiring theirs along the north side. Chartered in 1866, the route of the Dutchess and Columbia RR began where the southerly lines of Dutchess County touched the shore of the Hudson. A survey in early days had been chained and linked due east from the river. Its start was denominated "Plum Point" as marked by the surveyor's plummet. On the map, by slip of pencil, it read"Plum Point" - indicative of a projection into the river, whereas nothing of the kind existed. From "Plum Point," the route was laid a little east of north to an intersection with the New York & Harlem RR at Hillsdale. At Dutchess Junction, in 1869, the Boston, Hartford & Erie set in place a curved trestle across the shallow bay to reach Denning's Point where channel frontage existed, but before the rails were laid all further operations of the B.H.& E. stopped abruptly. The D & C RR did get its tracks laid, their trains and ferries operating at Dutchess Junction, but the men with vision and money controlling the B.H.& E.decided that a larger terminal could be built at Denning's Point and by combining the two operations, a train ferry could cross to Newburgh and then overland to the Pennsylvania coal fields. A look at the 1876 Atlas Map shows what they had in mind. Work progressed however, on the north side of the Bay and the following descriptions of what was happening have been taken from a reporter's accounts published in a Fishkill Standard Newspaper in 1869. An extensive pier was run out from the south tip of the Point to the channel in the river, a distance of 700 to 800 feet. The pilings were put in during the fall before the river would be frozen over so the pier would be completed by the opening of navigation in the spring. Three hundred piles were used. By July the tracks were to be laid and the pier would be the scene of an immense freighting business. This never happened there. The writer's enthusiasm continued "Embankments were cut down, low places filled up, bridges erected, roadways built, docks constructed, and where formerly but little activity was manifested except by a few fisherman, the hum of industry is heard on every hand. The B.H.& E.RR have cut their way through from Wiccopee to Denning's Point, obliterating a part of the old highway and making a new and better one higher on the hill. A deep cut was made, through the rock, (from Denning's Point to South Avenue)."