Rhinebeck—A Look Backward and Forward Elma Williamson Member, Board of Trustees, Rhinebeck Historical Society
D
evelopment! This was as much a concern in Rhinebeck in 1788 as in 1988, but for diametrically opposed reasons. Then it was a goal to be worked for; now it seems a threat. The census of 1790 showed a population of 3,662 in Rhinebeck which at that time included Red Hook and Staatsburg. Five hundred fourteen households spread over a large territory, which was described by an innkeeper to the Marquis de Chastellux in 1780 as "uncommonly fruitful;' left great expanses of desirable open space. "Ribbon Development" was not then a blight but a necessity. The inhabitants lived scattered along a lifeline of roads, some of them mere tracks impassable for long periods. Paramount was the Albany Post Road running parallel to the Hudson a mile or so inland. Intersecting this were the roads running inland from the landings on the Hudson through which passed most of the commercial and passenger traffic, one from Kip's Ferry (present Rhineclfff) along the Sepasco Trail through the Flatts to Sharon, Connecticut and one from Schultz's Landing (now vanished) via the Hook Road to Old Rhinebeck and by Pilgrim's Progress to Schuyler's Mill and beyond. Other connecting roads or tracks led to the Palatine settlement at Wurtemburgh and to Dover through Clinton, the route over which tenants on the Beekman Patent in lower Dutchess brought their rents in grain to the home office, and another to the mills on the lower Landsman's Kill. The River Road ran north from Kip's Ferry to the Livingston house at Clermont between the Post Road and the Hudson and there were a few other shorter connecting roads. By 1788 the Flatts was ready for expansion. The country was recovering from the upheaval of the Revolutionary War. The struggle in Poughkeepsie between Federalists and Clintonians at the Constitutional Convention did not impinge greatly on the daily lives of the majority of the inhabitants, although in the Dutch Reformed church Dominie Romeyn baptised the infant Thomas Jefferson Smith as John Adams Smith to the consternation of his parents. Most people were thinking of getting on with making a living. In 1785 an act of legislature had granted an exclusive right to operate a stage on the east side of the Hudson River to two men from New York and Albany and Isaac Van Wyck of Fishkill, to run at least once a week. By 1802 the New York Post was advertising daily departures with lodging at Peekskill and Rhinebeck and arrival at Albany on the third day. By 1792 a map had been drawn with a plan laid out for village lots in the orderly grid patterns that still distinguishes Rhinebeck village from other river communities. Where the Sepasco Trail had met the Post Road it "made the corner," a jog right along the Post Road before continuing east on what is now South Street. In 1801 this was eliminated by the cutting through of East Market Street to the church lands at Mulberry Street, then beyond through those lands to rejoin the Trail. This route became the Ulster-Salisbury Turnpike in 1802. 63
