M N P S

In Memoriam

Ervin Hubbard III (1945 – 2021)

E. Stuart Hubbard died on November 19, 2021 at the age of 76. Born on July 10, 1945 in Poughkeepsie, New York, Stu, as he was known to most people, was the eldest child of the late Ervin Stuart Hubbard Jr. and Marguerite Berthiaume Hubbard. He attended elementary and secondary schools in Poughkeepsie, NY, and then entered the Seabees in 1965. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam where he helped build airports, bridges and housing. He was honorably discharged in 1968. In 1970 he received an Associate Degree in Applied Science from Dutchess Community College, and two years later in 1972 he graduated from Fairleigh Dickenson University in New Jersey with a Bachelor of Science Degree. He then established “Hubbard Custom Building and Repair.” When illness prevented him from continuing in the construction business, he became “Mr. Mom” for his two daughters, Suzanne and Sarah, while his wife Linda worked at IBM.

Stu was the fifth generation of the Hart-Hubbard family to grow up on the LaGrange property acquired in 1838 by Benjamin Hall Hart and his wife Elizabeth Nichols Hart. Generation after generation of Hart and Hubbard families considered “Heartsease” to be home, and the house became a repository of over 170 years of family photographs, documents, business records and family correspondence.

After the death of Stu’s mother in 2008, it fell to his wife Linda to organize and curate the massive collection. In 2012 Stu and Linda began the process of donating the collection to the Dutchess County Historical Society. Among the most important components of the collection were materials related to the nursery and apple orchards that were maintained by the family from 1838 – 1963. Perhaps the most significant gift was the paintings, drawings, correspondence, and memorabilia of Caroline Morgan Clowes (1838-1904), a niece of the original owners, who herself came to live at “Heartsease.” Clowes was an accomplished artist whose painting “Cattle at the Brook” was exhibited at the 1876 Philadelpia Exposition. Over time, knowledge of her extraordinary talent faded away. Were it not for Stu and Linda, her paintings might have been lost as well. This coming November the Dutchess County Historical Society will proudly mount the first retrospective exhibit of life and paintings of Caroline M. Clowes.

The Hart-Hubbard Collection at the Dutchess County Historical Society is the largest and one of the most important collections owned by the Society. Each generation of the family took on the role of preserving the objects that tell the story of this extraordinary Dutchess County family. Stu and Linda’s decision to donate them to the Historical Society will ensure that the family’s legacy is not lost and that the collection will be forever available for study and interpretation. Their generosity will not be forgotten.

Stu is survived by wife Linda, their two daughters, Suzanne Hubbard Davis and her husband Mark, and Sarah Hubbard Maasik and her two children Taivo Ervin Maasik and Riho Magnus Maasik. “Heartsease” remains in family ownership.

A Quiet Storm

Remembering

Stephanie Woods Mauri

David Greenwood, Village of Millbrook & Town of Washington Historian

There was a seismic shift in the Dutchess County preservation community on October 17, 2022, following the unexpected death of Stephanie Mauri at age 86. “The consummate volunteer in the cause of historic preservation” is how architectural historian Neil Larson, who first met her shortly after joining the State Historic Preservation Office in 1980, remembers her. “A Quiet Storm” is how Carmen McGill, cofounder of Celebrating the African Spirit, describes her. For me she was a mentor, professional colleague, and dear friend with whom I shared a love of architecture, a commitment to preservation of the natural and built environment, and a passion for opera.

A lifelong learner, Stef entered Cornell University at age 16 to pursue architectural studies and later merited a Fulbright Scholarship to live in Italy with her husband Albert and son Ross, an experience which further honed her passion for architecture, history, art and music – especially opera – and the natural and built environment. She was a Hudson Valley resident for over 50 years, first in Highland and then in Hyde Park to which the family moved in the 1970s. She quickly became an integral part of the region’s historic community, including the Dutchess County Landmarks Association, which she chaired for a time, and the Dutchess County Historical Society, where she specialized in research and documentation.

She was, as Neil Larson observed, totally analog, spurning computers for paper records, to the consternation of some and the amusement of others. She liked her physical evidence physical, and was forever perusing papers, periodicals and other ephemera for information to copy and share with others with mutual interests. Bill Jeffway, Executive Director of the Dutchess County Historical Society, relayed that “Everyone I have spoken to who knew her, mentioned how Stephanie frequently mailed them things. She’d send a newspaper clipping, a copy of something, a form to apply for something, or something with a note on it. At the county historical society, few people’s names show up as much as hers does, because she was so focused on documentation and documenting….” We still have on our kitchen table the last stack of clippings she mailed to us, for distribution to the Conservation Advisory Commission files and the Millbrook Historical Society archives, and for our own information and edification. Included in the packet was the gift of a t-shirt from Celebrating the African Spirit.

In the mid-1980’s, the Dutchess County Planning Department decided to use Community Development funds to undertake a county-wide survey of historic resources. Because of Stephanie’s architectural training, association with Landmarks, and working relationships with the people in the department, the county hired her to do the field work. Her method proved to be innovative, minimizing text and utilizing her visual organization and drawing skills through incorporating maps and images. Her approach rendered her work more accessible than customary forms and quickly became a template for others. She covered nearly every town in the county, compiling loose-leaf binders bursting with data on individual parcels, some of which have now been digitized for public access, enabling others to explore historical land attributes and usage, and to inform future assessment and development.

The Town of Washington’s Conservation Advisory Commission hired Stephanie to come into Town Hall once a week to carry on her research, update the files, and meet with residents eager to learn more about the evolution of their homes and properties. I worked with her in my capacities as CAC Chair and Town and Village Historian, and utilized her database in compiling an annual calendar of historic images, underwritten by the Bank of Millbrook.

Stephanie was interested in all aspects of local history, including some strands that had been overlooked or ignored in previous research. Carmen McGill credits her for being instrumental in establishing Celebrating the African Spirit, the organization that grew out of the Dutchess County Historical Society’s Black History Project Committee. “Her research and sense of the importance of history and its accuracy were unparalleled,” she recalls; “she was so passionate, focused on the task at hand, and willing to share her newfound historical nuggets.” Carmen McGill was among those recipients who benefited from Stephanie’s prolific clipping services, citing copious news articles and information that Stef forwarded.

One of the last projects we worked on together was mentoring two young siblings who were researching the history of their family’s property in order to write a book. Stef was enchanted by their interest and enthusiasm, and was able to share with them documentation of former owners and changing property boundaries. The book – Tales of Winley Farm, by Carina and Max Mazzarelli, ages 12 and 9 respectively at the time of publication in 2021 – acknowledged Stef as the person who had done the original research on the property 34 years earlier and thanked her for her current help.

As Neil Larson said so simply and eloquently, “I’ll remember her and miss her.” We all will. But we can honor her legacy by carrying on those things she valued so highly:

Explore local history with careful research and precise documentation.

Protect and preserve our historic structures and landscapes.

Celebrate beauty, in music, art and the human spirit.

Reach out to others with kindness and caring.

FORUM: Invisible People. Untold Stories.

How a 1912 Millbrook Survey Helped Shape Perceptions of the Italian Immigrant Community by Robert McHugh.…............…27

A Glimpse of Black Life in Beacon, 1941, by Leonard Sparks

A Contemporary Conversation With the Formerly Enslaved Sophia Burthen by Andrew Hunter

“Who upon her oath saith:” Rocovering Women’s Experiences and Voices from Dutchess County Early Court Records

by

William

P. Tatum, III,Ph.D.

GENERAL HISTORY:

Life Through the Eyes of Annie Dall, Student 1884-1887 by Larry Laliberte…………………………………………......91

They Were Passing the Time of Day: Railroad Laborers in Dutchess County by John Desmond……………………………………….……..123

Why Averasboro? by Michael Boden, Ph.D.

The Henry Gridley Post 617, Millerton, Grand Army of the Republic (1887-1933) by Sean Klay

Letter from the Editors

The pursuit of historical truth is certainly not a new concept.

Vassar Professor Lucy Salmon spoke regularly about the topic over a century ago, saying it was a historian’s most important job. She put it beautifully saying, “[Each] new day may enable us to readjust our vision, to see the past in a truer perspective, to clear away the mists that have obscured the truth.”

DCHS recognizes the importance of such pursuits each year with its annual Helen Wilkinson Reynolds Award for someone who is “an exemplar of the necessary and accurate pursuit of historical truth, representing the spirit of Helen Wilkinson Reynolds.”

For the Forum section, the editors of the DCHS 2022 Yearbook, volume 101, took inspiration from this tradition of the pursuit of historical truth, and one DCHS Yearbook article in particular. “Invisible People, Untold Stories: A Historical Overview of the Black Community in Poughkeepsie,” was authored by Lawrence H. Mamiya and Lorraine M. Roberts and published in the 1987 DCHS Yearbook.

The work quickly became a highly referenced, landmark article. We have taken the liberty of extending the concept to the entire county, and to other groups such as the history of immigrants and women.

DCHS is pleased to now offer DCHS Yearbook Encore Editions, such as the one published in 2022 that pulls together all the articles published by DCHS since 1914 related to local Black History (some 200 pages). In this way, we hope to start to address the issue raised by Mamiya and Roberts.

As is the custom in prior Yearbooks, the first half of the Yearbook is dedicated to this forum topic, while the second half is dedicated to general and various histories. We have added a “notes” section with some brief, but important highlights.

The explosion of other publishing channels like online books, websites, and social media (which we fully embrace) only makes us more certain that the longest-running historical journal in New York State deserves to continue with its annual publication. We are proud to add this contribution not for its length (although the 200 pages does push us over a total of twelve-thousand published DCHS Yearbook pages), but rather for the quality and discerning eye that the DCHS Yearbook brings – a sophisticated understanding of history expressed in a most accessible way.

Your membership, donations, and business sponsorships allow us to continue this great tradition.

Bill Jeffway

Melodye Moore

William P. Tatum III, Ph.D

Call for Articles

Dutchess County Historical Society Yearbook, vol. 102

The Dutchess County Historical Society (DCHS) has published the Yearbook, an annual journal of local history, since the organization’s founding in 1914. The focus on publishing is a distinct hallmark of DCHS, embraced since the society’s founding meeting at the Pleasant Valley Library in April 1914. Helen Wilkinson Reynolds, the greatest historian of Dutchess County and a founding member of the society, established “the pursuit of historical truth” as the publication’s central tenet. Reynolds’ partnership with professional photographer Margaret DeMott Brown set a high standard for documenting the local past through photographs as well as the written word.

DCHS seeks to promote and interpret local history through the publication of original research and case studies that address personalities, places, businesses, and events in and from Dutchess County, New York, as well as the county’s relationship to national and international events. The Yearbook features three sections: a forum of articles focused on a specific theme, general county history articles, and brief notes. Full articles should be approximately 2,500-5000 words in length, while notes should be around 800 words in length. The Dutchess County Historical Society Publications Committee actively solicits articles, essays, reports from the field, and case studies that support the historical society’s mission to procure, promote, and preserve the history of Dutchess County.

For the 2023 forum, DCHS seeks articles and notes focusing on farming, agriculture, gardening, open space protection, animal husbandry, veterinary medicine, farm architecture, mills, forestry, and other topics related to the county’s rich agricultural past. As always, the DCHS Publications Committee welcomes submissions on all aspects of Dutchess County’s past for consideration.