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CELEBRATING
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SUFFRAGE This Special Section Produced in Cooperation with The Delaware Company. Sullivan County Democrat Section W August 18, 2020
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WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE
EDITORIAL
SULLIVAN COUNTY DEMOCRAT
AUGUST, 2020
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19th Amendment Celebrates Centennial BY DEBRA R. CONWAY AND JOHN CONWAY
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ugust 18, 2020 marks the Centennial Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women the right to vote. But the struggle to win that right dates back almost 100 years before that. As far back as the 1820s, women began to organize to fight a wide range of social ills, including slavery and the consumption of alcohol, and the fight to obtain the right to vote largely grew out of those movements. In 1848, a large group of women – mostly active abolitionists – gathered in Seneca Falls, NY for the first Seneca Falls Convention, one of the results of which was a “Declaration of Sentiments,” based on the Declaration of Independence and including the statement, “that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The convention also more or less formalized the struggle for women’s suffrage by providing a structure for the women engaged in it. In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association to advocate for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote. Most subsequent efforts grew out of that. Although not much has been recorded about any 19th century Sullivan County women who might have been involved in the suffrage battle, there were a number of local women who became very involved in the movement in the early 20th century. In fact, virtually every community in the county from Bloomingburg to Roscoe had an active Women’s Suffrage Club. In 1917, there were 21 such clubs in Sullivan County, more than in any other county in the Assembly District. Most of these women have been long forgotten by all but their descendants, and for many, even their given first names are difficult to ascertain, since in the style of the day they were typically referred to using only their husband’s names, as in Mrs. C.W. Montgomery. These women included Mrs. Luther Payne and Mrs. B.F. Green in Liberty, Mrs. Elisabeth Worth Muller and Miss Agnes Fairchild in
Monticello, Mrs. Paul Johnston in Livingston Manor, Miss Leah Olcott and Mrs. C.W. Montgomery in Wurtsboro, and many others. Today’s women owe them all a debt of gratitude. The 19th Amendment didn’t end women’s struggles – for example it wasn’t until 1937 that women could sit on juries in New York State – but it provided women with not just the right to vote, but the right to run for and hold public office. Every woman to hold political office in this country does so only because of the struggles and sacrifices of the suffragists. In celebration of the Centennial, we present a list of 20 notable groundbreaking political women from Sullivan County – 20 for 2020, as it were. Some were suffragists themselves; others came along after the fight was won. Each has ties to Sullivan County, was active in politics and was a groundbreaker in her own right, standing on the shoulders of the women who came before. Choosing the 20 women to profile was a difficult undertaking, and the results are sure to be controversial. We think each woman on the list is deserving, and so too are a host of others whom we were not able to profile here, but we salute nonetheless. Our apologies in advance to anyone who feels slighted or overlooked.
In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association to advocate for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote.
Celebrating Women’s Suffrage ‘Celebrating 100th Anniversary of 19th Amendment’ Published by
Catskill-Delaware Publications, Inc. Publishers of the
(845) 887-5200 Callicoon, NY 12723 August 18, 2020 • Vol. CXXX, No. 20
* * * * * This ‘Celebrating Women’s Suffrage’ edition was done in cooperation with The Delaware Company along with Delaware Company Executive Director Debra Conway and Delaware Company Board of Directors President John Conway. We are pleased to be able to highlight such a significant anniversary on the pages of the Sullivan County Democrat and thank The Delaware Company for its tremendous support in this project. On behalf of all of our advertisers a donation of $750 will be made to The Delaware Company to help support their mission of supporting and promoting the history and historic landmarks of the Upper Delaware River Valley and beyond. Recording history – and its effects on present day events – is a vitally important mission of the Sullivan County Democrat and one we are delighted to share with our readers. Publisher: Co- Editors: Editorial Assistants: Production Manager: Design: Advertising Director: Assistant Advertising Director: Special Sections Coordinator: Advertising Coordinator: Business Manager: Assistant Business Manager: Telemarketing Coordinator: Monticello Office Manager: Classified Manager: Production Associates: Circulation & Distribution:
Fred W. Stabbert III Joseph Abraham and Matt Shortall Isabel Braverman, Margaret Bruetsch, Kathy Daley, Patricio Robayo, Richard Ross, Jeanne Sager, Ed Townsend Petra Duffy Rosalie Mycka Liz Tucker Barbara Matos Susan Panella Lillian Ferber Susan Owens Patricia Biedinger Michelle Reynolds Margaret Bruetsch Janet Will Elizabeth Finnegan, Nyssa Calkin, Katey Dnistrian, Jessica Roda Anthony Bertholf, John Fischer, Phil Grisafe
The Delaware Company About The Delaware Company SULLIVAN COUNTY DEMOCRAT
AUGUST, 2020
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he Delaware Company is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2012 to promote and support the history and historic landmarks of the Upper Delaware River Valley and beyond. It is named for the group of settlers who, in 1755 established Cushetunk, the first permanent European settlement in the Upper Delaware. The Delaware Company’s mission emphasizes education, and specifically, telling the many stories that teach people about our rich and colorful local history. This not only increases residents’ appreciation for where they live and enhances their sense of place, but also encour-
The Delaware Company will shortly be announcing a major new initiative to tell the story of the D & H Canal. ages tourism by providing visitors with an authentic experience and insight into the county’s role in many events of national and international significance. Programs and initiatives undertaken by The Delaware Company include coordinating the annual commemoration of the Battle of Minisink, planning and conducting the annual Magical History Tour historical-architectural bus
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trip, and sponsoring the sixweek-long History of Sullivan County course twice each year. In addition, the group has sponsored two Washington’s Birthday Beer Tasting events, and conceived of and implemented the Minisink Project in 2017, which resulted in a permanent marker at the Minisink Battleground listing the names of the militia men killed at the Battle of Minisink. The Delaware Company will shortly be announcing a major new initiative designed to tell the story of the Delaware & Hudson Canal and the children who were an integral part of its operation. The Delaware Company has been accorded tax exempt status
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under section 501(c)3 by the Internal Revenue Service. It is governed by a Board of Directors, which currently includes: John Conway of Barryville, NY (President), William H. Chellis, M.Div., J.D. of Jeffersonville, NY (Vice President), Steven C. Melendez of Monticello, NY, Teresa Kehagias of Damascus, PA, Jan Cheripko of Bethany, PA, and Robert Dadras, R.A. of Liberty, NY. Its day-to-day operation is overseen by Debra Conway, Executive Director. To make a tax deductible contribution, make checks payable to The Delaware Company and mail to P.O. Box 88, Barryville, NY 12719.
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lthough it is quite common today to see the terms suffragist and suffragette used interchangeably, there is a significant difference historically. First of all, the term suffragette did not exist at all prior to 1906, when it was coined by a British newspaper as a derogatory term for the more militant women fighting for the vote in that country. It was intended to patronize, trivialize, their effort; a verbal equivalent of patting a child on her head. So technically, every woman – whether in the United States or elsewhere – active in the struggle for suffrage prior to 1906 is correctly termed a suffragist, and not a suffragette. In Great Britain, some of the suffragists who advocated a more aggressive approach to the struggle embraced the term suffragette
as a badge of honor. That wasn’t necessarily the case in the U.S., although there were some who took pride in a more aggressive, that is not to say violent, approach. “A suffragist is one who thinks of votes for women. A suffragette is one who gets out and works for it,� is how one Connecticut newspaper described the difference – not altogether accurately. The National Park Service explains the difference somewhat less facetiously: “In the United States, however, the term suffragette was seen as an offensive term and not embraced by the suffrage movement. Instead, it was wielded by anti-suffragists in their fight to deny women in America the right to vote.� In any case, the two terms should not be used interchangeably.
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20 Groundbreaking Political Women in Sullivan County’s History BY DEBRA R. CONWAY AND JOHN CONWAY
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hoosing 20 women from the political realm over Sullivan County’s 211-year history was no easy feat. And while this list is by no means meant to be complete, we hope you enjoy the diversity, strength and courage each of these groundbreaking ladies showed in becoming a force in what was once a “man’s world,” the political forum. And as we celebrate the Centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote, let’s please remember how important our vote is in keeping our democracy strong. Elisabeth Worth Muller
Elisabeth Worth Muller at the White House. She is the tall woman over President Coolidge's right shoulder.
late hour tonight, and the hikers were much relieved to get back to the hotel. Only two farmers were found to disapprove of suffrage, but they were quickly won over by the crusaders, and were made to promise to vote for the cause when the time comes. Many others promised to do so for a kiss, but this line of political graft did not work.” The following summer, Ms. Muller hired an ox-drawn wagon to help bring attention to her fight for the vote. The Times noted that the oxen would “draw the women and a camper’s outfit from place to place. When they come to a desirable place to stop, the women will pitch their tents and do battle for their cause as long as there is an enemy in sight, and then move on to conquer other CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
On the Cover: Leah Olcott (Stanton) of Wurtsboro.
mansion locals referred to as Muller’s Castle on Egg Hill outside Monticello. The home would become the center of the suffragist movement in the region over much of the next two decades. In fact, for all of her accomplishments, Elisabeth Worth Muller is most remembered for her efforts on behalf of the woman’s right to vote. On August 16, 1913, the New York Times reported: “Thousands of summer boarders greeted the tired suffragette hikers on their tour from Monticello to Liberty today…At Monticello the Misses (Alma and Phyllis) Muller were added and they were so very much excited that they at once hired horses and accompanied the hikers to Liberty, where the six crusaders were cheered by thousands of summer visitors along the way to the hotel, where the ladies will spend the night. “The meeting at Liberty, in front of the Post Office, held a crowd of over a thousand persons until a
ON THE
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“Therree is i nothing complicaated aboutt ordinary rd ry equalityy..” 85257
Elisabeth Worth Muller was the founder and president of the Monticello Suffrage Club and one of the nation’s leading voices for extending the right to vote to women. She was the first woman in Sullivan County to pass the bar exam and the first to legally shoot a deer. She was arrested for picketing the White House, but was later welcomed as a guest by Calvin Coolidge, and she championed progressive causes alongside Teddy Roosevelt while rubbing elbows with the likes of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Fulton Oursler and Sophie Treadwell. Born in New York City on April 21, 1862, she married Rudolph Muller, a German immigrant who made a fortune in the real estate business. The couple came to Monticello with their two daughters, Alma and Phyllis, in the early 1900s, and built the uniquely styled Victorian
—ALICE PA AU UL
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fields.” Rudolph Muller died in 1926, and a few years later Ms. Muller moved to Hollywood to be near her daughter, Alma, who had married the stage actor Francis Wupperman, who had changed his name to Frank Morgan when he began trying out for film roles, the most famous of which was the Wizard in the 1939 classic, “The Wizard of Oz.” Elisabeth Worth Muller died on February 26, 1952. She was 89. Mary Elizabeth Lease
By the time she purchased a farm in Sullivan County in 1929, Mary Elizabeth Lease’s fame had faded considerably and few of her neighbors even knew who she was, but there was a time when her name was as recognizable as any woman’s in the country. She was born in Pennsylvania on September 11, 1850. Her father and her older brother were killed in the Civil War, and their deaths
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moved her deeply. She blamed the Democrats and reviled the party for the rest of her life. At the age of 20, she moved to Kansas and began teaching school. In 1871 she married the local druggist, Charles Lease, and lived a middle-class life. Then the financial panic of 1873 stripped them of everything, forcing them to move to Texas and start over. This severe financial setback was another incident that helped shape her later life. While in Texas, she studied law and began a practice that specialized in representing the oppressed. She later would boast that she never lost a case…or collected a fee. She also began to get involved in politics, becoming active in prohibition through the Women's Christian Temperance Union, then women’s suffrage. She joined the labor movement, and the Populist Party. Having suffered the loss of her own farm years before, she became a vocal advocate for farmers’ rights, and helped create the
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platform for a powerful new political party. Many reporters began to refer to her erroneously as “Mary Ellen Lease,” a mistake that may well have originated for no other reason than that some newspaper editor with a bent for rhyme could call her “Yellin’ Mary Ellen.” The nickname stuck. She was also inaccurately credited with exhorting Kansas farmers to “raise less corn and more hell,” an attribution which, because she regarded it as “right sound advice,” she never bothered to correct. Ms. Lease made more than 160 speeches for the Populist cause, but she eventually broke from the party. Some political historians have cited her defection with causing the party’s widespread defeat in the 1894 elections, and then its total demise. She became a fervent supporter of the economist Henry George, who advocated “the repeal of all unjust or inefficient taxes, to be replaced with a land value tax.”
Coincidentally, both Mr. George, the founder of Merriewold Park in the Town of Forestburgh and the grandfather of the renowned dancer and choreographer Agnes deMille, and Ms. Lease would end up living, at least part of the time, in Sullivan County. In 1929 she purchased the old Reichmann farm near Long Eddy and spent part of her time there each year. While living on the farm in the fall of 1933, she contracted blood poisoning. Neglecting it, she became seriously ill and was rushed to the Callicoon hospital, where she died on October 29. Mary Elizabeth Lease was 83. Bella R. Montgomery
Despite the significant role that Mrs. Charles William Montgomery played in the fight for women’s suffrage in New York State, extensive research was unable to turn up a photo, and even her first name was extremely difficult to ascertain. In dozens of articles in numerous newspapers of the day,
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she was always referred to as “Mrs. C.W. Montgomery.” Only in an obituary for her husband in November of 1929 in the Scarsdale inquirer was her first name, Bella, mentioned. She was the daughter of Charles D. and Isabelle Immen of Wurtsboro, both of whom died in 1917, which was, ironically, also the year of her greatest triumph. Her father was a Civil War veteran who had served for a time as president (mayor) of the village and also as water commissioner, as well as on the Board of Trustees for the Wurtsboro school. Mrs. Montgomery lived much of her life in Scarsdale, N.Y. where she raised a son, Verne-- who later attended Hamilton College in upstate New York—and found time to help the Women’s Club of Scarsdale start the Scarsdale Inquirer weekly newspaper in 1919, and to serve as president of the local chapter of the League of Women voters in 1926. She served multiple terms as the President of the Sullivan County
Assembly District of the New York State Women’s Suffrage Party and in that position hosted many notable suffragists from around the country, including Margaret Foley and Helen Todd, taking them to meetings from one end of Sullivan County to the other. On Saturday night, July 28, 1917, she was the featured speaker at a rally hosted by the Wurtsboro Suffrage Club at the home of Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Drew in the village. The Sullivan County Record newspaper reported that her speech was “so compelling” that “each man, with a single exception, not only contributed, but with his contribution gave a promise to vote ‘yes’ on the suffrage amendment on November 6.” On Sunday, October 28, 1917, Mrs. Montogmery made arrangements for Helen Todd, who was here from California in a last ditch effort to secure victory for the women’s suffrage amendment in New York’s November 6 election, to speak to church congregations in Callicoon, Fremont Center and
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Nellie Childs Smith in front of her law office on Broadway in Monticello.
Hankins, and then over the next week accompanied her in campaigning in Monticello on October 31, in Woodville, Tennanah Lake, Roscoe and Rockland on November 1, in Grooville, DeBruce, Willowemoc and
Livingston Manor on November 2, in Bradley, Neversink, Claryville and Eureka on November 3, and in Liberty on November 5. It was that kind of tireless work by Mrs. Montgomery and others CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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that won women the right to vote in New York that year.
Nellie Childs Smith Nellie Childs Smith was born to a large Quaker family in Eureka, one of the hamlets later displaced by the construction of the Rondout Reservoir. She never married, and lived her entire life in Sullivan County, working in the law office of noted Monticello attorney John D. Lyons. And when she passed the New York State bar exam in 1916, she became the first practicing female attorney in Sullivan County. She was also the first Sullivan County woman to run for countywide office, losing in her bid to become Special County Judge in 1927. When Miss Smith was sworn in as an attorney in May of 1916, the Liberty Register newspaper took note of the fact that local history was being made.
“Miss Nellie Childs Smith was sworn in at the Appellate Division at Albany last Thursday, as an attorney and counselor at law,” the Register reported in an article headlined, “Miss Smith First Woman Attorney for Sullivan Co.” “Miss Smith has been employed in the law offices of John D. Lyons at Monticello for several years, [and] has the distinction of being the first Sullivan County woman to be admitted to the bar.” Her association with Lyons, a highly regarded legal mind who later mentored a young Lawrence H. Cooke, was instrumental in often placing Miss Smith in the right place at the right time. When Lyons served as County Attorney for a good part of her career, Miss Smith served as the Assistant County Attorney. She was also Neversink’s Town Attorney for many years. When she passed the Notary Public exam in 1927 along with 230 others, almost all of them were men.
Although Miss Smith was mainly known for the many real estate related cases she handled, and typically was involved in civil matters, she would occasionally be part of a high profile criminal case, as well, usually at Lyons’ side. When Lyons assisted Liberty attorney William Birmingham in defending young Charles B. Wise in the murder of vacationing piano teacher Nina Vilona in Bittersweet in 1926, Miss Smith was there. When Swan Lake resident Sadie L. Shapiro sued the owners of the Stevensville Hotel in New York State Supreme Court in Monticello in 1928, claiming that they had violated a provision in her deed that no casino be operated within one mile of her own, Miss Smith successfully argued her case. When Hortonville farmer and real estate broker Kurt M. Shilbury sued the Sullivan County Board of Supervisors in 1965, challenging the way they voted on issues in a case that ushered weighted voting
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into the county, Miss Smith represented the Town of Neversink as amicus curiae. She practiced law for more than 50 years in Sullivan County, and compiled an enviable record of successes. Nellie Childs Smith died on January 16, 1973. Susanna Potsch
Susanna Potsch was born in Germany in 1887 and came to the United States as a young girl, eventually settling in Jeffersonville around 1914. Widowed within a year, she supported herself and her children as best she could. Through diligence and hard work, she became the first woman ever elected to countywide office in Sullivan County, serving as Commissioner of Public Welfare (formerly called Superintendent of the Poor) from 1930 to 1935. Left to support her two daughters after the death of her husband, and possessing just an
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eighth-grade education, Ms. Potsch went to work taking in laundry and cleaning houses. In the 1920 census she described her occupation as “washer woman.” She was eventually hired as the housekeeper for former Sullivan County Sheriff Fletcher Rhodes, who was then serving as Superintendent of the Poor, a job that entailed, among other duties, overseeing the County Poor Farm in Thompsonville, where the Superintendent was expected to live. She lost her job when Rhodes was replaced by Calvin Hornbeck, but as the election of 1929 approached, the Democrats nominated her to challenge Hornbeck. She was elected that November. She took to the position quickly, finding the annual salary of $2,000 a significant upgrade over what she had been earning cleaning houses. Just a few weeks after assuming the office, she noticed that a number of the residents of the poor farm seemed to be getting drunk on a regular basis, despite the fact that Prohibition was still the law of the land.
She reported the matter to Sheriff Ben Gerow, and Gerow discovered that a huge still was being operated by the caretaker of the Mayflower, a boarding house located adjacent to the poor farm. Several arrests were made and the still was destroyed. The high profile case reflected well on the new superintendent. Ms. Potsch took office just as the country was plunging into the Great Depression, and the number of residents seeking refuge at the county’s poor farm steadily increased. Unfortunately, under her supervision, the cost of feeding and caring for those individuals also increased, leading to harsh questioning of her managerial skills by the Board of Supervisors. When she appointed her daughter Assistant Commissioner, the move earned her further criticism. Still, she increased the efficiency of the farming operation and the amount of produce grown on the farm, and improved the general living conditions there. She was re-elected in November of 1932, and her second three-year term was mostly a positive experi-
ence. When the 1935 election season got underway, Republicans nominated Margaret Engert of Mountaindale to run against her. Foreshadowing the later widely accepted notion that the toughest candidate to beat in any countywide election is a Republican from Fallsburg, Engert won. Susanna Potsch returned to her home in Jeffersonville. As the years went by, she began to spend winters with her daughter in Flushing. She died there in April of 1962. She was 75. Katharine St. George
Katharine St. George
Katharine St. George was born on July 12, 1894 in Bridgnorth, England to American parents, Hiram Price Collier, a former Unitarian minister, and Catherine Delano Collier, the younger sister of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s mother, Sara. She married George Baker Bligh St. George, third son of the second Baronet St. George, and they lived briefly in Washington, DC before relocating to Tuxedo Park, in Orange County in June of 1919.
Ms. St. George became involved in local politics, serving on the Tuxedo Town Board from 1926 until 1942 and as chair of the Orange County Republican Committee from 1942 until 1948. She was a delegate to the 1944 Republican National Convention. Ms. St. George was first elected to Congress in 1946, by ousting incumbent Congressman Augustus Bennett in the Republican primary and then win-
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ning the general election. When she sought her second term in 1948, she faced not one, but two challengers for the Republican line, and had to best both Walter G. Brown, former Goshen mayor and Orange County Republican Chairman, and Walter A. Felton of Newburgh to gain the nomination. She was re-elected. Ms. St. George served 18 years in the House of the Representatives, rising into the GOP leadership and becoming the first woman to serve on the House Rules Committee. During much of that time, Sullivan County was part of her district. She never liked to be labeled a feminist, but Ms. St. George became an outspoken advocate for women's economic equality, and is even credited with coining the phrase “equal pay for equal work.” She maintained that at the core of her work on the issue was an abiding conviction that if women were to achieve equality and fully participate in American
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society, they needed to do so from a base of economic strength. Ms. St. George’s 1959 proposal to outlaw sex discrimination in the payment of wages became law in the form of the Equal Pay Act of 1963. “What you might mean by ‘equal rights' might be totally different to what I believe is ‘equal rights,'” Ms. St. George once said. “I always felt . . . women were discriminated against in employment . . . I think women are quite capable of holding their own if they're given the opportunity. What I wanted them to have was the opportunity.” Despite facing those primary challenges and the occasional criticism that she was out of touch with her constituency, Ms. St. George was re-elected every two years until she was swept aside in 1964 by the Democratic landslide led by Lyndon Baines Johnson, losing to Democrat John G. Dow. She continued to live in Tuxedo Park, and died there in 1983. She was 88.
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Millicent C. Schadt Flynn was born in Jeffersonville on August 7, 1912 to Frederick W. and Anna Royce Schadt, the second oldest of five children. She married Robert J. Flynn, Sr. and lived in Roscoe for much of her adult life. Robert Flynn was a New York State Trooper and a member of the famed Rough Riders trick-riding team that performed in Madison Square Garden and elsewhere. Following his retirement from the State Police, he was first elected Sullivan County Clerk in 1953 and was still in office when he died suddenly of a heart attack while watching television at home on June 14, 1958. Ms. Flynn was appointed as his successor by Governor W. Averell Harriman. When she was elected County Clerk in a special election in November 1958, she became the first woman elected to that position in Sullivan County history. In 1959 Mrs. Flynn was re-elected by 3,840 votes, and won by 2,442 over George Wale in 1961. She was re-elected in 1963, 1965, 1967, and 1970. Her 1967 race was a difficult one, as Republican challenger Paul Feinman of South Fallsburg proved a formidable foe. Mrs. Flynn won by 2,639 votes. It was also an historical election, as Mrs. Mattie Perry, who garnered 647 votes on the Liberal Party line, became the first African American to run for countywide office in Sullivan. Mrs. Flynn’s decision to run in 1970 came at the last minute, after much soul-searching, but she had one of her strongest showing at the polls that year. Her margin of victory in her final election was 4,164 over Republican challenger David Schiff of Liberty. She retired at the end of her term in 1973, having served as County Clerk for 15 years. In January of 1960, Mrs. Flynn’s brother, Frederick W.V. Schadt, took office as Special Sullivan County Court Judge and Surrogate, after having defeated longtime incumbent Harold B. Spriggs the previous November. With Mrs. Flynn serving as County Clerk. the unusual situation of having a brother and sister both serving in county offices at the same time
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prompted the New York Times to take note in a January 2, 1960 article headlined, “2 in Family in Office.” Although she was typically all business at work, Mrs. Flynn was also known for her sharp wit. Former Sullivan County Clerk George Cooke, now the County’s Commissioner of Jurors, recalls visiting her home in 1992 to ask for her endorsement of his own initial run for the office. “I’ll never forget it,” he said recently. “We had quite a nice chat, and the conversation got around to her late husband, who had died many years before. She told me she had just had dinner with some of his relatives and they made a point of mentioning that she rarely spoke of her late husband any more. She said she told them that to the best of her recollection he had not done much worth talking about in the last thirty years.” Like his father, Mrs. Flynn’s son, Robert J. Flynn, Jr., was also a New York State Trooper, and served as Sullivan County Sheriff from 1976 to 1982. Millicent C. Schadt Flynn died in Roscoe on September 28, 1998. She was 86. She is buried next to her husband in the Beaverkill Cemetery. Helen M. Milk Helen Magdalene Milk was born on February 19, 1909 in Callicoon to Henry Jacob and Marie Lorenza Neumann. Her father was a butcher and owned his own meat market in the hamlet. She married Lawrence R. Milk in 1928. Lawrence Milk started out working in his father-in-law’s business and eventually got into local politics, serving for a time as the supervisor of the Town of Delaware. Mrs. Milk also got involved, and by the mid-1950s was an administrative aide to Assemblyman Hyman “Bucky” Mintz, as well as the vice chair of the county Republican Committee under Harold “Hud” Cole of Hurleyville. There was heavy speculation that Mrs. Milk would take on incumbent County Clerk Millicent Flynn in 1961, but despite considerable supCONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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port for that idea, she was nominated to run against the popular County Treasurer, Donald Baker instead. She lost. Many pundits were certain she would have beaten Mrs. Flynn. “The worst mistake made by Republicans was not running Mrs. Helen Milk against Mrs. Millicent Flynn for County Clerk rather than against Donald Baker for County Treasurer,” The Liberty Register weekly newspaper reported in its November 16, 1961 edition. “Mrs. Flynn could have been beaten, perhaps not this time, but certainly the next time by Mrs. Milk.” Despite the sentiment of many Republicans that she could have won election as County Clerk, and her own proclamation, made early in 1964, that she would not be a candidate for either Clerk or Treasurer, Mrs. Milk ran against Baker for Treasurer again that year, and lost a second time. She was hired by Republican Sheriff Louis Ratner to a newly cre-
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ated post as clerk-typist in his office in 1966, and shortly thereafter the county changed her job title to Deputy Sheriff Clerk, to render it non-competitive. In 1967, while still vice chair of the county’s Republicans, she was appointed by the GOP controlled Board of Supervisors as Commissioner of Jurors, replacing Democrat James J. Gottschalk, a former supervisor who had been appointed to the four-year post in 1966 by a Board then controlled by Democrats. The controversy over Mrs. Milk’s appointment and Gottschalk’s ouster was heated, and went to court, where it was eventually resolved in her favor, allowing her to assume the office in 1968. She was appointed to a second term in 1970, and a third in 1974. In September of 1975, citing an increasing workload as Commissioner of Jurors, she voluntarily stepped down as vice chair of the county Republicans after 22 years in the post. She also resigned as a committeewoman for the town of Delaware.
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“I think I did my bit,” she said at the time. “Twenty-two years is quite a long time.” In 1976, Mrs. Milk was elected to a one-year term as president of the New York State Jurors Association. Helen M. Milk died in February of 1986. She is buried in North Branch. Anne Kaplan Anne Kaplan was born to Isadore and Esther Rappaport on April 20, 1921, and grew up on a farm in Maplewood, just outside Monticello, attending a one-room schoolhouse along with her six siblings. She married Moe Kaplan, and together they ran Kaplan’s Deli on Broadway in Monticello for more than thirty years. Under her watchful eye it became one of the most famous eateries in the Mountains, and its name was recognized throughout the country. Ms. Kaplan was long active in local affairs, and in 1971 she became the first woman ever elected to the Village Board in
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Monticello. She was an active and outspoken trustee, and when mayor David Kaufman was elected Town of Thompson Supervisor in November of 1973, she immediately became the favorite to replace him. “Being the first woman mayor in the county would really be a feather in my cap,” she said at the time. “I’ve come a long way from a girl, born on a farm, who attended a one-room school.” When she was appointed acting mayor in January of 1974, she became the first woman ever to hold that office in any of the six villages in Sullivan County. That March, to no one’s surprise, she was elected to the post. She served as mayor until 1976, when she lost her bid for re-election. She remained popular even in defeat, and that year more than 175 Monticello residents signed a petition asking that a new street in the village be named Anne Kaplan Drive. “I think this a wonderful gesture in view of the fact that I am a lifelong Monticello resident,” she told a newspaper reporter. “And I did become the first woman mayor.” The petition apparently did not impress the Republican controlled Village Board, and the measure never came to a vote. Ms. Kaplan’s legacy as mayor included construction of the Monticello Neighborhood Facility on Jefferson Street, and the Sullivan County Government
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Center in the village also became a reality during her tenure. Ms. Kaplan was also active in New York State Democratic party circles, and she was selected as cochair of the party’s 24th annual Women’s Conference in Albany in 1975, which also featured newly elected Assemblywoman Jean Amatucci. Appropriately, the theme of the conference was, “The New Face of Government, 1975.” Ms. Kaplan moved to Houston in later years, and then to Las Vegas, before returning to Sullivan County. Suffering from Alzheimer’s, she died at the Achieve Nursing Facility in Liberty on October 2, 2012. She was 91. “I cannot think of Monticello and Sullivan County without fondly remembering Anne Kaplan,” former Congressman Matt McHugh told the Sullivan County Democrat at the time of her death. “She was a warm and beautiful person, known and loved by her family and many friends and admirers. ... She was a good friend and for me was representative of the warmth and genuine quality of the people of Sullivan County. She will be long remembered and sorely missed by us all.” Ida “Skippy” Frankel
Ida “Skippy” Frankel was born in Waterbury, Connecticut on April 20, 1919 to Morris and Molly Levowitz Bergman. She married Sidney Frankel, and together they ran Frankel’s Hardware store in the village of Liberty. With a partner, she also owned and operated the Hat Fair in the village in the early 1960s. Sidney was active in local politics, serving as village trustee and as deputy mayor in the mid-1960s. Ms. Frankel, known to almost everyone simply as “Skippy,” was also very active in local politics, and served as the Associate Chair of the Sullivan County Democratic Party for several years before resigning in protest. She was elected as a trustee in the village in 1971, the second woman ever to run for village
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Ida “Skippy” Frankel
office and the first to win a seat. She was the top vote getter in the election. She had a bumpy first term, and it was heavily rumored that she was positioning herself to run against incumbent mayor Marvin Magid, a Republican. She denied the rumors, and ran for reelection to the Board in 1973, winning again. In 1975, she decided to challenge then incumbent mayor, Republican Robert Klugman, and won by nearly 200 votes. She was the lone Democrat to win in Liberty that year, and was the only one from the party on the Village Board. Ms. Frankel said she had decided to run for mayor simply because “leadership should be of sufficient quality to pull the village together and the present leader is just not doing that.” She also told a reporter that “1975 was a good year for a woman to run,” and hoped that it would be an advantage for her. She served as Liberty Mayor for ten years, and during her time in office became the first female president of the New York State Conference of Mayors. She advocated for hiring a full-time Village Manager, proclaiming that “politics has no place in the running of a village. You can’t run a village part-time.” Mrs. Frankel died on March 26, 2006. She was remembered as “a strong and motivated woman who had many talents.”
Monica Kean of the Town of Lumberland was the first woman elected Town Justice in Sullivan County.
Monica A. Kean Monica A. Hunter Kean was born in Newark, New Jersey and met her husband Paul while vacationing in Grahamsville. They married and lived first in New Jersey and then in the Kean family homestead overlooking the Delaware River in Mongaup in the Town of Lumberland. Together, Monica and Paul Kean raised four children—two boys and two girls-- before she entered the local political fray. When she was elected Town Justice in November of 1973, after what she later described as “a grueling door-to-door campaign,” she became the first woman elected to that office in Sullivan County history, and one of just a handful of female town justices in New York State at the time. “No one ever thought I’d be elected,” she told Chris Farlekas of the Times Herald-Record during an interview over coffee in her home for an article that ran in the paper on March 2, 1975. “’A WOMAN?’ they’d say, with a question mark and incredulity in their voice. Everyone was ready to console me. They all said it was a pity I was trying so hard. ‘It’s a shame you’ll never win,’ they said. But I won.” She said the victory enabled her to fulfill a longstanding desire for
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public service that she had deferred while her children were younger. And when Paul Kean was elected Lumberland Town Supervisor in 1975, they became a rare husband and wife team of elected officials. Interestingly, Mrs. Kean ran as a Democrat, while her husband was a Republican, making the feat even rarer. Mrs. Kean said she found it amusing that many people were taken aback when they discovered they were to appear before a woman justice, and perhaps felt they would get off easy as a result. “But when I sit behind the desk, I’m a magistrate, and the law has to be followed,” she said. “A judge has to apply the law fairly,” she told Farlekas when asked about her judicial philosophy. “Each and every person is the same under the law. It’s my job to see that the principle is carried out.” Ms. Kean served as Town Justice until 1985. During her tenure, she became the first woman ever elected as president of the New York State Magistrates Association. When Paul Kean died on May 2, 2020, on the morning of his 92nd birthday, the couple had been married more than 70 years. Monica Kean survives. She lives in Middletown. Jean Amatucci Fox
Jean Amatucci Fox, the daughter of Daniel Amatucci, who was the Supervisor of the Town of Bethel during the Woodstock Festival, says she had long felt a calling to public service, but had never really considered running for political office when she was approached to run against incumbent Republican Louis Ingrassia in the 98th Assembly district in 1974. At the time, she was working as an advocate for health initiatives as the Director of Legislative Programs for the New York State Nurses Association. Ms. Amatucci Fox won the Assembly race against Mr. ingrasCONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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sia by less than 2,000 votes, becoming not only the first woman to represent Sullivan County in the State Legislature, but also the first Registered Nurse ever elected to the New York State Assembly. A moderate Democrat, Ms. Amatucci Fox won re-election in 1976 by a better than 2-1 margin, and on March 14, 1978, she made history again, becoming the first woman in the New York State Legislature to give birth while in office. Although women had been serving in the New York Assembly since 1919, there were still just a handful of women in the Legislature during Ms. Amatucci Fox’s tenure, but she says she did not find her sex to be a factor in the way she was treated by her colleagues. “I always felt very much accepted,” she recalled recently. “And I felt privileged, because I know women in politics were not always treated that way.” “I think I was accepted because of a combination of things,” she says. “I was a college graduate, I was a nurse, and I made it a point to only speak when I had something to say and to always have my facts in order.” Ms. Amatucci Fox decided not to seek re-election in 1978, choosing instead to remain at home to care for her young son. She says it was
Jean Amatucci Fox was the first woman to represent Sullivan County in the New York State Assembly, the first Registered Nurse elected to the Assembly, and the first woman to give birth while in office in the NYS Legislature.
SULLIVAN COUNTY DEMOCRAT
a decision she has never regretted. “I saw the toll it took on other families,” she said, referring to holding elected office. “And I decided I didn’t want to leave the baby. Family had to come first.” As her son grew older, she gradually became more and more involved in the community, serving on non-profit boards and substitute teaching. There were opportunities over the years to return to politics, which she considered, but ultimately decided against. “I am pleased I had a chance to serve, and I am very grateful to the electorate for giving that to me,” she said recently. “I think I did a good job.” Kay Kelly Bogdan By the time Kay Kelly Bogdan let out her first scream at Monticello’s Hamilton Avenue Hospital, her father, James Kelly, a Landfield Avenue candy maker and Chairman of the Sullivan County Democratic Party, was headed to Albany to become Deputy Secretary of State. At 3 or 4 months old, the precious only child was sleeping in a dresser drawer at the Dewitt Clinton Hotel. By six years old, she was flying up and down the carved stone “Million Dollar Staircase” in the Capitol across the street. “Politics was genetic,” she says. “My father was 62 when I was born, my mother 41. And he felt he didn’t have much time left to groom me for that world.” He made sure she knew how to properly shake hands with important people such as Jim Farley, one of the first Irish Catholic politicians to rise to national prominence, later serving simultaneously as Chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, Chairman of the National Democratic Committee, and Postmaster General under two administrations of FDR. He drilled her on phone answering skills so she would be always be poised no matter who was on the other end, a skill that came in handy after her mother insisted they return to Monticello for Kay’s schooling,
Kay Kelly Bogdan with Governor Mario Cuomo.
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then he - remembered her name, and she got what she needed. When the time came, after her husband passed, and she and her children were floundering, “politics” showed up to repay such kindnesses. Governor Mario Cuomo offered her a job in Albany heading up the Custom Plates division in the Department of Motor Vehicles. He frequently used her as his emissary to take to Sullivan County various awards or proclamations in his place. “He was the most decent, honest politician I’d met in my life,” she says. “Not counting my father, of course.” Georgianna Lepke
and such calls kept coming in. Toward the end of her college career at Russell Sage, her father drafted her into a “Kids for Kennedy” group to greet Bobby Kennedy on the steps of the Sullivan County Court House during his campaign tour for JFK’s presidential run. It was the beginning of a family/political alliance that paid off many years later. When her father died, while the newly married Kay Kelly Bogdan was teaching business skills at Monticello High School, Monticello attorney Rose Rosen asked her to stop by the office. “She went after me,” Ms. Bogdan says, to run for the Thompson Democratic committee in my father’s old district. “After 20 minutes, I agreed.” She won, and became immersed in all things political, eventually being elected the first woman to Chair the Sullivan County Democratic Committee, and later a state committeeperson. “Yes, I worked hard to help the right people get elected, to teach them how to properly fill out petitions, to go door to door…” she says. “But my bigger goal was to help people, to use my connections to raise money for new steps for the hospital, to rebuild St. Peter’s church after the fire.” She tells the story of a constituent who needed an experimental drug that Senator Ted Kennedy could help her get. She called his office, his secretary –
Georgianna Lepke says becoming a politician was a complete accident. She used to accompany friends to Republican dinners, becoming familiar with many names and faces, and gradually some issues. When, in 1975 the Neversink Town Clerk was set to retire, she was talked into running for the job. She did. And she was successful, beginning her public service at a time when Dick Coombe, Jim Gorman and Horace Sheeley were on the Town Board. They were men with “a very high sense of integrity” for whom she had a lot of respect. They became her mentors. Ms. Lepke recognized that she was in a man’s world, and decided she had to work harder; do her homework; always show up prepared, pleasant and perfect. Looking back now, she surmises that is how she earned her place in their world and their respect. When Coombe became Sullivan County Treasurer in 1980, he talked her into becoming his deputy. “I had never thought about such a position, but I accepted,” she said. Call it another “accident.” “Georgi is a remarkable woman who I could count on to always pay attention to detail while also always seeing the big picture,” Coombe says. “Plus she is a great people person.”
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Ms. Lepke, had served for years on the town Republican committee, and was elected to serve as Vice-Chair of the County Republican Committee under Harry Seletsky. When he had a heart attack, she stepped up to fill his shoes. “Another accident,� she says. She later became Chair, serving at a time when all three major county parties were led by women, with Kay Kelly Bogdan leading the Democrats and Sondra Bauernfeind the Conservative Party. “I don’t recall ever thinking, or anyone saying at the time anything about this being a breakthrough moment for women, but I
guess it was,� Ms. Lepke says. “We were all just doing our jobs.� Before long, Ms. Lepke decided to accept another job offer from Dick Coombe, who had been elected to the New York State Assembly and asked her to be his Executive Assistant. Dan Briggs, incoming County Treasurer, asked her to stay on with him. “I thought, well, I’ve served on the town and county level, why not go see what the state level is like,� she says. She returned to Neversink ten years later, just when Jim Gorman was stepping down as Town Supervisor due to failing health. He convinced her to run for the CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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Georgianna Lepke of Neversink hands the gavel of the Catskill Watershed Corp. (CWC) Board Presidency to Mike Triolo, supervisor of the Town of Stamford. Lepke, the former Town of Neversink supervisor and Sullivan County CWC representative, has sold her home in Neversink and is relocating to Florida. During the 1990s, Lepke participated in the negotiations for the NYC Watershed Memorandum of Agreement that led to creation of the CWC in 1997. She has been intimately involved with Watershed policy making as a member of the CWC Board since its inception. Delaware County representative Jim Eisel called Lepke “an outstanding asset to this corporation;� NYC representative Jeffrey Graf praised her “grace, dignity and balance,� and environmental representative Deborah Dewan thanked the outgoing President for the “great gift of her leadership.� For more info on the CWC and its programs visit www.cwconline.org. or call toll-free 877928-7433.
"Well behaved women seldom make history!" ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
The Delaware Company
salutes our Executive Director,
Debra (Keator) ConwayÂŤZKR \HDUV DJR EHFDPH DORQJ ZLWK KHU FROOHDJXH .DWKU\QH +RIIPDQ WKH ILUVW ZRPen editors in the (then) 94-year history of the Sullivan County Democrat.
The Delaware Company: Growing our future from the Roots of Our Past Board of Directors John Conway, President William H. Chellis, M. Div., J.D., Vice President Robert Dadras, R.A., Director Steven C. Melendez, Director Jan Cheripko. Director Teresa Kehagias, Director
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office. She won, serving on the last Sullivan County Board of Supervisors that was replaced in 1996 by the new County Legislature. She also replaced Gorman as the rep to the Coalition of Towns, representing local interests over drinking water demands from New York City. “That group eventually became known as the Catskill Watershed Corporation, and I was elected Chairman,” she says. “If New York City had gotten its way, none of us would even exist here now.” The Lepkes decided to put all the politics in their rearview mirror around 2013 to become snowbirds, finally selling their home and moving to Florida. “But we come back to visit,” she says. “Sullivan County will always be home - among all the beauty and places we worked so hard to protect.” Sondra Bauernfeind
It took only one meeting of the Sullivan County Conservative Party and Sondra Bauernfeind was hooked. The 84-year-old Town of Bethel woman cannot recall the name of the speaker, but, she says “he was inspiring.” He talked her into joining the party, which she did on the spot. It was a logical segue from serving as Treasurer of the Bethel Town Taxpayers Association, which was formed to “keep an eye” on expenditures in Bethel and by the County Board of Supervisors, “all of which deeply affect the burden placed on the taxpayer in the Town of Bethel,” she told the Times Herald-Record in 1967. Two years later, Robert Page of Westbrookville was re-elected Conservative Party Chairman, with John Bauernfeind, Sondra’s husband, elected as Vice Chair, and Sondra elected Secretary. That all changed in 1970 when Page resigned his position due to ill health, and John Bauernfeind stepped up to become Chairman.
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“Feeling it was unethical for two members of the same family to hold executive positions at the same time,” Ms. Bauernfeind resigned as Secretary and Marion Stackhouse of Fallsburg was elected to that position, according to the Liberty Register in June, 1970. A strong sense of ethics was instilled in her while growing up in Jeffersonville, the daughter of Dr. Max Epstein, and while attending Jeffersonville-Youngsville Central School along with her brother, the late Jeffersonville attorney Jacob J. Epstein. Her discerning sense of right and wrong might also explain her affinity for the laws of nature that led her to teach science for 40 years, first in Liberty and then in Fallsburg. And when, in 1973, she succeeded her husband as Sullivan County’s Conservative Party Chair, the first woman ever elected to that position, she became a passionate advocate for what she thought “was right,” regardless of whom she was up against. “I was a teacher,” she laughs now. “I was used to facing down pretty tough customers, so being up against tough men or tough situations never phased me.” Never being a “women’s libber,” it did not impress her, or even occur to her, that she was serving as Conservative Chair – along with her long-time Vice Chair Marion Stackhouse - at the same time the other parties were also being
Jean McCoach
chaired by women. Nobody said, “Hey, look at us!” “Marion and I made a great team because we shared the same values,” Ms. Bauernfeind says. But those values led to an eventual falling out with the local Conservative party in 1992, she adds. Mrs. Stackhouse, then serving as County Coroner, became aware of a situation she thought was being covered up. The two tried to question an elected official about it, but received a lot of push back and runaround – not because they were women, she says, but because ‘he had a problem with the truth.” When it came time for her to endorse the official’s bid for reelection, she refused. That prompted a major “falling out,” she says, “and I was exited from the party.” She has been a registered Republican ever since. Jean McCoach
Sondra Bauernfeind of Mongaup Valley brought this homemade sign – one she’s been showing to county legislators of late – to Albany, illustrating a price difference between solar energy and natural gas, during a rally in October 2012.
Katherine Jean McCoach was born to Walter and Amanda Bauernfeind Stewart in Johnson City, NY on November 17, 1924. She married Thomas McCoach and settled in Fosterdale, where she ran a beauty salon out of her house. When she was elected Town of Cochecton Tax Collector by a better than 2 to 1 margin in November of 1972, it had been years since a Democrat had won any office in the town. In fact, just two years before, the party had not
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been able to field a single candidate in the town elections. Over the previous year, she had helped revitalize the Democratic party in Cochecton, where Republicans held a 2-1/2 to 1 advantage in voter registrations. It was reported that she was nominated to run that fall largely because she “comes from an old local family, people know her, and she is a strong candidate.” Her victory, she said at the time, “proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cochecton voters want a two-party system.” Despite the strides Democrats made in the town, Republicans still held a two-to-one edge when Ms. McCoach ousted incumbent supervisor Carl Grund in November of 1975. She became the first woman ever elected supervisor in any town in Sullivan County, and when she took office in January of 1976—one of eight new Supervisors that year-- she became the first woman to serve on the Sullivan County Board of Supervisors, which had existed since 1809. On the County Board she was outspoken, and fiercely loyal to her town, which under the weighted voting system used at the time, typically had little sway on county matters. What she lacked in voting power, she often made up for in plain old common sense and was an effective legislator. As chair of the Board’s Optional Forms of Government Committee, she helped oversee the adoption of a new legislative manual that reorganized the county’s administrative structure. For years, she worked to get a traffic light at the four-corner intersection of Routes 52 and 17B in Fosterdale, and finally succeeded in getting a blinking light installed there. Not satisfied that the blinker was sufficient, she continued to campaign for a full three-color light. Her successor as Supervisor, Sal Indelicato, continued the fight, and on the very day Ms. McCoach died, he received a letter from the New York State Department of Transportation that the light had been approved. Jean McCoach died in Orlando,
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Florida on February 27, 2003. She was 78. Judith Smith Kaye
Judith Smith Kaye was born in Monticello in 1938, attended a one room schoolhouse in Maplewood, and graduated at 15 from Monticello High School, where she was on the debate team and edited the school newspaper. She was the first woman to serve on New York State’s Court of Appeals and its first female Chief Judge, while declining an opportunity to become the first woman appointed U.S. Attorney General. But for all of her accomplishments—and potential accomplishments she chose not to pursue, including an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court—Judith Smith Kaye never forgot her Sullivan County roots. She lived all of her adult life out of the area, but relished her friends here, and even returned for her 50th high school reunion in 2004. Her parents had fled Poland in the face of religious persecution, settling on a small farm in Maplewood, just outside Monticello. Judge Kaye attended the one room schoolhouse there, and later credited her teacher, Miss Kitz, with giving her an
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important head start in her education. When her parents sold the farm and moved to Monticello, opening a general merchandise store on Broadway, Judith transferred to Monticello school, and was so advanced that she was able to skip two grades. The store eventually became an apparel shop and Judge Kaye spent her high school years helping out, while also working for the Evening News weekly newspaper. She enjoyed working at the paper so much, her ambition was to become a journalist—an international correspondent—and that remained her goal throughout her matriculation at Barnard, where she majored in Latin American Civilization and edited the campus newspaper while also stringing for the New York Herald Tribune. Deciding that a law degree might enhance her chances of becoming an international reporter, she took night classes at NYU Law School while working days as a copy editor at a news service syndicate. Eventually, the law began to interest her more than journalism and she devoted her efforts to her legal career. She graduated cum laude in 1962, one of only 10 women in a graduating class of nearly 300. As a lawyer working for presti-
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Marion Stackhouse was an Army Nurse during World War II and the first woman Coroner in Sullivan County history...at the age of 71.
gious New York City firms, she still found time to have three children. When Mario Cuomo became governor of New York, one of his stated ambitions was to appoint the first woman to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. When the opportunity arose to do so, he chose Judge Kaye. On September 12, 1983, she was sworn in as the first woman to ever serve on the state Court of Appeals, and in less than three years had become the third-mostsenior judge on the Court, behind only Chief Judge Sol Wachtler and Associate Judge Simons. Following a scandal involving Wachtler, she became Chief Judge on March 23, 1993, the third Monticello lawyer to hold that position, and the first woman. When President Bill Clinton announced his intention to name the first female U.S. Attorney General, Judge Kaye was approached, and travelled to Arkansas for a meeting with the President-elect, but ultimately declined to pursue the position. When a vacancy arose on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Kaye was again at the top of the list of potential candidates. Again, she declined. She served admirably as New York’s Chief Judge until she reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 in 2008. She died in 2016. Marion Stackhouse
Judge Judith Smith Kaye, the first woman to be Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals.
Marion Gertrude Stackhouse
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was born in Neversink—the old hamlet before it was displaced by the waters of the Reservoir—on September 10, 1915 to Wilard W. and Hattie Avery Kracht. While she was still a teenager, and with just $10 in her pocket, she took the train to Brooklyn and enrolled in nursing school there. She graduated from the Brooklyn Hospital School of Nursing at the age of 20. She enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II, and served throughout Europe until her discharge in 1946. For the remainder of her life, she retained vivid memories of her days as an Army nurse, and it impacted much of what she later did. “Stackhouse vehemently believed that no one should die alone, and she spent much of her time sitting with soldiers who couldn’t be saved, comforting them until they died,” reporter Amanda Loviza wrote after interviewing several family members for an article in the Times HeraldRecord newspaper following Mrs. Stackhouse’s death. Returning to Sullivan County after the war, Mrs. Stackhouse became the Director of Nursing at Hamilton Avenue Hospital in Monticello and then at Community General Hospital. She was known as an extremely strict, but ultimately compassionate, taskmaster. She also worked parttime as a nurse for the Department of Corrections, and was a member of the New York State Nurses Association for more than 50 years. She married Burdett T. Stackhouse in 1947. He had been an Army Air Forces Captain during World War II, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery upon his death in 1963. Mrs. Stackhouse became active in politics, and served for many years as the secretary and then Vice Chair of the Sullivan County Conservative Party. She was elected County Coroner In 1986 at the age of 71, becoming the first woman to serve in that capacity in the county’s history. “She did it to prove to the CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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women of Sullivan County that if they got out and wanted to run, there was no reason they couldn’t,” her niece, Florence Stewart told the Times Herald-Record. Mrs. Stackhouse did not let her relatively advanced age slow her down as coroner, and she “didn’t hesitate to go out in the middle of the night, in all weather, climbing down embankments to get to car wreck victims if she had to,” Ms. Loviza wrote in 2016. Mrs. Stackhouse was selected as Sullivan County Woman of the Year in 1990. In 1992, she briefly considered a run for the U.S. Congress, but dropped out of the race. She died at the home of her granddaughter in New Mexico on August 17, 2016, less than a month before her 101st birthday. She had opted not to be buried with her husband at Arlington, telling family members “he needed his own space.” Instead, she was buried with full military honors in the Grahamsville Rural Cemetery. Olga Parlow Olga Parlow was born in Yonkers, NY, but she says she “only remembers living in Forestburgh all my life.” She attended a one-room school up until the sixth grade, and then attended St. Joseph’s Mountain School in Forestburgh through eighth grade before moving on to Monticello High School, from which she graduated in 1958. She went to work in the insurance and real estate fields out of high school and then in 1970 was hired as a legal secretary, a position she held until she became Deputy County Treasurer under Dan Briggs in 1983. When Briggs stepped down as Treasurer to become County Manager in October of 2000, Mrs. Parlow ran for the office. Although it would seem logical that she would ascend to the post after 17 years as Deputy, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Many others coveted the job. When Briggs’ selection as County Manager was announced in late September, the
SULLIVAN COUNTY DEMOCRAT
Sullivan County Democrat ran an article that mentioned the crowded field of prospective candidates for the soon-to-be vacant position. “Several names cropped up,” the article noted, “including Deputy County Treasurer Olga Parlow, Legislator Christopher Cunningham, Town of Fallsburg Deputy Supervisor Arnold Seletsky, Town of Neversink Supervisor Georgianna Lepke, Town of Bethel Supervisor Allan Scott, and Community Bank of Sullivan County consultant and Director of Business Robert Ernst. Of those names, Lepke, Scott, and Ernst have stated they would not seek the position at this time.” That November, Mrs. Parlow, running as a Republican, outpolled Legislator Chris Cunningham to become the first woman elected County Treasurer in Sullivan County’s history. Other women had run for County Treasurer before – perhaps most notably Helen Milk, a Republican who lost a fairly close race to incumbent Treasurer Donald Baker in 1961, and then again three years later – but none successfully. The 2000 election was only to fill the one year left on Briggs’ unfinished term, and Mrs. Parlow had to run again in November of 2001 for a full four-year term. She was again elected, defeating Ron Gozza of Liberty. When that term was winding down, Mrs. Parlow considered
Olga Parlow
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running one more time, but decided against it. She retired at the end of 2005. “One of my accomplishments while being County Treasurer was getting tax information available to everyone online,” she says. “By now it’s getting outdated and there are probably better ways available to access the information, but back then there weren’t too many ways available.” She still lives in Forestburgh. Leni Binder In January of 1996, the very first Sullivan County Legislature was sworn in, replacing the Board of Supervisors, which had governed the county for 186 years. Those first nine Legislators included one woman: Leni Binder, who was elected to represent District 7. When Ms. Binder was re-elected in 1999, she was joined by two other women among the nine lawmakers, but she was the first. Then, in June of 2002, she achieved yet another milestone, as she was sworn in as Legislature Chair to replace Raymond “Rusty” Pomeroy, who had resigned. She remains the only woman to ever chair the Sullivan County Legislature. "Mrs. Binder is a dedicated public servant. She has proved this over and over again as she functions cooperatively and productively for the benefit of the county," District 8 Representative Bob Kunis said in nominating Ms. Binder for chair. "I have never known Mrs. Binder to relax her standards of voting her conscience regardless of party demands. She will always embrace what is right for Sullivan County." “I promise not just good government, but good governance,” Ms. Binder said in accepting the nomination. Born in Mountaindale, Ms. Binder attended Ellenville High School and graduated from Syracuse University. She taught Social Studies in the Rondout Valley school district before getting married and moving back to Sullivan County, where she began raising her two children and get-
Leni Binder
ting involved in community service. When she heard that a new form of government was being proposed for the county, a Legislature to replace the Board of Supervisors that had governed since Sullivan was formed in 1809, she thought “it was a great forum for advocacy,” and decided to become a candidate. “I ran for office because I believed I could do more,” Ms. Binder said recently. “I met great people, dealt with the jail, nursing home, gaming, roads and budgets and tried for quality of life with keeping taxes fair.” She served as a Legislator until 2012, but she was prepared to step down when she ran for County Treasurer in 2005 following the retirement of Olga Parlow. Running on the Republican and People’s Choice lines, she lost to Ira Cohen by 1,670 votes. Since leaving the Legislature, Ms. Binder has been on the Village of Woodridge Board of Trustees and has served as the village’s Deputy Mayor. She has always been motivated, she says, by a love of creating, even though she “hates politics.” “I always tried to abide by a piece of advice I was given when I was first elected,” she said recently. “I was told, ‘don’t ever make a promise you know you can’t keep, from paving a road, passing a law or how you will vote on an issue.’”
SULLIVAN COUNTY DEMOCRAT
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WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE
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The Suffragists: Fight for the vote in Sullivan County A virtual program by the Time and the Valleys Museum
GRAHAMSVILLE - Join the Time and the Valleys Museum for a virtual program: The Suffragists: Fight for the Vote in Sullivan County on Sunday, August 23 at 2 p.m. by Sullivan County Historian John Conway. 2020 is the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote in the U.S. Women won the right to vote after decades of struggle and against strong opposition from men - and some women - who feared that government would be placed “under petticoatrule.” Ultimately, it was effective leadership and the development of what became known as “the winning plan” that turned the tide. Sullivan County Historian John Conway examines their strategies, the impact of World War I on the movement, and some prominent local leaders, including Elizabeth Worth Muller. Admission is FREE and Virtual attendance is EASY. Just email the Museum at info@timeandthevalleysmuseum.org to register, and you will receive a reply email invitation with information on how to
l be “ There never wil complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.”
Mrs. Muller's Votes Wagon, which toured Sullivan County campaigning for the vote leading up to the 1915 referendum in New York State.
log in for the talk. Please call (845) 985-7700 or info@timeandthevalleysmuseum.org for more information. About the Time and the Valleys Museum: Connecting Water, People and the Catskills, the Time and the Valleys Museum is currently closed. Exhibitions when reopening: • Water and the Valleys, an exhibit on the history of the Rondout
and Neversink watershed area from early geological times to the 20th century. This newly renovated exhibition includes interactives such as a Native American artifact guessing game, grinding corn with a mortar and pestle, videos and more. • Tunnels, Toil and Trouble: New York City’s Quest for Water and the Rondout-Neversink Story, an interactive exhibit on NYC water
supply system and the towns that were removed to build the system, which includes computer interactives, games, puzzles, videos and building a dam and tunnel. • 1930s Lost Catskill Farm • NEW! Once Upon a Time: One Teacher, 8 Grades, One-Room School The Museum is located at 332 Main Street (St. Rt. 55) in Grahamsville, Sullivan County. Adults admission is a suggested donation of $5, Children under 16 $2, and children under six are free. Town of Neversink and Town of Denning residents receive free admission every Thursday. As a Blue Star Museum, the Museum offers free admission to active duty military members and up to five family members. For more information call (845) 985-7700, e-mail info@timeandthevalleysmuseum.org or visit www.timeandthevalleysmuseum.org. Groups, camps and schools are always welcome Guided tours are conducted for groups of 15 to 100 people throughout the year.
We have certainly come a long way since August 18, 1920, the day the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote. We applaud all those who worked tirelessly to make this happen and all those women who have carried the torch of equality and fairness throughout our nation's history.
We urge everyone – men and women alike – to vote. It's a Constitutional right which should not be taken for granted but exercised often to make it even stronger.
ONY - SUSAN B. ANTH
SULLIVAN COUNTY'S ONLY TWICE-WEEKLY NEWSPAPER "Protecting your freedoms, since 1891"
With offices in Callicoon and Monticello
Call 845-887-5200 to advertise or subscribe today!
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SULLIVAN COUNTY DEMOCRAT
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