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🏘️ Croton Local History
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Underhill’s great-great-great-great-granddaughter. Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on
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Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Richard T. Underhill William A. Underhill Published December 8, 2013 April 9, 2017
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One of two versions of a 1917 Goodyear tire ad featuring the Nikko Inn. Click the image to enlarge it. Who was the marketing genius behind this bit of Jazz Age cross-promotion? The 1917 ads for Goodyear Cord Tires appeared in magazines ranging from
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the Atlantic Monthly and The New Country Life to Travel and Forest & Stream . Both feature detailed pen-and-ink drawings of Nikko Inn in the background, suggesting the perfect place you could visit “in superior comfort,” driving your Goodyear Cord
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Tire-equipped car. For other posts about the Nikko Inn, click here . Detail of Nikko Inn from the ad above. Click the image to enlarge it. A different version of the ad from the June, 1917 issue of Travel magazine. Share this: Print (Opens in new
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Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Nikko Inn Published December 14, 2013
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A seller on eBay is currently offering—and has graciously allowed us to feature—a bible bearing the bookplate of Abraham I. Underhill, one of the three Underhill brothers who started the flour mill on the Croton River in 1792, under a lease from the
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Van Cortlandt family. 1 The bible contains a handwritten page recording Abraham Underhill’s marriage “in a publick Meeting of the people called Quakers at Croton in the Town of Cortlandt, the 19th day of the 12th month, 1805 according to the order of
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the said society,” along with the birth of their son, Edward Burrough Underhill, four years later. Also included is something odd, which the seller describes as “a folded paper in an unknown hand, possibly shorthand.” Here is a link to the item. If
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you buy it, please let me know . UPDATE! We alerted the Westchester County Historical Society that this was available and are happy to report that they have purchased it for their collection. If they manage to decipher the “paper in an unknown hand”
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they have promised to let us know. Details about Abraham Underhill and his family can be found on this page of Underhill genealogy, edited by Josephine C. Frost, volume 2, The Underhill Society of America, 1932. ↩ Share this: Print (Opens in new
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Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Published December 17, 2013 December 18, 2013
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The Peek’s Kill. Click on the images to enlarge them. Here are excerpts from Benson John Lossing’s classic book, The Hudson, from the Wilderness to the Sea , recording in words and pictures a winter on the Hudson River very different from what we
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experience today. 1 From his first night visiting “Peek’s Kill Bay”—where the river was “cold, silent, glittering . . . except a group of young skaters, gliding spectre-like in the crisp night air”—to the next morning when “the bay was alive with
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people of all ages” and “fun, pure fun, ruled the hour,” Lossing describes the Hudson “bridged with strong ice” allowing “skaters, ice-boats, and sleighs [to traverse] the smooth surface of the river with perfect safety . . . and the counties upon
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its borders, separated by its flood in summer” to be “joined by the solid ice, that offered a medium for pleasant intercourse during the short and dreary days of winter.” Let’s strap on our skates and join the fun. “A few weeks after my visit to the
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Donder Berg and its vicinity, I was again at Peek’s Kill, and upon its broad and beautiful bay. But a great change had taken place in the aspect of the scene. The sober foliage of late autumn had fallen, and where lately the most gorgeous colours
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clothed the lofty hills in indescribable beauty, nothing but bare stems and branches, and grey rugged rocks, were seen, shrouded in the snow that covered hill and valley, mountain and plain. The river presented a smooth surface of strong ice, and
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winter, with all its rigours, was holding supreme rule in the realm of nature without. It was evening when I arrived at Peek’s Kill—a cold, serene, moonlight evening. Muffled in a thick cloak, and with hands covered by stout woolen gloves, I sallied
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out to transfer to paper and fix in memory the scene upon Peek’s Kill . . . The frost bit sharply, and cold keen gusts of wind came sweeping from the Highlands, while I stood upon the causeway at the drawbridge at the mouth of Peek’s Kill, and made
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my evening sketch. All was cold, silent, glittering, and solitary, except a group of young skaters, gliding spectre-like in the crisp night air, their merry laughter ringing out clear and loud when one of the party was made to “see stars”—not in the
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black arch above—as his head took the place of his heels upon the ice. Skaters on Peek’s Kill Bay On the following morning, when the sun had climbed high towards meridian, I left Peek’s Kill for a day’s sketching and observation in the winter air.
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The bay was alive with people of all ages, sexes, and conditions. It was the first day since a late snow-storm that the river had offered good sport for skaters, and the navigators of ice-boats. 2 It was a gay scene. Wrapped in furs and shawls,
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over-coats and cloaks, men and women, boys and girls, were enjoying the rare exercise with the greatest pleasure. Fun, pure fun, ruled the hour. The air was vocal with shouts and laughter; and when the swift ice-boat, with sails set, gay pennon
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streaming, and freighted with a dozen boys and girls, came sweeping gracefully towards the crowd,—after making a comet-like orbit of four or five miles to the feet of the Donder Berg, Bear Mountain, and Anthony’s Nose,—there was a sudden shout, and
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scattering, and merry laughter, that would have made old Scrooge, even before his conversion, tremulous with delight, and glowing with desires to be a boy again and singing Christmas Carols with a hearty good-will. I played the boy with the rest for
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a while, and then, with long strides upon skates, my satchel with portfolio slung over my shoulder, I bore away towards . . . the shores of Tomkins’s Cove, on the western side of the river, four or five miles below. Winter Fishing On my way to
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Tomkins’s Cove 3 I encountered other groups of people, who appeared in positive contrast with the merry skaters on Peek’s Kill Bay, They were sober, thoughtful, winter fishermen, thickly scattered over the surface, and drawing their long nets from