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🏘️ Croton Local History
Blog posts, articles, and community histories by local historians
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Brook Street, and Terrace Place still exists today and is said to be the oldest house in Croton. The entire map and the rest of this 1872 Westchester County atlas can be seen at the David Rumsey Map Collection . Although not labeled on this map,
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Brook Street was then called Upper Landing Road. ↩ See this previous post for an 1850 map showing the Quaker Meeting House in more detail. ↩ Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on
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Croton Landing Quaker Meeting House Published January 6, 2014 November 5, 2018
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Can you help decode this 19th-century document? Bookplate from the Underhill Bible. Last month we posted pictures of a bible offered on eBay, bearing the bookplate of Abraham I. Underhill, one of the three Underhill brothers who started the flour
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mill on the Croton River in 1792. We were thrilled (and proud) when the Westchester County Historical Society immediately purchased this treasure, after we alerted them that it was available. In addition to a handwritten page recording Abraham
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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 . . . ,” the bible also contained something unusual, which the seller described as “a folded paper in an
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unknown hand, possibly shorthand.” What does it say? Is it simply a mundane document, slipped into the family bible? The minutes of a Quaker meeting in Croton? A document relating to the long-running legal battle between the Underhill and Van
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Cortlandt families over the Croton River mill? If you happen to have expertise in 19th-century shorthand please contact me . Below are high-resolution black-and-white scans of the pages. Click to enlarge them. Thanks to Patrick Raftery, Librarian of
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the Westchester County Historical Society , for providing these images. Page 1 Page 2 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
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(Opens in new window) X Share on 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 Abraham I. Underhill Quaker Meeting House Quakers
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Underhill family Underhill flour mill Van Cortlandt family Published January 8, 2014
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Sanford Robinson Gifford, American, 1823–1880. Hook Mountain, Near Nyack, on the Hudson , 1866. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery. Click the image to enlarge it . This magnificent Hudson River School painting, Hook Mountain, Near Nyack, on
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the Hudson by Sanford Robinson Gifford, shows the view looking west from the southern shores of Croton Point. Hidden in the trees in the foreground is the rooftop and cupola of Richard T. Underhill’s Italianate villa, which he built in 1846 and
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christened “Interwasser”. Detail showing the rooftop and cupola of the Underhill mansion on the southern tip of Croton Point. Click the image to enlarge it. The image is courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery , which has made “thousands of
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images of works in the Gallery’s collection . . . available for free download . . .” For a similar view from higher up, showing the Underhill vineyards, see this previous post of a wood engraving from Harper’s Weekly . You should also check out the
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Hudson River School Art Trail , which includes this painting in an effort to encourage people to “hike in the footsteps of Hudson River School artists . . .” to “see the locations that influenced famous American landscape paintings of the 19th
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century.” 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 Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share
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on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Art Hudson River School Richard T. Underhill Sanford Robinson Gifford Published January 10, 2014 September 8, 2017
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Map of Hudson River Line Steamers, Albany and C. Vibbard . Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London. Click the image to enlarge it. Here’s a nice route map of the Hudson River Line steamers Albany and Chauncey Vibbard during the Golden Age of steamboats.
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The New York State Education Department has a fascinating account of Hudson River steamboat travel which includes descriptions of both boats and what was then called the Day Line. Of the many Hudson River steamboat lines, the one which became the
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best known in this country and abroad was the Hudson River Day Line. Its “white flyers” were famous for their elegance and speed, and provided the most enjoyable way to travel the Hudson River. No one could claim to have seen America without seeing
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the Hudson River, and the only way to properly see the Hudson River was from the deck of a Day Liner. . . . In the first full season of the Day Line in 1864 the steamer Chauncey Vibbard was launched and paired with the Daniel Drew to provide regular
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steamboat service between New York and Albany. Service was offered six days a week, but never on Sunday. As one of the steamboats was traveling upriver, the other was traveling downriver. The Day Line claimed its steamboats operated under the “nine
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hour system.” That is, it took nine hours for the boats to complete the trip between Albany and New York City, with Poughkeepsie as the half-way point for these trips. . . . In the 1880s the Day Line, in order to better promote its business, felt
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that it needed to upgrade its fleet with new boats that were not only larger and faster, but also more elegant in appearance and décor. The Day Line introduced the Albany in 1880 and the New York in 1887. These two new steamers, built on iron hulls
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300 feet in length, could accommodate 1,500 passengers and claimed to be the fastest steamboats in the world. They were built exclusively for carrying passengers, and were said to be the finest boats ever constructed for the business. The Day Line
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advertisements emphasized that it was “strictly first-class—no freight.” These boats featured spacious cabins finished in highly polished woods; they were handsomely paneled, luxuriously furnished and adorned with statuary and paintings by celebrated
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artists. The dining rooms were on the main deck, where the traveler could enjoy an excellent dinner, which was served on the European plan, and lose nothing of the view of the most charming of American rivers. See this previous post for images from
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Souvenir of the Hudson River , which has an inscription in the back that reads “Bought Sept. 1881 on Steamer Vibbard.” This map is courtesy of Wellcome Library, London, which has 100,000 images—ranging from ancient medical manuscripts to etchings by