"Why We Should Support our Historical Society"
[Editor's Note: On November 9, a fundraiser to support the Beacon Historical Society was held at The Roundhouse. Former Beacon mayor Clara Lou Gould and Beacon business Hudson Beach Glass were the honorees given the Beacons of History award. Over 180 attended the event. The following speech was given that evening by the president of the Beacon Historical Society.]
There is an old French proverb that reads: "Happy is the country which has no history."
This saying seems paradoxical to us today ... especially in light of our hometown's own rich past. More apt for our purposes would be this rephrasing: "Happy is the city with a history to tell." Beacon has history a-plenty, and for more than 40 years the Beacon Historical Society has carried on the happy task of fulfilling its mission--to procure, preserve and present the history of this very special community.
In comparison to other area societies we were late-comers to the party. Our sister city Newburgh, for example, founded its historical society way back in 1884. Perhaps it was this impression of a city without-an-historical-identity that had been attached to us that spurred a small group of like-minded Beacon citizens with a passion for local history to form the Beacon Historical Society in 1976. That was the same year that our nation "happily" celebrated its centennial, and it seemed the perfect time to launch an organization dedicated to telling Beacon's story.
Our Society's founders were the generation born between the world wars of the last century ... Beaconites who had grown up during the Depression and then served their country so honorably in World War II. The new Society was made up of men and women who were known and trusted in Beacon. So when they asked friends and neighbors to share memories and to lend out their precious family photographs, scrapbooks and Beacon mementos, the community willingly did so, and thus the Society's early collections of Beacon's history began to grow
They knew then (as we do now) that history can be fragile, often ephemeral--easily lost or quickly disappearing to fire, the dumpster, the bulldozer, and increasingly, the highest bidder at an auction house. Their task then (as it is ours today) was to make our history real and relevant; to tap into our community's imagination by describing what once was and what can be again today. Put simply: history imagined is history remembered
Just imagine, for example, a young Franklin Roosevelt coming here to Beacon in 1910 to give his first political speech. He is running for the state assembly and he passes right in front of us on East Main Street (then called Fountain Street), headed for the waiting throng of well-wishers at Fountain Square.
Or imagine, again in 1910, a young actress named Mary Pickford who with her famed movie director D.W. Griffith and his film-making entourage of the Biograph Studio are riding the trolley cars outside this Roundhouse. They are headed for the Mount Beacon Incline Railway which they will ride to the summit and there film the silent movie, "The Song of the Wildwood Flute."
Or imagine it is January of 1777, and a cold and weary John Adams, traveling from Boston to Pennsylvania, is close by and urges his faithful horse up-and-over what we today call "Hell's Hollow" on Mount Beacon--the colonists' shortcut pass from the Fishkill Depot across a rocky mountain trail to the foothills of Beacon and then down land further to the Fishkill Landing ferry. Adams would liken this passage "to crossing the Alps" in a letter to his wife Abigail. Hardly could Adams imagine that, years later, his granddaughter Caroline would marry into the DeWindt family and make her home here in Fishkill Landing.
For four decades now the Beacon Historical Society has been telling Beacon's stories to all who would listen, recreating the lives and times of the famous and the ordinary. Of late, in our small office space in the Howland Cultural Center, our collections were spilling over, even onto the seating. We were hopelessly beyond rescue by Feng Shui ... we needed a new home.
By now, you know where this story is going ... Things have changed for the better, and as I stand here this eventful evening, I can imagine all of my late friends and colleagues--those founders who built this Society and since have passed on--figuratively standing alongside me and cheering us on. For their long-held dream--that of a permanent home for Beacon Historical--finally has become a reality.
So I feel honor-bound to mention a few of the hallowed names of leaders and benefactors from our Society's past--names probably unknown to many here tonight--as I offer my invitation to all of you to come visit our new home at 17 South Avenue.
... Come visit us and read the nineteenth-century journals of ex-slave James Brown--journals so lovingly transcribed by former city historian Joan Van Voorhis ... Come in to our new home and see the local bottles collections and the old Beacon postcards collections that our good friend and longtime member Gordon Ticehurst doted upon... Come see the ship models--especially the ferryboat "Beacon"--painstakingly crafted by one of our most generous and talented members, Jack Stearns ... Come in and handle actual Revolutionary War letters about Fishkill Landing--collected by our Society's first president, Lud Ruf ... Come peruse the military records of every one of Beacon's Civil War veterans--all dutifully copied from the Library of Congress by member Derry Dubetsky.
You see, we are like that person in every family who takes on the job of steward of the family's history--the Great Aunt of yours or mine who saved all of Grandma's old letters ... or the inquisitive second-cousin who quizzes everyone in the family until he has filled out all the names in the Family Tree. We are that steward, that repository of our family's--that is, the city of Beacon's--memories. We are the Beacon Historical Society.
