Mystery Photo: Uniontown Hose Company in 1959

This photograph, dated 1959 and showing the Uniontown Hose Company in full dress uniform, was donated to the Historical Society by the Rivertowns Enterprise. The firemen are standing in front of their brand new firehouse on Rose Street, which was dedicated on Saturday, December 6, 1959. This photograph may have been taken at the dedication ceremony. But apart from Chief Aresta Aluisio, second from the right, we have no identifications. Do you recognize anyone else? Click the photograph and look at it more closely in Flickr. If you need to enlarge it, click the “All Sizes” link above the photograph.

If you don’t know, but are curious about the answers, come back to the blog and check this post. We’ll attach comments with any information we receive.

Admiral Farragut: Legends of a Hastings Hero

Part II: I Sailed With Farragut

Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (for more information about any photograph, click the image)

Last week’s post included several stories about David Glasgow Farragut’s early days in Hastings in 1861. But the reminiscences of Civil War times that were printed in the local papers in the 1920s and ‘30s also contained more personal memories of Farragut. William McConnell must have been a great storyteller in those days, because many of his childhood memories found their way into print -- memories of swimming in the Saw Mill River and of being chastised by the master of the local “little red schoolhouse”. In the 1930s, the Hastings News carried a story of his acquaintance with Admiral Farragut’s family.

“For a year or more the lad had been carrying two pails of drinking water a day to the cottage on Washington Avenue. The spring at the northwest corner of Washington and Broadway provided drinking water for the neighborhood. Young Willie McConnell received a quarter a week pocket money for the carrying of a heavy pail each morning and each evening to the Farragut door. He still remembers the southern mammy who presided in the kitchen and who took the pail from the boy’s hands.”

But of all the stories told in Hastings about Farragut, the most exciting must be the one about James Hitchcock. In 1933, a Hastings News reporter got the story from James’s younger brother William, who was seventy-seven at the time.

“Young Jim Hitchcock, reckoned the village’s boldest blood, who was reputed to be able to spit tobacco farther than anyone in Hastings, was a close neighbor of the Farraguts. Perhaps it was during the inactive summer of 1861 that the Captain first took an interest in the boy. Probably the lad worshipped the old Captain and listened by the hour to tales of the sea. At any rate, when Captain Farragut was sent to the Gulf Squadron, Jim Hitchcock went with him. The captain had promised the sexton [Jim’s father] and his wife to find a berth for the lad that would not take him into direct action.

Hastings' Admiral Farragut Post of the American Legion posing with a model of the "Hartford" presented to President Roosevelt ca. 1938.

‘Jim was many years older than me. …I wasn’t born when Jim went off to the Spanish waters with the Captain,’ Mr. William Hitchcock told the representative of the Hastings News who called upon him the other day. ‘Yes, that’s what we called those parts at the time – the Spanish waters. I’ve heard my father and mother tell about it often, how Jim went with the captain, and how the captain made him a sailor...’

‘Yes,’ Mr. Hitchcock went on, ‘Jim was on the Hartford with the Admiral, and Jim fought at Mobile Bay. I’ve heard him tell the tale many a time of how three men at the wheel were killed by a shot that went clean over his head because he happened to be stooping down at the moment. The Admiral’s promise to my father and mother? It wasn’t his fault he didn’t keep it! It was Jim’s. The Admiral told my father when he came back that he had tried to put Jim on another ship, but Jim had coaxed for the Hartford. ‘You’ll get your damned head shot off you then, Hitchcock,’ said the Admiral to Jim, ‘and it won’t be my fault either.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Jim and he stayed with the Admiral. I’ve heard him tell that story many times.’ ”

And where was Jim Hitchcock in 1933? Nobody knew. “He came back to see us every few years,” William told the Hastings News. “Every few years until thirty-five years ago, and then Jim never came again. I went down to Snug Harbor a few years ago looking for him, but his name wasn’t on their lists of old sailors. Jim must be dead by now.” The Sailors’ Snug Harbor on Staten Island was the first home for retired sailors in the United States. It opened in 1833 and lasted into the 1960s. That property is now the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden.

The USS Hartford, on which Jim sailed, was one of the last wooden warships and had been commissioned in 1858. She was set on fire during a battle in 1862, but was saved by Farragut and his crew and continued to be Farragut’s flagship for all his major naval victories. The news of their neighbor’s exploits no doubt thrilled the villagers of Hastings. But they had no opportunity to show their tremendous pride and admiration for their local hero until the Admiral’s return to Hastings in the winter of 1865. That spectacular homecoming is the subject of next week’s post.

Decorative stamp showing the "Hartford" organized by local residents for Hastings' 1936 Farragut Day, celebrating the 135th anniversary of Farragut's birth

Mystery Photo: Theatrical Performance with a Nautical Theme, ca. 1935

Detail of central section. For entire photograph, see bottom of post.

Here is a real mystery. We know nothing about this photograph except that it includes Augusta Rieke (later Buckes). If you look at the entire photograph, below, you will see her in the front row, third from the right, next to the man dressed as a sailor.

There were so many organizations that mounted theatricals in the 1930s, and this performance could have been produced by any one of them. In our pamphlet file, we have programs from variety shows, plays, and musicals sponsored by the VFW, Riverview Manor Hose Company, the Woman’s Cub, the Tower Ridge Yacht Club, St. Matthew’s Lyceum, the Police Benevolent Association, and even the Holy Name Society of St. Matthews’s Roman Catholic Church. Generally, these performances were fundraisers, either for the organization that sponsored them or for a specific charity. But they gave plenty of opportunities for star-struck village amateurs to show off their singing, dancing, and acting skills. Sometimes there would even be an appearance by a local celebrity, like Jonathan Winters or Billie Burke.

This is a wonderful photograph, and we’d love to know something more about it! Do you recognize the show? Does anyone in it look familiar? Let us know! Click the photograph and look at it more closely in Flickr. If you need to enlarge it, click the “All Sizes” link above the photograph.

If you don’t know, but are curious about the answers, come back to the blog and check this post. We’ll attach comments with any information we receive.

Admiral Farragut: Legends of a Hastings Hero

Part I: How Farragut Came to Hastings

"Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!" Admiral Farragut in the rigging of his flagship, the 'Hartford', at the Battle of Mobile Bay. (Click on any of the photographs for more information.)

Before Billie Burke arrived to dazzle the village with the glamour of the theater, Hastings’ most famous resident was Civil War hero, David Glasgow Farragut. The Farragut family lived in Hastings for barely five years, and for most of that time Farragut himself was at sea. But those years, 1861 to 1865, spanned the Civil War, during which Captain (from 1862 Rear Admiral) Farragut became an American legend.

“Interest in and appreciation of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut increases at Hastings from year to year,” wrote a local reporter in the early 20th century. “There is no place in this broad country that has a better right to claim his citizenship and reverence his memory.” The Historical Society is full of memorabilia and articles about the great man and his time in Hastings, enough to fill many blogs. We have selected a handful of these stories to share with you over the next couple of weeks.

The verifiable facts about Farragut’s time in Hastings can be stated in just a few sentences. Before the Civil War, Farragut, who was a captain in the Navy, lived in Norfolk, Virginia. But he was a loyalist, and when Virginia seceded from the Union in April of 1861, Farragut moved with his wife and son to Hastings-on-Hudson. For a time, they lived at 60 Main Street. Farragut also rented from John William Draper half of a two-family cottage at the corner of Washington Avenue and Broadway. Over time, the number and order of these residences has become confused. Perhaps they lived in two houses; perhaps it was three. In 1865 the war came to an end. At about the same time, the city of New York presented the Farraguts with money to buy a house in town, and the family moved into Manhattan, ending their brief connection with Hastings.

A.C. Langmuir's 1939 photograph of the Draper cottage occupied by Farragut. In the 1910s, most of the locals claimed that this, and not the house on Main Street, was where the Farraguts spent most of their time while in Hastings.

But having an American hero in Hastings, even for a short time, fired the local imagination. 60 Main Street became known as “the Farragut house.” An oak tree on Main Street became “the tree under which Admiral Farragut used to sit.” In the early 20th century, reporters sought out Hastings old-timers and wrote up anything they could remember about Farragut. Many of these old-timers had been children during the Civil War, and their stories often appear to change from one article to the next. The Society has two scrapbooks, one compiled by journalist J. Otis Swift in the 1910s and 1920s, and another by A.C. Langmuir in the 1930s, that include such articles. Are they “memories” or “tall tales”? After all this time, it’s hard to say.

An article from 1919 tells one story of how the Admiral came to choose Hastings-on-Hudson for his residence.

“It was just before the beginning of the Civil War, when there were many Southerners and Southern sympathizers in New York, that young Farragut came up from the South to visit New York. The Government of Washington, hearing that its favorite young naval officer was on his way to the city, and fearing some Southerner would kill him, sent word to him to get out of New York city instantly. Farragut got the message as he was crossing from Jersey to the city, and promptly transferred to a small sloop, which came up to Hastings and landed at the old dock where the cable factory is. Hastings was a secluded place, cut off from New York by a ravine and miles of country road, and he stayed here for some time, making many friends, so that he afterward decided to live here, and took the house on Main Street known now as the Farragut house….”

Potscard of 60 Main Street with the caption "Admiral Farragut's Home" produced by HC Todd ca. 1905. Todd included both a photograph of this house and of Farragut himself in his booklet of historic photographs of Hastings. There is also a photograph of Grace Episcopal Chapel with the caption "Farragut worshipped here."

An earlier article from March of 1911 gives a slightly different version.

“When [Farragut] first came among the people, he was treated with coolness, as a southern refugee. An absurd story was circulated that he was an emissary sent to Hastings to blow up the Croton Aqueduct where it crosses the deep ravine near the Farragut House.”

A 1933 article adds a story told by Miss Emma Dorland, whose mother bought 60 Main Street in the 1870s: “…the northern troops that were patrolling the aqueduct in 1861, making sure that New York’s water supply was safe, had destroyed a sextant which [Farragut] had left one day on his lawn on the grounds that it was an ‘infernal machine’ which might blow up the aqueduct!”

A reporter for the Dobbs Ferry Register in 1919 relates another tale, which even he cannot bring himself to believe – that Farragut and John William Draper were attempting to photograph the heavens when soldiers destroyed their camera, imagining it to be some kind of bomb.

But as the war progressed and news of Farragut’s naval exploits reached Hastings, the tide of Farragut’s popularity turned. Local residents became tolerant, and even enthusiastic, about “their” Admiral Farragut. Tune in next week for Part II of the saga of Admiral Farragut in Hastings.

Carte-de-visite photograph produced as a souvenir around 1865 after the Battle of Mobile Bay by photographer Charles C. Fredericks of New York City. This particular card comes to us through the Draper family. John William Draper remained a close friend of the Farraguts, even after they left Hastings.