Ulster County

Fall Events at Senate House Historic Site

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Fall brings a diverse lineup of programs at Senate House State Historic Site, in historic uptown Kingston, NY at 296 Fair Street. Senate House is part of a system of parks, recreation areas and historic sites operated by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the site is one of 28 facilities administered by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission in New York and New Jersey. For further information about thess and other upcoming events call the site at (845) 338-2786 or visit the State Parks website at www.nysparks.com.


Saturday, October 2, 1:00 – 7:00 PM

African American History & Culture Festival: Music as the Pulse of Life

Some of the best regional talent performing music of different genres, from freedom songs to hip hop. Featured artists include Kim and Reggie Harris, Rednex Poetry, POOK, the Ulster County Community Choir, and more. Also, hands-on activities for kids, lectures, food and more. This event is free, for all ages, and occurs rain or shine.

Saturday, October 9, 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Living History Encampment by the Third Ulster Militia

Re-enactors demonstrate the realities of 18th-century life during wartime, as well as domestic activities and trades. Free- occurs in light rain or shine. Please call for details.

Saturday, October 23, 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM

Arts Forum: Appraising Art / Re-appraising Vanderlyn

Tickets $10.00

Join arts expert and television personality Leigh Keno and renowned regional art experts for a day of talks and object evaluations to learn about Hudson Valley art and history, the Vanderlyn family of painters—particularly its most famous member, John Vanderlyn—and strategies for evaluating objects to understand their significance and value. Tickets for the public program are $10.

Saturday, October 23, 5:00 – 7:00 PM

Evening Reception with Leigh Keno

Tickets $50.00

Join Leigh Keno and other arts experts in the Senate House Museum’s Vanderlyn Gallery for wine, food, 19th-century chamber music and artful conviviality.

Through October 31:

Currier & Ives: “Cheap and Popular Pictures” a free exhibition of 40 prints by the best-known printmakers of the 19th Century, with images offering fascinating glimpses of the Hudson Valley’s past.

Historic Huguenot Family Reunion, Early History Event

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Many in the Hudson Valley know of Historic Huguenot Street as a unique place. The architecture, the setting, the sense of timelessness within our modern, busy world – it is true that all of these things distinguish the site. Equally special though is the fact that descendants of the community’s founders and early leaders are still very much involved with and drawn to the Street. More continue to visit the site each year.

Embracing this, Historic Huguenot Street is hosting a “family reunion” for descendants and those interested in the special early history of the site. The Gathering, as the event is called, will be held from Friday, August 13th to Sunday, August 15th.

The event will begin with a Friday evening reception and viewing of the newly-installed portrait exhibit, An Excellent Likeness, in the LeFevre house. Saturday is the “meat” of the event, with a full day series of workshops focusing on early history. Topics such as the lives of the Huguenots and Dutch before they settled New Paltz, African-Americans and Slavery, Clothing Design and the role of women in early New York will be featured. Lunch and dinner are included and the day will be rounded out with evening options of a talk about Cultural Pluralism or an opportunity to partake in the popular Haunted Huguenot Street program. The event concludes on Sunday with options of a service in the French Church, an archaeology workshop or a tour of the museum houses.

More information about the Gathering, including workshop descriptions, can be found at www.huguenotstreet.org. The cost for the event is $50 per person or $90 per couple. Special activities are available for children and Saturday meals are included in the cost of registration. For more information, visit the HHS website or call (845) 255-1660.

Historic Huguenots Last Colonial Overnight of Season

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Of the many programs Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz offers, one of the most popular is Colonial Overnight. Just in time for one last hurrah before school starts, HHS is hosting its final Colonial Overnight. The program will be offered on Friday, August 20th.

No more than fifteen lucky participants will travel back in time to spend the night in a 300 year-old building, prepare and cook a colonial era dinner over an open fire and even get to know some of the people who lived on Huguenot street in the 1700s. There will also be colonial games and crafts, and a tour of the houses at night, some of which are said to be filled with the spirits of people who loved the street so much that they haven’t left. The night will finish off with a camp-in on the floor of the DuBois Fort.

Colonial Overnight begins at 6pm. Drop-off is at the DuBois Fort Visitor Center at 81 Huguenot Street in New Paltz. The program includes dinner and breakfast. Pick-up is at 10am. The cost is $45 per child or $40 for Friends of Huguenot Street. There is also a discount for multiple children from same family. Advance reservations are required. Contact Sarah Wassberg at (845) 255-1889 with any questions or make your reservation online at www.huguenotstreet.org.

Minnewaska State Park Master Plan Adopted

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The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission have adopted a master plan for Minnewaska State Park Preserve. State Parks has reinstated the master planning process throughout the park system, and Minnewaska State Park is among the first to complete a new master plan. Park master plans define a long-term, sustainable vision for parks by helping to identify best uses for a specific site, make the most of limited resources, and protect the environment.

The Minnewaska master plan includes natural resource protection measures and more avenues for recreation, including expansion of hiking, biking, equestrian and climbing opportunities, and reuse of the former Phillips House as the preserve office and visitor center. [LINK]

The master plan outlines OPRHP’s vision for potential capital improvements, operational enhancements and natural and cultural resource stewardship within Minnewaska State Park for the next ten to fifteen years. Factors such as the availability of funding, the need to invest in rehabilitation of existing park infrastructure, and other pressing needs in the entire state parks system will influence the sequence and timing of the improvements.

Highlights of the plan include:

• Developing a climbing management plan to indicate additional areas suitable for rock climbing-

• Creating a looped single track mountain bike trail system and enhancing the existing woods roads for hiking and horseback riding-

• Implementing ridgewide efforts focused on fire management, deer impacts on biodiversity and invasive species control- and

• Reusing the former Phillips House as the preserve office and visitor center and improving parking lot designs.

Currier & Ives at Senate House Historic Site

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The prints of Currier & Ives—one of the most successful purveyors of lithographic prints in the 19th Century—are diverse, full of fascinating historical information and compelling imagery, perhaps despite their perennial appeal on calendars and cards. A new exhibit at Senate House State Historic Site, in Kingston, NY, offers us forty of their prints focusing on the ideals, values and innovations of the 19th Century. The exhibit is free and open to the public. For more information on hours, location and other details, please call (845) 338-2786.

While it’s better known for its buildings and collections representing colonial and Revolutionary history, Senate House State Historic Site, located in uptown Kingston, also has impressive collections of objects, documents and art of the 19th Century, including over 200 Currier & Ives prints, given to the site by the late Rutgers Ives Hurry, a Saugerties resident whose passion was collecting images of the Hudson Valley made by the firm.

The Senate House exhibition focuses on three themes: the ideal of the 19th-century home, images of New York City, and Hudson River steamboats (both the luxury and potential dangers they represented). The exhibit is entitled “Cheap and Popular Pictures,” a term touted by Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives, who shrewdly observed and marketed their images&#8211made by many different artists of the day—to the opinions, interests and ideals of America’s growing middle class.

Currier & Ives: “Cheap and Popular Pictures” can be viewed during open hours at Senate House State Historic Site: Wednesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, and 1 – 5 pm on Sundays. The exhibition runs through October 31, and is available by appointment and for school groups after that date. Senate House is located at 296 Fair Street, Kingston NY, 12401. For more information: (845) 338-2786.

Poughkeepsie: Historic Family Homes Reunited

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Historic Huguenot Street has announced that it has reached an agreement with Locust Grove in Poughkeepsie to transfer to it the properties and collections of Locust Lawn located in the town of Gardiner, New York. The agreement is result of months of planning to reunite the family homes of Annette Innis Young, who was responsible for establishing both estates as protected historic sites.

Transferring ownership and “reuniting” these two estates fulfills the original vision of Annette Young. It was Miss Young’s desire to jointly preserve the Locust Lawn and Locust Grove estates under one organizational umbrella hoping “the foundation will maintain these houses as an example of the lives of three generations of a wealthy and cultured Hudson Valley family.” Unfortunately, she was unable to achieve this during her lifetime.

As an alternative, she donated Locust Lawn to Historic Huguenot Street (which was then known as the Huguenot Historical Society), an organization in which she was already involved. Upon her death in 1975, Annette Young’s will established a not-for-profit educational corporation to preserve Locust Grove and its contents in perpetuity for the &#8220enjoyment, visitation, and enlightenment of the public.&#8221

The Locust Grove Estate was purchased by Annette Young’s father, William Young in 1901. The Young family cherished Locust Grove’s extensive grounds and historic buildings and added their own important collections of furniture, paintings and ceramics.

Locust Lawn is located on Route 32 South in Gardiner. It features an historic federal-style home was built in 1814 by Josiah Hasbrouck, a businessman and gentleman farmer whose ancestors were among those that founded New Paltz. Josiah Hasbrouck was Annette Young’s great-great grandfather and a U.S. congressman. The Hasbrouck family left Locust Lawn in 1885, leaving behind 70 years of finery and furnishings. The house was a repository of family history for another 70 years until it was donated to Historic Huguenot Street by Annette Young in 1958.

In addition to transferring the property and collections of Locust Lawn, Historic Huguenot Street will donate its adjoining properties, which include the historic Terwilliger stone house as well as the Little Wings Bird Sanctuary and Meadow. The Terwilliger House will continue to be protected as a historic building, open to the public. The existing protections on the Little Wings Bird Sanctuary and the Conservation Agreement on the Meadow also will remain in place with the transfer of the properties. Together, all of these properties preserve the core of the estate created by Josiah Hasbrouck.

The executive directors of the respective organizations have cooperated over the years to ensure that the collections and history have stayed linked to each other. These connections led to the formal transfer that is now taking place.

It is anticipated that Locust Grove will assume ownership and management of Locust Lawn by the end of August. Under the terms of the transfer, which has already been approved by the boards of both organizations, all restrictions placed on the property by Annette Young at the time she gifted the site will remain in effect. In the short term, the site will continue to be open to the public by appointment. Locust Grove plans an expanded program of public events in the future.

Photo: Locust Lawn Front Facade Courtesy of Historic Huguenot Street.

Historic Huguenot Street Elects New Board Members

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Historic Huguenot Street of New Paltz has elected three new members, including a key official from the Belgian Consulate, to the organization’s board of trustees. The elections occurred at the group’s annual meeting.

Christina Bark, Susan Ingalls Lewis and Edith Mayeux were welcomed to the board. Christina Bark is experienced as a corporate leader, attorney and entrepreneur. Most recently, Bark served as a Global Leader of Business Affairs and Chief Counsel for Oliver Wyman, a leading international consulting firm . She holds degrees from Vassar College and Stanford Law School.

Susan Ingalls Lewis is an Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she teaches courses in American history and women’s studies. Lewis is an accomplished author and has held several leadership positions in the Mid Hudson Valley, including terms on the Rosendale Library and the Century House Historical Society in Rosendale. She holds degrees from Wellesley College and the State University of New York at Binghamton.

The third new member of the board of trustees is Edith Mayeux. Mayeux is the Trade Commissioner for the Wallonia Region of Belgium at the Consulate of Belgium in New York. Mayeux was born in French-speaking Wallonia, which is the ancestral home of the founders of New Paltz. In her current role, Mayeux helps companies from Wallonia access the U.S. market. Mayeux holds a degree in Modern Languages from the Ecole d’Interpretes Internationaux and in Applied Economics from the University of Mons, Belgium. She lives in Manhattan.

Mary Etta Schneider, president of Historic Huguenot Street, says of these new members, “We are so fortunate to have these three incredible women join our board of trustees. Each brings very special skills and perspectives. We are especially thrilled to have Edith Mayeux join our board. Historic Huguenot Street’s connection to Wallonia is a distinctive part of our history and we hope this can be the beginning of a growing relationship with our ‘homeland.’”

Also, Stephen Pratt Lumb of Dutchess County, himself a descendant of eleven of the twelve founders of New Paltz, returned to the board after a short break. Thomas E. Nyquist and Stewart P. Glenn of New Paltz were re-elected, as were Mark A. Rosen of Stone Ridge and Eileen Crispell Ford of Norwalk, Connecticut, who is also a descendant of the community’s founders.

Historic Huguenot Street, located on the banks of the Wallkill River, is where small group of French-speaking Huguenots settled in 1678. Today, just steps from downtown New Paltz, the site features seven stone houses dating to 1705, a burying ground and a reconstructed 1717 stone church – all in their original village setting. HHS offers six acres of landscaped green space and public programming to the local community and visitors from around the world. For more information about Historic Huguenot Street, visit www.huguenotstreet.org or call (845) 255-1660.

New Paltz: Moonlight Historic Harcourt Preserve Walk

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Historic Huguenot Street and the Wallkill Valley Land Trust have come together with a unique and new offering in New Paltz, on Saturday, June 26th at dusk: a moonlight walk on the 54-acre Harcourt Preserve that borders Huguenot Street. As the sun sets and the moon rises, participants will enjoy a drink on the porch of the DuBois Fort before setting off to see the historic preserve as few do – by the light of the moon. Full moons were a much anticipated treat in the days before electricity – an opportunity for people to venture out at night and enjoy the ability to see by the light of the moon.

The tour will begin at 8:30pm at the DuBois Fort Visitor Center at 81 Huguenot Street in New Paltz with a toast to the rise of the full moon with a glass of sparkling cider or wine. The easy, flat one-and-a-half-mile walk is the perfect opportunity to experience the kind of summer nights the original inhabitants of Huguenot Street once did.

Advance reservations are not required, but are suggested. To make a reservation, visit www.huguenotstreet.org or call (845) 255-1889.

Historic Huguenot Street (HHS), located on the banks of the Wallkill River, is where small group of French-speaking Huguenots settled in 1678. Today, just steps from downtown New Paltz, the site features seven stone houses dating to 1705, a burying ground and a reconstructed 1717 stone church – all in their original village setting. HHS offers six acres of landscaped green space and public programming to the local community and visitors from around the world. For more information about Historic Huguenot Street, visit www.huguenotstreet.org or call (845) 255-1660.

Photo: Moonlight over the serene Harcourt Preserve along the Wallkill River in New Paltz.

Tracing Your Ancestors to the Dutch Settlers

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Theodore P. Wright, Jr., Ph.D., Vice President of the Dutch Settlers Society of Albany and a trustee of the New Netherland Institute, will discuss resources to aid in tracing your ancestors to the Dutch Settlers, specifically in an area under the jurisdiction of the Court of Rensselaerswijck prior to the year 1665 or in Esopus (Kingston, NY) prior to the year 1661. The program will be held in Librarians Room, New York State Library, Cultural Education Center, 7th floor 310 Madison Avenue, Albany 12230 on Thursday, June 17th, 12:15 &#8211 1:15 PM Online registration is available.

The Dutch Settlers Society of Albany was founded in 1924, in connection with the celebration of the tercentenary of the settlement of the City, and was instituted to: perpetuate the memory and virtues of the individuals who resided here during the time it was a Dutch colony- and to collect and preserve records and information concerning the history and settlement of Albany and its vicinity, including genealogical records of the settlers and their descendants without regard to race, creed, or country of origin.

For more information about this program, contact Sheldon Wein or Mary Beth Bobish at [email protected], or call at 518-474-2274.

Timefest Comes to Senate House State Historic Site

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On Saturday and Sunday, June 5 and 6, 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, Senate House State Historic Site joins in Timefest, the city-wide celebration of Kingston’s history, offering free music, historical interpretation, tours, activities for kids and more. The Senate House events are free, open to the public, and occur rain or shine. For more information, please call (845) 338-2786.

On Saturday, June 5, Senate House highlights the Dutch Colonial history of our area. Living history presenters will inhabit the site, performing the tasks, crafts and pastimes of Dutch New York. Children can make their own “Dutch, Delft-like” tile to bring home. The Bells & Motley Consort of Olden Music performs lively tunes at 1:00 and 3:00, and throughout the event they display their collection of musical instruments.

On Sunday, June 6, an encampment by historical re-enactors from the First New York offers visitors a taste of military life during the Revolutionary era, and will also feature performances of military and popular music of the age. Kids can “enlist,” drill with fellow soldiers, and take part in a hands-on activity while learning about Kingston’s role in the Revolution. The Headless Horsemen Fife & Drum Corps will perform throughout the day as well.

On both days, free tours of Senate House and admission to the site’s museum are available from 11:00 am to 4:30 pm, thanks to the support of the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area program, administered by the Hudson River Valley Greenway. All of the free, special programming on this weekend is supported by the Friends of Senate House and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission.

A “history jitney” will stop at the site throughout the day to bring visitors to other Timefest events in the Midtown and Downtown neighborhoods. This event is a great way to indulge in some free and educational family fun. For more information about Timefest, please call (800) 331-1518.

Senate House State Historic Site is located in Kingston’s historic uptown Stockade district, at 296 Fair Street, Kingston, NY, 12401. For more information about public programs, please call (845) 338-2786, or visit www.nysparks.state.ny.us