By David Sokol
Boy leaves farm, sees world, makes fortune. Triumphantly returns for plum local job. Renovates family home to reflect new position and ease into retirement. What could very well be the treatment for an episode of Property Brothers: Forever Home is actually a recap of Edward Martin’s Red Hook homecoming, which took place 150 years ago. That’s when steamboat entrepreneur Thomas Cornell chartered the Rhinebeck and Connecticut Railroad Company and tapped Martin as its president. Edward had occasionally come back to Red Hook over his career as a railroad civil engineer. In fact, the 1850 census lists him as an occupant of the house originally built for his grandparents Gottlieb and Ann Catherine. But in order to plan and open the railroad popularly known as the Hucklebush Line, Edward decided to settle in for good. And, in the words of the Daughters of the American Revolution as “a bachelor of considerable wealth, [he] took great pride in keeping the house and grounds in excellent condition.”
The breadth of Edward’s wealth was never a question. Triangulate his 1893 New York Times obituary with court records, and other accounts and you’ll find that, at the time of his death, he was worth more than $88 million in today’s dollars.
Read moreBy Claudine Klose
arly in July 2020, Town Historian Emily Majer received an email from a former Red Hook resident, asking whether the Town’s Red Hook Advertiser newspaper had been microfilmed and indicating that he would be interested in supporting a project to digitize them. The former Red Hook resident was none other than Bill Wilken, whose family had run Wilken Brothers, an agricultural business cooperative active in Red Hook in the mid-20th century. Then-president of Historic Red Hook, Claudine Klose, began a conversation with Wilken, now living in Ohio, that resulted in a major gift to support the preservation and electronic dissemination of more than 40 years of Red Hook Advertiser newspaper
Read moreBy Thea Burgess
What was the zip code of the address where you lived five years after high school? The artist, cartoonist, writer, teacher, and MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant winner Lynda Barry asked us this during the Omega Institute workshop “Writing the Unthinkable.” Most couldn’t remember. A few of us still were doing math in our heads related to Lynda’s first query when she asked who our fourth grade teacher was. A couple of names were stated but not many. “Mrs. Onody,” I smugly murmured to myself. Building suspense, and our worries that we desperately needed a memory tonic, Lynda hesitated before asking her final question: what was your phone number when you were a kid? We all shouted the digits…
Read moreBy William P. Tatum III, Ph.D.
How do historians reconstruct the past from fragmentary evidence? Join us for the introduction to this new series exploring how we uncover Red Hook’s hidden past.
“How was your week?”
Consider your reaction when someone unexpectedly asks you what you’ve been up to over the past week. If you’re like me, a sip of coffee, a few “hmms,” or a drawn out “weeeelllll” covers your desperate rifling through your memory. One day tends to bleed seamlessly into the next, especially in these “interesting” times.
Historians face a similar challenge. We ask them questions, expecting a polished, complete answer informing us about events that transpired before our earliest memories. There is little patience for gaps or best guesses, unless one is discussing known mysteries. Yet the records from which they can draw factual information are even more fragmentary than our memories of last week.
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