Friday
April 15,1938
Dear Carl,
All yesterday and today I helped Nik paint his house. Tonight I went again to see Mrs. Davis who works at the Poughkeepsie Savings Bank and is interested in local history.
She said there is a Dr. Thomas, a clergyman of New York who says that the author of The Night Before Christmas did not write it but that one of his ancestors named Livingston did. He has as much proof as a Baconian. Says Livingston had horses in his stable named Prancer and Dancer etc. and that he had written a lot of other verse in the s same meter as the poem Says that the alleged author picked it up somewhere and sent it to the Troy paper. In his old age when he signed a paper saying he bad written it that he was in his dotage. If you are interested I can go into details. The Livingston family all had red hair and lived at Livingston Manor in Fishkill.
An article by Dr. Henry Booth for the Dutchess County Historical Society is supposed to contain interesting matter. Mrs. Davis seemed then to have run out of any stories such as the Tory story I thought so good. She seemed to have mostly a hodge podge of things, which I will pass on in the hope they might suggest something or dovetail with something you want.
de Chastellux's two journeys give something of life on the Hudson. Matthew Vassar once wanted to put a statue of Hendrick Hudson on Bannerman's Island. It used to be called Pollopel Island after a Polly Pell who lived there and eloped much against her Father's wishes. Another elopement was that of Elsie Derieimer who eloped from the second story window of her house in Poughkeepsie. Her Father felt that his eldest daughter should get married first and therefore objected to the youngest getting married. There is a Glebe House now occupied by the Junior League. It is on land known as Glebe lands which were a gift from the Crown so as to support the local church.
There is a crackpot across the river from Poughkeepsie who raises Cain about Roosevelt calling his place Krumb Elbow. Says his place is Krumb Elbow. Maps show him to be wrong and anyway the Roosevelt's don't call their estate Krumb Elbow according to his Mother. The newspapermen used the word because the section near Hyde Park is called that. The fierce resentment up here against Roosevelt is curious. That he is a neighbor and given the countryside very favorable publicity is unimportant to them.
Off Newburgh Bay is a spot called the Dancing Room[1] where the Indians are supposed to have danced. Peekskill was founded because John Peek sailed up the Hudson and got stuck in the mud at Peekskill Bay. Immigration from Holland has not stopped. Mrs. Davis knows several Dutch who have come over in recent years and settled in and around Poughkeepsie. At Rhinebeck during the week or so before Easter the schools are closed so that the school children can join in picking violets. Practically every family fusses a little with violets. The prosperity of the town is deeply affected by the vogue in wearing violets.[2] Mrs. Davis heard from an old lady about a cave near the site of her burned down house and it was supposed to lead into the banks of the Hudson but she has never been able to get the boy scouts to do anything about it.
The dancing room! I'll have to ask around about that.
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