Looking Back in Philipstown

250 Years Ago (October 1775)
The Committee of Safety for New York ordered repairs to the barracks and hospital at Albany in preparation for the arrival of colonial troops.
The royal governor in New York City, William Tryon, took refuge on a British warship, the HMS Duchess of Gordon, in the harbor.
Fearing a British attack, the Continental Congress ordered all sulfur and brimstone supplies taken from Manhattan and stored farther up the Hudson River.
150 Years Ago (October 1875)
Seward Archer at Breakneck Hollow was closing the woodhouse at the Baxter-Pelton place when he spotted movement in a small upper window. Thinking it was a chicken, he climbed a ladder and groped around the loft until he caught hold of a man's leg. "What are you doing here?" he yelled. Retreating down the ladder, he went to retrieve a gun. The intruder followed and ran off with Archer firing after him. The man shot back with a pistol, but only after he was at a safe distance.
A government bond belonging to George Haight that had been stolen from the foundry safe was redeemed with the U.S. Treasury by a bank in London.
A large dog belonging to William Birdsall, while inside Boyd's drugstore, mistook the plate glass in the upper part of the door for open air and jumped through it. He was startled but not injured.
William Lobdell narrowly missed serious injury when he lost his grip on a butcher knife and the point struck the bone of the nose at the corner of his left eye.
An intoxicated miner who loudly claimed at a local barber shop that his pocket had been picked found the money in his other pocket.
After several Dutchess County farmers complained about missing sheep, two Germans who owned a slaughterhouse in Poughkeepsie informed police that two young men had been selling them mutton and promised to bring them a fat cow. One suspect gave his name as William Smith, but two men from Cold Spring who visited the jail said that, in fact, his name was Spellman and he was known in the village for his thievery.
George Purdy of Cold Spring won top prizes at the annual Newburgh Bay Horticultural Society fair for his Isabella grapes, greengages and quinces.
The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad banned newsboys from throwing books, newspapers, prize packages or circulars into the laps of passengers.
A double-decked canal barge carrying $2,000 worth of coal [about $59,000 today] sank in 100 feet of water near West Point. The crew escaped on smaller boats.
Two railroad detectives arrested H. Freeman, a German peddler well-known in Cold Spring, with a huge pack stuffed with ladies' corsets. He said Isaac Levi had paid him $2 [$59] to retrieve the pack after it was thrown from a freight train near Stony Point. After being jailed on $1,000 [$29,000] bond, Freeman retracted his confession, saying he had found the corsets by happenstance. During a search of the Levi home, one of Levi's sons swung a pitcher and hit a detective in the back of the neck.
When William Smith caught a thief stuffing cabbages into a bag on the Undercliff estate, the culprit asked for leniency, then stood up, punched Smith in the face and ran.
Two preachers from Poughkeepsie spoke from the vacant lot at the corner of Main and Stone streets to what The Cold Spring Recorder called a "small and changing audience" about the need for a national ban on liquor sales.
100 Years Ago (October 1925)
James Nastasi covered a home on Pine Street occupied by grocer John Sackal with Elastic Magnesite Stucco, which its manufacturer claimed was weatherproof, fireproof and crackproof.
E.L. Post & Son offered home demonstrations of the Hoover vacuum cleaner, available on an installment plan with $6.25 [$115] down.
The Playhouse in Nelsonville was screening The Ten Commandments, directed by Cecil DeMille, and Circus Days, starring Jackie Coogan.
A Columbus Day celebration at Loretto Hall included performances by soprano Rita Hamun of the Metropolitan Opera House and four rounds of sparring by boxer Joe Col...