Vera Neumann — Legendary Designer

Do you know who Vera Neumann was? Perhaps your mother or grandmother owned a Vera scarf? Or maybe you bought some Vera dish towels from Crate & Barrel or a Vera scarf from Target not too long ago? She’s an absolute legend in the world of textile design and her Printex printing plant was located right here in Ossining, at 34 State Street.

So settle in, tie a brightly hued scarf around your neck, and read on . . .

Born in 1907 in Stamford, CT, Vera was creative from the time she could hold a pencil. The story goes that her father nurtured her talent by taking her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every Sunday as well as hiring a sign painter to give her drawing lessons. Vera went on to study at the Cooper Union and started out as a fashion illustrator and freelance painter of murals for children’s rooms. (Wouldn’t THAT have been a thing to grow up with on your wall!)

She married her husband George Neumann in the 1940s and they became the power couple of textile design. With her limitless imagination and his business acumen, they built a wildly successful and long-lived company. Their first commission was placements for the B. Altman department store, with Vera screen printing the entire run on her dining room table. After that, it was a race to keep up with demand.

The post-WWII world complicated matters, and it became difficult to source fabrics. An oft-repeated story is that Vera came across a stash of silk parachutes in an army surplus store and began screen printing her whimsical, colorful, ever-changing designs on silk and so created her iconic line of scarves.

Outgrowing one studio after another, Vera and George settled in Ossining, buying the former Smith-Robinson House at 34 State Street and fitting it out for their Printex plant. (An 1810 Georgian mansion, it’s still standing today, barely, and is one of the few remaining buildings in Ossining built with prisoner-quarried Sing Sing marble.)

34 State Street, Smith-Robinson House/Printex
Courtesy of the Westchester County Historical Society

With their living space and office right next to the plant, Vera’s reputation and creativity thrived.

Vera and George Neumann in the design studio of Printex. Photo by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. (1951), from the Library of Congress

The Living Room
Photo by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. (1951), from the Library of Congress

Look at that shiny wood floor! And that fireplace!

The printing plant
Photo by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. (1951), from the Library of Congress

The office suite of Printex
Photo by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. (1951), from the Library of Congress

How fabulous was this? River views and no commute? Wood floors and fireplaces? And just look at the Georgian decoration around those doorways! I wonder if any of it survives today?

The Printex company employed many Ossiningtonians. Dr. George Hill, their neighbor at 30 State Street, provided medical services to Printex employees. He also helped connect young people with jobs there. Local artist Donna Chambers was one of them, and the training and inspiration she received no doubt helped inspire her to become a professional artist who creates remarkable quilts and jewelry today.

And here’s just a tiny selection of Vera designs, from a 2015 exhibit at the Alexander Gray Gallery in New York:

If we were going to play six degrees of Vera Neumann, we can connect to President Harry S Truman and First Lady Bess Truman, who chose Vera’s Jack-in-the-Pulpit design (below) for the upholstery in the White House solarium.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit design – note, the shadows are part of the design. It is one of Vera’s most popular, in active use from 1952 to the mid-1980s – a remarkable run!

We can also connect to Marilyn Monroe. who famously wore nothing but a Vera in her last photo shoot (with photographer Bert Stern.) I’d love to post a Marilyn photo here, but I can’t afford the rights, so here’s a link to a photo instead.

But one of the most admirable things, I think, about Vera Neumann is that she kept her price point low enough so anyone could own a Vera. While other designers charged upwards of $25 a scarf, Vera’s averaged from $2 – 10. (Remember inflation! $25 in the 1960s is about $250 today.) “I don’t believe only the wealthy deserve good design,” she said and meant it. And her inexhaustible creativity meant that the market was never saturated with the same thing, so even these “cheaper” scarves were unique and special.

In the 1950s, as their family grew, George and Vera decided to build their dream house, reaching out to the leading architect of the day, Marcel Breuer. On their plot of land at the top of Finney Farm Road in Croton, with magnificent views of the Hudson and beyond, Breuer’s modernist design is a triumph. Still standing, and recently restored, it was on the market in 2020 for $4.2 million. Take a look here and here.

Vera and George travelled widely and collected art – Alexander Calder (who briefly lived in Croton as a child) was a close friend, and the Neumann lawn was decorated with a large Calder sculpture, a gift from the artist.

In the 1960s, the company branched out into clothing and home textiles, and sales skyrocketed. Here are a few outfits I plucked off Ebay/Pinterest:

And here are some home goods items:

Ooh, I’ll take one of each please!

Sadly George died in 1960 and Vera sold Printex in 1967, though she remained active as a designer and board member for decades.

Vera Neumann in her Ossining studio, c. 1974

She lived in her beautiful home with her dachsunds and cats, swimming daily in her indoor pool until 1981, when she moved in with her daughter in Ossining.

Vera Neumann died in 1993, designing to the end. An artist, a trendsetter, a savvy businesswoman, hers was certainly a life well-lived who brought joy to everyone who saw her designs. Check out more of her work here.

Dr. Ruth Murray Underhill – Ossining Anthropologist

It’s Women’s History month and I’m going to try and blog about as many of Ossining’s inspiring women as I can. (I must editorialize a moment though and confess that I don’t much care for these theme months. It seems to me we’re perpetuating exactly what we’re hoping to fix, the idea that women’s history or Black history or any of the other myriad histories that are celebrated on a monthly basis are a separate thing from just plain history. But, until we teach a deeper, more inclusive history, I guess we need to keep doing this. Sigh.) Okay, off my soapbox.

For my inaugural Women’s History post, I want to share a bit about an Ossining woman I’m sure few have heard of – Dr. Ruth Murray Underhill.

Dr. Ruth Murray Underhill, c. 1960 (University of Denver)

She was one of several remarkable Underhill siblings who pushed the envelope of what was acceptable and expected at the time – her sister Elizabeth was a lawyer, a banker and a suffragist, and her brother Robert a mountaineer.

The daughter of Abram S. Underhill and Anna Murray Underhill, Ruth’s pedigree stretched back to one of the earliest European settlers of this country – Captain John Underhill who arrived on this shore in 1632. (More on him in a moment.) Further, according to a 1934 article in the Democratic Register, the Underhills were related to a William Underhill of Stratford-upon-Avon who reportedly sold William Shakespeare his home. How’s that for a fun fact?

Dr. Ruth Murray Underhill was a renowned anthropologist celebrated for her work with Native Americans. She was also a social worker, a writer, a lecturer, a professor, a Supervisor with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and a local television/radio host. Multi-lingual, Underhill spoke several Western languages, as well as Papago and Navajo.

Ruth was born in Ossining in 1883 and grew up in this rambling Victorian at 38 Linden Avenue that her father had built in about 1878. (I’ve always wondered about this grand house just off the corner lot. Now I know.)

She attended Clara Fuller’s Ossining School for Girls and went on to Vassar College, graduating in 1905.

Unsure of her true calling, she spent the next decade searching, briefly serving as a social worker for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, then traveling to Europe to study at the London School of Economics and Munich University. When World War I hit, she volunteered for the Red Cross.

In 1919 she married Charles Crawford, but they would be “divorced amicably” a decade later.

In 1920 she published a novel entitled White Moth about a successful woman in the business world, which was respectfully if not enthusiastically received. You can read it here if you like and form your own opinion.

After her divorce, at age 46 she went back to school, enrolling in Columbia University. Dr. Ruth Benedict, a professor in the Anthropology department (and a bit of a legend), encouraged her to pursue a PhD in the field. At the time, the Dr. Franz Boas, considered by many to be the “father of modern anthropology” was the Chairman of the Anthropology Department and seemed to be unusually encouraging towards female students – Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston also studied with him, though a bit before Ruth did.

For her doctoral thesis, Underhill lived with and studied the Papago (Tohono O’odham) in southern Arizona for over three years. Out of that came her Autobiography of a Papago Woman (1936) about Maria Chona, a Papago elder and leader of her tribe. This was the first published autobiography of a Native American woman. Now, I cannot tell a lie — some of the attitudes are a little cringy for today’s sensibilities. But for the time it was groundbreaking – Underhill documented the rites, ceremonies and history of Chona and her tribe. Underhill even wrote about the rituals surrounding menstruation, which must have been shocking for that time. Heck, it’s kind of shocking for THIS time.

Underhill received her doctorate in 1937 and began collaborating with Dr. Gladys Reichard at Barnard studying Navajo culture. From there, Underhill went on to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, becoming Supervisor of Indian Education and helping develop curricula for Native American reservation schools. (The irony of course is that one of her ancestors, Captain John Underhill, is infamous for his brutal tactics against the Native Americans in the 1600s. He led several bloody massacres and murdered hundreds (if not thousands) of Lenape during the Dutch era in New York State. Here’s an example of a nearby atrocity he spearheaded.)

Underhill spent her career traveling extensively, studying, writing and teaching. Here’s her 1952 visa to Brazil which I include just because I have this image:

Ruth ended her career as a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Denver and died just shy of her 101^st birthday.

Credit: Fremont Davis, 1941.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institute Archives

Edward Kemeys – Ossining Artist

Sometimes I think one could easily play Six Degrees of Ossining – mention any person or any place in the entire world and you could connect it back to Ossining (or Scarborough or Briarcliff) in less than six degrees.

First, for you runners out there, does this statue look familiar?

“Still Hunt” by Edward Kemeys
Central Park, NYC

If you’ve ever run a race in Central Park, you’ll be familiar with the steep hill, sometimes called “Cat Hill,” right after the Boathouse at about East 76^thStreet. It’s there, almost at the top, that you see this remarkably life-like panther crouched in the shadows on top of a rock to your left.

The story I’m about to share delighted me and I hope you’ll find it just as interesting.

But let’s set the stage first — those of you who are familiar with Ossining might know of Kemeys’ Cove. Today it’s a condo complex near the Jug Tavern and the Arcadian shopping mall. But back in the day, it was homestead of one of the first European settlers in the area. (Watch this space for a post about the pre-European people who lived here.)

Just after the Revolutionary War, William Kemeys, a wealthy shipowner from Scarborough, England left the mother country due to his lack of enthusiasm for the Church of England and the social constraints he suffered from because of that. He came to America looking for tolerance, acceptance and opportunity. Taking a brief foray up the North River (as the Hudson was called in those days), he found a delightful spot in which to settle: “There he built a long low ceilinged English House of red brick facing south on the cove and called the place Scarborough after the English town from whence he came. The house was still standing about 1870 until the property passed out of the hands of Edward Kemeys, the great grandson of William Kemeys and was demolished.”^[1]

Now, it’s this Edward Kemeys that concerns us here. Born in 1844 in Milledgeville, Georgia (“during a sojourn of his parents to the South”^[2]) to Abby Brenton Greene and William Kemeys. Abby sadly died soon after Edward’s birth, and he spent much of his childhood on the Kemeys homestead in Scarborough, with his grandparents Judge Edward Kemey and Gertrude Bleeker.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, our young Edward enlisted in the 65^th New York Volunteer Regiment, eventually attaining the rank of Captain of Artillery. Edward and the 65^th served nobly at many battles,^[3] Antietam and Gettysburg being perhaps the most well-known today.

After the war, Edward studied civil engineering and helped survey Central Park. But his heart wasn’t in it — he soon became interested in animal sculpture and went west to study animals (so the story goes) and then to London and Paris to learn how to sculpt.

Here’s a slightly more in-depth history on Kemeys and his work written by the NYC Parks Department^[4]

“Still Hunt” was by no means his only famous sculpture – if you’ve ever been to the Art Institute of Chicago, you’ve seen his handiwork — the two bronze lions at the entrance were sculpted by Kemeys.

One of a pair of lions at the entrance of the Arts Institute of Chicago
sculpted by Edward Kemeys

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York also has a number of his works on display – this one, called “Mutual Surprise” is one of my favorites:

“Mutual Surprise” by Edward Kemeys
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here’s a link to his New York Times obituary just because I like obituaries.

I still do wonder why Edward let the Kemey’s homestead go. Seems like it would be an idyllic spot for an artist.

But there you have it, from Ossining to Central Park to famous sculptor.

^[1] From a xeroxed history with no author information found at the Ossining Historical Society

^[2] From the same xeroxed history with no author information found at the Ossining Historical Society

^[3] See here for more: https://civilwarintheeast.com/us-regiments-batteries/new-york-infantry/65th-new-york/

^[4] https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/central-park/monuments/1506

FDR Park and the Comte de Rochambeau

“The code word is Rochambeau, dig me? . . . You have your orders now, go man go!” (From Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda)

I originally wrote this post back in December 2022 in honor of the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to the White House:

*French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden toasting each other at the State Dinner hosted at the White House on December 1, 2022 (Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)*

At the time, there was all sorts of talk about how France was America’s first ally, during our glorious Revolution of 1776. So, I thought it would be interesting to share some nitty gritty details about a local spot where the French Army encamped during the American Revolution on their way down to Yorktown, Virginia where they helped us defeat the British in 1781.

However, the Harry Potter Forbidden Forest Experience had other ideas.

They had loaded in an enormous amount of equipment and closed off a big section of Franklin Delano Roosevelt State Park. And they’d set up right on top of the campsite and the historical markers I sought. But, as of February 15, all is clear and now the story can be told.

(As an aside, if you missed the Harry Potter Experience, it’ll be back next Fall, so try and snag a ticket. They are not cheap, but it’s definitely a fun experience for young and old. (No they’re not paying me to say this!) Plus, the company has left the park better than they found it, with both new and upgraded trails. So win/win.)

On August 21, 1781 Marshal Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau and his army first encamped within the boundaries of today’s FDR Park to rest before their big march south to attack the British in Virginia.

*General Rochambeau. Painting by Joseph Desire Court (National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.)*

Local historian Lincoln Diamant wrote about their sojourn in our backyard in this charming article for the New York Times in 1996 (back when the NYT still published charming articles of local history and culture.)

Now, Rochambeau’s army of 3,500 had arrived in Westchester in early July. They met up with George Washington’s army, camping in Ardsley, and Washington and Rochambeau planned the upcoming offensive.

Rochambeau commandeered the nearby Odell House in Hartsdale as his headquarters. (See here for more on this Westchester Historic Site.)

Diamant mentions that the two armies “exchanged civilities,” and shares a description written by a French officer of a banquet the Americans offered that consisted of ”la haute cuisine Americain . . . vegetables, beef, potatoes, lamb, chicken, salad (dressed with nothing but vinegar), puddings and pie — all heaped upon the same table, and often upon the same plate.”

I can just see the French officers chuckling to each other behind perfumed, lacy handkerchiefs at such peasant fare and rough presentation, can’t you? Oh, those Americains! I dread to think what the French thought about the wine served.

Washington took a few weeks to decide where he was going to launch what he must have known was the Colonies’ Hail Mary attack on the British. By late August, Virginia had been selected as the attack point.

The two armies split up and began marching. The French took a slightly different route, but all were marching through 90* heat, in wool uniforms, carrying heavy loads up to 60 pounds over some pretty hilly terrain.

It’s at this juncture that Rochambeau’s army stopped in what is today FDR Park, camping near Crom Pond, on the property of one Caleb Frost, a Tory who had long before escaped south behind British lines. According to Diamant, the precise location of this campsite is noted as near “Solomon Hunt’s Tavern in the pleasant settlement of what is now Yorktown Heights (near the corner of Hallock’s Mill Road and U.S. 202)”

They only stayed one night, heading off to Verplank to cross the Hudson River at King’s Ferry, marching south to Virginia, to the Siege of Yorktown and the Battle of the Chesapeake (I know I don’t need to tell you what happened there.) Let’s just say that without General Lafayette (who was waiting there in Chesapeake Bay), General Rochambeau, and all the French soldiers fighting and dying for our cause, we would not be the vibrant, independent country we are today.

So yeah, France really IS our first ally.

But the story doesn’t end there. In 1782, on their way up to Boston to embark on ships that would return them to France, Rochambeau’s army would return to this campsite for almost a month’s stay in September/October. As they packed up to leave, Rochambeau was very nearly arrested. You see, mill owner Hallock was miffed that the French army had cut down trees and destroyed some of his fences (3500 men will do that), and so had the local sheriff try to collect 15,000 livres from Rochambeau in damages. Ever the diplomat, Rochambeau defused the situation by offering to pay a significant, but much lower amount. While I certainly understand Hallock’s ire, in the big picture, Hallock would have likely had nothing if the British had won. Plus, the sign below notes that Rochambeau’s army had made improvements to the Crom Pond to give themselves more access to water and their work had also benefited mill-owner Mr. Hallock. I think Mr. Hallock was being unreasonable. Don’t you?

*Here is the sign I have been waiting to photograph*

The National Park Service has helpfully put together this Washington – Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Trail Brochure which you can use to follow in the footsteps of these patriots all the way from Boston down to Yorktown, Virginia. (I know what I’m doing this summer . . .)

Teatown Lake Reservation — From 2022 to Two Million Years Ago

I can’t quite believe it’s taken me this long to write about Teatown Lake Reservation.

Talk about ignoring things in your own backyard! It’s not only a wonderful organization that has provided exemplary stewardship of the land, but it’s also a goldmine of history.

If you know where to look, of course.

Now, I have of late become a little more interested in pre-history – I mean geologic history, the kind that involves rocks and . . . well, rocks. It is truly the history before humans. See here for more.

(Also, see the first chapter of my new book Croton Point Park: Westchester’s Jewel on the Hudson)

But I’m not going to go back to the Precambrian epoch. I mean, I could tell of gneiss and schist and Ossining marble, of ancient continental plates, ever shifting and buckling up mountain ranges. Of Pangaea and volcanoes and ice sheets . . . but already, I feel my attention begin to wane.

No, I have to admit that my interests lie in people – how they lived, what they ate, what they wore, what they did. How different yet similar we are. And, of course, how we got to where we are today.

Teatown has all of this – characters and stories, and a long, long history that can indeed be traced back to rocks and magma.

So let’s start from today, and go backwards, investigating the world of Teatown from 2022 all the way back to – well, I guess the history of the rocks and ice I disparaged above. Or at least until I get bored.

First, no discussion of Teatown would be complete without calling attention to Lincoln Diamant’s excellent book, Images of America: Teatown Lake Reservation.

You can find it in our local libraries, pick it up at the Teatown gift shop, at any number of our local bookshops or, if you must, buy it online.

(Full disclosure, I have plucked much of my research for this post out of Diamant’s book.)

So, what is Teatown? (And how did it get its name?)

Today, 2022, Teatown Lake Reservation is a non-profit nature preserve with miles of trails, native plant exhibits, and a small wildlife refuge. Much of the land that constitute today’s Teatown was owned by Gerard Swope, Sr. and his wife Mary and inherited by their five children. They created Teatown Lake Reservation in 1963 to honor their parents and it has been thriving and growing ever since.

Gerard Swope was president of General Electric from 1922 – 1945 and was a well-respected businessman and labor reformer. He also worked in the Roosevelt administration during the Depression to aid with the economic recovery.

In 1922, Swope purchased the main house, the outbuildings and various parcels of land from the estate of Dan Hanna. In 1924, the Swopes created Teatown Lake, by building the small dam still found at the far side of lake.

I must note that from October – December 2022, Teatown had to do some extensive rebuilding of the dam and in the process, drained the entire lake. Here are some photos and look – you can see the remains of 18^th/19^th century stone walls still stuck in the mud.

And here are some pictures of the diggers and backhoes at work rebuilding the dam and installing a new pump.

But back to the exciting title search — in 1919, Dan Hanna purchased the land. He was the owner and publisher of the Cleveland News, as well as being a coal industrialist from the Ohio region. If you’re a serious political history buff, you might find it interesting to learn that he was the nephew of Ohio Senator Mark Hanna, the Karl Rove (or Kellyanne Conway) to our 25^th President, William McKinley.

Dan Hanna was referred to as a “Cleveland Millionaire,” in a 1916 New York Times squib about his third divorce. (Is that a sniffy New York Times way of saying he wasn’t up to New York social standards?) He then swiftly remarried Molly Covington Hanna in the same year. There are other newspaper clippings I’ve seen that were positively salivating over his marital career (“Dan Hanna is some Marry-er” winked the Lexington Herald-Leader in December of 1916).

At his death in 1922, according to the New York Times, his estate was valued at $10,000,000. He was also noted as having four infant sons. Considering that he married Molly in 1916 and she was 47 at the time, that is either surprising or simply incorrect. Yet this curious 1923 article describes a chaotic life after she was widowed, despite the 978 acre estate on Makeenac Lake in the Berkshires that she received as a wedding gift from Hanna.

Continuing on back in time, the previous owner, Arthur Vernay, purchased the parcel in 1915 from the Hershfeld estate. Vernay was one of those wealthy men with a fascinating variety of interests and hobbies – apparently he was a very successful antiques dealer in Manhattan who was also an enthusiastic big-game hunter in the style of Teddy Roosevelt (and who also donated many carcasses to the Museum of Natural History. Apparently you can still find his name on a plaque in the Roosevelt wing there today.)

Vernay was responsible for building many of the Tudor-style structures that still stand today. Those office buildings by the parking lot? These were the old stables and outbuildings of the Croft, Vernay’s matching Tudor-style mansion that stood across the street until it was demolished in 2019. The Croft supposedly contained imported genuine antique English interiors (a fireplace in there was said to be from the 1300s!) I mean, considering that Vernay dealt in antiques, that seems possible.

Now, here’s where it gets complicated. Before 1915, Teatown was part of a series of parcels that had at one time all been owned and farmed by the Palmer family. The Palmer connection goes back to 1780, when William Palmer purchased a fairly large tract of land from Pierre Van Cortlandt. Palmer lived at 400 Blinn Road (so named in the 20^th century by actor Holbrook Blinn) and seems to have run a successful dairy farm. (Lincoln Diamant says that #400 was a converted dairy barn. But Diamant also says that #400 was a house built by the Van Cortlandt’s in 1740. I’d be interested to know which is the truth.)

In 1826, William Palmer gives several plots of land to his son Robert, who would build himself a farmhouse nearby at 340 Blinn Road.

A few years later, William Palmer would give another plot to his son John, who apparently lived in a farmhouse on or near today’s Teatown administration building. His barn is said to have been on the site of the maple sugaring shed. And the lake? That wasn’t there at all – it was in fact a Big Meadow (so noted on maps of that era.)

At some point, son (or grandson?) Richard Palmer also received a plot of land – this one all the way over by Teatown Road. In fact, if you walk along the Lakeside Trail, crossing the two Eagle Scout-built bridges built by Troop 18 scouts Michael Pavelchek and William Curvan . . .

. . . you’ll eventually come upon some crumbing stone foundations which are all that’s left of Richard Palmer’s farmstead. The buildings were supposedly standing until 1915, and I have even heard that daylilies are still seen to bloom at the site on occasion (though I’ve never managed to see any.)

Other plots of land were sold to non-Palmers, one of which still whispers to us when the leaves are down. As you’re walking on the Lakeside Trail, right next to Spring Valley Road, you might notice a pile of stones. These are the foundation of Kahr’s farmhouse, located at 1685 Spring Valley Road.

And if you walk a little farther and look carefully, you can even see what I believe is the original well for this farmhouse:

Are your eyes glazed over yet? Stay with me a bit longer and I’ll tell you how it got its name AND make the connection all the back to the first people – I’ll be quick, I promise!

How did Teatown get its name?

The story goes (and it comes from the aforementioned Mr. Diamant) that during the American Revolution a grocer named John Arthur moved up from British-controlled Manhattan to the Neutral Zone of northern Westchester. Gossip ensued, and it was bandied about among the local women that Mr. Arthur had several chests of tea in his possession. Now tea was as precious as gold then (remember the Boston Tea Party??) and Arthur was a prudent businessman who hoped to sell his tea for whatever the market would bear. Well, this market of tea-deprived farmwomen was no match for him – they ransacked his farmhouse and found the tea. He finally agreed to sell it to them for a reasonable price and so Teatown was born.

(I will not waste words poking holes into this story as I do not have a better one to offer in its place.)

Moving still further backwards . . .

In 1697 Stephanus Van Cortlandt is awarded a royal patent from King William III for 86,000 acres that ran from today’s Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton all the way up to Anthony’s Nose and inland almost to Connecticut. Stephanus died in 1700 and it was up to his widow Gertrude and about 100 tenant families to farm and maintain the land. (Well, I’m pretty sure Gertrude wasn’t doing any hoeing. . .)

Now, before 1609, when Henry Hudson sailed his Half Moon up the river, the area was home to Algonquin-speaking indigenous people related to the Mohicans, Munsees, Wappingers and Delawares. The Sint Sincks and the Kitchawan were two tribes that likely used the Teatown area as their hunting grounds.

Going back even farther, say about 10,000 – 15,000 years ago, people were following the retreating glaciers and first coming into the area from the south and the west.

Think about that — our area has only been habitable fairly recently. Consider that the most recent ice age, of the Quaternary Period, began over 2 million years ago and it wasn’t until about 25,000 years ago that humans and animals could even have survived. It is, as Town of Ossining historian Scott Craven likes to say, just a geological snap of the fingers!

So there you have it – a thumbnail history of Teatown from November 2022 to 2 million years ago. While this is by no means in-depth reporting, I hope it will inspire you to dig deeper.

A Shameless Plug . . .

I know I haven’t posted much here lately and that’s because I was putting the finishing touches on my new book!

Co-authored with Town of Ossining Historian Scott Craven, it’s called “Croton Point Park: Westchester’s Jewel on the Hudson.” Here’s the cover for your enjoyment:

It’s a fairly comprehensive history of (duh!) Croton Point Park, starting about 25,000 years ago when the ice sheets began their final retreat north. We’ve been getting great feedback on it from people who’ve read it and/or seen one of our presentations.

So check it out! You can buy it at any bookstore in the immediate area, as well as from the usual online bookselling sites. (You can even purchase a Kindle version!)

And please, visit our website: HudsonValleyChronicles.com — you can find other links through which you can purchase the book and read our new Hudson River blog over there.

Thanks for your support!

Ossining War Casualty – U.S. Navy Nurse, Ensign Mary Feeney

Folks, I have made a mistake.

Not too long ago, I published a blog post about Private Benjamin Feeney, an Ossining casualty of World War I, and stated that Feeney Road in the Town of Ossining was named in his honor.

Feeney Road is actually named after Ensign Mary Elizabeth Feeney, a U.S. Navy nurse who died in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on April 14, 1943. I learned of my error when I saw a 1963 letter from the Ossining Town Board confirming that two new streets would be named after veterans Mary Feeney and Nathan Bayden.

So, as a prelude to Memorial Day, let’s right that wrong and learn about Ensign Mary Feeney.

^{Ensign Mary Elizabeth Feeney.}*^{Source: Ossining Historical Society pamphlet “A Memorial 1775 – 1983”}*

Mary Feeney was born in Ossining on September 11, 1916 to John and Ida Mae (Farren) Feeney. Her father was a desk clerk for the Ossining Police. She was also the niece of our Private Benjamin Feeney — Mary’s father John was Benjamin’s older brother. What a tragedy for him to lose a brother and a daughter in the World Wars!

They first rented a house at 72 South Highland Avenue and then moved to 31 Hamilton Avenue.

Both houses still stand today:

*72 Highland Avenue. Photo source: Google Streetvie*w

*31 Hamilton Avenue. Photo source: Google Streetview*

Mary, I believe, went to Ossining High School, likely graduating in 1935. (Alas, I’ve been unable to hunt out the OHS yearbook from 1935. I hear the Ossining Historical Society has it, but it is difficult to access. Someday I shall find it and confirm this assertion.)

She went on to study nursing at the Cochran School of Nursing at St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Yonkers, graduating in 1937.

According to the 1940 census, she was listed as being a nurse in “private practice.”^[1] (I imagine her taking care of a wealthy but crotchety Victorian invalid who lived in an elegant, but airless and dark home who imperiously ordered Mary about and was perhaps even addicted to morphine.) No wonder Nurse Feeney joined the U.S. Navy Nurses Corps as soon as she saw this poster, signing up as an Ensign in August of 1941.

*Navy Nurse Recruiting Poster. Photo source: National Archives*

I haven’t been able to find out anything about where she trained or was posted at first, but I did learn that in May of 1942 she married Bernard Joseph Gordenstein in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. He was also in the Navy, a pharmacist in fact, but I can’t pinpoint where they might have met.

Less than two months after they wed, Gordenstein shipped out on the USS Cub One Project, sailing from San Francisco. (This apparently was a code name for Advanced Base Aviation Training Units (ABATU) that were sent to the Pacific to train with and serve the forces fighting there.)^[2]

In February 1943, Gordenstein was evacuated from Naval Base Hospital No. 3 in Espiritu Santo by the USS Solace. From there, he was transferred to US Naval Mobile Hospital No. 4 which may or may not have been based in Wellington, New Zealand. (Names and numbers of hospitals, especially the mobile ones, got shifted around in the heat of the Pacific battles.) He’s listed as a patient on the manifest of the USS Solace, but no other details are given.

Nice, you say, but what of Mary Feeney (at this point, Mary E.F. Gordenstein)?

I just don’t know. I went down the rabbit hole of her husband’s service record because I thought I’d find her lurking in the shadows of the internet, but no such luck. I see no listing for her on any muster rolls or ship manifests that I have been able to find.

But at some point, Ensign Mary Feeney was posted to Hawaii and served at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital. I think it’s unlikely that she was there for the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, because the Navy put its nurses through rigorous training before they were sent out into the field. However, I don’t know exactly what that entailed or how long it took. And, as mentioned before, Ensign Feeney signed up in August 1941, so theoretically she could have been in Pearl Harbor that fateful December morning. But until more documents regarding Navy nurses are digitized over at the National Archives, this is all I know right now.

I did find more information and some photos of Navy Nurses in general on this excellent website if you want a deeper dive:

Navy Nurses of World War II

It’s strange that there is so little information available online about the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. Well, at least in terms of official service records. Via the above-referenced website and Wikipedia (I know, I know), I’ve learned that over 11,000 nurses, both active and reserve, served in the Navy during WWII. When our Mary Feeney joined up, there were only about 1,700 Navy nurses. Throughout WWII, Navy nurses were right there at the battle sites in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, going out onto the beaches to gather the wounded of Guadalcanal, Guam, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa (just name-checking some of the more well-known battles, but know that Navy nurses were all over.) Some were even captured and held as POWs (google “Angels of Bataan” for more.)

About 230 US Navy nurses died during WWII.

Here’s a 1942 photo from the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery:

*Administrative group including Navy nurses and Red Cross workers at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital, 1942. Photo source: U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery*

What do you think? Is that nurse third from the left Mary Feeney? I can see a resemblance to the one photo I’ve found of her.

And how about this pic? Do you think that first nurse on the left could be Mary Feeney? This actually does seem like a possibility. (I do so want there to be one photo of her in uniform.) If it is, it would have been taken just four months before her death.

*U.S. Navy Nurses pose for a group portrait at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, December 16, 1942. Photo source: National Museum of the U.S. Navy*

Post your thoughts in the comments (and of course, if you see anything I’ve gotten wrong, or if you have any further information, please let me know!)

Sadly, the last thing I have been able to uncover about Ensign Mary Feeney is that she died of pneumonia on April 14, 1943 while stationed at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital and that she was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star medal.^[3]

Mary Elizabeth Feeney Gordenstein is buried in the Halawa Naval Cemetery in Oahu, Hawaii, Section C, Grave 330.

Interestingly, her obituary in the Peekskill Star does not mention her marriage, her husband, or even refer to her by her married name.

I know that if I ever go to Oahu, I will be visiting her gravesite.

^[1] 1940 US Federal Census

^[2] https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Cub-1

^[3] Peekskill Star, 4/20/1943 Mary Feeney obituary

Ossining War Casualty – Private Elting W. Roosa, 1896 – 1918

Continuing my investigation into the stories behind the Ossining streets named after veterans, today’s post begins with Roosa Lane.

Roosa Lane, off Hawkes Avenue, Ossining. *Photo by John Curvan*

Now, as you will note, Roosa Lane does not have a star on it as other street signs do, but it DOES have a flag. While I’m still researching this, I believe the older streets (such as Feeney and Bayden for example) have the star while more recent ones, like Roosa, are demarcated with a flag.

Roosa Lane is named after Private Elting W. Roosa, who died in France on October 25, 1918, just about two weeks before the Armistice. He was a member of the 105th Co. Medical Training Division, 27th Division at the time of his death.

Private Elting W. Roosa. *Photo from the Columbia University Libraries*

Roosa was born on July 11, 1896, in Kingston, New York, to William and Mary Roosa. The family moved to Ossining sometime after 1905 and lived at 4 Church Street, aka the Rowe building.

4 Church Street, c. 1910. *Photo Courtesy of Dana White/Ossining Historical Society*

Later, they moved to 11 Independence Place in Ossining. According to the 1914 Ossining City Directory, 18-year-old Elting Roosa was working as a clerk (father William was a carpenter.) But the next year, Elting enrolled in Columbia University’s School of Pharmacy, graduating in 1917.^[i] Just before he graduated, in April of 1917, he joined the NY National Guard’s 102^nd Sanitary Train, composed of ambulance and field hospital companies.

Upon graduation, Elting had quickly found a job as a pharmacist, in Tarrytown at Russell & Lawrie. (Fun fact, if they are not still in existence as of 2022, they were until very recently.) But he was drafted in June, and by July, Private Roosa and the rest of the 27^th Division went down to Camp Wadsworth in Spartanburg, South Carolina for training. Just less than a year later, on June 30, 1918, he was sent overseas on the USS Huron and arrived in Brest, France – one of the last of his division to arrive.

I haven’t been able to confirm exactly what he did overseas – I’ve learned that many US Army personnel records spanning the years 1912 – 1963 were destroyed in a 1973 fire, so perhaps that accounts for the lack of information.^[ii]

However, I think it’s likely that Roosa may have served as a medic, an orderly or perhaps even a pharmacist. But even in those few months that he was overseas, he must have seen plenty of the horrors of war. His Division, the 27^th, was involved in the last, great push of the War, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on the Somme that took place from September 24 – October 1.

Over one million US soldiers participated in this battle and over 26,000 died.

But our Private Roosa didn’t die in battle – no, he died of pneumonia. Remember, at this time, the Great Influenza was ravaging armies in the US and across Europe. And the Battle of Meuse-Argonne happened just as the second, most deadly wave of the influenza epidemic was peaking. According to an article published by the National Institute of Health (NIH) entitled “Death from 1918 pandemic influenza during the First World War: a perspective from personal and anecdotal evidence,” there were over 100K troop fatalities all told due to influenza at this time.^[iii]

Further, the article details reports made by Colonel Jefferson Kean, the Deputy Chief Surgeon of the Allied Expedition Forces based in France. On September 18, 1918, he wrote of a “Sudden and serious increase in influenza-pneumonia.” By October 6, he was reporting that “Influenza and pneumonia . . . increased by thousands of cases. Case mortality of pneumonia 32 percent.” The next week, it had increased to 45%.

It was right about this time that our Private Roosa must have contracted what was likely influenza-pneumonia, dying shortly thereafter. As Sister Catherine Macfie observed at her field hospital in nearby Lille, France: “The boys were coming in with colds and a headache and they were dead within two or three days. Great, big handsome fellows, healthy men, just came in and died. There was no rejoicing in Lille the night of the Armistice.”^[iv]

A surprising fact I uncovered was that while about 53,000 American soldiers died in combat in WWI, approximately 45,000 additional US soldiers died of influenza and pneumonia. It’s very hard to get one’s head around those figures.

Another surprising fact is that Private Roosa was buried three times – below are the cards for his burials and disinterrments.

From the Records of the Quartermaster General, Card Register of Burials of Deceased Soldiers,
1917 – 1922, National Archives

This intrigued me, so I did a deep dive and learned that the odyssey of Private Roosa’s remains illustrates two stories: one, the development of how America would treat its battlefield dead going forward, and two, the political nightmare the repatriation of the US war dead was to become.

WWI was the first time the US Government attempted the repatriation of its fallen soldiers, but then of course this was the first time they had sent so many overseas to fight in a war. (Up until the 20^th century, casualties of war were buried more or less where they fell.)

But after WWI ended, many families wanted their sons (and daughters – let’s not forget the 400+ American nurses who died during this war) to come home.

Though former President Theodore Roosevelt, whose son Quentin’s plane was shot down in July 1918 over the Marne, publicly announced that he wanted his son to remain where he fell, his sentiment was in the minority.

So, the Graves Registration Service (GRA) took on the tremendous project of determining what families’ wishes were and fulfilling them. To this end, over 74,000 postcards were sent out to the families of fallen soldiers asking if they wanted their remains repatriated. Ultimately, over 44,000 bodies were shipped home for burial.

But at the Armistice (11/11/1918), there were over 23,000 burial sites across the war zone. To accomplish their task, the GRA had to consolidate and relocate, establishing 700 temporary cemeteries for this purpose.

This likely explains why Private Roosa was first buried in a British cemetery in Maissemy, then disinterred and reburied about a year later in an American cemetery, that would be known as Flanders Field.

One thing I think is worth mentioning is that at that time, the US Army was still segregated. And this task of exhuming thousands of bodies was primarily assigned to the Black labor battalions. ^[v] This picture, from the National Archives and Records Administration, shows soldiers at work in the Ardennes, France.

*Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration*

In 1921, Private Roosa’s remains were exhumed and transported back to the States on the USS Cambrai, leaving Antwerp, Belgium on March 21, and arriving in Hoboken, NJ on April 3. (Ossining’s Sergeant Joseph De Barbiery arrived in Hoboken three months later, in July, 1921.)

I also learned that France, desperate to recover from four years of brutal war that had destroyed its farms, towns and cities, not to mention an entire generation of young men, was not terribly enthusiastic about devoting its limited resources to the transport of the dead while its living were in dire need. They also didn’t want the sight of coffins to further traumatize its citizens. So it took several years of diligent diplomacy to make all the necessary arrangements for the 44,000 soldiers whose families wanted them home.^vi

Caskets waiting for transport in Antwerp, Belgium, 1921. Photo courtesy of the US Army Signal Corps.

I have found no record of a funeral for Private Roosa, but he lies buried in Ossining, in Dale Cemetery, next to his mother and father and not too far from the street that bears his name today.

^[i] https://library.columbia.edu/libraries/cuarchives/warmemorial/world-war-i/roosa-elting-w.html

^[ii] https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/fall/military-service-in-world-war-one.html)

^[iii] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4181817/

^[iv] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4181817/

^[v] https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/05/31/world-war-i-exhumed-memorial-day

[vi] https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc804852/m2/1/high_res_d/thesis.pdf

Ossining War Casualty — Corporal Nathan Bayden

As promised, here’s a post with information on Corporal Nathan Bayden, one of Ossining’s war veterans, honored at the intersection of Feeney Rd. and Bayden Rd.

While Private Benjamin Feeney lost his life in WWI (see full blog post here), Cpl. Nathan Bayden served in WWII and was killed in action in Algeria.

(I do rather wonder how these street names honoring our soldiers are chosen, as this seems a particularly random pairing.)

Nathan Bayden was born in Ossining on July 21, 1918. His parents, Benjamin and Fannie, were born in either Poland or Russia (hard to know back then as the borders kept shifting.) The family was Jewish.

He graduated from Ossining High School in 1935 and immediately went to work, likely as a clerk in his parents’ antique store which they ran out of their house at 107 Spring Street.

According to the 1940 census, he was a chauffeur, and worked 52 weeks a year, earning the princely salary of $700 a year. (That works out to about $20,000/year today.)

Not sure if Nathan was drafted or if he joined up voluntarily, but he officially enlisted on March 5, 1941. His enlistment record notes that he was a “salesperson”, not a chauffeur, and at the time he enlisted, he wasn’t assigned to a particular service branch at the time.

At some point, though, he became part of the US Army, 2^nd Armored Division, 67^th Armored Regiment.

The nickname for the 2^nd Armored Division was “Hell on Wheels” and their shoulder patch looked like this:

If you look closely at Corporal Bayden’s picture above, you can see that same patch on his left shoulder, confirming his Division.

I can’t find out when he joined the 2^nd, so I’m not sure which battles he fought in, except for his last. Killed in Action on December 7, 1942 in Algeria, he was originally interred in a cemetery in Tunisia, but at some point his remains were transferred to Arlington cemetery, where he rests today.

So what was this Ossining boy doing in Africa in 1942?

Frankly, I always forget that battles were raging in Africa during WWII. All I know is that General Erwin Rommel commanded the German Afrika Korps, it was hot and sandy, and the Kasserine Pass is somewhere there. I believe these battles in Africa were a plot point in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the European and Pacific theaters generally seem to take up more space in the version of WWII I’m familiar with.

And I’m not going to lie, military history is far too numbers-oriented and remote for me to engage with too deeply, so I’m not going to get into the weeds on all this. But I did learn that the famous General George S. Patton was in charge of the 2^nd Armored Division in 1942.

And while I can’t pinpoint the battle in which Corporal Bayden lost his life, it was likely in the aftermath of Operation Torch – an Allied invasion of the French Colonies in northern Africa.

In reading about this battle, I’m surprised that Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg haven’t done a feature film on it, because it’s just as dramatic and heroic as the Normandy invasion featured in Saving Private Ryan.

Operation Torch took place November 8 – 16, 1942. As he would be for D-day on June 6, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of this operation. (No wonder the man smoked up to four packs of cigarettes a day!)

The invasion involved landing over 75,000 troops in Morocco and Algeria. Like D-Day, this operation involved US and British forces working in tandem.

Why was this invasion necessary?

Why is war ever necessary, I reply.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I have a nuanced understanding as to the strategy at work here. But, a careful reading of Wikipedia (ahem!) and a brief conversation with my history guru Ken during a run, the ostensible goal was to liberate North Africa from the Vichy French and the Nazis, but Stalin was really keen on the Allies opening up a 2nd front for the Germans to contend with.

It seems that our Corporal Bayden’s Division was in the Western Task Force on the Casablanca side of things. General George S. Patton was in direct command of this part of the invasion, and over 35,000 troops were secretly transported there in ships, nonstop from the United States. Traveling through waters patrolled by U-boats, arriving right on time, at night, in unfriendly territory in bad weather – the logistical portion alone of this story is remarkable.

Here’s a map of the battle sites I downloaded from Wikipedia – it clarified a lot of this for me. (Cpl. Bayden’s Division is all the way on the left, or western side of French Morocco.)

How exactly did Corporal Bayden participate in this battle? And how did he lose his life nearly one month afterwards? Alas, I have not uncovered much detail here, except that a hospital admissions record states that that the Causative Agent of his death was “Boat, sinking, by mine or resulting from unspecified enemy action.”

And then there’s the clipping (above) that I found in in the Ossining Historical Society’s 1983 Memorial Honor Roll – though Bayden’s death year is incorrect, perhaps the description of the cause is accurate? Hard to know. If anyone reads this who knows more, please contact me!

Taking into account that Bayden enlisted in March of 1941, and knowing that the majority of the soldiers participating in this battle came straight over from the States, I believe this might have been Bayden’s first, and last, experience in battle.

So the next time you drive up Bayden Rd., take a moment to remember Corporal Nathan Bayden, who died far from home at the age of 26.

Ossining War Casualty – Private Benjamin Feeney

_{Private Benjamin Feeney. Photo Source: Ossining Historical Society pamphlet “A Memorial 1775 – 1983”}

Today, let’s learn a little bit about Benjamin Feeney, one of Ossining’s own who made the greatest sacrifice in World War 1. (But no, he is NOT the Feeney after whom Feeney Road is named after. It is actually named after Ensign Mary Feeney, a U.S. Navy Corps nurse. See this post here.)

Benjamin K. Feeney was a Private in the 165^th Infantry, Company L. He died in a German prison camp on August 7, 1918 from wounds received in battle on August 1, 1918.

Now, the 165^th Infantry Regiment^[1] had originally been known as the 69^th Infantry Regiment, but for reasons known only to the Army, it was renamed the 165^th in July of 1917 and became part of the 42^nd Division. Because the 42^nd was comprised of National Guard units from many states, then-Major Douglas MacArthur noted that the “42^nd Division stretches like a Rainbow from one end of America to the other.” Ever after, the 165th was known as the Rainbow Division.

Fun fact – as the 69^th Infantry Regiment it was known as the “Fighting 69^th”, a nickname supposedly given to it by Robert E. Lee during the Civil War. Its Armory still stands at 26^th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City and has had a storied history I won’t get into here. But you should definitely Google it.

Also, here’s another fun fact: Father Duffy (of the statue in Times Square, right where the TKTS half-price ticket booth is located) was the regimental chaplain for the Fighting 69^th. Poet Joyce Kilmer (you probably know him from the poem “Trees” that begins “I THINK that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree”) was also a member of this regiment and was killed on July 30, during the Aisne-Marne counter- offensive, just a week before our Private Feeney died.

Now, I’m not going to get into the weeds about the Aisle-Marne counter-offensive, or the Battle of Second Marne as it is sometimes called, to distinguish it from the first Battle of the Marne that took place in 1914. However, the fact that there are two battles of the same name on basically the same bit of land four years apart tells you something about what deadlock this World War was.

But I will note that this battle was Germany’s last major offensive of WWI and that it signed the Armistice about 100 days later, so this could certainly be seen as the beginning of the end for them. Some even think that the German infantry was decimated by the so-called “Spanish flu” and this contributed to their crushing defeat.

But back to our doughboy, Benjamin Feeney.

According to the 1905 census, Private Feeney was the son of Coleman and Bridget Feeney and born in about 1890. He lived on Revolutionary Road with his parents and at least seven siblings.^[2]

On November 6, 1917, as a member of the National Guard incorporated into the 165^th Regiment, he traveled to France, on the troopship Ascania, departing from Montreal, Canada.

According to the Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774-1985 ^[3] Private Feeney took part in several major engagements in France: Rouge Bouquet (in March 1918.) Poet Joyce Kilmer was also in this battle and wrote a poem called Rouge Bouquet in memory of their fallen comrades.

Other battles in which poor Private Feeney fought in were in Baccarat (April 1918), Champagne (June 1918), and Chateau Thierry (July 1918). I realize that these last three sound like a vacation, but they were brutal, trench-based conflicts that make “All Quiet on the Western Front” seem tame.

His final battle was the Aisne-Marne Offensive whose objective was to cross the Ourcq River and force the Germans to retreat (Read this if you want a deeper dive.) While the Allies were, as previously mentioned, successful, the 165^th suffered a 42% casualty rate. Our poor Private Feeney was one of them.

His record notes “captured August 1/18, released, death at Limburg, Germany of wounds received in action.” He was likely held at Limburg an der Lahn, a large German POW camp, in the days before he died.

He was buried at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery, Seringes-et-Nesles, France.

(And no, Feeney Road in the Town of Ossining is NOT named after him. It is named after Ensign Mary Feeney, who also died in World War II.)

RIP Private Feeney.

^[1] https://museum.dmna.ny.gov/unit-history/conflict/world-war-1-1914-1918/165th-infantry-regiment-69th-new-york

^[2] https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=7364&h=2305118&tid=&pid=&queryId=edd8a6b452d613a8248c1e2978ef0da1&usePUB=true&_phsrc=IZv2&_phstart=successSource

^[3] The National Archives at College Park; College Park, Maryland; Record Group Title: Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774-1985; Record Group Number: 92; Roll or Box Number: 379

Ossining History on the Run

Local History Seen from a Runner's Perspective

Author: Caroline