Sullivan County Historical Society & Museum

Sullivan County Historical Society & Museum Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Sullivan County Historical Society & Museum, History Museum, 265 Main Street/PO Box 247, Hurleyville, NY.

The Sullivan County Historical Society was established on September 18, 1886 to preserve the history of Sullivan County for the enlightenment of future generations.

05/22/2026

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
May 22, 2026

REMEMBERING COMPANY H

“A nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.” —Abraham Lincoln

On May 22, 1861, Company H of the 28th NY Volunteer Regiment was officially organized in Albany, NY with soldiers—mainly recruited from Monticello by John H. Waller—mustered in for two years of service in the Union Army’s Eastern Theater.

Over the next two years, the 28th would take part in some of the fiercest fighting of the Civil War, including Antietam, Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and the disastrous defeat at Cedar Mountain.
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Waller was just 31 years old when he raised Company H a few weeks after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter and President Lincoln issued his proclamation calling for troops. Unfortunately, although Company H was the first group of soldiers from Sullivan County organized to fight in the War Between the States, its service is often overshadowed by the contributions of the 143rd and 56th, later regiments made up largely of Sullivan County men.

In August of 1902, when the surviving members of the 28th held their annual reunion at the National Cemetery in Culpeper, Virginia, Waller was one of two men from Sullivan County to attend, as he was joined by William McIntyre of Mongaup Valley.

McIntyre had been 28 years old when he enlisted in Monticello on April 30, 1861, and mustered in as a private three weeks later. He was one of nearly 100 men who left Sullivan County with Waller that May to join the Union cause, meeting up with the rest of the regiment in Albany before heading south.

Among the orders of business at the meeting portion of that 1902 reunion, held almost 40 years to the day after the Battle of Cedar Mountain had occurred on that site, was the dedication of a massive new monument to those members of the 28th Regiment who had lost their lives in that bloody confrontation. The granite monument stood 25 feet high, weighed 40 tons, and cost $2,500 to erect (that would be nearly $100,000 today).

The battle at Cedar Mountain, on August 9, 1862, was the first clash between Robert E. Lee’s vaunted Army of Northern Virginia and Union General John Pope’s newly formed Army of Virginia. The heavily outnumbered Union forces made a valiant stand that day, but were eventually routed, and the 28th had taken heavy casualties.

All battles are brutal, but few matched the intensity of Cedar Mountain, in which the regiment had 213 men either killed, wounded or missing out of 339 engaged. Of those, 41 men from the regiment were killed that day.

Members of Company H who had enlisted in Monticello and were killed at Cedar Mountain included John P. Carpenter, George Egner, Abram Neer, James A. Palmer (who was also sometimes referred to as James A. Parmer), and Sergeant Alfred Pierson. In addition, Corporal Matthew Linsen (or Linson), who was severely wounded in the battle, would succumb to those wounds in a hospital in Culpeper, Virginia a few months later.

Twelve members of Company H were wounded at Cedar Mountain, and another eight were taken prisoner.

Of course, the 28th Regiment was just one of many who took part in the fighting that day, as approximately 8,000 Union troops and twice as many Confederates, including Stonewall Jackson, were involved.

The battle has become well known among Civil War historians for a couple of firsts: for one, it marked the first official field duty for the nurse Clara Barton. Barton had treated wounded soldiers on her own initiative after the battle at Bull Run the year before, and received official permission to accompany the U.S. Army to the front lines on August 3, 1862, just six days before the clash at Cedar Mountain. She spent two days and nights on the battlefield tending to the wounded, including Confederate prisoners, after her arrival on August 13.

Cedar Mountain was also the first time that photographs of dead horses on an American battlefield were seen by the American public, as the result of the work of photographer Timothy O’Sullivan, who photographed the aftermath of the battle. A month later, at Antietam, O’Sullivan would shoot and publish the first photos of dead soldiers on a battlefield.

The volunteers of the 28th Regiment had enlisted to serve for two years; mustering out in Albany on June 2, 1863. Some of them went on to fight with other units for the remainder of the war. Waller, a Captain with the 28th, was promoted to Major in December of 1862, and went on to serve with the 132nd Infantry, spending the remainder of his service mainly in North Carolina. After the war, he returned to Monticello, where he published the Sullivan County Republican newspaper and became known simply as “the Major.” He lived until 1919, and is buried in St. John’s Cemetery in Monticello.

On this Memorial Day weekend, it is appropriate that along with all of those who have given their lives in the service of our country, we remember the long forgotten sacrifice of the men of Company H killed at Cedar Mountain: John P. Carpenter, George Egner, Abram Neer, James A. Palmer, Sergeant Alfred Pierson, and Corporal Matthew Linsen.

As President James A. Garfield famously noted: “For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.”

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. Email him at [email protected]. He will be a featured speaker after the Fremont Center Memorial Day Parade on Monday, May 25.

PHOTO CAPTION: The monument to the 28th NY Regiment, erected at the site of the Battle of Cedar Mountain in 1902.

05/16/2026

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
May 15, 2026

THE GODFATHER OF AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE

On May 23, 1789, Nathaniel Sackett sent a long, rambling letter to newly inaugurated president George Washington. The letter informed Washington that Congress had denied Sackett’s proposal that he be granted federal lands in order to create a new state bounded by the Ohio, Scioto, and Muskingum Rivers and Lake Erie.

Sackett was hoping that the letter would convince his old friend to intervene on his behalf, or at the very least to appoint him to a position in the new government, but firmly believing it was not his place to do so, the President refused both requests.

Sackett was living in Fishkill, in Dutchess County, at the time of his letter to Washington, but he eventually moved to the home of his eldest son, Ananias, at Sackettborough in the town of Thompson in what was to become Sullivan County. He died there on July 28, 1805, his 68 years filled with the successes and failures of an adventurous man.

Nathaniel Sackett was born in Orange County on April 10, 1737, the son of the Reverend Samuel Sackett and Hannah Hazard Sackett. By the time of the American Revolution, he was serving in the New York Provincial Congress, where his abilities and ambition caught the attention of two of his colleagues, the estimable John Jay, and William Duer, a representative to the Continental Congress and a Colonel in the Colonial Militia.

When General George Washington decided he needed to create an intelligence network, or spy ring, both men were quick to recommend Sackett.

“John Jay, later the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, had been running counterintelligence as head of the New York State Committee and Commission for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies,” Nina Strochlic writes in an article entitled “The Letter That Won the American Revolution” in National Geographic magazine. “One of Jay’s operatives, a merchant named Nathaniel Sackett, had experience in secret writing and codes.”

Based on Jay’s recommendation, and his own observations of Sackett’s skills with codes and cyphers, Duerr wrote a letter to Washington on January 28, 1777.

“I beg Leave to introduce to your Excellency's Acquaintance Mr. Sacket, a member of the Convention of the State, a Man of Honor, and of firm Attachment to the American Cause,” Duerr wrote. “He will communicate to your Excellency some Measures taken by him, and myself which if properly prosecuted may be of infinite Utility to the present military Operations. I have therefore recommended it to him to wait on you in Person in hope that some Systematical Plan may be adopted and prosecuted for facilitating your Manoeuvres against the British army.”

“In February 1777, Washington wrote a letter to Sackett in which he offered him $50 a month—out of his own pocket—to establish the first formal apparatus for the ‘advantage of obtaining the earliest and best Intelligence of the designs of the Enemy,’” Strochlic writes.

Although he lasted just six months in his job—Washington fired him for lack of tangible progress-- Sackett put together the network of spies that would eventually prove invaluable in winning the war, and he personally trained Benjamin Tallmadge, the man who would not only succeed him, but far outstrip his accomplishments in the espionage game.

It was Tallmadge who organized and adroitly managed the group that has become known as the Culper Spy Ring, but Sackett’s contribution to the war effort was significant enough for some historians today to refer to him as “the godfather of American Intelligence.”

After he was relieved of his position as spymaster-in-chief, Sackett finished out the war as a sutler, an officially sanctioned merchant who followed the army and sold goods directly to the soldiers.

Following the war, in 1785, he came up with his proposal to establish a new state, roughly approximating the current boundaries of Ohio, "for the relief of all our distressed and neglected citizens" but he could not convince Congress to go along with the plan, even after he presented them with a petition with 340 signatures supporting it.

Meanwhile, the oldest of Nathaniel’s five children, Ananias, who had served as a private in the Revolutionary War, was hired in 1792 to build a road to access some remote lands owned by the Livingston family. What became known as the Sackett Road was the result, and it was so well laid out that much of it served as sections of the Newburgh-Cochecton Turnpike when that road was constructed several years later.

Ananias was paid for his work with 700 acres of land southwest of Monticello, and he built his residence near the pond that now bears his name. He conceived a prosperous community he called Sackettborough, but despite his vision, it never grew beyond a few houses.

“This borough was intended to perpetuate his name and deeds, but amounted to nothing more than a frail monument of the vanity and folly of human hope and ambition,” James Eldridge Quinlan wrote in 1873 in his “History of Sullivan County.” “No one can now point out the location which once bore the name of Sackettborough, and no individual now residing in the county can claim the once respectable patronym of Sackett.”

Ironically, Ananias Sackett eventually moved to Ohio, which had become the 17th state in 1803. He was living there at the time of his death on September 2, 1838.

The saga of Nathaniel Sackett will be the subject next Saturday. May 23 of the first Bold Gold Media Speaker Series program at Fort Delaware Museum of Colonial History in Narrowsburg, NY. This columnist, your Sullivan County Historian, will present: “The Godfather of American Intelligence” at 5:15 p.m. in the event tent behind the Fort. The program is free and open to the public.

Fort Delaware is located on the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway at 6615 Route 97 in Narrowsburg. It opens for the 2026 season tomorrow, Saturday, May 16. It is open 10-5 weekends through the end of June and then Thursday thru Sunday in July and August and weekends again in September and October. There are many special events scheduled to commemorate America’s Semiquincentennial, some taking place at the Minisink Battleground. Visit thedelawarecompany.org for more information.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. Email him at [email protected]

PHOTO CAPTION: Fort Delaware opens for the season at 10 a.m. tomorrow, May 16. John Conway presents "The Godfather of American Intelligence" next Saturday at 5:15 p.m. The program is free and open to the public.

04/25/2026

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
April 24, 2026

CAPITALIZING ON CONVENTIONS

On April 16, 1959, Jack Paul, the President of the Sullivan County Hotel Association, announced that the 11th annual Sullivan County Hotel Show scheduled for the Laurels Country Club in May, was a complete sell out. Since the show was not open to the general public, and admittance was restricted to members of the hotel, bungalow, camp, restaurant, hospital and catering industries only, this meant that every booth available for an exhibit at the show was rented. Paul noted that it was the largest show ever put on by the Association.

At that point in Sullivan County’s history, absent the long talked about county convention center, such a show could only have taken place at the Laurels, whose casino, overlooking Sackett Lake, featured the largest exposition space in the region.

That was because the Laurels was among the very first Sullivan County hotels to recognize the profitability of soliciting convention business to its year around facility. In fact, it is likely that of all the 538 hotels of Sullivan County’s Golden Age, none were as innovative as the Laurels.

The Laurels, the brainchild of Hyman and Sadie Novick, had started out modestly enough, but by the early 1930s, when Grossinger’s was just beginning to eclipse the Flagler as the Catskills’ premier resort and the Concord was not yet a twinkle in Arthur Winarick’s eye, the hotel with the unrivaled location on one of the county’s most beautiful sheets of water had already begun booking conventions. Organizations as diverse as the New York State Credit Union League, the New York Public Welfare Association, the Retail Workers Union of America and the Young Republicans would regularly gather at the Sackett Lake venue over the next four decades.

Beginning in the mid-1930s, the Laurels was remaining open all year around. They had Olympic speed skating trials on Sackett Lake and engaged in a highly publicized legal battle with arch-rival Grossinger’s – which they lost– over the services of world renown speed skater Irving Jaffee, who eventually became the director of winter sports at "the G" and set a speed skating record on Grossinger Lake.

By 1940, the hotel was advertising itself as "the smartest all-year-round playground in the Catskills for young folks." The Novick family– which by that time included sons Joseph and Ben and daughter Lillian Brezner– purchased the nearby Drake estate and built a picturesque golf course and ski area. The Laurels was so busy, that in 1943, when the Defense Department imposed travel restrictions because of the war and the hotel was forced to cancel five conventions in the month of June alone, it didn’t miss a beat.

In 1949, when the Laurels opened its new outdoor pool, it announced that the pool was so large it was required by law to have three lifeguards on duty at all times. Grossinger’s had opened its own "Olympic sized pool" that summer, but there were few other pools in the region of that magnitude.

In the 1950s, the hotel made headlines when it became the first of the famed "Borscht Belt" resorts to offer lobster on its menu. By that time, the family had changed its name to Novack and Ben had long since left the hotel, eventually ending up in Miami Beach where he first renovated the Sans Souci and then built the magnificent Fontainebleau Hotel. Hyman Novack died in May of 1955, and Joseph just over a year later, by which time the hotel accommodated more than 1500 guests, more than any other Sullivan County resort.

Under the direction of young Charles Novack, who had taken over as general manager, the Laurels became the place to go for late, late, night entertainment, and its stage was often still occupied– and its 1000 seat nightclub still crowded– when the sun came up. It became such a popular hotspot that famous performers like Billy Eckstine would often walk on stage unannounced and put on an impromptu show.

But Sullivan County’s Golden Age hotels, with their nightclubs and indoor swimming pools, were site independent, and before long the edge the Laurels had always enjoyed because of its spectacular location on Sackett Lake, where speed boats and water skiers once spent warm summer days, meant less and less. A succession of unseasonably warm winters wreaked havoc with the hotel’s winter sports schedule, often forcing cancellation of events such as the innovative MG sports car races held on the ice of the lake.

By the 1970s, Sullivan County’s heyday had passed; many hotels– including some large resorts such as the Youngs Gap in Parksville– had closed, and most others were struggling to survive. The Laurels had just 125 guests registered on July 20, 1973, when the operation came to a screeching halt. A State Supreme Court judge vacated a month-long stay of foreclosure, allowing the hotel to be turned over to a receiver.

Even those who doubted that the county’s Golden Age had come to an end, were finding it increasingly difficult to ignore the evidence.

Much of the Laurels was destroyed in a July, 1980 fire. Today, just the swimming pools and some crumbling foundations remain.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. E-mail him at [email protected].

PHOTO CAPTION: The Laurels Country Club had an unrivaled location on picturesque Sackett Lake.

04/24/2026

We’re proud to announce five new historic marker dedications for 2026, continuing our effort to honor and preserve the legacy of The Borscht Belt.

Each historic marker highlights a different town or hamlet and the unique stories of its hotels, bungalow colonies, and tourism legacy, giving history a place. Like totems, each marker says: this happened here.

Here’s where we’ll be:

𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟐𝟖: 𝐅𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐥𝐞
𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝟏𝟏: 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐞
𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝟏𝟏: 𝐑𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐇𝐢𝐥𝐥 & 𝐆𝐥𝐞𝐧 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝
𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐒𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟒: 𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐒𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐲
𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐎𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟖: 𝐖𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐬𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐨, 𝐒𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐆𝐥𝐞𝐧 & 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐕𝐢𝐞𝐰

With these additions, the Borscht Belt Historical Marker Trail will include 𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒚 historic markers across Sullivan County and Ulster County. Each dedication will feature lively arts and cultural programming: artist and historian talks and panels, illustrated slideshows, film screenings, cocktail hours, and more- inviting audiences deeper into the Borscht Belt’s illustrative past.

Join us in the Catskills this summer…and take our trail, please! 🤍

04/17/2026

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
April 17, 2026

THE KANE FAMILY MURDERS

It was April of 1777, and America’s War for Independence, which had started almost exactly two years before with the fighting at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, had long since reached the upper Delaware River valley.

While the war raged all around it, there was not open warfare in the upper Delaware, and no actual battles, save for the Battle of Minisink in July of 1779, took place there. But the divided loyalties among the settlers, and the enmity that developed as a result, did lead to periodic atrocities perpetrated by both sides.

By 1777, most of the settlers who remained in the Cushetunk settlement, on both sides of the Delaware River, were Tories, loyal to the British government, almost all of the Patriots having sought the safety of greater numbers in other areas, either in Orange County or in Connecticut. Among the Tories who remained in Cushetunk was a man named Bryant Kane, who lived with his family on the New York side of the Delaware River near present day Cochecton. Among his neighbors was the magistrate Robert Land, who lived with his family directly across the river.

Like his neighbor and fellow Tory, Land, Bryant Kane learned that Patriot scouts from Orange County, under the guidance of former Cushetunk resident Bezaleel Tyler, were looking for him, and fearing that he would be arrested or killed, he disappeared, seeking refuge among one of the Iroquois tribes who were likewise aligned with the British.

“Before leaving, Kane employed a man named Flowers to stay with his family and attend to his business,” James Eldridge Quinlan wrote in his “History of Sullivan County” published in 1873. “He hoped no harm would befall his wife and little children, as the scouts had not been known to injure the helpless and harmless, and it was hardly supposed the savages would disturb the families of their friends.”

But Kane had seriously miscalculated, and one night in April of 1777 his family was murdered, although to this day there is disagreement about who the perpetrators were.

Many accounts blame the atrocity— and the burning to the ground of Robert Land’s home that very same night— on a group of Mohawks. Other accounts say it was more likely Seneca. However, both those Native American tribes were allied with the British throughout the war, so it doesn’t make sense they would exact such a price from a Loyalist family.

Some have explained the paradox by citing the possibility that Bryant Kane’s wife had Patriot leanings, and had thus become suspect to the British and their allies. That conjecture does not address the fact that the Land home was visited that same night.

For his part, Kane apparently did not blame the Mohawks or Senecas, as he was almost certainly among the Loyalists who accompanied Joseph Brant on his raids on Pienpack in October 1778 and Minisink in July 1779, and at the Battle of Minisink, where Cushetunk residents fought on both sides.

There are still other versions of the incident that lay the blame on members of the Oneida nation, who were the only Iroquois tribe fighting on the side of the Americans, and who, according to Quinlan’s account, “performed their bloody work at night, and disappeared before morning.”

Those versions do not attempt to address the fact that there is little mention in contemporary accounts of bands of Oneidas visiting this part of New York State.

The logical conclusion that the fate perpetrated upon the Kane family would have no doubt befallen the Lands, as well— like Bryant Kane, Robert Land had also left the settlement, leaving his family alone— lends credence to yet another theory. This account of the incidents places the blame on a group of Patriot scouts, led by former Cushetunk resident Bezaleel Tyler III, who were known to disguise themselves as Native Americans when perpetrating their atrocities.

Tyler had an ongoing conflict with Robert Land, and eventually arrested him and testified at his court martial. And he and the scouts under his command were known to commit murder in the name of independence, claiming the lives of suspected Loyalists named Handy and Payne in separate incidents without so much as an interrogation. It is not a stretch, therefore, to think they would have killed the Kanes and attempted to kill the Lands.

While the deaths of Handy and Payne—two men who might well have been Tories, although Tyler and his men did not wait for any evidence of that-- did not sink to the level of killing women and children, they were so sudden and cold-blooded that even some of Tyler’s scouts were appalled by them.

It has been said that the Revolutionary War was America’s first civil war, and nowhere was that more evident than in the upper Delaware River valley, where there are many other incidents that illustrate the enmity that pitted neighbor against neighbor in the Cushetunk settlement.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian and President of The Delaware Company. Email him at [email protected], and be sure to read more about the Revolutionary War’s impact on this region in the Democrat’s special section today.

PHOTO CAPTION: Throughout the colonies, the American Revolution pitted neighbor against neighbor, and although portrayed comically in this contemporary cartoon, there were often tragic consequences, such as in Cushetunk in April of 1777.

04/10/2026

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
April 10, 2026

CUTTING DOWN THE HEMLOCKS

The village of Monticello was mostly a harmonious community in the late 19th century, its residents passionate about all things American, including baseball. In fact, the national pastime was one of the few things that could ever divide the populace, and it did briefly, before uniting them solidly behind the local team.

That local team, known as the Hemlocks, was a formidable baseball team back then, able to hold its own against all comers, who often came from as far away as Jersey City and Brooklyn. But the Hemlocks proved no match for a makeshift squad made up of players from their own village.

The Hemlocks were so popular that whenever they played, the local businesses would close down so everyone could attend the game, but perhaps no game ever drew the kind of crowd as two 1878 contests that pit the team against the Mutuals, a loosely knit squad of locals put together specifically for the occasion.

The series was originally supposed to consist of three games, to be played at Bennett Field on Mill Street (later the site of the old Monticello High School on St. John Street). It came about as the result of a challenge issued by Monticello innkeeper LeGrand Morris, who felt the Hemlocks were ignoring the best player in town.

Unable to convince Hemlocks’ captain George Lugington any other way, Morris and Monticello attorney Theron A. Read arranged the games to showcase the talents of pitcher Blake Mapledoram.

Ludington, often described as "the life and soul of the team," had built the Hemlocks into the power they were, wisely choosing new players to upgrade the team when the situation warranted it.

"Ludington was an inspiring leader and trainer," wrote Edward F. Curley in his book, “Old Monticello.” "He selected players that developed to be the best in the country, some of the number afterwards entered professional teams and made good."

Ludington, who was also the team’s catcher, felt Mapledoram was too young to play for the Hemlocks, and besides, Bill Hindley, "with his cannon ball straight delivery" was his pitcher. So Mapledoram was forced to watch from the sidelines as Ludington and Hindley, along with Frank Holley, Oscar Olmstead, Thomas Watts, Frank Snook, Charles and Henry LeBarbier, and Joseph Merritt played game after game.

Morris and Read, and other fans, knew that Mapledoram had grown up on the family farm and was strong as an ox. He had practiced his pitching against the barn door every chance he got and had developed tremendous arm strength and a wicked curve ball. They knew he could also play third base and right field and was better than most of the Hemlock players.

Morris and Read were so sure that the Hemlocks’ bats were no match for Mapledoram’s arm, that they assembled a team around him and issued the challenge, leaving Ludington with little choice but to accept.

Curley, a witness to the series, recalled in his 1930 book that Mapledoram "got his chance. He pitched for the Mutuals, and Charlie Harlow, now Admiral Harlow of the United States Navy, was catcher. The series was on, with the following scores: First game, Mutuals 9, Hemlocks 5. Second game, Mutuals 5, Hemlocks 3. Third game, never played–- a Hemlock couldn’t be located with a search warrant."

From that point on, Curley writes, Mapledoram was the Hemlocks’ hurler, and an already formidable team became virtually unbeatable. Ludington juggled the line-up as necessary: When Oscar Olmstead, his starting second baseman, had to quit the team because of his clerical duties in Royce and Cady’s Store, Lud moved to second base and brought in a player named Wade from New York City to catch.

When the competition demanded it, Lud would resort to ringers to supplement the homegrown talent, at one time featuring three professional players in Hemlock uniforms.

One of those pros, Charlie Reipschlager, who played for the Monticello team under the name of Mitchell, later played in the American Association, one of the three major leagues at the time, and was the catcher for the New York Metropolitans when they captured the Association championship in 1884. He played major league ball through 1887, wrapping up his career with the Cleveland Blues that year.

Despite his undeniable talent, Mapledoram never made it that far. He was never better than in his final game as a Hemlock, overpowering a Brooklyn team, striking out 17 while hurling a shutout.

"Someone had told them (Brooklyn) that the Hemlocks were weak, as some of the players had left to go into business," Curley writes, "but the left fielder, Lanahan said after the game, ‘If those players are the remnants, what in h-ll [sic] was the other team like?’"

Mapledoram’s ambition was to play pro ball, and he left Monticello to pitch for the Johnstown, PA team. Pitching in a game against Pittsburgh, he threw his arm out and never played again, though he umpired major league ball in the Union Association in 1884 and the National League in 1886.

By the time the 20th century dawned, the Hemlocks were but a faded memory, though baseball enjoyed a rebirth in Sullivan County in the early 1900s. By that time, in an eerie foreshadowing of a similar and better known phenomenon in the sport of basketball some 30 years later, many of the top collegiate baseball players in the nation were spending their summers at the Liberty hotels in order to play ball, and when they combined on the Liberty town team, they were a match for anyone.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian Email him at [email protected].

PHOTO CAPTION: Blake Mapledoram

03/27/2026

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
March 27, 2026

THE FEMALE HUNTER OF LONG EDDY

She has been the subject of more books and articles than perhaps any other woman with ties to Sullivan County, and yet she never amassed a fortune, held political office or traveled to far off lands. She was so well known that the New York Times ran a lengthy article reporting her death, although it ran more than 30 years before she actually died.

She was Lucy Ann Lobdell, also commonly known as “the female hunter of Long Eddy.”

Lucy Ann Lobdell was born near Albany around 1829. Her father brought the family to the upper Delaware a few years later, and went to work as a lumberman. At the age of 17, Lucy married a timber raftsman, George Washington Slater, who proved to be an abusive and unfaithful husband. When Slater deserted her just a few weeks after the birth of their child, Lucy, who had already earned a reputation as a marksman and game stalker by the time she had entered her teens, left the baby in her parents’ care and, dressed as a man, took to the woods.

"The mountains of Delaware, Sullivan and Ulster Counties in this state, and the Delaware River counties in Pennsylvania, were then filled with game," the New York Times reported on October 7, 1879, in an article reporting Lucy’s death, erroneously, as it turned out. "For eight years the unfortunate wife and mother roamed the woods of that section, making her home in the wilderness, where she erected rude cabins for her shelter. She never appeared at the settlements, except to procure ammunition and needed supplies, for which she exchanged skins and game. Her wild life was one of thrilling adventure and privation, and it was not until she was broken down by the exposure and hardships of it that she returned to the haunts of civilization."

In 1855, Lucy published a book entitled "Narrative of Lucy Ann Lobdell, the Female Hunter of Delaware and Sullivan Counties, NY" in which she detailed her escapades in the wilderness. In the book, she claimed to have killed 168 deer, 77 bears, 1 panther and numberless wild-cats and foxes.

Lucy lived home until she recovered her health, but found it difficult to adapt to the structured life, and before long donned the clothes of a man again and disappeared.

"She did not return to the woods," the Times reported, "but assuming the name of Joseph Lobdell, she went about the country making a living as a music teacher."

Lucy, or Joseph, as she was known, next settled in Bethany, Pennsylvania, where she started a singing school. Here she "won the love of a young lady scholar, a member of one of the leading families of the village," according to the Times.

"The two were engaged to be married, but the s*x of the teacher was discovered and she was forced to fly from the place in the night to escape being tarred and feathered."

Upon returning to Long Eddy a short time after, Lucy once again reverted to living life as a woman, at least for a time. Her health failing, she applied for residence at the poorhouse in Delhi, and was accepted there. In 1868, she became involved with another resident of the poorhouse, a young lady of 25 years of age named Louise Perry Wilson. The Times went on to report:

"They refused to be separated, and in the Spring of 1869 they left the poorhouse together, and for two years they were not heard from in Delhi. In the summer of the above year, a couple calling themselves the Rev. Joseph Israel Lobdell and wife appeared in the mountain villages of Monroe County, Pa. For two years, they roamed about that section, living in caves and cabins in the woods, subsisting on game, berries, and on the charity of the lumbering foresters scattered about in this region. They generally appeared in the settlements leading a bear which they had tamed. The man delivered meaningless harangues on religious subjects, and proclaimed himself a prophet. Finally they became public nuisances and were arrested as vagrants."

Authorities didn’t take long to discover that the supposed male reverend was actually a woman, and the pair were eventually returned to the poorhouse in Delhi. By 1876, they were living as man and wife again, this time in Waymart, Pennsylvania. Lucy was arrested again, and after a short stint in jail, released.

"The two went to Damascus Township, and in 1877 purchased a farm, which they occupied and worked together until a few days since, when Lucy Ann Slater, or Joseph Israel Lobdell, as she insisted on being known, died after a brief illness. She was nearly 50 years of age," the Times continued.

But Lucy Ann Lobdell did not die in 1879, nor in 1885 as the Wayne County Herald reported that year. In fact, she was admitted to the Willard Asylum for the Insane in Hancock in 1880 and lived the final 32 years of her life there, the doctors consistently referring to her as insane, uncontrollable, indecent and immoral.

“At a time when women did not commonly travel unescorted, carry a rifle, sit down in bars, or have romantic liaisons with other women, Lucy Lobdell boldly set forth to earn men's wages,” Sullivan County resident William Klaber wrote in his 2015 novel, “The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell.” “Lucy Lobdell did all of these things in a personal quest to work and be paid, to wear what she wanted, and love whomever she cared to. But to gain those freedoms she had to endure public scorn and wrestle with a s*xual identity whose vocabulary had yet to be invented.”

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. Email him at [email protected].

PHOTO CAPTION: Lucy Ann Lobdell, the female hunter of Long Eddy.

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