Delaware County, NY Genealogy and History Site

Special to www.dcnyhistory.org - posted 13 March 2012
HSM hosts Genealogy Roundtables

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown will host two Genealogy Roundtables in the coming weeks, when Sally Elliott Scrimshaw, Ed Stewart and Betty Baker will share information and memorabilia on local families, some of which go back more than 200 years in this area and have roots in Scotland.

The informal gatherings will take place Saturdays, March 24 and April 14, at 10 a.m.in the Community Room of Fairview Public Library, 43 Walnut St., Margaretville.

The Roundtables are free; donations to cover the cost of room rental will be welcomed. Sally Scrimshaw will be the presenter March 24, sharing information about members of the Elliott, Squires, Long and related families. The Elliott farm in New Kingston was first settled by Sally's Scottish ancestors around 1818, and is still a working dairy farm, operated by the sixth- and seventh-generations on the land there.

She will explain the weaving of New Kingston and Bovina forebears and relate family stories handed down from the 19th and 20th centuries, including the Anti-Rent War era of the 1840s, and the Civil War, which claimed several ancestors.

On April 14, Ed Stewart and his cousin, Betty Baker, will discuss Todds, Fairbairns and related families, including Boutons, Bakers, Keators, and Crafts. The Fairbairn clan of Delaware/Ulster County are all descended from John and Elizabeth Miller Fairbairn, who came from Roxburghshire in the Scottish Borders and married at Bovina in 1841. Elizabeth's family included Millers, Olivers and VanBenschotens in Bovina, Delhi, Colchester, Andes and New Kingston.

Almost all of the Todds in this area are descendants of Samuel Todd, a Revolutionary War soldier from Plymouth, CT, and his wife, Mary Dudley. Ed and Betty will connect them to the "massacre" at Deerfield, MA, in 1704 and a Connecticut divorce in 1780. If you have information, photographs, documents or genealogical research sources to share with the gathering, please bring them!

The entire 2012 HSM schedule of events can be viewed at www.mtownhistory.org, where information on the Society's projects, and features on special topics, can also be found.

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1950s CMNews now online - posted 25 January 2012

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown, Delaware County is pleased to report that the latest batch of Catskill Mountain News microfilm has been scanned and posted online. They run from Sept. 2, 1949 through Jan. 28, 1955. What a wealth of history these newspapers contain, detailing the business, social and community life of the greater Margaretville area!

And they're searchable! http://history.catskill.net/

Phase 1 of this project involved microfilming and digitizing bound volumes of the CMN from 1902-1937. The second phase is digitizing microfilm of the years 1938-73 held by the NYS Library. The work is being done by Hudson Microimaging of Port Ewen, in cooperation with Northern New York Library Association. Funding for the current phase has been generously provided by the O'Connor Foundation of Hobart and an anonymous donor.

The next five years - through 1960 - is expected to be available by spring.

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NEWS from the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown --posted 19 August 2008

The Catskill Mountain News, 1902-37 (except 1920 and '25) is now on line, for your browsing and searching pleasure! Go to http://history.catskill.net/ to read history as it was happening!

A dedicated computer station at Fairview Library in Margaretville is also available for viewing and printing the News. This resource was preserved by Hudson Microimaging with funds from the O'Connor Foundation, Dick Sanford, Herman Gottfried and the late Ed Scheider.

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