The Blizzard of '88 Hurley New York

Revised: February 19, 2004.

Memories of Hurley (1953)

ln June of this year (2002 --ed) Jennifer Hartzel and her husband of Redwood City, CA visited Hurley. Jennifer is a decedent of Calvin and Emma Lawson Burhans, who lived in the Nieu Dorp house in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Jennifer's grandmother,


(approx 4 yrs old)	(age 17)

Bernice Aleen Burhans was born in Hurley on August 5, 1889 and lived there for 19 years, until her father died and the family moved to New York City. Bernice married George Stout and moved to California. Jennifer had a tour of the Niew Dorp and Hurley and was kind enough to leave us a copy of the following letter her grandmother wrote to the Los Angeles Times in 1953. It was written in response to a column in that paper regarding the "Ulster County Gazette" and is a "memoir" of her youth in Hurley in the early I 900s. Jennifer was wondering if anyone would venture a guess as to exactly where "down the lane" would have been. Please contact us if you think you know.

The article by Mr. Hungerford on the Ulster County Gazette more then fascinated me. I was born and lived for my first 19 years in Ulster county, NY in the historic village of “Old" Hurley and my two sisters and brother and I all graduated from Kingston Academy, the high school of that tune. The building has since been razed, and the triangle on which it stood is now a park, I believe. The year of my graduation my father died, and later on, I took a business course at Spencer's Business College in Kingston. We sold our home and moved to New York City. The information about the only two authentic copies of the Gazette sent me burrowing into my cedar chest to see if one of my three carefully preserved magazines of "Hurleyana" might possibly prove to be one of the spurious reproductions. However, no Gazette; it's very possible that my only living sister (now in New Jersey) has one among her treasured papers and I am sending her the clipping from the Times. My three are "Picturesque Ulster,” "The Four Track News" of July 1904, (a beautifully' illustrated "smooth" magazine--5 cents a copy, 50 cents per year) and "House and Garden" of May 1945. The last named contains an article with before and after illustrations of my Hurley home, which is now a tea- room. (The Nieu Dorp--ed)

In 1777, the British burned Kingston, which at that time was the capital of New York State and the people fled for refuge to Hurley, three miles away. The old stone house across the street from my home (the Van Deusen House--ed) served for a brief time then as the State Capitol. These two old stone houses with their thick walls had the same floor plan, and at least the main part of each building dated back to pre-Revolutionary times--as did many other buildings in that neighborhood.

The two articles in the first two magazines mentioned above are by R. Lionel De Lisser and differ only slightly in content and pictures of the historic village. My father's (Calvin - ed.) blacksmith shop and our home next to it are visible in the pictures of the main street--the Dutch Reformed church at one end of the street and the schoolhouse at the other.

This old white schoolhouse (where the 'four of us" went) I understand has also been razed and a more modern structure built a little nearer the center of the village. Just past the New Cemetery (on the "turnpike road" also leading to Kingston) was the entrance to the dearest sport of my childhood, "DOWN THE LANE" -- complete with mill brook blackberries, meadows, violets and other wildflowers, wintergreen (edible leaves and red berries), trailing arbutus, pine frees, etc. My brother drove a neighbor's cows there for their day's grazing and back again at evening We bought our milk from them for four cents a quart, buttermilk free. (“Store" bread was five cents a loaf but mostly the housewives baked their own.) We children used to go to the Old Cemetery to pick Lilly’s-of-the-valley which grew wild there, and to read --or try to---inscriptions on the ancient gravestones of the Indians and early Dutch settlers. I could go on to undesirable lengths with such nostalgic recollections, but will refrain with just a further word about the cover-to-cover allurement of the "Four Track News "---including all the ads, that is, as well as the educative text and very beautiful illustrations. The ads picture early model cars as well as early model locomotives, to say nothing of the costumes of those days. At least they seem to be "costumes" to our eyes, but were, of course, merely stylish clothing then. As for the "Picturesque Ulster" --- which includes histories and pictures of several "Townships" besides that of Hurley--it appears to have been published by the "Styles and Bruyn Publishing Co. of Kingston, NY" A large "4" on the cover, but no dates or editorial information. In case this letter (or any part of it) is deemed of sufficient interest to appear on your letter page, please use only initials.

Here is Dave Baker's response to the above article.
Dave is the Town Historian.

"Thank you for printing in the September Prologue the material on Bernice Burhans Stout and her recollections of the village of Hurley in the early 1900s. There is a lot that can be learned from the article about the Burhans family, but first let us answer the question about "down the lane".

This lane is the extension of Hillside Terrace and once lead to the pasture lot of the George Van Sickle family of Main Street, who lived in the house now owned by Otto Stupakoff (next to the museum--ed.) The lane not only provided the entertaining delights to Bernice as a young girl and teenager, but was also the location of the somewhat famous Hurley hickory bush and a related spring. You can still walk part of the old lane that extends from the end of Hillside Terrace, as it is still a town road, but not maintained. The hickory trees are still there, but the spring is dried up.

In Bernice's day there were no houses on Hillside Terrace as the property along the first part of the lane was owned by the Hiller family. There was a gate across the beginning of the land and the sides of the lane were fenced all the way to the pasture lot. Her brother would have driven the Van Sickle cow down the lane before attending the old school (on Zandhoek Road) in the morning and may have driven it back home again in the evening--a daily chore for her brother. Bernice became well acquainted with the lane as she must have accompanied her brother on his chore.

We also know that the Burhans family did not have a cow of their own, but bought their milk needs from the Van Sickles. We also know that Mrs. Van Sickle churned some of her milk into butter, as the buttermilk that was free was the liquid left over from the butter churning process. Buttermilk was used as a drink and in the baking of cookies and pan cakes. In the historian's collections is a photograph of a family group outside the Burhans' house and dates from the early 1900s. As the family was there until 1918, I think it is a Burhans family portrait. The photograph shows a family group with all the women dressed in the latest fashion, white blouses and full, black ankle length skirts---very similar to the dress> Bernice is wearing in her portrait.

Mrs. Stout's recollection of attending Kingston Academy is of interest as most of the students at that time who came from Hurley were girls. At that time, (the early 1900s) girls were better educated than the boys were as times were hard in the Town of Hurley and the boys dropped out of school before high school to help support the family. It was not unusual for girls to have a high school and higher education and seek employment in the business world or as school teachers. As attending school by girls tended to run in families, I surmise that Bernice's mother, Emma Lawson, also was well educated and was probably the bookkeeper/business manager of the family business. Kingston Academy was a regional school and Bernice would have met many teenage girls and boys who were in her peer group from all around the area and, most likely, she was also socially active with them. These school ties were maintained by the people of that time and probably accounts for the fact that although she lived in California, she was kept up to date on what was going on in Hurley and the renovation of her old home.

Note from Joan Castka: In the last Prologue (September 2002) there was a picture dated 1908 of children in the old school. Bernice Burhans must be in this picture--I wonder which one she is? Did you also notice that some of the boys were dressed as Indians?