The History of Orange County New York

by Unknown

There are, in addition to the above, thirty-five incorporated companies in Middletown, representing manufacturing, mercantile, mechanical and financial enterprises. The largest employers of labor are the Borden's Condensed Milk Company, the New York, Ontario & Western Railway Company shops, Howell-Hinchman Company, and the Union Hat Company.

The cemetery grounds of the Hillside Cemetery Corporation, formerly Hillside Cemetery Association, are located in the southwest part of the city. The cemetery had many natural advantages from contour of the land, virgin forests and running streams. To these have been added about twelve miles of macadamized roads and drives, with gracefully curving paths and winding walks. A great deal of shrubbery and many flowering plants have been set out and in the summer the scene is a most lovely one. Surely Hillside Cemetery is a beautiful resting place for the dead.

Middletown has a most complete water system supplied by three reservoirs, located in the towns of Wallkill and Mount Hope, and named respectively, Monhagen, Highland and Shawangunk. All water for domestic use is thoroughly filtered before being conveyed to the city.

The city has several miles of well paved streets, and is lighted by both gas and electricity.

The telephone system consists of two companies. The Orange County Telephone Company has about 1,600 telephones in use, and also does the long-distance business in the city for the Hudson River Telephone Company. The Middletown Telephone Company has about a score of subscribers in the city. It also has connection with several outside independent companies.

With its location, financial ability, numerous business enterprises, its many social, benevolent, charitable and religious associations and institutions, its splendid school system, and with the enterprise, energy and business ability of its citizens, the Middletown of to-day is only a beginning of the greater Middletown which will occupy this central part of Orange County in the years to come.

To sum up the history of the town of Wallkill were an easy task, and so saying is to speak in the highest praise of the town. Its course has been peaceful, quiet, serene; its politics have never been infected by scandal and corruption; the red glare of warfare—aboriginal or otherwise—has not shone athwart its pages; it has been a history in which the husbandman has dominated the scene and has been the central actor. Agriculture has been the mainstay of a people pious and God-fearing, the descendants of those sturdy New England and Long Island ancestors, who built the meeting-house and the school as soon as ever the settlement was made.

We dwellers in the Wallkill of to-day have every reason to be thankful that our history has been what it has; if it has lacked romance or excitement, it has likewise abounded in a peace that has meant prosperity.

Of late years the flood of immigration has sent its waves to our thresh-olds, and we find in our villages, on our farms, and toiling along our railroads the children of Italy, of Hungary, of Austria, of Russia and the more remote East. What the picture will be a century hence, what sort of an amalgamation will have taken place, we cannot foresee. Certain it is that, if he is to remain with us, we must educate the alien, teach him our ways, prepare him for citizenship, and do all we can for him morally and intellectually, and that will surely involve amalgamation. At any rate, this is a force that is bound to change our town's history, in the next hundred years, from anything that has gone before it. We should face the problem—meet it with those most forcible of weapons, Education and Law.