MISCELLANEOUS.
It is not generally known that for two years (1884-1886) the United States Official Postal Guide for New York City was printed in Orange County. A. M. May & Co. had the contract and the printing was done by William H. Nearpass at the Port Jervis Gazette office.
Of the papers at Pine Bush, Monroe, Washingtonville and Chester, mention has already been made.
In the number of publications Newburgh leads with about forty publications or changes from one to another; Middletown comes next with 22, Port Jervis with 15, Goshen with 13, and Montgomery with 7.
Bloomingburg is in Sullivan County. So is New Vernon. But each is on the south slope of the Shawangunk range and on the Shawangunk Kill, which divides the counties of Orange and Sullivan. In each place there was once a paper that practically was an Orange County production, and depended to a greater or less extent on this county for its support. The first was the Signs of the Times in about 1883. The other was the Sullivan Whig at Bloomingburg, in 1846. The former was Elder Beebe's Old School Baptist organ; the latter John W. Hasbrouck found at Bloomingburg in 1846, where he began to learn the printing trade.
INCIDENTS.
As an auxiliary incident of Orange County journalism, it may not be entirely out of place to record some facts regarding journalism in Pike County, Pa., opposite Port Jervis. In 1846 or 1847 James J. McNally removed the material of the Goshen Sentinel to Milford, in Pike County, and started the Pike County Democrat, July 14, 1849. It was a seven-column folio. In 1852 he changed its name to the Milford Herald. Some time afterward John M. Heller purchased the plant, and put in charge John B. Adams and Harry Heller, the son of J. M. Heller. It passed to several owners, and when O. H. Mott took it, in January 1, 1878, he for some unknown reason changed its name to the Milford Dispatch, which it remains, and now, 1908, it is edited by Josiah F. Terwilliger.
But the first paper in Milford was The Eagle of the North, in 1827, with T. A. Wells, printer. In 1828 it became The Northern Eagle and Milford Monitor, under Benjamin A. Bidwell. Somewhere between 1831 and 1840 the paper disappeared. A second Northern Eagle appeared February 6, 1864, started by Dr. Edward Halliday. It was a red-hot republican journal, and, as might be inferred, had a small constituency in that land of 991 democratic and only a few republican voters, and it died January 1, 1866.
MORE OR LESS PERSONAL.
Orange County's pioneer journalists have been gathered to their fathers. Of the second generation there remains one—as if to link the memories of the first with the fast-reclining activities of the third generation of newspaper workers. And that one relic of the dead past is a woman, now in the sunset of life. Dr. Lydia Saver Hasbrouck is with us yet; a landmark in Orange County journalism—honored by those who know her best, beloved by kindred, respected by all. The twilight of her years is closing pleasantly at her beautiful home on Linden avenue, Middletown.