The town of Blooming Grove was organized March 23, 1799, the territory being taken from the more ancient Cornwall township. The name Blooming Grove had long been in use for this part of Cornwall, being the name of the old village which was given to distinguish it from Hunting Grove, a locality then in New Windsor.
The first town meeting was held at the house of John Chandler, the first Tuesday of April, 1799. Selah Strong was then elected supervisor and Daniel Brewster town clerk. Two hundred dollars were raised for the support of the poor that year, and a $10 bounty was voted for each wolf killed within the town. Mr. Brewster served as town clerk for thirty-seven years without intermission. There was little personal politics in those times, and public office was probably regarded as a public trust.
In April, 1830, a part of the town was taken off in the formation of Hamptonburgh. In March, 1845, another small portion was set off to the town of Chester.
Charles W. Hull has been town clerk since 1874, and has just been reelected, so that his term will be nearly as long as John Brewster's.
The house of John Brewster, at which the town meetings were held, 1765 to 1799, was kept as a hotel and was said to be the homestead of the Cooper family, upon which is now situated the Blooming Grove station and post-office.
When the present town of Blooming Grove was formed, the principal center was at Blooming Grove, where the old church was erected, 1759. The first town meeting was held in the spring of 1759, at the house of John Chandler, who kept a general country store here several years previous to this, also at Edenville, near Warwick, taking in wheat and other grain which was carted to New Windsor, ground at the old mill on Quassaic Creek, and shipped to the West Indies and exchanged for sugar, molasses and other products of the tropics, which were brought back to Orange County by the Hudson River to New Windsor, and exchanged again for grain and other farm products. John Chandler purchased in 1793 a small farm, upon which his great-grandson, B. C. Sears, now resides. He was president of the Newburgh and New Windsor Turnpike Co., and of the Blooming Grove and Greycourt Turnpike Co., built by his son-in-law, Hector Craig. He was an elder in the Blooming Grove Church and a large land owner in this part of the county.
The village of Blooming Grove then consisted of the old church and the old Blooming Grove academy, built about 1810, to which many of the students came from the neighboring towns, boarding with the neighbors about. A part of it was used as a district school until 1857, when the present building was built upon the old academy site. A blacksmith-shop, kept later by Pierson Genung, a drug store, a cooper shop, the old toll-gate, the country store, and the hotel kept by Benjamin Thompson, where were held the town meetings, general trainings, etc., and the public were entertained, were on this the main thoroughfare from Warwick to New Windsor and later Newburgh. This property was conveyed to Samuel Moffatt, Jr., merchant, by the executors of Rev. Benoni Bradner, and by him to Seth Marvin in 1810, who built a store-house on a lot purchased of Charles Howell, 1810. Blooming Grove now consists only of the old church, the parsonage and the schoolhouse, and half a mile away the station, store and post-office, kept by C. C. Gerow, and the creamery owned by the Sheffield, Slawson, Decker Co.
VARIOUS RESIDENTS
In 1810, Samuel Moffatt, Jr., having sold his place in Blooming Grove, moved to a new settlement at Washingtonville, building the old corner store, now owned by George A. Owen. Across the highway Moses Ely, the father of the late Dr. Ely, of Newburgh, had a tannery, and John Jaques, then a young man, opened here a shoe-shop. The old corner store, built in the woods almost, there being only two other dwellings, (a log house owned by James Giles and the private school of Jane Sweezey), was carried on by Samuel Moffatt and his son David, either alone or as members of the firm, from 1812 to 1832; then John S. Bull, 1832-1839; Walter Halsey and Apollis Halsey, 1839-1850; and the Warners and Williams Howell, 1850 to 1890, and George A. Owen, 1890, to this date. This store has always been, and is still, a prominent landmark in Washingtonville. In 1813, Jedediah Breed came to Washingtonville from Dutchess County, and built a harness shop adjoining the dwelling house now owned by his grandson, George A. Owen, and which has been occupied as a harness shop for nearly 100 years. Here Henry F. Breed kept the Blooming Grove post-office for forty years, nearly continuously; after his death the post-office was removed to the building of Alexander Moore, where, in 1872, the name was changed from Blooming Grove to Washingtonville.