"Poughkeepsie as a township was incorporated in 1788. The village bearing the name was formed in 1799 (incorporated as a city in 1854), and soon became the center of a large trade running in long lines east and west from the river. Dutchess County had at this time but a sparse population. There was a post-road from New York to Albany; but the building of the Dutchess Turnpike from Poughkeepsie to Sharon, Conn., connecting with one from that place to Litchfield, which took place in 1808, was a capital event in its history. This made a considerable strip of western Connecticut tributary to Poughkeepsie's trade.
"Over the turnpike went four-horse Concord stages, with berailed top and slanting boot in the rear for trunks and other baggage. Each one had the tin horn of the driver; and it was difficult to tell upon which the driver most prided himself—the power to fill that thrilling instrument, or his deft handling of the ponderous whip and multiplied reins. Travelers to Hartford and Boston went over this route; and an east and west through and way mail was a part of the burden. A sort of overland express and freight line, styled the Market Wagon, ran in and out of the town from several directions. One[page 123] or more of these conveyances started from as far east as the Housatonic River, and they frequently crowded passengers in amongst their motley wares.
"Speaking of the stage-driver's horn recalls the fact that when the steamboat arrived—which was so solitary an institution that for some time it was distinctly called 'The Steamboat'—the tin horn did duty also for it. When it was seen in the distance, either Albanyward or in the New York direction, a boy went through the village blowing a horn to arouse those who wished to embark on it. It is said the expectant passengers had ample time, after the horn was sounded, to make their toilets, run down to the river (or walk down) and take passage on it.
"In colonial days few were the people here; but they were a bright and stirring handful. It seems as if every man counted as ten. The De's and the Vans, the Livingstons, the Schuylers, the Montgomerys and ever so many more of the Hudson River Valley settlers are still making their impress upon the country. I suppose it need not now be counted strange that the strong mixture of Dutch and English settlers, with a few Huguenots, which finally made Dutchess county, were not a little divided between Tory and Whig inclinations. Around Poughkeepsie, and in its allied towns stretching between the Hudson River and the Connecticut line, there was much strife. Gov. George Clinton in his day ruled in the midst of much tumult and turbulence; but he held the reins with vigor, in spite of kidnappers or critics. When the British burned Kingston he prorogued the legislature to Poughkeepsie, which still served as a 'safe harbor.' As the resolution progressed the Tory faction was weakened, either by suppression or surrender.
"It was in the Poughkeepsie Court House that, by one vote, after a Homeric battle, the colony of New York consented to become a part of the American republic, which consent was practically necessary to its existence.[page 124] How large a part two small incidents played here towards the result of nationality. That single vote was one, and the news by express from Richmond, announcing Virginia's previous ratification—and added stimulus to the vote—was the other. Poughkeepsie honored in May, 1824, the arrival of Lafayette, and dined him, besides exchanging speeches with him, both at the Forbus House, on Market Street, very nearly where the Nelson House now stands, and at the Poughkeepsie Hotel. It was one of Poughkeepsie's great days when he came. Daniel Webster has spoken in her court house; and Henry Clay, in 1844, when a presidential candidate, stopped for a reception. And it is said that, by a mere accident, she just missed contributing a name to the list of presidents of the United States. The omitted candidate was Nathaniel P. Talmadge. He could have had the vice-presidential candidacy, the story goes, in 1840, but would not take it. If he had accepted it, he would have gone into history not merely as United States senator from New York and afterwards Governor of Wisconsin territory, but as president in John Tyler's place.
"In 1844, the New York State Fair was held here somewhere east of what is now Hooker Avenue. It was an occasion thought important enough then to be pictured and reported in the London Illustrated News. Two years after the telegraph wires were put up in this city, before they had yet reached the city of New York. Considering the fact that Prof. S. F. B. Morse, the telegraph inventor, had his residence here, this incident was not wholly inappropriate.
"The advent in 1849 of the Hudson River Railroad, which was an enterprise in its day of startling courage and magnitude, constituted a special epoch in the history of Poughkeepsie and the Hudson River towns. Men of middle age here well remember the hostility and ridicule the project occasioned when it was first broached. Some said no railroad ever could be built on the river's edge;[page 125] and, if you should build one, the enormous expense incurred would make it forever unprofitable. It seemed then the height of Quixotism to lay an expensive track where the river offered a free way to all. Property holders, whose property was to be greatly benefited, fought the railroad company with unusual spirit and persistence. But the railroad came, nevertheless, and needs no advocate or apologist to-day. There is no one now living here who would ask its removal, any more than he would ask the removal of the Hudson River itself."
And lo! the Catskills print the distant sky,
And o'er their airy tops the faint clouds driven,