created 2025-06-09, & modified, =this.modified
Why I’m reading
Often I travel along the Hudson to these places. I carried this book with me in my last overnight trip, and leafed through it. Now I want to read it more deeply, so I can consider the places I see with a different understanding.
In the early 1600s when the Dutch sailed past an expansive rock that jutted into the Hudson, they encountered large gatherings of Lenape frantically dancing, jumping and singing around enormous bonfires. For the natives, this was a religious experience to ask for favor of the Great Spirit – to the devout Christians these activities terrified them. So they called this Duyvil’s Danskammer, or Devil’s Dance Chamber.
The rock was lost when the steamer the Thomas Cornell was wrecked here on a foggy night in 1882 and before the brickyard was built some ten years before then, it “was beautiful, crowning a wooded plateau, with a sweeping view across Newburgh bay to the Highlands (with) a delightful bathing-beach of firm white sand… and a dock where large vessels could land. The river was very gay in those pre-railway days, dotted with hundreds of sails, sloops, and schooners…“.
Thought
Looking further, the Danskammer (dance hall) name was used for a mansion in the area. The remains (5 of six columns) of the columns went on to be part of the Storm King Art Center.
The river was very gay in those pre-railway days, dotted with hundreds of sails, sloops, and schooners plying between New York and Albany.
The Capture of Major John André
Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow – Patriot’s Park. André Brook or Clark’s Kill is the boundary.
“In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate André, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was universally known by the name of Major André’s tree.” -The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Arnold was alerted of the capture of John André, and the discovery of his treachery against his own army, and escaped. André was imprisoned at the Continental Army’s headquarters at Tappan and was found guilty of being a spy in disguise and under an assumed name. On October 2nd, 1780 he was hanged.
Thought
Find a bit on John D. Rockefeller’s war on snakes. He was a afraid of snakes since his youth and wasn’t able to walk on parts of his estate. Men clambered all over his estate, slaying snakes and returning them for 25 cents a skin.
This estate is now park of Rockefeller State Park preserve.
“I will pay 25-cents for each snake killed on my estate. I desire to rid my land of these reptiles, and any one may enter the war of extermination.” JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER -The New York Times, June 12 1906.
