Week of April 24
April 22, 1876 – 150 YEARS AGO
Rockland County Journal
OUR NEW MANUFACTORY
We always take particular pleasure in noting the march of improvement in our midst, and love to commend enterprise and energy wherever we see it evidenced. In keeping with this feeling, we visited this week the now quarters of our piano manufacturers, Messrs, Matthews & Polhemus, on Main Street, just below Franklin, and found the establishment in complete running order and turning out some fine specimens of workmanship.
The building which has been but recently completed, is of brick, two stories high, fifty-five feet long and twenty-five feet wide. The front door opens into the office and ware-room, where at all times there are instruments finished and ready for sale and use. The next room is the workshop, which is forty feet in length, where the piano cases are made. In the rear of this room, built as an addition to the main building is the drying house. Up stairs, over the workshop, is the finishing room, where the instruments are put together and the action put into them, besides a great deal of fancy work, such as carving legs, etc., being done. In the front of the second story is the varnishing room, where the woodwork of the pianos receive the high polish which is always seen upon them. We saw here, just ready to receive the finishing touch of the skilled workman, several cases for the new scale upright pianos which this firm are manufacturing, which were as fine specimens of that work as we have ever seen. We also examined several instruments on hand, and we do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce their first-class in tone, strength and finish.
We are glad this enterprising firm have already been so successful in business as to enable them to take such superb quarters, and we predict and wish for them in the future many long years of prosperity such as always attend the efforts of the worthy.
April 23, 1926 – 100 YEARS AGO
Rockland County Times
BOYS ARRESTED FOR STEALING BICYCLES
About twelve o’clock Thursday afternoon, Carl Christophel and Edward Schaefer reported to Officer Kennedy that their bicycles had been stolen, from the place where they had been parked between the racks provided for them on the school grounds.
Officer Kennedy remembered that he had seen two youths walking south on the Middletown Road about eleven o’clock and believed that perhaps it was these young men who stole the bicycles.
The officer followed the trail as far as Hillsdale where he came upon the boys riding on the wheels. He immediately placed them under arrest and brought them back to Pearl River and they were brought before Justice Woodworth for trial.
They gave their names as Julius Lyons and John Gale, 17 years old. Both pleaded guilty to the charge of petty larceny. Young Gale was sentenced to sixty days in the county jail, after having just been discharged from the same jail a few days before where he served 15 days sentence for stealing a watch in Spring Valley.
Lyons was given a 15-day sentence. Judge Woodworth commended Officer Kennedy for the prompt recovery of the bicycles.
April 24, 1976 – 50 YEARS AGO
The Journal News
MR. BICENTENNIAL RIDES AGAIN
[Image: Murray Fornaro, Mr. Bicentennial. Photograph by Art Sarno, The Journal News.]
Rockland County’s Mr. Bicentennial, Murray Fornaro of Blauvelt, has decided making people happy is more important than historical accuracy as he intensifies a campaign to re-create great moments from the Revolution locally.
On Sunday Fornaro plans to reenact, for the second time in a week, Paul Revere’s famous ride. Fornaro had marked the ride’s 200th anniversary of April 18 by zooming through southern Rockland on a motorcycle dressed in colonial clothing and ringing a bell.
He’s going to do it again because residents of the North Rockland area told him they were slighted and hurt that he didn’t visit their area, Fornaro said.
So he’ll leave Nyack at 1 p.m., headed for Suffern or Route 59, and he doesn’t seem to care very much that this week’s ride, from a historical point of view, is all wet.
From Suffern he’ll take Route 202 to Central Highway in Garnerville; then Central Highway to Route 9W in Stony Point, where he’ll turn around at the post office and return to Nyack on Route 9W.
The whole trip should take about two hours, he feels.
Last week people lined the streets waving flags and cheering him on, and cars blew their horns at him, Fornaro said.
He made his ride on the back of a 65-horsepower Harley Davidson motorcycle driven by a friend. The only problem was exhaustion caused by having to ring the 1½-pound bell for two hours, Fornaro said.
Fornaro, an installer for the telephone company, changes into colonial clothing after work every day and makes appearances around the county. He designed and built the county’s Bicentennial time capsule. which is scheduled to be buried later this year
His next project is a reenactment of the Boston Tea Party. He’s working out the details now.
This Week in Rockland (#FBF Flashback Friday) is prepared by Clare Sheridan for the Historical Society of Rockland County. © 2026 by The Historical Society of Rockland County. #FBF Flashback Friday may be reprinted only with written permission from the HSRC. To learn about the HSRC’s mission, upcoming events or programs, visit www.RocklandHistory.org or call (845) 634-9629.
