Week of November 21
November 20, 1875 – 150 YEARS AGO
Rockland County Journal
AROUND HOME
☞ Bogert Suffern has purchased the grocery business of William Van Wagennen, at Ramapo and the last named gentleman has removed to Matteawan.
☞ Some of our boys are wondering whether they will have skating on Thanksgiving. We rather guess not unless they can skate on the bare ground.
☞ Owing to the steamer Adelphi having grounded on the Peekskill flats, on Thursday, she did not make her Nyack landing until after eleven o’clock a.m.
☞ Roe Haddock is giving to Piermont one of the finest buildings outside of New York. The roof is now on, and “Our Village Hall” will soon be a glorious reality.
☞ Messrs. DeForrest & Wipple, druggists of Albany, have purchased the Rockland County Pharmacy, of Piermont, where the business will be continued as heretofore.
☞ It is said that there are twenty-two women in one place out West who have become bald-headed by wearing heaps of false hair. Nyack ladies will please take notice.
☞ The old passenger station at Piermont is to be renovated, and the traveling public will get seven connecting trains daily between there and New York, as per new time-table.
☞ We are pleased to learn that Rev. R. De-Witt still officiates at the Reformed Church, Spring Valley, his Classis having refused to dissolve his relations with that church.
November 21, 1925 – 100 YEARS AGO
Rockland County Times
THE DEER CAME TO HIM
Visions of his coming home on the South Mountain road some day with a great buck shot in the north woods may have crossed the mental horizon of George Conklin, who never dreamed that to him would come “all that waits.”
On his way home about eight o’clock Sunday evening as he drove past the Blumenfeld home, a great 300-pound buck, blinded by the glare of the headlights on the Conklin car, jumped from the embankment, landing right on the front of the auto, the body becoming wedged between the bumper and fender with the prongs under the radiator.
Mr. Blumenfeld, who was attracted as were other neighbors by the crash, said “you have killed Frank Howard’s cow.” The investigation disclosed the deer badly injured and an appeal was made to Game Warden Knapp, who gave permission to shoot the animal to end its suffering and gave Conklin the carcass as part compensation, the front of his car being badly damaged.
November 22, 1975 – 50 YEARS AGO
The Journal News
1876 ‘TIME CAPSULE’ DUG UP IN MONSEY
[Image: Crowd gathers at excavation site. Photo by Ted Neuhoff, The Journal News.]
A handful of fledgling historians dug up a grassy plot in Monsey Friday and uncovered what the Smithsonian Institut[ion] believes to be the only Centennial “time capsule” in the United States.
The nine-hour excavation project produced a 10 by 12 by five-inch soldered lead box which will rest in the vault of a Spring Valley bank until the Ramapo Bicentennial Committee decides when to open it.
The time capsule was buried April 15, 1876, in a knoll on Grove Street by neighborhood residents who gave some indication of its contents in that day’s issue of The Nyack Journal, an ancestor of The Journal-News.
The box is supposed to contain coins, stamps, a list of local inhabitants, a piece of a flag once flown by George Washington, buttons from a Revolutionary War uniform and other artifacts described as being “likely to interest posterity 100 years from now.”
Bicentennial Committee Chairman Alfred Stonehouse had contacted officials from the Smithsonian Institut[ion], the New York State Historical Society and the West Point Historical Society, and each confirmed that Monsey’s time capsule is the only one known to have been buried to celebrate the country’s Centennial in 1876.
The digging, sponsored by the Monsey Lions Club and supervised by Vassar College archaeologist Lucille Johnson, began at 7 a.m. and ended at 3:40 p.m. when Harry Jackson’s shovel struck a slab of cement.
Beneath it, enclosed in a granite block, lay the capsule.
Jackson, Paul Neil and other members of the Lions and the Monsey Fire Department had dug a five-foot trench and hacked their way through the roots of a well-embedded elm before locating the lead box.
Pouring rain and ankle-deep mud limited the number of spectators to about 20, but Stonehouse expects that a much larger crowd will witness the opening of the capsule. The committee will announce the date at its meeting at Ramapo Town Hall.
Stonehouse was impressed by the ingenuity of 1876 Monseyite. “People were pretty smart at the time,” he said. “They used a soldered lead box to protect what’s inside. We were expecting a wooden trunk or something else that might have decomposed. But they had the foresight to do it the right way.”
According to the story in The Nyack Journal, the 1876 ceremony included a prayer service, speeches by local dignitaries and a military procession highlighted by 38 young ladies in liberty uniforms.
Rockland residents in the year 2076 will be treated to a glimpse of history being made today. The Ramapo committee will plant a time capsule of its own next year to help its descendants celebrate the Tricentennial.
The contents of the 1976 capsule have not yet been collected, but Stonehouse promised that one item will be this issue of The Journal-News.
This Week in Rockland (#FBF Flashback Friday) is prepared by Clare Sheridan for the Historical Society of Rockland County. © 2025 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.
