Week of September 12
September 11, 1875 – 150 YEARS AGO
Rockland County Journal
AROUND HOME
☞ Rev. Wm. Gilkes, formerly a student of Mr. Spurgeon, will preach in the Nyack Baptist Church on Sunday morning and evening.
☞ The Thirty-second Annual Fair of the Rockland Co. Agricultural Society will be held at Spring Valley on the 28th, 29th and 30th insts.
☞ The railroad stations at Nyack and Mansfield Avenue were broken into by burglars on Monday night, but what they got did not pay for the risk.
☞ The inhabitants of Palisades village are looking after Joseph Krutzer and Lefler who have been selling beer and other liquors without a license.
☞ The Straw-ride proposed by the members of the W. A. Townsend family, headed by his son-in-law, Fred I. Evans, will take place next Thursday evening.
☞ Take your wife, or if you have none take some other man’s wife, or daughter or sister, or niece and attend the Fair on the last three days of this month.
☞ Miss Haeselbarth’s Select School will reopen on Wednesday, 15th inst., at her residence on Sickles Avenue, the first residence west of Richard P. Eells.
September 10, 1925 – 100 YEARS AGO
Pearl River News
BARN DANCE TO BE HELD AT THE BELVEDERE HOTEL
[Image: Nauraushaun Chapel in 1937. Etching of the Nauraushaun Presbyterian Church as it looked to J. E. Costigan, artist and resident of Nauraushaun, 1937. The structure is little changed since its erection in 1856. Etching appeared in the Orangetown Telegram and the Pearl River Searchlight, July 11, 1947.]
The Nauraushaun Nifties will hold their second annual Barn Dance at the Belvedere Hotel, September 12, 1925, at 8 P.M. sharp. Dancing will be held at the new open air dance pavilion, which is one of the largest and best in Rockland County. Music will be furnished by the well known “Arabian Knights” of station WEAF, New York City.
A two-and-a-half dollar gold piece will be awarded to the lucky person as a door prize.
Refreshments and home-made cake will be on sale as usual.
The proceeds are to go towards the painting of the Nauraushaun Chapel.
As only a limited amount of tickets are on sale by any members of the society they may be purchased in advance at fifty cents apiece.
ATTENTION, PARENTS!
The News staff has noticed on many occasions children coasting down Central Avenue on their little express wagons and bicycles. This is a very dangerous practice as the freight trains are using these tracks for several hours of the day. It behooves the parents to warn and caution their children to stop this hazardous practice. A representative of the News conferred with the gate attendant and he was informed that he has absolutely no control of the actions of the children of the Town and it was an utter impossibility to watch them, trains and gates at the same time
September 9, 1975 – 50 YEARS AGO
The Journal News
HUDSON RIVER WATER OK TO DRINK
Drinking water from Hudson River has been declared fit for human consumption.
The declaration came Monday from the state Health Department. It followed by one day a complaint from the state Department of Environmental Conservation that the General Electric Co, may have irreparably damaged the 306-mile river by dumping toxic wastes into its waters for more than two decades.
On Sunday, Ogden Reid, the state’s environmental conservation commissioner, warned New Yorkers against eating any fish taken from the Hudson which runs from a small Adirondack Mountain lake to New York City where it enters the Atlantic.
The complaint’s allegation focused on the dumping of a toxic chemical called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) from General Electric plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls.
General Electric officials said the company discontinued four years ago dumping the type of PCB found recently in Hudson River fish.
On Monday, the concern over possible PCB contamination spread throughout the state. The state Health and Labor departments were cooperating in an investigation of the health of industrial workers exposed to the chemical.
According to the Health Department, the health of workers at six industrial General Electric plants at Port Edward and Hudson Falls; the Niagara Transformer Corp. in Buffalo; York Capacitor Corp. in Brooklyn; R. F. Interonics in Bayshore, Long Island; Axel Electronics in Jamaica, and Universal Voltronics in Mt. Kisco.
Reid also warned against eating lake trout and brown trout taken from Lake Ontario. High levels of PCB were also reported in fish from Lake Champlain, according to state and federal officials.
The departmental complaint issued by Reid seeks an order requiring General Electric to reduce daily PCB discharges to two pounds by the end of the year and to eliminate the discharges entirely by end of 1976.
Company officials claimed they were willing to work toward a daily discharge of three quarters of a pound. General Electric officials also said the company’s two plants discharge less than five pounds of PCB daily. Federal law allows the company to discharge between 30 and 40 pounds a day. Earlier this year, the federal Environmental Protection Agency directed the company to limit its daily PCB discharge to four ounces by May 31, 1977. But that order was suspended pending a hearing.
In Washington, a federal health official called upon the Environmental Protection Agency to order an immediate halt to the dumping of PCB into the Hudson.
PCB is a “suspected cancer-causing chemical,” according to Cooper. Other federal officials have said PCB is fatal to fish eggs, may cause liver cancer in rats and can cause weight and hair loss in monkeys. Its effect on humans is still under study.
The chemical is used in manufacturing electrical equipment, as well as plastics, paints, sealants, caulking compounds, cutting oils and heat transfer and hydraulic liquids, federal officials said.
Recent fish sampling taken near the two General Electric Plants found concentrations of the chemical greatly exceeding the five parts per million standard set by the federal government as the limit for human consumption, state officials said
But water samples taken from 11 drinking water supplies from the Hudson and Mohawk rivers showed PCB concentrations well below federal standards for human consumption, state health officials said Monday.
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.
