New Windsor neighbors celebrate a wedding in 1910.
By Mary McTamaney
In these unsettled times, we all let our minds return once in a while to the comfort and lessons of our childhoods. The path back to a memory can be a conversation that reminds us of when we first knew something to be true. It can be weather that feels like a special day in our past. It can be the excitement or apprehension of starting something that feels vaguely familiar.
Look back in a family scrapbook and re-imagine the hour the picture you see there was taken.
I did that this week when I learned that one of my favorite historians, Kevin Burke, would soon be leading a conversation on memory. I intend to listen in to the virtual talk he will give for the Newburgh Historical Society this Sunday afternoon. To get my imagination in gear, I looked at my own past through family pictures and then I looked at Newburgh’s collective past through archival photos of public moments.
It isn’t hard to lift the veil of time when you stare into an old photo. Who is there in that scene? What are they saying or thinking? What did they see as they looked around? Who witnessed their moments that day?
Not long ago, I was surprised and delighted as I looked at a small picture shared on Facebook. A little girl named Mary is standing with her teddy bear on the front steps of her Newburgh home. The doorway looked so familiar. The house is #188 Dubois Street and the photo was taken around 1926. That is where I too, another little girl named Mary, lived at the same age but three decades later. I also stood on that staircase leading to our apartment. Suddenly, looking at the 1920’s photo, I remembered those steps in clear detail. I remember sitting with paper and pencil and having my very favorite blue pencil with a white eraser fall through the round hole drilled in each board for drainage. Although my mother gave me another pencil, I missed that one and puzzled for some days about how I could retrieve it. How different and how much the same was Dubois Street when each little Mary looked out and observed the world? Neighbors like Mrs. Ryan, Mrs. Volpe and Mrs. Lynch who were always kind to me must have had antecedents who were the neighbors who watched out for the older Mary. Did she feel the adventure when she was old enough to cross the street and visit the firehouse on the corner? Who took her for walks in the vast pathways of Downing Park? When I was an adult, I got to know little Mary from the picture, who became Mrs. Mary Connell, but I never knew we had shared a birthplace. What fun we might have had comparing stories of that block from a child’s eye.
I scouted around in our family albums and found one particularly intriguing photo there. It is a crowd gathered at a wedding celebration in New Windsor. My husband’s mother, his aunt and his grandparents are pictured right in the center. The family hosting the wedding were the Hudigs from Ducktown. The Swatschinas (my husband’s family) were fairly new immigrants who spoke with heavy accents. Most of their neighbors did too, having arrived as the 20th century began from a variety of central European countries like Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary.
What did it sound like to sit among that big crowd in 1910? What food was served? What music was played? Where did each family walk back to when the feast was over? Just imagine those old dirt roads full of laughing guests departing for their first homes in this new world.
Stories like these are easily mined by each of us from our neighborhood pasts. An expert in bringing these moments to light is Dr. Kevin Burke and he will be leading a conversation, “Connections in a Placeless Time,” on Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. via remote connection to the Newburgh Historical Society. Kevin, like me, grew up here. He graduated from NFA and has gone on to a fascinating and fun career. He works with Dr. Henry Louis Gates on the genealogy series, Finding Your Roots. He is co-author of the landmark history, And Still We Rise. In the past few years, his special focus has been personal history – the story of family and neighborhood. He hosts a podcast series, Your Hometown, with the Museum of the City of New York in which he interviews famous people about their memories of youth. Surprising stories are recalled by people we all know and the real surprise is how many experiences we all have in common despite living them in different decades and places.
To join Sunday’s conversation, just register with the historical society through their Facebook page or website or this link: www.eventbrite.com/.../connecting-in-a-placeless....
A logon code will be sent to you by e-mail in time to join in and remember why we are Newburgh Strong and how much community has meant to you too.