Mary McTamaney

In the act that created the Precinct of Newburgh before the Revolutionary War, there was a provision for care of the poor by a “Poor Master” who would dispense alms. The precinct’s budget in 1770 set aside 50 pounds for relief of the poor. By 1778, the war was underway and many men were called to fight. The budget for alms for the needy rose to 200 pounds.

As the village was incorporated in 1800, a vote was taken to construct a poor house and a temporary one was erected immediately on the north edge of the village (today’s Rogers Place). In 1805, children were distinguished as needing special care and someone was put in charge of their welfare. Sadly, that often involved finding them quarters as indentured servants or apprentices, but it got homeless children fed and housed in temporary quarters at least.

By 1830, the village’s welfare budget was $2,500. Then, to provide better shelter for the unhoused, Newburgh joined the new county-wide welfare system which had a central almshouse in Goshen and Newburgh depended on that shelter for 23 years, from 1830 to 1853. Newburgh didn’t find its residents served as well by that merger (its poor taxes were dispensed in a formula it thought unfair to the needy here) and it reestablished a welfare commission of its own, in collaboration with the Town of Newburgh, in 1853. It was the only collaborative municipal pairing for such services in its time.

The City, by the late 19th century, had a 4/5 interest with the Town of Newburgh in the ownership and operation of the City and Town Home, successor to the old Alms House. That sprawling brick complex of housing and farm buildings (the Home ran a large farm to provide food for its residents) occupied the acres around Muchattoes Lake at the south end of Newburgh near the New Windsor border.

To provide a separate more nurturing place for young children, the Alms commissioners bought the Daniel Rogers home on High Street inside the City of Newburgh and set up a Children’s Home there within walking distance of public schools and with matrons hired to supervise. That 1820’s Rogers Mansion lasted just into the 21st century when it had a third life. It transitioned from a children’s shelter to an adjunct facility for the YMCA and was connected to its big Grand Street headquarters.

Two great depressions hit Newburgh and the surrounding area: one in 1893 and one in the 1930’s. Both times, the city issued bonds and borrowed money to provide relief for the swollen ranks of the needy. Newspapers from those years show no public controversy at either time. In the Great Depression of the 1930’s it was local banks that made all the loans for public welfare. In 1934, an article in the Newburgh News reports that welfare payments had now topped $1,000 per day and the 1934 total expenditure was over $371,000. There was certainly “workfare” in Newburgh’s welfare system. In the Great Depression, such projects as repairing bridges over Lake Street and Little Britain Road, grading the playing fields at NFA and the Recreation Park, fixing the dam feeding our reservoir system on Silver Stream and building public garden plots were accomplished.

Newburgh’s Welfare Department offices, where caseworkers managed services for folks in need, was last housed in the early YWCA building before public welfare transitioned across the state from city to county management. That brick headquarters building at 150 Liberty Street didn’t get the new life that the YMCA has had. It was demolished in 1969 to make way for one of the strongest forces in city life – the automobile. The Welfare Building came down to make room for a drive-in window for the Newburgh Savings Bank. That same year, the City and Town Home complex housing the homeless and elderly over on Muchattoes Lake fell to wrecking balls as well. Both local institutions were replaced by county and state service centers.

Private charities are another aspect of public welfare deserving of their own story. Church guilds, leagues to guide “wayward” boys and girls, orphan asylums, veterans organizations and “friendly visitor” societies to aid the sick all played a significant role.

The classic 1891 history of Newburgh by John Nutt has a chapter entitled “Benevolence.”

Its introduction is a lesson still worth reading.

“To what degree does a city meet the highest demands of our modern civilization? Does it stimulate and satisfy men’s higher and more intellectual wants? Does it relieve the dread that hangs around helpless infancy and helpless old age? Does it guide its youth in the paths of rectitude? Does it help the poor, visit the sick, heal the wounded? These are the higher tests by which intelligent people estimate the degree of advancement, culture and moral worth of a population.”