The Hillsdale Historians are taking a break this month, but lest our readers feel history-deprived, there are three terrific local exhibits you won’t want to miss, and can visit for free, this fall.
The Roeliff Jansen Historical Society in Copake Falls has mounted “From the Home Front to the Front Lines,” a compilation of life-shaping stories, objects, and memories of World War II as told through personal correspondence, photographs, G.I. equipment, recorded interviews, official documents, photographs, and mementos contributed by the more than 35 Roe Jan area families of those who served. These contributions have been woven together into a “scrapbook of life abroad in the war and … here at home,” said Lesley Doyel, President of the RJHS.
A display of uniforms worn by Roe Jan area residents who served in WWII.
Bomber jacket from an Ancramdale pilot who served in the Mediterranean Theater. The hand-painted words and images include a grid of fifty bomb silhouettes, representing his fifty successful missions.
Display: The Pacific Theater of War
Maps, pamphlets and translation guides issued to soldiers in Europe.
This deeply personal installation examines the global conflict through the prism of local residents. Originally scheduled to close at the end of September, the exhibit has been extended until October 10th. Visit roeliffjansenhs.org for hours and location.
Another must-see exhibit this fall is “George R. ‘Pop’ Sweet: The Famed Fiddler of Fog Hill” at the Austerlitz History Center.
This meticulously-researched installation explores the life of George R. “Pop” Sweet (1883-1965) whose career as a fiddler and square dance caller brought him wide renown.
George “Pop” Sweet as pictured in the New York Post, 1942, promoting the National Folk Festival
From the remote Fog Hill section of Austerlitz, NY, Pop Sweet and his Huckleberry Pickers played square dances in almost every hamlet in Columbia County and the Berkshires from the 1930s into the 1950s. Sweet’s fame spread well beyond the local region. He played for the Roosevelts at Hyde Park in 1940, and in 1943 was selected as the best caller, among over 130 appearing, at the National Folk Festival in Philadephia.
Pop Sweet Orchestra, c. 1938. Pop is on the far right.`
Austerlitz Town Historian Thomas Moreland, who compiled the exhibit, discovered recordings of Pop Sweet fiddling and calling that were recorded in 1947 at the old Globe Hotel in Hillsdale by Margot Mayo, a key figure in the 1940s New York City revival of folk dancing, square dancing and folk music. These priceless artifacts of American folk music, which now reside in the Library of Congress, are the soundtrack of the exhibit.
The Globe Hotel in Hillsdale, c. 1930s, where Margot Mayo recorded George Sweet in 1947.
The exhibit also explores Sweet’s colorful persona as a backwoods outdoorsman, hunter and trapper, pursuer of the “Black Beast of the Berkshires,” and long-time Groundhog Day forecaster.
The Sweet family, which still resides locally, includes six generations of musicians dating back to the 1830s. The sixth generation is Bobby Sweet, well-known Berkshire singer, songwriter and bandleader.
The Pop Sweet exhibit will be open through the end of 2022 at the Austerlitz History Center, 812 Route 22, Spencertown, NY from 9-11 on Saturdays and by appointment with the Austerlitz Town historian (tmoreland@austerlitzny.com). The Center’s permanent exhibit, also well worth seeing, covers the history of the Austerlitz area from its settlement in the 1750s to the 21st century.
Finally, visit Copake Town Hall, where the walls are lined with 200 years of history.
This wonderful installation of stories, memorabilia, history, and art depicts significant facets of Copake history, such as the town’s lost buildings and businesses (the Copake Movie Theater, the Copake Pharmacy, the town’s Ice Industry), natural attractions (Bash Bish Falls), famous residents (The Astors of Copake), public monuments (The Copake Memorial Clock) and literary life (Carroll Rheinstrom: The Man Who Sold Superman to the World is featured in a stand-alone panel and is the subject of a new book by Town Historian Howard Blue).
A exhibit panel explaining the history of Copake’s Movie Theater. A beautiful art-deco building, the theater opened in 1933 and was lost to arson in 1990.
The exhibit is the culmination of a multi-year effort by Blue, artist and graphic designer Peter “Nick” Frisch (who also designed the panels for the RJHS WWII exhibit), and longtime former Town Clerk Vana Hotaling, who contributed her deep knowledge of the town and its people. Visitors can tour the exhibit Monday-Thursday 8AM to 4PM and Saturdays 9AM to noon. Copake Town Hall is located at 230 Mountain View Rd.
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© 2022 Chris Atkins and Lauren Letellier
The Historians of Hillsdale, New York 
For about ten years my family would stay at a cabin on a one-acre plot at Pumpkin hill road at the end of Yagonoffs pasture and owned by Charles Fitzgerald. Charles paid one hundred dollars for the property and had a local builder by the name of Stupillbean build a one room cabin half way up the hill on the property.I was looking at the local real estate sales and the cabin was sold recently $440,000.00 since the covid epidemic. My brother and i had free range to go anywhere being under ten years of age in the late 50,s and early sixties. My brother and myself would walk the one mile to the Yagonoffs farm every day of our vacation through the cow pasture giving a wide berth of the cows that didn’t like anybody in their territory . Mr. Yagonoff worked at the local dumps on route 22 and had a farm yard full of treasures from other people that he brought back to the farm.
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