🏘️ Croton Local History

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An aerial photograph, taken by a Manhattan map-making firm June 11, 1924, near Croton Point, purports to document two submarines (possibly rumrunners), each about 250 feet long and 600 feet apart, below the surface. A recently published book,

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Smugglers, Bootleggers and Scofflaws: Prohibition and New York City by Ellen NicKenzie Lawson, contains an amazing 1924 aerial photo, purporting to show rum-smuggling submarines in the Hudson River near Croton Point. The photo appears in the chapter

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“Rum Row”—the name of the smuggling area of the Atlantic coast from Nantucket to New York City and New Jersey. Lawson writes, “News of a submarine being used on Rum Row appears to have some substance to it. One smuggler testified in court that he saw

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a submarine emerge on the Row with a German captain and a French crew. Newspapers in 1924 reported that submarines were smuggling liquor to New Jersey and Cape Cod. An aerial photo, taken by a commercial Manhattan map-making firm that same year,

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suggested submarines were thirty miles up the Hudson River near Croton Point. (German submarines were kept out of the river during World War I by a steel net strung low across the bottom of the Narrows.) The photo purported to document two submarines

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below the surface of the Hudson River, each 250 feet long and 600 feet apart. The aerial firm sent the photograph to the U.S. Navy, which had no submarines in the area, and the startling image was given to Coast Guard Intelligence and filed away.”

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Here’s a link to the book on Amazon, which includes the Rum Row chapter. Thanks to the New York History Blog, which alerted us to this book with their recent review . Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in

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Like Loading... Related Tagged bootlegging prohibition rum smuggling Published January 4, 2014

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Croton Landing from plate 44 of the County Atlas Of Westchester New York , published by J.B. Beers & Co., 1872. Here is a detailed map of what Croton looked like in 1872. Known then as Croton Landing, the village consisted mainly of houses and

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businesses along what we know today as Grand Street, Brook Street, and Riverside Avenue. If you look at the top left side you can see that Riverside Avenue got its name because it did once run right along the side of the Hudson River. That area to

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the right of the railroad tracks was filled in long ago, altering the original banks of the river. The pond-like area at the bottom left between the tracks and Riverside was also filled in. Other interesting features include: The brook along Brook

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Street, now covered over. 1 In the top right the label “Friends Ch.” is the Quaker Meeting House which was located at the intersection of Grand Street and Mt. Airy. 2 The house labeled “Mrs. Barton” in the triangular area bounded by Old Post North,

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Brook Street, and Terrace Place still exists today and is said to be the oldest house in Croton. The entire map and the rest of this 1872 Westchester County atlas can be seen at the David Rumsey Map Collection . Although not labeled on this map,

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Brook Street was then called Upper Landing Road. ↩ See this previous post for an 1850 map showing the Quaker Meeting House in more detail. ↩ Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on

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Croton Landing Quaker Meeting House Published January 6, 2014 November 5, 2018

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Can you help decode this 19th-century document? Bookplate from the Underhill Bible. Last month we posted pictures of a bible offered on eBay, bearing the bookplate of Abraham I. Underhill, one of the three Underhill brothers who started the flour

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mill on the Croton River in 1792. We were thrilled (and proud) when the Westchester County Historical Society immediately purchased this treasure, after we alerted them that it was available. In addition to a handwritten page recording Abraham

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Underhill’s marriage “in a publick Meeting of the people called Quakers at Croton in the Town of Cortlandt, the 19th day of the 12th month, 1805 . . . ,” the bible also contained something unusual, which the seller described as “a folded paper in an

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unknown hand, possibly shorthand.” What does it say? Is it simply a mundane document, slipped into the family bible? The minutes of a Quaker meeting in Croton? A document relating to the long-running legal battle between the Underhill and Van

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Cortlandt families over the Croton River mill? If you happen to have expertise in 19th-century shorthand please contact me . Below are high-resolution black-and-white scans of the pages. Click to enlarge them. Thanks to Patrick Raftery, Librarian of

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the Westchester County Historical Society , for providing these images. Page 1 Page 2 Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X

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