In 1S44, the New York State fair was held here, somewhere east of what is now Hooker Avenue. It was an occasion thought important enough then to be pictured and reported in the London Illustrated Xacs. Two years after, the telegraph wires were put up in this city, before they had yet reached the city of New York. Considering the fact that Professor S. F. B. Morse, the telegraph inventor, had his residence here, this incident was not wholly inappropriate.

Professor Morse's home was called Locust Grove, and lay a couple of miles to the south of the city. It

428 The Hudson River

should not be forgotten that before he had made his great reputation as an inventor he was widely known as an artist. To him the American Academy of Design owed its first impulse. It is said that his summer home at Locust Grove was connected by telegraphic wires with all prominent points upon the American continent. Not far below Locust Grove is the famous ferry where for many years the Milton horse-boat plied to and fro across the river. At the eastern end of the ferry, in the old war times, dwelt the blacksmith and jack-of-all-trades, Theophilus Anthony. There, at his forge, he worked over the mammoth chain that was used to obstruct the river at Fort Montgomery. He gave what assistance he could to the patriot army, and it may well be believed that a strong and willing arm and a good forge found plenty of occupation; but retribution came when Vaughan's ships passed up the river with the torch. The smithy and mill were among the first places to be laid in ashes, and the smith himself was carried a captive to the most detestable prisonship that history has made a record of -- the filthy and disease-saturated Jersey.