Marjorie Cross oral history interview [audio]

              Interviewer:  This is Wednesday, November 3, 1982 and I'm at the home of Mrs. Marge Cross above Alligerville, NY on Rockhill Road and this is part of the Rondout Valley Middle School Local History and Folklore Project.  This is tape 1.

Cross:  ...and dated 1897.  That will give us quite a picture of how people maintained their homes and things they had to buy and how little they did buy.

Interviewer:  Is this the store that's down there now?

Cross:  No, that was owned by a DeWitt family and this store that I have reference to stood across the canal from the DeWitt's, stood on the toe path and hasn't been there for many many years and I can't remember when the store burned.  Of course I grew up in Kingston but I came here in 1925 when I got married.  As I said my husband's family had always been here.  I want to find just the ones that I wanted to refer too.  I had found at one time in here over in here over in The Clove they cut hoop poles and if you say it fast it comes out hoop poles and then people wonder what are hoop poles.  Well they were saplings, perhaps and I don't think bigger than 3 inches in diameter surely and men cut those out of their wood lots off of their farmlands.  And this Daniel Schoonmaker who kept the store bought everything from everybody.  He bought the hoop poles and I found in here an account of one man, I forget his name at the moment, brought in 16,000 plus hoop holes along in March.  He cut them, I suppose, during the winter when there wasn't a lot of employment and when he could get in the woods handedly to work and haul them out and how much do you suppose he got for them?

Interviewer:  16,000 I shutter to think.

Cross:  $28.00, which I'm sure was a lot of money to him in that day.  Then of course he had been trading at the store buying his very essential groceries and was credited with the $28.00.

Interviewer:  Where was the Schoonmaker store?

Cross:  That stood across the toe path from Frank's store.

Interviewer:  Right here in Alligerville.

Cross:  Yes, right here in Alligerville.

Interviewer:  And this is the...

Cross:  This is the ledger from that store and I think the other one was earlier.  I think one of them was the 1880's, but anyway this one is 1897 and they are still cutting millstone and a man rarely cut a millstone by himself and got credit for it.  He cut it on shares with somebody else because one man couldn't handle those enormous blocks of stone and they didn't have forklifts.  They could do it with a block and tackle and I'm sure that's the way they did it and they brought them in, one of them was 2 millstone and now if I could only find that readily.

Interviewer:  Is that in there as well?

Cross:  Yes.

Interviewer:  Would Mr. Schoonmaker be buying the millstones from these men?

Cross:  Yes, he bought everything.

Interviewer:  And then sold them from his store?

Cross:  Yes.  He imported things from New York, he owned a boat on the canal, hired somebody to do the boating and a man had...

Interviewer:  Which Schoonmaker was that again?

Cross:  Daniel.  I can't tell you offhand but I think his father's name was Thomas, but he was of an old Alligerville family.  His father lived in the house that John Schoonmaker lives in now, John and Virginia, you turn up the lane right after you cross the bridge and it's the white house along the creek.

Interviewer:  In Accord?

Cross:  No right down here.  You're referring to John L junior.

Interviewer:  Oh this is another Schoonmaker.

Cross:  This is his father.  This is John L. Seamax.

TIME:  4:33.4 (Rummaging through things)

Cross:  I see a lot of stickers here.  Let me see why I have a sticker here.  Well, to give you an idea of what Mr. Schoonmaker sold in a store, this is dated 1889, John H. Kavenwagonon who lived in the stone house where Dr. Helmely lives now.  The Cozright 4 corners and the stone house to the right as you approach the 4 corner was John H. Kavenwagonon house and he came or somebody came down here to Alligerville and bought 2 yards of muslin and a yard of ditto in a different color apparently and the total was $.29.  He had 2 pairs of hose and that was $.27 and 2 spools of thread, so the total was $.37 and that means the thread was a nickel a spool.  You don't sell so you don't know that thread is $.69 or $.79 a spool now.  He had 3 yards of calico for $.21 and a pound of coffee for $.30.  Seven pounds of sugar was $.55 and for some reason he gave this man two dollars in cash and he was a village banker as well.

Interviewer:  So he gave him a loan of two dollars you think?

Cross:  Yes.  John H. Kavenwagonon was man of some substance but apparently was a little short on cash.

Interviewer:  Do you think that was true with the farmers down here, I mean, they were short on capital but they had lots of land?

Cross:  Short on capital?  Oh yes, they had no capital.  You worked until you had one cow and worked until you could afford to buy a second cow.

Interviewer:  How did they make money at all?  Did they raise a cash crop down here?

Cross:  Oh sure.  Well, the wives would take their surplus eggs to Mr. Schoonmaker and he would give them credit for it.  26 eggs, 73 eggs or whatever it was and it could be anything.  Cash crop?

Interviewer:  Was corn a big crop then?

Cross:  No, they were all small farmers.  If a farmer had...I was going to tell you about my husband's grandparents who lived in the Clove also.  You know where the Bush's live quite a long further up?  It's a white house up against the bank on the right-hand side going up the Clove.

Interviewer:  Towards 44 / 55?

Cross:  Yes.

Interviewer:  Not really but I know the direction you're talking about.

Cross:  Right there below the road is where my husband's father was born in a little tiny house with a basement kitchen and there were probably 3 rooms upstairs.  His grandfather and his Civil War papers said he was born in Accord and he enlisted almost at the very end of the Civil War and stood before Richmond.  And when he came home from there he married, I suppose, his girlhood sweetheart from Accord and her name was Osterhout, good old name, and they were married...

Interviewer:  His name was Bush?

Cross:  No, his name was Cross.  Russell D. Cross and I don't know what the D stood for.  They were married at the High Falls Reform Church, Clove Church, and set up their family over here.  Before he went in the census of 1860 he's listed as a Locktender, the only other occupant of a household and I can't tell you the number of the lock but it was probably between here and Accord.  And I can't tell you the name of the person who was head of the household, but Russell D. was in the household as Locktender.  And the census of 1870 he is a boatman and stone cutter and lives in the Clove with the other families listed beside him, proper wife and children.  The census of 1870 he's a stone cutter and farmer any owned 40 acres.  Made his living off of the 40 acres and he bought a wood lot a couple of time, so he may have cut loop holes too.  But he certainly cut millstone and before the 1880's census he was dead and leaving his wife with five children to bring up.

Interviewer:  Now how old was he then when he died?

Cross:  He was in his 40's.

Interviewer:  Do you think that was unusual for a man to die at that age?

Cross:  Oh no.  I think 40 was...well, occasionally you would find in a family where people lived to a great old age but that was really the exception.  I'm a genealogy buff so I read church records, census records and what not.  But anyway her children...

Interviewer:  They were living in the Clove?

Cross:  Yes.

Interviewer:  This is your husband's grandfather?

Cross:  Yes.  There were 5 children and a girl was the eldest.  I don't know if she ever worked at Mohonk, but I have a feeling probably she did.  Then there were 2 boys, no:  a boy, a girl, a boy, then a girl.  And all but the baby and I can't say that the eldest worked at Mohonk, but the rest all did.  My husband's father started at the age 11 as a bellhop.  Of course in those days they didn't have running water in the hotel rooms and all the drinking water was carried by the bellhops up a stairway, no matter how many flights of stairs they didn't take the elevator, and Agate pitchers the water was carried from; what is the name of the spring?  Oh I can't tell you but there's a spring and they carried up the drinking water in 5 gallons demijohns and then bellhops transferred it to the Agate pitchers and carry it to the guests.  And he grew up really at Mohonk because he was eventually ahead of their transportation department there.  In those days they had innumerable teams.  He not only transported the guests but he also did all the planning for the outside work with the Teamsters and his brother was in the purchasing department, his older brother.  But the eldest child, the girl, went to New Paltz and then taught school all of her working life after that.

Interviewer:  Where did she teach school?

Cross:  She taught here in Alligerville for the most part.  Well no, where was she first?  I think she was down in Tarrytown, Ossining, somewhere down in Westchester County right after she finished school and then came up here to be with her mother who was getting along in years.