> Connelly, > Do you (or anyone on the Whitney L-Roots board) know the Norman > VanValkenburg that is referenced in this article? It says that he has > much folklore and tales of the Catskills. > The VanValkenburgs are related to the Whitneys via the Line of Alfred > Whitney (1810 - 1865) & his wife Phoebe Hammond (Whitney) (of the > Catskill NY area),,,, so perhaps Norman VanValkenburg may be able to > help us find info on Alfreds parents. > I have also located a service that sells maps of each town in the > Catskills dating back to the mid- 1800's. These maps often had the > "names" of the land owners written right on the plat. I am sending for > some. > Connelly, do you know what was the "exact" town that Alfred lived in? > How about Walter B ( 1 & 2) ? Was it Lexington, Westkill, > Bushnellville, Jewitt, NY, etc? > Thanks for any info anyone may be able to lend..... > Russ Whitney > Author - Building Wealth - A Simon & Schuster "Whitney", Financial > Release. > Available in all major bookstores, Amazon & Barnesnoble.com > --------------AD1D217B073E6BBDED68893C > Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> > <html> > Connelly, > <p>Do you (or anyone on the Whitney L-Roots board) know the > Norman VanValkenburg that is referenced in this article? It says > that he has much folklore and tales of the Catskills. > <p>The VanValkenburgs are related to the Whitneys via the Line of Alfred > Whitney (1810 - 1865) & his wife Phoebe Hammond (Whitney) > (of the Catskill NY area),,,, so perhaps Norman VanValkenburg may > be able to help us find info on Alfreds parents. > <p>I have also located a service that sells maps of each town in the Catskills > dating back to the mid- 1800's. These maps often had the "names" > of the land owners written right on the plat. I am sending for some. > <p>Connelly, do you know what was the "exact" town that Alfred lived in? > How about Walter B ( 1 & 2) ? Was it Lexington, Westkill, > Bushnellville, Jewitt, NY, etc? > <p>Thanks for any info anyone may be able to lend..... > <br> > <p>Russ Whitney > <br>Author - Building Wealth - A Simon & Schuster <b>"Whitney"</b>, > Financial Release. > <br>Available in all major bookstores, Amazon & Barnesnoble.com</html> > --------------AD1D217B073E6BBDED68893C-- > --------------22AAA9C4A76BF94DC05FFF0C > Content-Type: message/rfc822 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Content-Disposition: inline > Return-Path: <wins@truman.olsusa.com> > Received: from olsusa.com ([207.30.195.26]) by ns1.olsusa.com > (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-64832U3500L350S0V35) > with ESMTP id com for <wins@olsusa.com>; > Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:37:14 -0400 > Message-ID: <39C53242.17A7C823@olsusa.com> > Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:06:10 -0400 > From: Russ Whitney <wins@olsusa.com> > X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win98; I) > X-Accept-Language: en > MIME-Version: 1.0 > To: wins@olsusa.com > Subject: Catskill Forest Preserve - Note reference and contact info for a Norman > VanValkenburg - Whitney cousin, most likely > Content-Type: multipart/mixed; > boundary="------------4BD41A6459DAB2F10EEA07B5" > X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 > This is a multi-part message in MIME format. > --------------4BD41A6459DAB2F10EEA07B5 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Note the reference at the bottom of this page to Norman VanValkenburg. > VanValkenburgs are related to Whitneys. This Vanvalkenburg is aformer > Director of NY Division of lands. Notes that he also is an authoreof > Forest History in the Catskills. > He lives in Saugerties with his wife. In case anyone wishes to contact > him. > http://www.global2000.net/protectadks/cmatters.html > --------------4BD41A6459DAB2F10EEA07B5 > Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii; > name="cmatters.html" > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Content-Disposition: inline; > filename="cmatters.html" > Content-Base: "http://www.global2000.net/protectadks/ > cmatters.html" > Content-Location: "http://www.global2000.net/protectadks/ > cmatters.html" > <HTML> > <HEAD> > <TITLE>Catskill Forest Preserve</TITLE> > <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Non-profit organization defends constitutional safeguards that protect the New York State Forest Preserve in the Adirondacks & Catskill Parks."> > <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Adirondacks, Paul Schaefer, New York State Forest Preserve, Adirondack Research Library, Catskills, Article XIV, Conservation, Preservation, Adirondack and Catskill Parks, Adirondack Park, Catskill Park, Blueline"> > <META NAME="resource-type" CONTENT="document"> > <meta name="generator" content="Sausage Software HotDog Professional 5"> > </HEAD> > <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#6666FF" ALINK="#FFFFFF" VLINK="#008040"> > <CENTER> > <Img Src="images/headnbar.gif" Border="0" Height="53" Width="597" UseMap="#headnbar1" Alt="HOMEPAGE"> <Map Name="headnbar1"> > <Area Shape=Rect Coords="0,13,597,53" Href="index.html" Alt="HOMEPAGE"> > </Map> > <BR> > <FONT FACE="Arial"><a href="index.html">Homepage</a> | <a href="organiz.html">Organization</a> | <a href="members.html">Membership</a> | <a href="events.html">Calendar</a> | <a href="library.html">Library</a> | <a href="communit.html">New Facility</a> <BR> <a href="follow.html">Education</a> | <a href="current.html">Legislative</a> | <a href="archives.html">Archives</a> | <a href="staff.html">Staff</a> | <a href="sponsors.html">Sponsors</a> | <a href="xlinks.html">Other Sites</a></FONT></CENTER> > <P> > <CENTER><TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" WIDTH=600> > <TR><TD> > <CENTER><H2>Catskill Forest Preserve & Statistics</H2></CENTER> > <B>Origin of the Catskill Forest Preserve</B><BR> > <I>by Norman J. Van Valkenburgh</I><BR> > from the September 1997 issue of <I>The Forest Preserve</I></A> > <P> > <I>Editors Note: This excerpt is taken from The Forest Preserve of New York State in the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains: A Short History by Norman J. Van Valkenburgh, 1996, published by Purple Mountain Press, in cooperation with the Adirondack Research Library of The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks.</I> > <P> > In 1883, the legislature succumbed ... and passed a law prohibiting the further sale of state land in ten of the twelve Adirondack counties. But still, no mention was made of the Catskills. > <P> > Another commission was appointed in 1884 and directed to "investigate and report a system of forest preservation." This so-called Forestry Commission submitted its report in early 1885 and agreed with the recommendation made by the earlier Commission of State Parks: Preserve the Adirondacks before it is too late. The commissioners reported they had "visited the forest region of Ulster and Delaware counties," but disposed of the Catskills in a single paragraph in the fifty-seven page report, concluding, "The protection of these forests is, however, of less general importance than the preservation of the Adirondack forests. The possibility of their yielding merchantible timber again in any considerable quantities is at best remote; and they guard no streams of more than local influence . . ." > <P> > To effect its recommendations, the commission drafted bills to create a forest preserve consisting of more than 681,000 acres of state land in eleven of the twelve Adirondack counties. Thus, a Catskill Forest Preserve seemed to become extinct before it ever came into being. > <P> > However, behind the scenes, some political jousting was going on involving Ulster County, Cornelius A. J. Hardenburgh (sometimes chairman of the county board of supervisors), and Alfred C. Chapin (comptroller of the State of New York). The basis for this upset was an 1879 law compelling Ulster to acquire all lands in the county not sold for arrears in taxes and, then, to pay taxes on these lands to the state. > <P> > Cornelius Hardenburgh was a firm opponent of taxes of any sort, and an admiring public elected him supervisor of the town of Shawangunk. In 1884, they promoted him to the state assembly. As town supervisor and member and chairman of the board of supervisors, he influenced the decision of the county to not pay the taxes due the state on the tax-sale lands. By 1884, Ulster County owed over $40,000 to the state, and Chapin brought suit to collect. As the 1885 legislative session met, Assemblyman Hardenburgh promptly introduced a bill (which was signed into law on April 20, 1885) to repeal the 1879 law and convey the county-owned lands to the state. With this law, Hardenburgh wiped out Ulster County's debt and, maybe without realizing it, brought the Catskills into the forest preserve business . . . > <P> > The Catskill Forest Preserve, at its inception, consisted of a grand total of 33,894 acres, all but 1,163 acres being in Ulster County. And Cornelius Hardenburgh had the last laugh. The lands constituting the Forest Preserve are taxable; instead of Ulster County being in arrears, the state has since paid taxes on these same lands to the county. While Hardenburgh's goal may not have been forest and watershed preservation, without his intervention creation of the Catskill forest Preserve would have been years away - or never. Norman Van Valkenburg is a former Director of New York State's Division of Lands and Forests, an active surveyor with the Mohawk Preserve, and a preeminent author of NYS Forest Preserve history as well as fascinating tales of the Catskills. He lives in Saugerties with his wife Dot.