History of the Town of Lexington
Historian Karen Deeter, Deputy Historian Jannel Mellott, Genealogy Team – Alida Bloodgood and Jannel Mellott

In the southeastern part of the Catskills along the Schoharie Creek lies the Township of Lexington, encompassing Lexington, North Lexington, West Kill, Spruceton, Beech Ridge, Little West Kill, Bushnellsville and Broadstreet Hollow.

Lexington is part of Greene County. Once the hunting grounds of the Iroquois Indian, “traces of their feet upon this land are still findable.”  However, most of our knowledge about these “traces” relates to the lower areas of the county. There are still many unknowns about the occupancy and activities of the Indians in the area which is now Lexington.

A large part of Lexington is up on the mountains and tablelands. There are two separate valleys, each named for the stream running through it; the Schoharie and the West Kill. The mountains that surround Lexington provide “some of the grandest scenery in the Catskills.”

The Township of Lexington is situated within the lands granted to Johannes Hardenburgh, by Queen Anne. First settled in 1788 as part of Windham, Lexington was officially separated in 1813, and was first called New Goshen after the Connecticut town that many of the early settlers came from. Just a few months later a settler from Massachusetts was instrumental in having the settlement renamed Lexington.

From the 1790’s when many from New England and the Hudson Valley began the great movement west, settlers were drawn to the Catskills by the availability of water power, the availability of timber, by furs and lumber as sources of income, and by the negligible rent charged by most Hardenburgh patentees. Often settlers immigrated in groups. North Lexington was settled by five families, four from Columbia County. Later two very large Barber families settled in North Lexington and gave it the temporary name, Barber Town.
The original Lexington settlement was “upstream” from its current location. Education quickly became a concern to the first settlers; an Academy was established, and the December 1819 Catskill Recorder reported: “School will be open in this Academy on Monday the 6th, December next. Boarding may be had in respectable families near the Academy on very liberal terms.”

Also in 1819 at that original site, a large tannery was built. Leather was in high demand. A grist mill, a saw mill, a store and a post office developed around the hustle and bustle of the tannery business.  Captain Aaron Bushnell and Abraham Hare had a large tannery in West Kill in 1820.  By 1930 there were several more in the township.  During that time, downstream from the original settlement just above the fording place where a new dam had been built, another, larger tannery had been established, followed by another grist mill and a small distillery. Thus, the forming Township of Lexington was definitely a part of the development of tanning as a major industry in the Catskills.
The old settlement died away as the village of Lexington grew around this new development bringing a potash manufacturing plant, the first woolen mill, a forge, a store and a post office.

Life had not been easy for the nineteenth century pioneers in this area. The settlers who came before the tanneries had to chop down trees, dig up and drag out the stumps and then deal with the seemingly endless rocks, before realizing a proper field for planting. Those that arrived after the tanneries, settled on land previously cleared by the “bark-peelers.”
 
Lexington, as well as the other higher elevation towns, had a thriving dairy industry due to the abundant grazing lands on the mountain pastures. In an 1824 edition of a New York State gazetteer, Lexington and Windham were listed as being noted for dairying and available grazing land, and both were mentioned as fine apple producing areas.
The population of the Township of Lexington continued to grow until the late 1840’s. The various settlements within the Township took on names, circumstances and rich histories of their own.

The hamlet of West Kill, located south of the village of Lexington and just under the great mountain pass Echo Notch, has always been considered a spot of quiet beauty. It has a main street where there once were three stores, a post office and a popular ice cream shop. There are no shops or stores there now but it is still a spot of quiet beauty. The upper reaches of the niche of the West Kill Glacier have attracted many professional and aspiring geologists to the area. The valley has the beautiful U-shaped profile typical of a glacier formed valley but it earned its shape the hard way, for it was the work of the two glaciers together:

              “Some 16,000 years ago, standing at the top of Hunter Mountain you                    could have seen, off to the west, the Grand Gorge glacier advancing                up what is now Spruceton Valley; and from the east, another glacier                       advancing westward through the length of the valley.”

It would have been quite a sight, and it made this West Kill/Spruceton Valley very unique.
The Bushnell family – thought by some to be the true founders of West Kill - built tanneries, stores, saw mills, grist mills, a temperance hotel, and were responsible for many other enterprises in and around West Kill. The hamlet of Bushnellsville grew up around one of their tannery sites a few miles south of West Kill.

At one time there was a road connecting West Kill and Broadstreet Hollow. The road is long gone and the only access to Broadstreet Hollow is via route 28 on the other side of Echo Notch, making it a rather private community. It is known that at one time there was a sign at the entrance of this access that read “Bradstreet Hollow Road.”  And there is a grave yard with the name in stone of Bradstreet Cemetery. Many believe that this peaceful community was originally Bradstreet Hollow after Major General John Bradstreet, a British Army officer during the French and Indian War.

There are the remains of two saw mills in the hollow. One of those sawmills, belonging to William Rowe, supplied rough sawn lumber to the Chichester Furniture Factory at a time when there was a trail over the mountain from Broadstreet to Chichester that horses and ox drawn wagons used to deliver the lumber.

Beech Ridge lies west of West Kill on a mountain range that is called by some Vly Mountain and by others Angle’s Peak, after Daniel Angle, one of the first settlers of Beech Ridge.  Angle, a Hessian soldier, served in Burgoyne’s army, was captured at Saratoga, later enlisted in the American service and eventually was honorably discharged and granted a pension. A later Angle, Peter, discovered that he could make vinegar from the sap of the Beech trees for which Beech Ridge was named. That’s one story, anyway. There are other stories about how this area was named – there are two well-known history sources that refer to the area as Beach Ridge.  The road sign says “Beech Ridge Road,” so, here, we’ll rely on the authority of the sign makers. Never-the-less, the hill where Peter Angle lived is now called Vinegar Hill, and is a place that provides a beautiful view of the town.
During the great expansion of the boarding house business after the Civil War, many boarding houses sprang up in Lexington and eventually almost one out of every three Lexington homes had a room or two for regular summer boarders. While most of the large well-known boarding houses and hotels were west of Lexington, Beer’s says of those days: “Of the hundreds of summer boarding houses and hotels located in and about Greene county, very few can compare with Lexington’s O’Hara House...all in all, the spot is, indeed, charming…it is a most desirable stopping place.” The O’Hara House is still standing but is not in use.

Another well known stop for the boarders was the Lexington House. After serving as a resort hotel in those historic days, the house was placed on the New York State Registry of Historic Places. This property has been a summer camp, an art center, and most recently was owned by a New York City based theater organization that offered summer theater opportunities in the several buildings and the barn theater on the property. This historic site, circa 1883, is one of the last standing examples of late-nineteenth century resort architecture in the Catskill region. This property is currently for sale.

The St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church in Lexington was easily accepted on the State and County Registries of Historic Places because it perfectly represents the many small Catholic churches that were built during the “boarding house” days for the large population of summer Irish family boarders from the New York City area.  The church was in excellent condition when it was purchased by The Lexington Historical Society in 1998. The building has been well cared for and lovingly houses much of the history of this town. This historic church/ historical society is located on Church Street – off of Route 42, not far from the intersection of 42 and 23A.

The birth of the Lexington Co-operative Creamery Association in 1899 provided an income for many in this community. During the butter production years they produced eight tons of butter every 24 hours and required 15 men per shift around the clock. Land O’ Lakes was their biggest buyer. These machines were replaced by sealing machines when Redi-Whip production replaced the butter production in the mid-fifties. The Lexington Creamery closed in 1959 when Redi-Whip moved out. In 1961 the building burned to the ground. Recently, a local carpenter opened his business on this site with a sign that reads “Creamery Mill Works,” and thus reminds us of the part the creamery played in the history of our town.
Another business that was a dominant feature in the lives of the residents of Lexington just after the turn of the century was the Fenwick Railroad. At the head of the West Kill Valley, by the stream’s remote headwaters, stood the western terminus of a major commercial enterprise – a mountain tramway that was a feat of engineering rivaling the famous Otis Inclined Railroad. Big business, rather suddenly, became a part of this small mountain community. The scope of the whole business would be impressive even today and it was built at a time of complete reliance on the muscle power of man and animals. The Fenwick Lumber Company was a great industry that signaled revolutionary changes in the lives of a generation of Greene County residents. Many trail hikers have attested to the fact that there is still evidence of the Fenwick in our mountains.

Set perfectly into a scenic spot in the cozy West Kill Mountains is the “farm” in which western painter, sculptor and historian, Charles Schreyvogel, lived for seven years before his untimely death in 1912.  In the 1970’s the Lexington town historian, Ron Fleming, lived in the Schreyvogel house and took on the responsibility of restoring parts of the historic site. Still standing on the property is the studio which Schreyvogel, himself had built with the help of a local man, Grant Bloodgood.  In this studio Schreyvogel painted his famous “In Safe Hands,” using his daughter, Ruth and handyman Grant Bloodgood as models. The old wooden horse – made from a barrel by Grant – is on exhibit in the Family History Room at the Town Municipal Building.

In West Kill is another house with a studio. From this property Levi L. Hill, in the 1850’s, announced that he had succeeded in adding color to daguerreotypes, the new and wondrous early photographic process. The shed in which Mr. Hill did most of his work still stands in back of the house. If all had gone as expected following his announcement, Levi Hill would hold the distinguished title of “Father of color photography.” However, things did not go as expected. Hill died an early death in ill health not only without the distinguished title, but without any positive recognition of his part in the history of photography. He had lost almost all credibility in his work in the art of Daguerreotype. However, just recently, through a revival of interest in the Hill story, analysis of some of his work that has been in storage at the Smithsonian Institution has revealed that, indeed, there was in some of Hill’s daguerreotypes true and natural color. And there is more to this story, which makes the site of the Hill house in West Kill increasingly interesting. In the very near future there will be a permanent exhibit acknowledging this story of intrigue, conflict and resolution in the work of Levi Hill that took place in West Kill, New York. It is hopeful that the Hill house will be placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in that the resolution of this story has affected the history of color photography nationwide and even internationally.

The first settled land in the Township of Lexington was owned by John Maben, who settled in the town as early as 1777. In some history documents, therefore, John Maben has been given the distinction of “first settler” in this town. He was born June 1, 1753 in Northern Ireland and died in Lexington on June 1, 1813, the year Lexington officially became a town.
Born into an Irish family of upper class merchants and farmers, John came to America about 1768 as a “gentleman-adventurer.” During the post Revolutionary War days John became interested in American politics and culture. He adopted the views of many New Englanders, married, Miss Sally Pearce in Connecticut, and so stayed in America. John and Sally came to Lexington Flats in 1777 where he leased approximately 86 acres of land. “At this date his signature appears upon leases given by Robert Livingston for these lands.” Here John and Sally raised seven children.

In the next 75 years there were numerous boundary changes in the land the Mabens inhabited.  The Lexington Flats area was actually part of Woodstock, Ulster County, until March 23, 1798, when it became Windham, Greene County. On January 27, 1813, Windham was divided into three towns; Windham, Greenland (later Hunter) and New Goshen. Three months later, on March 27, 1813, the town of New Goshen was renamed Lexington. In 1849, Hunter and Lexington ceded land to create Jewett. Then in 1851, a part of Lexington was removed when the town of Halcott came into being.

On an old map the Lexington Village Cemetery is named Cemetery of the Lexington Flats Society.  This cemetery is on that first settled land of the region owned by the Mabens, and was originally the Maben Cemetery.

The  Family  History  Room
located
in the Lexington Municipal Building
open
to the public on Mondays 10:00 to 4:00

Historian  Karen Deeter

Deputy Historian  Jannel Mellott

Genealogy Team – Alida Bloodgood and Jannel Mellott

518 989-6027