HISTORY & MYSTERIES
On May 15, 1922, when the Rum Plane crashed in Croton with 250 quarts of Canadian Scotch, it attracted the attention of the police, the press and curious Crotonites. An article in the New York Times reported that when the Westchester County police reached the wrecked plane they found “country folk grouped about the battered remains … Continue reading Another Mystery of the Rum Plane
LIQUOR LADEN PLANE FROM CANADA FALLS AS IT NEARS CITY Drops 250 Quarts of Scotch Near Croton, Where Water for Highballs Comes From FLIER ESCAPES IN AN AUTO Car Apparently in Waiting Whisks Limping Aviator From Scene “Dusk was deepening into darkness” on the night of May 15, 1922, as a Curtis biplane circled slowly … Continue reading The Mystery of the Rum Plane
How did a silver medal from 1847, awarded to R.T. Underhill for the grapes he grew on Croton Point, end up buried in a garden on Long Island? That’s what reader Mike S. wants to know. “Many years ago, possibly 25 or so,” he writes, “my grandfather was turning his garden in Shirley, New York. … Continue reading The Mystery of the Underhill Medal
Can you help decode this 19th-century document? 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 mill on the Croton River in 1792. We were thrilled (and proud) when the Westchester County Historical Society immediately purchased … Continue reading The Mystery of the Underhill Bible
A recently published book, 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 “Rum Row”—the name of the smuggling area of the Atlantic coast from Nantucket to … Continue reading Rum-running Submarines off Croton Point?
On January 17, 1883 the Troy Daily Times ran an ad for a lost watch that will quicken the heart of anyone fascinated by High Bridge, the covered wooden bridge that once soared above the Croton River. LOST—A small sized hunting cased, gold English watch. On the upper case is an engraving of High Bridge, … Continue reading The Mystery of the Lost High Bridge Watch
Where are the Devil’s Footprints? This simple question was recently posed to a group of Crotonites—experts in local history, in Hudson Valley geology, and some people who grew up here and explored all of Croton’s old ruins and haunted places in their youth. They all had the same reply: “What footprints?” The answer takes us … Continue reading The Mystery of the Devil’s Footprints
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