The Blue Point Fire Department was founded in 1890, located on BLue Point Avenue. They originally started off sharing a building with Bob Brown's Grocery Store. They have been serving the community of Blue Point, NY and other local communities for over 125 years with thousands of accounts in land and water rescue. This collection is from the Bayport-Blue Point Library. Founded in 1938, the library serves rhe communities of Bayport and Blue Point on Long Island's south shore.

The Black Oral History Project was conducted by Chemung County Historical Society staff and community volunteers from 1989 until 1991. It was conceived as a follow-up to the collaborative exhibit and publication A Heritage Uncovered: The Black Experience in Upstate New York, 1880-1925 and sought to capture information about a more contemporary Black experience. It was digitized with a grant from the South Central Regional Library Council.

The Big Flats Historical Society formed in 1971 and its members have since researched, written and designed a catalog of publications and calendars with the goal to preserve and share the history of Big Flats, New York. A selection of those publications appears here, exploring how local history can be recorded and shared in different writing styles and formats.

The town of Big Flats, which had formerly been called "Great Plains,” was organized in 1822 from the town of Elmira. The town contains a hamlet also named Big Flats. As the Chemung River sharply turns, the Chemung Valley widens to create Big Flats’ distinctive geographic feature: broad flatland. Industries that could use the valley and the flatland made Big Flats known. For over a century of Big Flats’ history, farming, specifically tobacco farming and manufacturing, made use of the fertile soil and vast area of the valley flatland. In the late 1920s, the establishment of an airport, now called the Elmira-Corning Regional Airport, made use of the flatland. In 1939, the start of The Schweizer Aircraft Corporation, a sea plane and glider manufacturer, led to the valley hills becoming a popular glider launching area, called Harris Hall, that is still in use today. As highlighted in this collection, along with the tobacco and flight industries, Big Flats maintained both unique and characteristic businesses of a small town in America throughout the 20th century, in addition to community pillars such as churches, a post office, and a masonic hall.

Thomas Powell, a devout Quaker was the original owner of what is today parts of Farmingdale, Bethpage, Old Bethpage, Plainview, Huntington and Plainedge. When the first settlers came to what today is Bethpage, the land was still owned by the Powells, who have been in the area since 1695.
The first man to settle the area was Rowland Pearsall, who bought his farmland from a Powell. He lived near where Plainview Rd. intersects with Cherry Ave. from about 1748 until his death. The farm was in his family until the mid-1850's. The makeup of Bedeltown (as Bethpage was then known), remained basically unchanged for almost 100 years after its initial settlement. The growth of the town continued through the rest of the 19th century following the connection to the Long Island Railroad. Following the 1932 opening of nearby Bethpage State Park, the name of the local post office was changed to Bethpage on October 1, 1936. The name Bethpage was, however, already in use by an adjacent community,which resisted suggestions of a merger and instead renamed itself Old Bethpage. From 1936 until 1994, Bethpage was home to the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation.

Founded in 1913 as the Delmar Free Library, the Library was originally limited to a single room in what is now the Masonic Temple on Kenwood Avenue in Delmar, New York. To better serve a growing community, the Library moved to a newly constructed building at the corner of Hawthorne Avenue and Adams Place in 1917. The Library saw three additions at this location, but eventually outgrew the space and the current library was constructed at 451 Delaware Avenue, opening in 1972. Today, the Bethlehem Public Library serves the 28,243 residents of the Bethlehem Central School District and surrounding community.

When the Joslyn family took over the old photographic studio at the corner of West and Main St. in Warwick, they found hundreds of glass plate negatives--most with no name on the envelope. Duane Joslyn donated the collection to the Historical Society of the Town of Warwick. When the murky images were brought to light, they revealed a wonderful record of what the people of the Warwick community looked like, and how they dressed around the turn of the 1900s.

Dianne Aimone volunteered to scan and catalog some of the most interesting of the portraits, and costume historian Mimi Sherman provided descriptions of the fashions. We hope you enjoy this glimpse of Hudson Valley chic circa 1900!