Villages

Germantown,

Columbia County,

New York

By Capt. Franklin Ellis²⁷²

1878

Germantown

     Germantown is a pleasantly-situated village, about a mile from the station.  It has grown up within the last fifty years, not from any special reason except the convenience of the people for trade and business facilities.

     There is no water-power to stimulate-growth.  It has two hotels, two or three stores, and several shops.  The manufacture of carriages and sleighs has been quite extensively carried on by Isaac N. Mackey, the wood-work done by Mr. Bathrick.  There are many fine private residences in and around the village, and several very productive orchards.

     The parsonage of the Reformed church, recently newly fitted up, has a fine location, with a liberal glebe of several acres, forming a pleasant home for the pastor, who is still kindly and respectfully called "Dominie" by his people, as in the olden times.  A neat vestry stands south of the parsonage.  Near it is a very large apple-tree, a venerable relic of a former age.

North Germantown

     This place has a post-office and the Methodist church of the town.  It is a short distance east of the steamboat-landing, and its vicinity is a well-cultivated district, affording many delightful homes.

Germantown New Dock

is about one and a half miles north of the railroad station, and is a place of growing importance.

East Camp

preserves the ancient name given in the time of the Palatines.  It is in the southwest corner of the town, on the river, and contains a hotel, one store, and a few dwelling-houses.  It is the landing-place for the market-barge "Harvest Home."  This is owned by a company of farmers, and forms a very cheap and convenient mode of shipping hay and other produce down the river.

The Railroad Station

has little or no room for growth as a village between the bluffs and the river.  It is the one point of railroad business for the town, and for portions of Clermont and Livingston.

    Coming up the bluffs eastward we find the Mountain View House, originally built for a classical school.  It has a fine site, and is rightly named.

The Lutheran Church Neighborhood

is  a pleasant hamlet on the south line of the town; it has no post-office, but receives its mail from the village three miles north.  The church itself and the parsonage constitute the chief features of the place.  The grounds around the latter and the growing shrubbery indicated the taste and kindly labor of the Rev. W. W. Gulick, for a long time pastor of the church, now removed to Palatine Bridge.  A new cemetery, laid out upon a beautiful hill-side, indicated the growing tendencies of the community to care for the beloved dead, and the old burial-place near the church, carefully fenced, with its clean grass sod, indicates much of loving care.

     A cabinet-shop, a blacksmith-shop, a school-house, and a church constitute the village.  Just east is the farm-residence of Mr. Ephraim Lasher, to whom we are indebted for assistance in securing important material for this work.  He has some fine specimens of Alderney stock.

The Rockefeller Neighborhood

     This expression may be thought to apply to the whole town, but the old Simon Rockefeller tavern, in the east part, may perhaps claim this special name.  Yet even there will be found to this day, besides the Rockefellers, the Staats, Fingars, Lasher, Philips, and Dicks,--those old historic Palatine names.

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