NewCastleTHEN

125 Years Ago . . .

In 1872, Horace Greeley was in the middle of his presidential campaign. Crusading against the corruption of Ulysses S. Grant’s Republican administration, he was the presidential candidate of the new Liberal Republican Party. Greeley argued that the war was over, the Confederacy was destroyed, that slavery was dead and that Reconstruction was a success—so it was time to pull Federal troops out of the South and let the people there run their own affairs. True to the times there were nasty political cartoons about the election drawn by Thomas Nast, a famous cartoonist of the time who worked for several papers, most notably Harper’s Weekly. Look here in the coming weeks for some of those historical, and truly satirical, cartoons.

100 Years ago . . .

In 1907, a southbound Harlem line train had pulled out of Mt Kisco mid-afternoon. Workmen were in the midst of installing a track switch just north of the Chappaqua train station. There were a few spikes to be hammered in and they hurried to complete their work. As the train approached the 5-year old Chappaqua station, it struck the new switch and every new spike began to rip away from the track. The engine lifted from the track and rolled over onto the northbound tracks. The engineer, fireman and baggage handler, though injured and taken to White Plains Hospital, survived the crash. The four passenger cars remained upright, but had jumped from the tracks, causing a great deal of track and rail bed damage. Even in those days, this was rush hour and no one could continue north or south on Route120. But the clean up was completed in 3 hours and northbound trains ran later that evening. Repairs were made and before long everything was running on the Harlem Line as usual.

50 years ago . . .

The station wagon, marketed for commuting towns like Chappaqua, was the car to have 50 years ago. This 1955 Chevrolet Nomad cost about $2600.00. The SUV was a long way off and these wagons were the first BIG vehicles manufactured. They were named “station” wagons because—in the era of one car families—suburban wives would drive their working husbands to the train station in the morning in the family car and pick them up at night.