The Hudson River Maritime Museum 2005 Exhibit

A Tale of Two Ports:
Newburgh and Kingston
on the Hudson

Along the 150 miles of the Hudson River between New York and Albany there are a number of small cities with histories dating back to the early days of American colonial history in the 17th and early 18th centuries. There are similarities and differences in their histories, but all the cities and villages along the Hudson share a common story of having shipped products and people by boat in the early centuries of American history.

Port of Newburgh

Kingston and Newburgh are two Hudson Valley cities of similar size with a shared history of shipping as the dominant business locally at different times and for different reasons. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Newburgh was the shipping port for farm products from the interior of the surrounding countryside. Newburgh is located sixty miles from New York City just north of the entrance to the Hudson Highlands, a chain of picturesque mountains which come right down to the edge of the Hudson for a distance of about thirty miles on both sides of the river.

Farmers located behind the mountains had to come north or east to Newburgh to ship their products to the hungry population of the ever-expanding New York City. The roads were primitive in those days, and shipping quantities of anything over the mountains was all but impossible. The dominant industry in Newburgh until the first railroad arrived in the area was shipping on the Hudson. Four or five prominent shippers competed for the trade which was carried on in sloops until the arrival of affordable steamboats in the 1820s.

During the best days of shipping from Newburgh the wide main street leading down to the river (now called Broadway) was often packed with lines of farmers with their carts and wagons full of farm produce or herding farm animals to be shipped out on the boats and barges to New York City for food.

Kingston

Kingston, the older of the two cities by some sixty years, having been first settled in 1652, as opposed to Newburgh's first settlement date of 1709, was set several miles back from the river on a plateau of fine farmland along the Esopus Creek in what is now called uptown Kingston.

Shipping was not a big part of the farming economy there until the opening of the Delaware and Hudson Canal in 1828 brought coal to the area on the Rondout Creek called Rondout. Since coal was to become the dominant fuel of the new industrial age developing in the 19th century in the Northeast, Rondout, the port of Kingston, jumped into existence and became a boomtown almost overnight. The quiet farming village of Kingston was to change into the busy shipping and industrial town of Kingston by the end of the 19th century because of the shipping of coal and other products like ice, bricks, cement, and bluestone produced from the earth and water of Ulster County.

Newburgh's best shipping era was ended in 1843 by the arrival of the Erie Railroad into the center of Orange County where the farmers could go to ship their products without traveling to Newburgh to ship by boat on the Hudson. This was a major blow to Newburgh's economy, but soon local businessmen came up with a solution, industry. The new industrial age involving steam machine power was beginning, and Newburgh joined the steam age. In 1863 a large coal depot was built at Newburgh by the Pennsylvania Coal Company bringing the fuel of the steam era to Newburgh on a branch of the Erie Railroad. From the coal depot also was shipped great quantities of coal by boat to New York and other ports. Industries from textiles to heavy machinery were established in Newburgh establishing a prosperity which continued well into the 20th century.

Of particular interest is the fact that both Kingston and Newburgh had transportation barons who controlled nearly all means of public transport locally for long periods in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These families- Cornell-Coykendall in Kingston and Powell-Ramsdell in Newburgh- were the most successful business people of their time and place.

The Transportation Barons

Because shipping on the Hudson was the main form of transport for various commodities and passengers until the mid-19th century, it was inevitable that there would be serious competition in and among the river towns for the shipping business. In both Kingston and Newburgh in the 19th century there arose a dominant family in each place which came to control most of the shipping and public transportation in their town.

In Kingston/ Rondout Thomas Cornell built a shipping empire consisting of passenger and towing vessels. After 1882 the Cornell Steamboat Company was only involved in towing freight on the Hudson. In the early 20th century, after buying out several smaller companies, Cornell had a virtual monopoly on towing freight on the Hudson River. Despite the competition of the railroads along the Hudson starting in the 1850s, shipping by water held its own until the Depression of the 1930s because it was an inexpensive way to ship large bulk cargoes.

After Thomas Cornell died in 1895, his shipping empire was carried on and expanded by his son-in-law, Samuel D. Coykendall. Coykendall and his sons owned and ran the Ulster and Delaware Railroad starting in. Since the railroad ran into the Catskill Mountains, a popular destination for tourists, Coykendall did his best to attract passengers to his trains.

One way he did this was to build Kingston Point Park, a beautiful landscaped park at Kingston Point which opened in 1896. Coykendall had his railroad travel out to the Point to the park along a causeway to pick up passengers for the Catskills who were arriving by Hudson River Day Line steamer at the Day Line landing dock at Kingston Point Park. For those wanting to go into Kingston or for local citizens wishing to enjoy the Park, Coykendall also ran the trolley line which traveled to the Park from various points in the City of Kingston. Everything was conveniently set up for the visitor to patronize every branch of the Cornell-Coykendall transportation empire except for towing.

Early History of Kingston

During the period of early trading and settlement by the Dutch and English in the Hudson Valley in the early 17th century, trading was carried out at the mouth of the Rondout Creek. However, permanent settlement did not occur until 1652 when an Englishman named Thomas Chambers came to what is now the Rondout section of Kingston. Chambers had left the patroonship of Rensselaerwyck near Albany for a more independent life with his own property.

Another adventurer named Kit Davits or Davids, known as an Indian scout and trader, also settled along the Rondout Creek. Soon Dutch colonists came to the area, but settled along the fine farmland on the Esopus Creek some three miles inland from the Rondout. The settlement known as Wiltwyck grew as a farming community along the Esopus. The Rondout Creek area remained sparsely populated with some farms. Some minor sloop trading went on.

Wiltwyck (early Kingston) had a colorful history. Conflicts with the local native peoples whose farmland the Dutch were settling and farming went on for decades in the 17th century. Treatment of the Native Americans by the colonial Dutch leaders tended to be heavy handed. Eventually the Indians rose up against the Dutch settlers in Wiltwyck killing and kidnapping some of them. The Dutch colonial government under Peter Stuyvesant had a stockade of wooden palisades built at Wiltwyck for the settlers to live in and be safer.

However, another "Indian War" took place before the Native Americans gave up the area. The Stockade area was the nucleus of old Wiltwyck/ Kingston, and is today an historic district, also referred to by local citizens as "uptown Kingston." Within the original uptown Kingston settlement area grew in the 18th century a prosperous village with fine stone houses, a beautiful courthouse, churches, and businesses. Not only was Kingston the county seat for Ulster County, but it was also the meeting place of the first New York Senate, the place where New York's first non colonial governor George Clinton was sworn in and was, ultimately, the first capital of New York State.

As Americans grew more disenchanted with their British colonial rulers, Kingston became a center for the local patriot, anti-royal cause. When the Revolutionary War began in the mid-1770s, despite the formation of a home-grown army under the excellent leadership of American military men like the Clinton brothers, and of course George Washington, the British managed to capture New York City.

The British became aware of the patriot fervor of Kingston citizenry, and during a naval campaign up the Hudson decided to punish the town. A fleet of British warships was sent up the Hudson in the autumn of 1777 to take the Valley for the English, and cut it off from New England, also a patriot area dedicated to the cause of independence and self rule. While traveling upriver, the British fleet stopped off at Kingston, and marching from the shore of the Hudson up into the village on the plateau, the soldiers set fire to every house and barn they found. The citizens of Kingston fled to nearly Hurley with as many of their valuables as they could carry, but their homes were ruined and the year's food supplies destroyed. The British were stopped in their quest to divide New York and New England at the Battle of Saratoga, but Kingston was stopped in its tracks, requiring several years to rebuild.