When
Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson River in 1609, laying
claim to the valley for the Dutch Crown, the east bank of
the river had been home for centuries to the Wappinger
Indians and other members of the Algonquin Federation. They
called one of their encampments Poughkeepsie, the
reed-covered lodge by the little water place." Dutchess was
named after England's future Queen Mary, not after the
Dutch, who relinquished their claims to the area in 1683.
Dense forests and rolling hills were hospitable to trappers and farmers who
immigrated to the valley, many of whom were European political and religious
refugees. Trading posts became settlements; inns sprang up along the King's
Highway (now Route 9) from Manhattan to Albany and the Mohawk Valley.
During the Revolutionary War, the Village of Fishkill served as an encampment
for General George Washington's troops and, briefly, as the capitol of New
York State. Poughkeepsie was the state capitol in 1788 when the United States
Constitution was ratified with the provision that certain amendments later
incorporated into the Bill of Rights were needed to insure personal liberty.
Throughout the 19th century, industry boomed in Dutchess with labor provided
by continued immigration from Europe. Brick yards and textile mills thrived
in Beacon and Poughkeepsie, while the Livingstons and Roosevelts conducted
lucrative shipping trades and farmed their huge estates along the Hudson
River waterfront.
Late in the century, the railroads brought Dutchess County within easy reach
of wealthy New Yorkers who built their weekend and seasonal retreats here.
The Astors, Rogers, and Vanderbilts were among the families whose vast and
beautiful estates dotted the landscape along the river and in the eastern
highlands.
As this leisure class with money and time to pursue learning and culture
emerged, literary and historical societies, schools and institutions of
higher learning were established. Libraries were presented to even the
smallest communities by local benefactors. Landscape painters Frederick
Church and Thomas Cole gained fame and patronage as the Hudson River School
flourished, while landscape architecture was advanced by the work of Andrew
Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux.
