History is fleeting. It glides away like a stream – a stream that is hard to follow unless you are hardy enough to climb along its rocky shores. Yet, the rewards of following that stream are many. Small places and objects that have been overgrown are sometimes revealed when you step up close to them.

I had that experience twice this month, thanks to the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands. That institution has been encouraging research into its archives if the results of that research can be shared with the public. One local scholar, Steve Baltsas, spent many hours looking into the history of a rather dim old painting in the Society’s collection and uncovered a fascinating story of its artist, that artist’s local patron family and a long lifetime of friendships and sadness. Mr. Baltsas shared that story during a Thursday evening reception at the Society’s Crawford House and amazed all of us in the audience with the connections he found. The Society’s Research Manager, Jeff Doolittle, hosted a workshop last weekend to teach the basics of understanding old handwriting – something that confounds most of us who find family letters and deeds. From the Society’s archives, he pulled out two examples of old-fashioned manuscript writing. The exciting surprise was that deciphering those manuscripts revealed undocumented history.

An 1865 letter began as a business inquiry, but midway through the prose, we found reference to the “horrible assassination of President Lincoln and probably Secretary Seward and his son.”

We looked up at the top of the letter and realized that it was written by a Newburgher the day after Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. The writer, Andrew DeWitt, who was in New York City that day, goes on to hint that in April of 1865, peace talks were beginning but they now “appear to be entirely crushed out.” A letter, filed for many years under the name of the writer, included such a revealing look at local sentiment that no one had linked to that important moment in history.

An earlier Newburgh document from the historical society archives, a portion of which is shown here, is a one-page contract drawn up in 1839 as Saint Patrick’s Church was being built. Slowly interpreting the old handwriting, we saw that the stone for the church came from the local limestone quarry owned by Abraham Dubois and that a mason/contractor named Timothy O’Mara was overseeing the acquisition of the stone and the building of church walls. Mason O’Mara sent the men to quarry the stone. Mr. Dubois then hauled the cut stone in his wagons and delivered it to the lot where the church was being erected. Mr. O’Mara was paying Mr. Dubois six shillings “per perch” of stone. Looking up old-fashioned masonry terminology, we discovered a perch was a measurement of stone approximately equal to one course of stone in an 18- inch deep wall that is 16 feet long. So, the stone making up Saint Patrick’s church walls cost six shillings per 16-foot row as laid down by local stone masons. That is something to contemplate, along with the hard hand labor of cutting all that stone from a hillside of solid limestone, as parishioners enter the old sanctuary on Grand Street or as young students look over from the windows of their SUNY Orange classrooms.

In historical societies, public libraries and especially still in private homes, old papers that look awkward at first glance may hold new aspects of old stories that should be noted, cataloged and saved for future generations.