Return to the village of Alfred Dolge

Dolge portrait from his obituary, 1922

Thinking about a new historical novel based on the life of Alfred Dolge, I recently returned to the village he founded, Dolgeville. In my earlier postings on this site, The Enlightened Capitalism of Alfred Dolge and The Downfall of Alfred Dolge I explored  his  history , but  was  left with many questions.  In publishing here some of my more recent thoughts on this remarkable visionary, I am looking forward to hearing from Dolgeville natives and others who share my fascination with his late 19^th century mix of capitalism and socialism.  

When I first posted a piece on the 1912 Little Falls strike eighteen months ago,  I heard from many people whose insights and comments guided the subsequent writing of my short novel of the strike, The Red Nurse. The panel discussion on the strike in which I participated on August 9 at the old Stone Mill was another great opportunity to learn from others who share an interest in that long ago struggle.

The Dolgeville-Manheim Historical Society

 I arrived in Dolgeville on a beautiful August morning and met with Bob Maxwell, president of the Dolgeville-ManheimHistorical Society, who graciously opened the society’s museum and archives to me. The museum is housed in an 1890 Firehouse on Main Street, built during the heyday of Dolge’s reign over the village. The first floor features a number of exhibits on village history, including artifacts from the Dolge family.  There is also a display of footwear manufactured by the Daniel Green Shoe Company, which continued for many decades an industry pioneered by Dolge.

Clock from the Dolge home

Zimmerman autoharp manufactured in Dolgeville

The second floor contains a trove of materials that would require several doctoral students to do it justice. Cabinets packed with Dolge era files contain handwritten notes by Dolge, his school notebooks from Germany, family photographs and far more. There was a scrapbook kept by his son Rudolf, a phrenological study of Rudolf, the notes he made for his defense in the court cases that followed the bankruptcy, and a note he sent many years later from Venezuela to explain his role in the crisis of 1898. There were also piles of ledgers from the factories and books from the industrialist’s private library. I also found Dolge’s own notes for his defense in the court case of 1899.

Map drawn by young Alfred as a student in Germany

Alfred Dolge's notes for his own defense

I was particularly glad to find that the society offers for sale a photocopy of the very rare  book, History of a Crime, in which Dolge explained how his dream of an ideal industrial village was destroyed.  There were also fragile newspaper clippings in which Dolge was viciously attacked as responsible his own financial collapse.

Possibly Rudolf Dolge?

In the self-published History of a Crime the industrialist provides a very detailed description of how he was tricked out of all he had built. After a brief summary of the conspiracy by Hardin and Ingham, the bulk of the book consists of depositions  in a lawsuit initiated by the Garfield Bank, and concludes with  Dolge’s  May 6, 1899 farewell speech, in which he says:

“I have been called a dreamer. Yes, I am a dreamer, full of ideals, full of enthusiasm for the good, the noble in mankind and nature, a firm believer in humanity and the possibility for everybody. The world would be better if we had more dreamers of this kind and fewer cold-blooded egotists who regard their fellow men only as an object for plunder.”

He paints himself as an idealist among knaves, but it simply defies credibility how such a brilliant and dynamic man could let himself be repeatedly deceived by Judge George Hardin and Schuyler Ingham, remaining loyal to them even as they systematically dismantled his companies from April to August of 1898. He is also less than convincing in his explanation of how his son Rudolf was prevailed upon to give a  power of attorney to the unscrupulous men who destroyed  not only his father’s wealth but  also the hopes that his workers had placed in the pension, insurance and profit-sharing plans dependent on the Dolge companies.

Trestle foundation from the Dolgeville-Little Falls Railroad

Perhaps Dolge was overextended since financing the Dolgeville-Little Falls railroad and trusted Hardin and Ingham to devise means to outsmart his creditors. Perhaps his own hands were not completely clean, but this possibility cannot yet be determined with any certainty. It is clear, however, that Hardin and Ingham profited immensely from Dolge’s ruin and immediately destroyed the complex social welfare system he had built up.

Dolge mansion

The Dolgeville Mills

After only touching the surface of the archives, I walked around the village to see some of the many structures still in use 114 years after its founder left forever. The limestone factories on the East Canada Creek and the Dolge mansion are in fine repair, as they were on my last visit, thanks to the care of their current owner, Charlie Soukup.  The Turnhalle, the imposing social and cultural center of the 1890s community on Faville Avenue, currently houses Bergeron Company which manufactures strollers, car seats, and equipment for children with disabilities. It is heartening to see companies like Bergeron still making valued products here in America, although they are reportedly seeking Asian partnerships.

The Turn Halle

I then followed Van Buren Street extension down to the location of High Falls Park, a gift of Dolge to the village which was, sadly, sold off by his creditors soon after his departure. I met a very friendly retired couple, the Andersons, now living near where the home of Dolge’s father once stood.  Christian Dolge was a revolutionary in Germany, imprisoned for his part in the 1848 uprising, and must have been quite a formative influence on his son.  He is said to have been friendly with Karl Marx, who fled Germany after 1848. Marx’s history of the uprising, and analysis of why it failed, is quite readable. (Marx’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution, or Germany in 1848 is available free on Kindle)

Christian Dolge

Christian Dolge and hunting companion

Christian followed his son to Dolgeville by the 1880s and his farmhouse was the scene of many gatherings. He kept his own menagerie and the remains of his trout ponds are still on the Anderson’s property.  The Andersons told me what they knew of the High Falls Park and shared with me a map drawn by John Lacik.

Map of High Falls Park by John Lacik

A view of what was once the ballfield at High Falls park

Looking across what was once the ball field of High Falls Park, I tried to imagine the nearby woods as they were in the 1890s, a scene of wholesome recreation for the  workers and their families who lived a life beyond imagining for those toiling in the factories of Little Falls and similar milltowns. Here in Dolgeville, those who worked hard believed that a decent pension, healthcare, and education for their children was assured.  How many of them, I wondered, realized that their hopes and expectations depended entirely on the one man whose name the village bore?  And how many could have imagined that over a century later American working people would still not be assured of health insurance and a decent pension and disability protection, and moreover that those benefits already won would be under attack?

Mr. and Mrs. Dolge in later life.

Woman at left may be Dolge's sister Anna

My novel on the later life of Alfred Dolge, Mr. Dolge's Money,  can be found on Amazon in paperback for $9.95 and on kindle for 99 cents. The story centers on Alfred and Anna's grandson Joseph, or Jose, who is imagined as a son of Rudolf's from Venezuela. At the very end of World War I. Alfred dispatches the young man on a mission across newly Bolshevik Russia into a Germany in the midst of its revolution. In the course of Joseph's attempts to recover his grandfather's hidden fortune, he narrowly escapes from Lenin's secret police and the early Nazis and their followers from the occultist circles of Munich.

 My  short factual biography of Alfred Dolge is also available on Kindle for 99 cents and as an illustrated paperback for $7.95. The Kindle version can  also be read on tablets,smartphones and PCs by downloading the free Kindle app. Amazon Prime members may also borrow the story through the Kindle Owners Lending Library.

The Last Days of a Unique Fishing Community on the Hudson

View from the village toward Amtrak and the Hudson

At some point in the 1800s – no one seems to know when – a unique fishing community sprang up along the river in Hudson, NY.  And as of today, that unique community will exist no more. It will go the way of other communities of free spirits in this region, like the fiercely independent Taghanic Basketmakers who were driven out of the hills above Lake Taghanic  90 years ago.

Entrance to Furgary is next to Hudson's waste treatment plant

Known as the Furgary Boat Club – and no one seems to known the origin of the word – generations of local people have made use of the collection of shacks between the town’s waste treatment plant and the Hudson River.  For years, city officials have talked about evicting the Furgary squatters but now that threat has finally become a reality.

Contemplating the end of an era

Two days before the eviction, I visited the site and talked with a melancholy  group of Furgary folk.  Most, if not all, had memories of the place going back to childhood and none could really understand why the City of Hudson was taking away land they had long regarded as their own.  But the problem is that the land was never their own in any legal sense. Joe Gallo, the president of their official group, the North Dock Tin Boat Association, told WGXC that there were never any deeds for the shacks nor any legal means of transfer.  Informal arrangements and mutual trust among members were what held the little community together. And according to a Register-Star article, no one ever lived there full-time. (I found no real evidence, one way or the other, on this claim.)

Longtime Furgarians

When I visited, the community residents were friendly enough but I was told by other local people that the Furgarians had long regarded the area as their private property and had posted plenty of No Trespassing signs prior to their recent troubles with the City.  Apparently, membership was usually limited to people whose families had lived in Hudson for generations. However,  one man who had moved to Hudson only a decade ago told me that he was friendly with the villagers and was considered a welcome guest  by them whenever he dropped by. But in no sense did the fishermen ever consider it public land, although in fact the several acres of shoreline and wetland do belong to the City of Hudson.

Wetlands stretch north from the Furgary shacks

The long-simmering dispute over ownership of the fishing village was brought to a head three years ago:

“In August of 2009, while performing a deed search, the Columbia Land Conservancy discovered the land, and the adjacent waste water treatment plant property, belonged to the state, which promptly traded it for property under the river owned by the city. Now that Hudson knows they own the land officials see development potential for the riverfront property.”

"Main Street"

Although Hudson’s current mayor, William Hallenbeck, said in a Common Council meeting on July 9 that he wished he could find a way to save the Furgary camp, the fisher folk with whom I spoke doubted his sincerity.  Their leader Joe Gallo, said that former mayor Rick Scalera was so adamant to destroy the community that he would be driving the first bulldozer. According to Gallo, the City has failed to recognize the services provided gratis by the Furgarians, for which the City would now have to pay:

“For a century and a half, we have been stewards of this part of the Hudson River. We have not only worked the river for shad and other fish, we’ve also managed the habitats and public hunting grounds of the foreshore, North Bay and Middle Ground Flats. We’ve safeguarded this area for the many children and pets who are drawn to it. And we’ve done it for free.”

 

Whether the destruction of this community will be cost-effective for the City of Hudson remains to be seen but it is clear that, as Gallo says, the City has shown “No regard for the cultural aspect.” This kind of American community outside the usual restrictions of laws and deeds was once common, but now  is extremely rare. As one fisherman-hunter-trapper told me, “Since Katrina, there’s nothing like us this side of the Mississippi.”  Surely, a wiser as well as more economically sound course might be to preserve the unique community but open it to a wider public.  Issues of liability cited by City officials could certainly be handled much the same as for other city parks.

Moving Day

No one with whom I spoke has any real idea of what will follow the destruction of the Furgary community. A strong possibility is that the Columbia Land Conservancy, whose researcher discovered the title discrepancy that set this whole crisis in motion, may seek to extend its adjacent natural area north of the city.  The organization’s Summer 2012 newsletter includes an article entitled “A Transformational Plan for Hudson’s Waterfront.”

Although no mention is made of the Furgary site, the accompanying map illustrates a plan “to connect the heart of Hudson to the Greenport Conservation Area and beyond.”  And a non-profit like the CLC certainly has a number of donors and supporters with deep pockets who could well have an influence on local officials.  There are also rumors of condo development, but considering that the site is right next to the city Waste Treatment Plant, that seems highly unlikely.

The CLC's Greenport Conservation Area adjoins Furgary site

I suspect that the most likely impetus behind the community’s destruction is the drive by a well-funded non-profit (i.e. the Columbia Land Conservancy) to keep expanding protected areas in the county. While such a motive is, in general, to be applauded, in this case it may well be that the “green” values of some of the county’s more influential residents are prevailing over the age-old traditions of a small group of local people. 

Update July 19, 2012

We visited the Furgary site a few days after the Hudson PD’s SWAT team launched its 3 a.m. assault against what  amounted to “three grumpy old men. ” The little cove was quiet and deserted, except for a few hungry cats. Police had strung netting loosely around the property and tacked up a few unofficial No Trespassing signs, but clearly no one was attempting to reoccupy the site – which raised the question of why Hudson authorities felt the need for such overwhelming force to back up its eviction orders.

The Register-Star reported that the Hudson Police Department felt the need for a SWAT team because of reports that people on the site were armed and planning to reist the eviction. No word on where such rumors originated. Mayor Hallenbeck also tried to justify the SWAT option in an interview with WGXC radio.  A well-informed older gentleman who joined me while I was looking over the now closed little village blamed the overreaction on the excessive dumping of military equipment into America's police forces by the feds after 9-11. 

Update Nov. 3, 2016

 

Over four years have passed and the Furgary settlement remains boarded up, in some cases falling into ruin. Makes you wonder what the rush was in closing down this unique Hudson River fishing camp.