1882

Pastor William Sharts, conducting services in the third church building, which, like the second one, was known as the "Church on the Rocks," because it sat on a rocky ledge overlooking the Sawkill (about ¾ mile east of our present location--that is, north of present-day Route 212, across from the country club). (To enlarge the picture, just click it.)

Above is a map of the Woodstock village, published in 1878, showing the Church on the Rocks on the east side of town, just north of current Route 212 (known then as simply Saugerties Road) and north of the Sawkill. It is identified simply as "LUTH. CH." (To enlarge the view, click it.)

It was about this time that the Bible School became a vital part in the church life, under the tutelage of Eveyln Cramer.

Two days after Christmas, the congregation held a donation for Pastor Sharts at the parsonage.

Amt. $51.00 [$992 in 2006 dollars]. The usual quantity of pork, etc. for the winter's consumption given by the congregation at different times when they butchered. This has been done yearly. Whole amount of donation, when all paid in, $62.00 [$1,207].(1)

---

From Anderson, Mark J., For All the Saints: Christ's Lutheran Church, Woodstock, New York, 1806-2006 [Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006], pp. 56-57, citing the pastor's notes. (Close)

---

• ← Preceding year on the church
• Next year on the church →

Prospectors were exploring the Woodstock area for coal, oil, and gas.

Local Civil War veteran John Schoonmaker toured mountain resorts with his "Phantasmagoria" (a magic lantern that produced the effect of motion to glass-slide images projected on a screen), showing a version of Uncle Tom's Cabin and featuring his own war service.

This is a placeholder for information on our region during this year. The information will come soon. The footnote at the end of this sentence is also a placeholder; please don't click it.(2)

• ← Preceding year on the region
• Next year on the region →

Chester A. Arthur (Republican) was President. The 47th Congress was in session. (The midterm elections that year would elect the 48th Congress.) A dollar in that year would be worth $19.46 in 2006 for most consumable products.

Immigrants from the British Isles and western Europe (especially Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany)--the so-called "Old Immigrants," most of them boasting a comparatively high level of literacy and accustomed to some level of representative government, who were either Protestant (most of them) or Catholic, were arriving during this decade at an average annual rate of 275,300. The "New Immigrants," those from southern and eastern Europe (especially Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia), largely illiterate and impoverished, who tended to be either Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish and who had little experience with representative government, were arriving at an annual rate of 92,600--34% of the Old Immigrants' rate, a threefold proportionate increase from a decade earlier and a fivefold increase in raw numbers. The New Immigrants huddled together in large cities, such as New York City and Chicago.

Solidly Democratic white supremacists held political power all over the South. The economically dependent blacks who even tried to vote (forget about being elected to political office) would be facing unemployment, eviction, and violence. Blacks (and poor whites as well) continued being forced into sharecropping and tenant farming; former slave masters were now bosses and landlords. Through the "crop-lien" system, the serflike small farmers could get food and supplies from storekeepers by agreeing to a lien on their expected crops, a lien they would never be able to fully pay off. The daily discrimination against blacks grew increasingly oppressive. Blacks were continually assaulted by harsh reminders of their second-class citizenship, and the white supremacists dealt brutally with any black who dared to violate the customary racial code of conduct.

There were 113 lynchings in the United States during this year; 49 of the victims were black, 64 of them white. (Apparently what terrible things that happened to Native Americans or to Asians did not get counted.)

Larvae of the gypsy moth (Porthetria dispar) continued to spread from Medford, MA, where French naturalist Leopold Trouvelot had brought the insect from Europe 13 years earlier with hopes to start a silk industry in New England. The moth population was exploding and defoliating American woodlands.

The 28-year-old Mason and Hamlin Organ Company in Boston started making pianos as well as organs and was reorganized under the name Mason and Hamlin Organ and Piano Company.

New York wagonmaker Webster Wagner, who had for the preceding 9 years been sued by George Mortimer Pullman, 51, for using Pullman-designed equipment on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, was killed at the age of 65 in a collision on the New York Central line.

The 31-year-old Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad (nicknamed "the Milwaukee Road") extended to Omaha, NE.

Black freedom fighter Frederick Douglass, 64 (pictured here), a former slave and abolitionist, summarized the accomplishments of Reconstruction:

Though slavery was abolished, the wrongs of my people were not ended. Though they were not slaves, they were not yet quite free. No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent on the thought, feeling, and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending, and maintaining that liberty. Yet the Negro after his emancipation was precisely in this state of destitution.… He was free from the individual master, but the slave of society. He had neither money, property, nor friends. He was free from the old plantation, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet. He was free from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave to the rains of summer and the frosts of winter. He was, in a word, literally turned loose, naked, hungry, and destitute, to the open sky.(3)

---

Quoted in Bailey, Thomas A., Kennedy, David M., and Cohen, Lizabeth, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998, p. 506. (Close)

---

Cattle drives on the 700-mile-long Chisholm Trail from San Antonio, TX, to Abilene or Ellsworth, KS (two "cow towns" on the Kansas Pacific Railway, where cattle could be transported to Chicago), continued on a large scale, hundreds of thousands of steers driven north on the "Long Drive," moving at an average 12 miles per day through open, unsettled country.

Drought continued on a good part of the cattle range in the West.

This is a placeholder for information on the United States during this year. The information will come soon. The footnote at the end of this sentence is also a placeholder; please don't click it.(4)

• ← Preceding year on the U.S.
• Next year on the U.S. →

London businessman Arthur Lasenby Liberty, 38, moved his very successful Liberty's of London, selling oriental prints and home furnishings, from 218A Regent Street to much larger quarters at 142-144 Regent Street.

The St. Gotthard tunnel through the Alps opened after 10 years of construction.

Prince Milan of Serbia, 27, took the title of King.

The coffee rust (Hamileia vastatrix), which had appeared in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 13 years earlier, was spreading throughout the Orient and the Pacific, wiping out coffee plantations and causing coffee prices to soar.

This is a placeholder for information on the world at large during this year. The information will come soon. The footnote at the end of this sentence is also a placeholder; please don't click it.(5)

• ← Preceding year on the world
• Next year on the world →