Halfway Brook

These listings first appeared in Erie Railway publications from 1885–1889.

Washington Lake House, Joseph Tether, Proprietor
Accommodates 30; 20 rooms, adults $6 to $8; children half price; servants $5; transient $1.25 per day. Discount for season. Transportation adults $1; children, half price. Lake of 200 acres only 2 minutes’ walk. Perch, pickerel, bass. Surrounded by forest. Raises vegetables. Plenty milk, eggs butter and poultry.

Spring House, Barryville, George Layman Proprietor
5 minutes walk from Shohola. Accommodates 30; 20 rooms; adults $7 to $8; children under 12, half price; servants $6; transient $1.25 per day. Discount for season. Transportation, $1. Raises vegetables. Plenty fresh milk, butter, eggs and poultry.

Laurel Valley Farm House, Charles Hickok, Proprietor
Accommodates 20; 10 large rooms; adults $7; children $3.50; transient $1.50 per day. Transportation free to weekly boarders. 3 miles from Shohola Glen. Good livery. Will meet guests in response to telegrams. Raises vegetables. Plenty of butter, eggs, milk and poultry.

Lake View Farm House, Edward Prange, Proprietor
Accommodates 20; 13 rooms; adults $7; children $3; servants $5; transient $1.25 per day. Discount for season. Transportation, $1. Raises vegetables. Plenty fresh milk, butter, eggs and poultry. Continue reading →

Halfway Brook Publishing presents: 
Echo Hill and Mountain Grove!

Echo Hill and Mountain Grove continues the story started in The Mill on Halfway Brook, in the Town of Highland, Sullivan County, New York. It is the second in the series, Memoirs from Eldred, New York, 1800–1950.

The narrative is an account of the change from lumbering, rafting, and bluestone quarrying, to that of running boarding houses in the picturesque hamlets of Barryville, Minisink Ford, Yulan, Eldred, and Venoge (Highland Lake) located near the Delaware River. 

Echo Hill and Mountain Grove tells the history of the Town of Highland and its townsfolk (Austin, Leavenworth, Eldred, Myers, Bodine, Bradley, Bosch, Clark, Gardner, Hallock, Mills, Boyd, Horton, Parker, Greig, Stege, Sergeant, Tether, and others), many of whom owned boarding houses. 

It includes visits to Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New York City, and France. Details on the Shohola Depot, Shohola Glen, Shohola House, the Pelton Soda Factory, the Roebling Bridge, the Congregational Church Centennial, Zane Grey, two presidential assassinations, and World War I, are a part of the story. 

Echo Hill and Mountain Grove is 2.5 pounds, over an inch thick, and 512 pages packed full of stories from 1880 to 1920 in the Town of Highland, NY.

Click on Look Inside under Echo Hill and Mountain Grove on the right hand side to see a few pages of chapter 3 and the 20 page index. It takes a half minute or more to load.

Echo Hill and Mountain Grove is available for $39.95 (which includes USPS shipping).

Feel free to email any questions to me, Louise Smith: 
info (at) halfwaybrook (dot) com.

A special thank you to my husband Gary for a new updated site!

Echo Hill and Mountain Grove has been uploaded, and I will soon have a proof copy. If that isn’t quite right, I will make corrections and hopefully by the end of September Echo Hill and Mountain Grove will be available!!

Thank you so much for your patience.

The summer cottages, hotels and boarding houses thickly planted on the mountain slopes and by the lakes and living streams of Sullivan, Delaware, and Western Ulster Counties, are now tenanted by a larger throng of city visitors than ever before.

…Sullivan County alone offered accommodations at the opening of this season for 8,000 guests, against 6,500 last year, and as a rule every available place of entertainment is filled with New York, Brooklyn and Newark guests.

Taking together Sullivan, Delaware, and the adjoining regions in Ulster west of the Catskills, the number of visitors now being entertained will exceed 15,000…

In the rugged, picturesque, and healthful highland region in question, which has a mean altitude of 1,500 feet above sea level, many city people of means have built for themselves handsome country seats or cozy cottages for Summer abodes.

Perhaps the most magnificent and costly of these country homes are those owned by Mr. George R. MacKenzie, President of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and Mr. William F. Proctor, Treasurer of the same company, both situated in the town of Lumberland in Sullivan County.

In the same town, Mr. Leon DeVenoge, importer of New York, has a handsome Summer mansion and an estate of 2,000 acres…—The New York Times, “Some of the People Summering in the Catskills,” Middletown, N.Y., August 11, 1888.

“Echo Hill and Mountain Grove” update:
There are a few last minute changes happening and I am hoping the book can be uploaded for a proof copy within the next two days. I hope you will agree it was well worth your wait. It’s 512 pages jam packed with stories, postcards and photos, and includes a 41-page appendix, and a 20-page index.

In Chapter 4 of Echo Hill and Mountain Grove, Ell Austin marries Emma Parmenter, in Solomon City, Kansas. When Emma’s father Henry dies, she and her sister Sophronia Parmenter (how is that for a name?) inherit 220 acres on the Smoky Hill River.

Delaware House, 1882
Mrs. M.A. Holbert Proprietor; F.J. Holbert, Manager. 1/3 of a mile on banks of Delaware at junction of Lackawaxen. Conveyance free. Accommodates 100; 15 single rooms; 50 double rooms; $10 to $12; $2 per day. Discount for season. Two cottages attached. Boating for a mile on river. Black bass fishing in front of house. Boats free. Livery furnished; $5 per day. Best of references. Fresh vegetables, butter, eggs, milk, etc. from farm. Guides obtained.
—Summer Homes and Rambles Along the Erie Railway, 1882.

Delaware House, 1884
A popular Summer resort on the Erie Road and banks of the Delaware and Lackawaxen Rivers; everything first class; boating, bathing and fishing; boats free; reduced rates for June and September; circular. F.J. Holbert, Agent.
—Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 11, 1884.

Trivia note: Zane Grey, the author, met his wife Lina (Dolly) Roth at the Delaware House. Tthe Delaware House was built by William Holbert in 1852.

Menzo Quick, George Eckhart, George Mills, Alonzo A. Calkin and James K. Gardner and their successors as directors and all other persons who may hereafter be subscribers to or holders of the stock hereinafter mentioned are hereby constituted a body corporate by the name of the Barryville and Shohola Suspension Bridge Company for the purpose of purchasing, maintaining, reconstructing and managing the bridge across the Delaware River at Barryville…The corporation hereby created shall exist for fifty years…

Menzo Quick, George Eckhart, George Mills, Alonzo A. Calkin and James K. Gardner are hereby made directors of said company and shall continue in office until the first Monday of January 1908…
—Newtown Register, September 14, 1907

The district school at Barryville has been closed on account of the Scarlet Fever. There has been four deaths in that place from it, three of them were members of the school. The first was Mina Cortright, 16 years of age, who had just won a prize of $10 for the best attendance scholarship and deportment.

The teacher and scholars attended the funeral on the 2nd and the next night Lizzie, daughter of Jacob Beck, aged 7 years died, and she was not buried when Herbert, youngest son of Hon. S.St. John Gardner, died.—Republican Watchman, December 17, 1880.