History of Dutchess County

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.