Sullivan Retrospect (2026)

03/10/2025

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
October 3, 2025

MARK BROWN AND SYLVESTER CARR

It was Saturday night, the third of October in 1874, and the hamlet of Purvis was in a festive mood.

Sylvester Carr, a popular local bartender was getting married the next day, and his many friends were celebrating at the saloon attached to the Purvis Hotel. Carr was a big, boisterous man, who had enlisted in the 56thRegiment in the early years of the Civil War, a fact of which he was so proud he was commonly known simply as “Vet” Carr. He rarely spoke of the fact that he had in fact deserted his company and never saw action. This circumstance notwithstanding, he was well-liked around town, and because of his impending nuptials the saloon was extra busy that night.

One of the revelers was a local laborer named Mark Brown, a native of England, who had come to the area a few years before to work in the timber industry. He was an industrious worker when sober, which was hardly ever, and nasty and quarrelsome when drunk, which was often. He lived with his wife and three year old child not far from the hotel in Purvis.

On this particular night, Brown was on a spree, having spent most of the day in the bar, drinking and running up a substantial tab. Finally, about eight o’clock in the evening, Carr, the bartender, decided that Brown had had enough. Carr refused the Englishman another drink, at least until he had paid his bill. Brown argued, and threatened the bartender. Carr finally grabbed Brown, wrestled him to the floor, choked him, and threw him out into the street. But the evening was still young.

About an hour later, an enraged Brown returned, and although it is not clear whether he re-entered the tavern or in some way encouraged Carr to join him in the street, he drew a pistol, and before anyone realized what was happening, fired one shot into the bartender’s head, killing him instantly. Brown was immediately subdued, and held for the authorities. Sullivan County Sheriff Ben Winner was notified, and he arrested Brown, transported him to Monticello, and lodged him in the County Jail.

As the month of October drew to a close, a grand jury was convened, with Albert M. Fulton, a prominent Monticello businessman, as foreman. District Attorney Alpheus Potts presented the facts of the case, and Brown was indicted on a first degree murder charge.

Monticello lawyer Arthur C. Butts, the county’s most respected criminal defense attorney at the time, represented Brown at the October term of Sullivan County Oyer and Terminer Court and entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. A trial date was set for the following June.

By all accounts, Butts, who also served as Special County Judge and Surrogate during a distinguished career, waged a masterful defense. "It was one of the most brilliant battles of the seventies," recalled Edward F. Curley in his book, "Old Monticello."

There was no argument that Brown had fired the shot that killed Carr; Butts instead attempted to prove advanced insanity. Newly elected district attorney John F. Anderson, assisted in the prosecution by Benjamin Reynolds, was able to convince the jury that Brown was fully aware of his actions at the time of the shooting, and a guilty verdict was announced by foreman James L. Jordan, a Monticello farmer.

Judge A.M. Osborn sentenced Brown to be hanged in the courthouse or courtyard on the 9th of July "between the hours of 10 and 2 o’clock."

Butts unsuccessfully appealed the sentence, and eventually went to Albany to seek a reprieve from Governor Tilden, but to no avail.

"This news was carried to the prisoner Thursday night," the New York Times reported. "Having felt no hope of a different result, he received it unmoved."

As the date for his ex*****on drew nearer, Brown, who had been counseled throughout his stay in jail by the various members of Monticello’s clergy, found religion. He denounced liquor as the root cause of his crime, and advocated temperance for all.

"The ex*****on took place in the jail yard at Monticello at 11:30," the Times reported on July 10, 1875. "Judge Butts remained in the cell with Brown all the previous night. The prisoner smoked several ci**rs, but did not close his eyes in sleep. He maintained the most complete control over his feelings, showing not the least sign of faltering. He did not lose this remarkable control of himself to the last. On the scaffold, he said that he did not remember the shooting, and hoped to be forgiven for it. His father was a drunkard, he said, and died in an inebriate asylum in England. After the cap was put on his head, he made a brief prayer, and then the drop fell."

About thirty-five people witnessed the hanging, and quite a number of townspeople came by to see the body after it was cut down. They had been alerted to the prisoner’s demise by a unique contrivance rigged up by the sheriff. The Times reported that Winner had attached a small rope to the drop weight of the scaffold, connecting it to the clapper of the courthouse bell.

"When the drop fell, this rope broke, and a solemn toll announced to the people that Mark Brown was dead.”

Brown was buried in the old Monticello cemetery next to the grave of Noah Bigelow, who had been hanged on July 15, 1869.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. His Retrospect column rins every Friday in the Sullivan County Democrat newspaper. Email him at [email protected].

PHOTO CAPTION: Prominent Monticello attorney Arthur C. Butts is said to have waged a brilliant defense in the trial of Mark Brown. Nevertheless, Brown was convicted of murder and eventually hanged.

26/09/2025

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
September 26, 2025

THE GREAT MOUNTAINDALE FIRE

In the early morning hours of Saturday, September 26, 1931, fire inexplicably broke out in the unoccupied storefront owned by Aaron Anderman on Mountaindale’s Main Street, and rapidly spread to either side. Despite a steady rain and a relatively calm wind, the stubborn flames eventually claimed sixteen buildings, totaling more than $300,000 in property damage, nearly $6.5 million in today’s dollars.

The O&W Railroad station, the economic lifeblood of the community, was soon engulfed, and telephone and telegraph services were destroyed, effectively isolating the tiny hamlet. Remarkably, no one was seriously injured.

Fortunately, a small crew of men had been working late in a restaurant in town, and they heard the cry of fire from someone on the street. They roused Mountaindale fire chief Mortimer Michaels, and he was able to summon aid from several nearby fire departments before communications were lost. Soon, men and equipment from Woodridge, South Fallsburg, Hurleyville, Woodbourne, Loch Sheldrake, Liberty, Monticello and Ellenville arrived on the scene to contribute to the effort. Despite the manpower, it took nearly four hours to bring the inferno under control.

As dawn broke the following morning, the hamlet had been reduced to what the New York Times described in its September 27 edition as “a picture of destruction.”

“The Ontario & Western Railroad station and freight house, Meyer Levine’s real estate building, the Kantzer dry goods store, the Satell (sic) three-story business block, the New York Telephone Company Building and several others were burned,” the Times reported.

Additional buildings were actually destroyed intentionally, as firemen worked diligently to create a fire break in the face of a diminishing water supply. Despite the devastation, residents soon realized that the toll could have been worse.

“The mutual aid and a persistent falling rain and lack of wind all combined to save the village from complete destruction,” Manville B. Wakefield wrote in the chapter on Mountaindale in his 1970 book, “To The Mountains by Rail.”

By November, work had begun rebuilding some of the structures lost in the blaze, but others would never be replaced.

“Meyer Levine, who conducted a meat, poultry and vegetable market, has started building a brick structure considerably larger than the building he previously conducted, while Jacob Berkowitz, who conducted a hardware store, has also started work of excavating for a new building,” the Liberty Register reported on November 26, 1931.

For many townspeople the fire was not easily forgotten. There were still some around who had vivid recollections of an eerily similar, though smaller, blaze that had struck the community in October of 1912.

At that time, a little over a month after the Labor Day Weekend had signaled an informal end to a prosperous season for its many small resorts, the bustling hamlet had been visited by a devastating fire that resulted in at least $35,000 in property loss (almost $1.2 million today), and disrupted telegraph service for several hours.

In “To The Mountains by Rail,” Wakefield writes that Mountain Dale—the name of the community typically appeared as two words for many years – actually began life, at least as far as the railroad and the post office were concerned, as Sandburgh, described in the railroad’s 1878 vacation guide as “a romantic village in the midst of trout streams and wild scenery and commanding charming views of far-reaching landscapes.” In December of 1880, the name of the hamlet’s post office was officially changed to Mountain Dale. It became Mountaindale (one word) in 1895.

In the next decade the name change was complete, as the original Sandburgh railroad station burned—some have said with the help of townspeople anxious to see a new terminal constructed—and was replaced with a more modern structure built closer to the center of the shifting business district.

By 1900, the resorts around the tiny hamlet had begun to change, as the influx of Jewish vacationers had begun. In fact, the year before, local boardinghouse operator Paul Van Barriger had announced in the railroad’s “Summer Homes” vacation guide that he would be accepting Jewish tourists. This tiny announcement, and a larger advertisement for John Gerson’s Rock Hill Jewish Boarding House in the same publication, are the first references to Jewish resorts in the region that early in the next century would become internationally known for them.

By the time of the October, 1912 fire, Mountaindale had become one of the most popular stops on the railroad, and had become a summer refuge for thousands of vacationers, Jews and Gentiles alike. It was this thriving resort industry more than anything else that prompted the immediate rebuilding of the section of town lost in that blaze.

Such was not the case in 1931.

While most of the hamlet’s main street was rebuilt in the wake of the ’31 fire, the Depression had begun to take its toll on the resort industry, and the O&W did not rush to replace the depot.

Although the railroad announced on October 15 that plans were underway for the construction of a new, enlarged station to be built the following spring, it was never erected. An old passenger car was pressed into duty as a temporary station, with a freight car serving as the express office, until what Wakefield refers to in his book as “an abbreviated facility” was finally completed.

But the railroad would never recover, and the trains stopped running altogether in 1957.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. His Retrospect column runs each Fridayin the Sullivan County Democrat newspaper. E-mail him at [email protected].

PHOTO CAPTION: The O&W's "abbreviated facility" in Mountaindale constructed in the wake of the 1931 fire. (Photo from "To The Mountains by Rail" by Manville B. Wakefield)

19/09/2025

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
September 19, 2025

A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY

On September 14, 1814, after watching British warships bombard Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key, a successful attorney and amateur poet, penned a poem about the experience. Originally entitled “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” the poem would eventually be set to music and become better known as “The Star Spangled Banner.” The song was adopted by the U.S. Navy in 1889, and became the official national anthem of the United States in 1931.

Mostly because of that one poem, Francis Scott Key became a household name throughout the nation. His son Phillip Barton Key, also an attorney, is not quite as well known, but he did get his fifteen minutes of fame in 1859, for a far less laudable act—his murder at the hands of a sitting U.S. Congressman in a crime with a distinct Sullivan County connection.

In broad daylight in February of 1859, in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House, New York Congressman Daniel E. Sickles shot and killed Key, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and the lover of Sickles wife, Teresa. Despite dozens of witnesses to the incident, Sickles was later acquitted of the crime, his attorneys successfully employing a temporary insanity plea for the first time ever in an American courtroom.

Sullivan County’s own George B. Wooldridge was Sickles’ chief aide at the time, and was not only an important witness during the trial, but had been the man who followed Teresa Sickles to her assignations with Key and then informed the Congressman of his wife’s infidelity. His testimony, as well as his ongoing interviews about the trial in Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated magazines, made him an instant celebrity.

Alan Barrish, former Director of the Ethelbert B. Crawford Public Library in Monticello and a former Thompson Town Historian, became interested in the Wooldridge story after reading a footnote in James Eldridge Quinlan’s “History of Sullivan County.” It is now likely that he now knows more about the man than anyone else alive.

In the footnote to a brief passage that mentions “the Sickles Affair,” Quinlan writes that “Mr. Wooldridge was an illiterate man, and yet a paid contributor of several New York publications. Among them was the Leader and Bonner’s Ledger. He was also a protege of General Sickles. While in Washington, he discovered the infidelity of Sickles’ wife, and gave Sickles the information which led to the murder of her seducer.”

The incongruence of Wooldridge being illiterate and yet a paid contributor to several publications was enough to get Barrish started.
He discovered that Wooldridge was far from illiterate, and suspects that the unflattering comments Quinlan makes about him were the result of a longstanding political feud between the two, as Wooldridge frequently wrote satirical pieces about characters that were thinly disguised versions of Quinlan and his close friend and political ally, Monticello’s A.C. Niven.

Wooldridge, Barrish discovered, was active in New York City politics from an early age, and later became a well-known member of what was known as “the flash press” in the city.

“Woodridge’s first appearance in politics is in an article in the April 9, 1838, New York Evening Post,” Barrish said. “His name appears on a list at the end of an article entitled ‘Sixth Ward.’ I am not at all sure what this article is about. But he does seem to have been involved with the Democratic Republican party, which evolved into the Democratic party.”

Wooldridge and the Quinlan/Niven faction, both active in Democratic party politics, would have come to loggerheads in the years leading up to the Civil War over the question of slavery and Southern secession, Barrish reasons. Both Quinlan and Niven were vocal Copperheads, or “Peace Democrats” while Wooldridge was an outspoken “Union Democrat.”

Barrish has also uncovered many references to Wooldridge’s work in the flash press, which was a term for the prolific low brow, scandal sheets of the day. For all his investigating, however, Barrish has never been able to pin down the story behind Wooldridge’s often referred to disability.

“He is often described as ‘a cripple’ or as using crutches,” he said. “But there doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory explanation for how he became disabled, or even a consensus about the extent of the disability.”

The two most popular books about the Sickles case, Nat Brandt’s 1991 “The Congressman Who Got Away with Murder,” and Thomas Keneally’s “American Scoundrel” (2002), both feature references to Wooldridge’s use of crutches, but their explanations for how that came about differ greatly.

Kenneally claims that Wooldridge suffered from “infantile paralysis” while Brandt writes that “George B. Wooldridge was a tall, resolute man whose powerful build resulted from his use of crutches because he had lost the use of his legs in an accident.”

Barrish has found some references to a railroad accident Wooldridge might have been involved in, but isn’t convinced that his resulting injuries left him permanently disabled. That detail is something he hopes to be able to clarify with further research.

It is known that while Wooldridge faded from the national spotlight almost immediately after the Sickles trial. He turns up in White Lake again in 1866, when he opened the Grove Hotel.

“He died at the hotel in December of 1868,” Barrish says. “He is buried in the Union Cemetery in Mongaup Valley.”

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. His Retrospect column appears every Friday in the Sullivan County Democrat newspaper. Email him at [email protected]. He first wrote about George B. Wooldridge in 1998.

PHOTO CAPTION: Alan Barrish at the grave of George B. Wooldridge in Mongaup Valley.per

18/09/2025

On this date in 1975, newspaper heiress Patty Hearst is arrested in San Francisco more than a year and a half after she was first kidnapped by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army and then became a member of the group.

In the ensuing months, the group, including their erstwhile captive, crisscrossed the country in order to evade capture, including a stay in Jeffersonville in Sullivan County.

Years afterward, hundreds of Sullivan County residents recalled seeing Patty Hearst while she was here, and at least a few of them probably did.

One Youngsville business owner actually saw her, recognized her, and called authorities to alert them. By the time they arrived to investigate, she had vanished again.

Years later, Patty Hearst, who called herself Tania after her indoctrination as a member of the SLA, recounted her time here in her book, “Every Secret Thing” describing Jeffersonville as “near nowhere in particular.”

12/09/2025

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
September 12, 2025

THE CONFUSING SAGA OF CHESTNUT WOODS

On September 5, 1778, a small contingent of colonial militia from Fort Honk near present day Napanoch, were ambushed near where the Chestnut Brook flows into the Pepacton Creek in what is today the town of Neversink, but was part of Ulster County at the time.

The incident has become known as the Battle of Chestnut Woods, and to this day remains one of the most confusing events of the Revolutionary War.

It is not particularly unusual for various accounts of occurrences that took place during the Revolutionary War to differ in detail, but few incidents have resulted in such widely disparate versions as what transpired that day at Chestnut Woods.

The series of events began with a Loyalist attack on a settlement known as Pine Bush. This is not the current hamlet with that name, but an older place in the town of Rochester. The attack resulted in the death of two men from the settlement, some destruction of the buildings there, and a possible kidnapping of a young boy. Many accounts of this attack place the responsibility for it on the Mohawk Joseph Brant and his marauding band of Loyalists and Iroquois, but although the means and methods employed during the attack bear some resemblances to Brant’s tactics, it is most unlikely that it was his work.

As often happens throughout history with personalities that are larger than life, Brant became a bogeyman, with many atrocities unjustly assigned to him. But the discrepancies do not stop there.

Most sources tend to agree that troops were ultimately dispatched from Fort Honk, led by Lt. john Graham (or was he a sergeant?). The men under Graham’s command numbered either 18 or 19 or 20 or perhaps even 21.

In relating what is now generally regarded as a highly questionable account of the incident in his 1873 “History of Sullivan County,” James Eldridge Quinlan wrote that “there were several hundred troops stationed at a fort on Honk Hill. Their commander, on learning what had occurred, at once resolved to dispatch a part of his men to intercept the savages at the Chestnut Woods, about thirteen miles from Napanoch. Volunteers were called for, when an officer named John Graham, stepped forward, and offered to go with a sergeant's guard, consisting of eighteen privates and a sergeant and corporal. He was offered more, but refused to take them. But one of those whom he proposed to lead on a hazardous expedition, was an expert Indian-fighter. The name of this man was Abraham Van Campen, and he was a near kinsman of the noted Major Moses Van Campen. The others were from the old settlements east of the Shawangunk, and unused to border-warfare.”

Although most accounts of the battle, including the marker and the bronze plaque on the site, list just three men killed at Chestnut Woods, Quinlan records that all but three of the men in the contingent, including Graham, were killed. That would mean 18. The best research into the events of that September suggests that neither of those numbers is accurate.

To complicate matters further, two of the men listed on the bronze plaque, erected by the citizens of the county in 1920, apparently did not exist. The plaque lists John Graham, Adam Ambler, and Robert Temple as the deceased, but there are no military records for either of the latter two names. In all likelihood, they are Adam Embler and Robert Semple. Curiously, Adam Embler is also listed among those killed at the Battle of Minisink on July 22, 1779. Given the difficulty of finding accurate accounts of incidents like Chestnut Woods, such inaccuracies are understandable, but nonetheless frustrating.

Quinlan writes that the tragic debacle was in large part the result of the inexperience of Graham, who led the men into an ambush by encamping in a place that was easily surrounded by the enemy.

“No rat ever walked more unconsciously into a trap than did the brave but rash Graham. Without knowing it, he and his party were as completely in the power of the enemy as if they had been a covey of partridges under a fowler's net. The Indians and Tories occupied the elevations on every side, where they were securely posted behind tree trunks, and awaited the signal of death from their leader.”

In a dispatch to New York Governor George Clinton written on September 9, 1778, Colonel John Cantine, who had ventured to survey the scene of the carnage when the men did not return to Fort Honk, had a slightly different take.

He wrote: “But what could have induced them to choose a place so disadvantageous to themselves I cannot account for. The place in my opinion was neither calculated for Defence [sic] or to save a Retreat. They had been there about half an hour, and heard the enemy coming. An Indian came about thirty Yards before the rest, and when he came opposite to them, he perceived them, as they were in no way properly concealed. The Indian on seeing them squatted, and then Abraham Vancamp shot at him. Several of the others came within forty Yards of our men, who then discharged their pieces upon them, but I believe did little or no Ex*****on, at Least I could see no signs thereof.”

So exactly what happened at Chestnut Woods that September in 1778 is still a mystery, and it would be fitting to clear it all up now that the county— and the nation— has begun the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War.

Stay tuned.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian and co-chair, with his wife Debra, of the Sullivan County RevWar 250 Commission. Email him at [email protected].

PHOTO CAPTION: The plaque commemorating the Battle of Chestnut Woods near Grahamsville was erected in 1920. It lists three men who were killed in the ambush. It is more likely there were at least 11 killed.

05/09/2025

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
September 5, 2025

DELAWARE RIVER FERRY BOATS

Long time readers of the Retrospect column will no doubt recall the chronicles of the protracted efforts 35 years ago to discover the moorings of the ferry that crossed the Delaware River between Barryville and Shohola before the suspension bridge was built there in 1856.

Hundreds of hours of research and dozens of trips along the river bank by a team of inquisitive searchers yielded few clues to the ferry’s existence, and about the only positive evidence that ever turned up was a mark on an old map and a notation in a guide book that a bridge had been built on the site of an abandoned ferry crossing. Soon the quest was forgotten, as other, seemingly more solvable historical mysteries were addressed.

The author Frank Talbot Dale, who has also provided the exceptional "Delaware Diary" and "Bridges Over the Delaware River," contributed some useful documentation in his 2008 book, "The Ferry Boat Business on our Delaware River," still available in both hard and soft cover from Xlibris Corporation.

Dale’s book, like his previous work about the bridges, is one of those books that, while not specifically about Sullivan County history, contains invaluable information for anyone seriously interested in that subject. And it is not just the Barryville-Shohola ferry that he discusses in the book, but the ferries that operated at Pond Eddy, Tusten, Skinner’s Falls, Cochecton, Hankins, and Long Eddy, as well.

But for those who remember following the search for the Barryville ferry so many years ago, it is the section on that operation that proves most rewarding.

“The earliest organized and commercial transportation across the Delaware, and most other major waterways in our country, was by ferryboat," Dales writes in his introduction. And this method of transportation started, at first unofficially, in the 17th century.

"The first ferry craft on the Delaware were simple rowboats. In addition to the boatman, this craft could carry a traveler or two, with baggage. The horse that had transported the traveler overland and was accompanying the traveler over water, was tied to a rope held by the owner, and in this way, the horse swam alongside the craft. The boat was rowed across the river.

“But this soon changed; not all horses liked to swim the Delaware. Early in the 18th century, specially designed ferryboats came into existence. These crafts were designed to carry several passengers with some goods, as well as a horse or a pair of horses and a loaded wagon. The craft was rectangular in shape, was thirty, forty, or rarely fifty feet in length, and about ten feet in width."

Dale indicates that a ferry began crossing the Delaware near the mouth of the Halfway Brook as far back as 1790, about 40 years before the hamlet of Barryville was established with the arrival of the D&H Canal. This ferry, he notes, enabled farmers living on the New York side of the river to access the grist and saw mills then being operated on the Shohola Creek.

After Barryville began to grow into a bustling community due to the canal, the ferry business boomed, as goods from the Pennsylvania side were transported across the river to Barryville for shipment on the waterway. When the Erie Railroad arrived in Shohola in 1849, the process was reversed, as passengers and freight from the New York side made their way across the river to the train station.

This Barryville-Shohola ferry remained in operation until the suspension bridge was built, and then resumed its crossings whenever the bridge needed repairing or rebuilding, which was often, at least prior to the center pier being added in 1866.

The Pond Eddy ferry began operating in the early 19th century, and was initially run by the Hendershot family. It was instrumental in moving bluestone from the Pennsylvania side of the river to the D&H Canal prior to the construction of the bridge at this location in 1870. The bluestone industry was so vital to Pond Eddy and the vicinity around that the community actually changed its named for a time to Kilgour, in honor of the owner of a major bluestone company in the upper Delaware.

The ferry that ran between Masthope, PA and Tusten, NY began operation around 1840, as did the ferry that crossed the river near Skinner’s Falls. The Cochecton-Damascus ferry began even earlier and was one of the few operations that survived the construction of a bridge at its location.

The Hankins ferry officially began operation in 1860, when William Kellam was granted permission from the Pennsylvania state legislature to create the business. This ferry was used to carry Civil War soldiers across the river during the war years. Dale, however, points out that Jacob Kellam, William’s father, had operated a private ferry at the same spot for many years before his son was granted official permission by the state.

Joseph Geer began running a ferry between Long Eddy and Equinunk, PA in the early years of the 19th century, and after a bridge there had been built and then abandoned, the ferry boat business started up again, operating well into the 20th century. This was probably the last of the upper Delaware ferryboats in existence.

Virtually every significant historic and economic milestone in Sullivan County’s history came about as the result of a major breakthrough in transportation, and the ferry boat operations on the Delaware River are an all-too-often overlooked example of that phenomenon.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. His Retrospect column runs every Friday in the Sullivan County Democrat newspaper. E-mail him at [email protected].

PHOTO CAPTION: The ferry that ran between Masthope, PA and Tusten, NY beginning about 1840 was typical of the Delaware River ferry boats.

29/08/2025

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
August 29, 2025

The End of the Farm Rest Bandits

It was early morning on September 1, 1935 when NYS Police Sergeant Thomas Mangan shot and killed a man attempting to flee the scene of a hold-up at the Farm Rest, a house of ill-repute just outside the village of Monticello.

Sgt. Mangan had been leading an impromptu raid on the roadhouse when he came upon an unexpected scene—gunmen holding up a group of 20 men who had their hands in the air and their trousers draped around their ankles, while five women looked on aghast. The bandits all attempted to flee upon seeing police, but the man who turned out to be the ringleader of the gang, later identified as George “Fats” Klein, never made it out of the window he was trying to climb through.

As Klein, who was armed, had struggled to maneuver his way out the window, Mangan ordered him to stop where he was, but the warning was ignored. Mangan then fired at the man with his .45 caliber pistol, striking him in the side. Klein stumbled back inside the room, where he was quickly subdued. But the bullet had pierced his heart, authorities would later discover, and he died within a few minutes.

Another of the hold-up men was tripped up by the victims, who once the chaos ensued upon police interrupting the hold-up, quickly pounced on him and began pummeling him with their fists.

Authorities eventually arrested eight men, who, they discovered, were responsible not just for the Farm Rest hold-up— which had netted them just $190— but for early morning robberies on successive Mondays in late August at the Hotel Nemerson and the Elm Shade Hotel, both in South Fallsburg. The men had hit the Farm Rest as more or less of a practice run for a hold-up at a large hotel they had planned for Labor Day.

The targeted hotel was never identified.

Klein, also known as “Big George the Peddler” and Fats Weinberg, was a fruit peddler on the East Side of Manhattan. He had been in Sullivan County only a short time before embarking on his criminal career here, but had become fairly well-known in some circles. In stories about his demise, New York City newspapers reported that he had been wanted in several states.

The other men arrested included Frank Mattera, David Levinsky, Abe Roth, Sam Wagner, Julius Goldberg, Thomas Romano, Abe Silvers and Fisher Biesky.

Police also arrested five “entertainers” at the Farm Rest that night. The women were fined $10 each and released. Five of the eight men, who became known collectively as “The Farm Rest Bandits” went on trial in Sullivan County Court later that year, with Judge George L. Cooke presiding. They were convicted, sentenced, and most of them were in prison by Christmas, sentenced to terms of from 15 to 30 years.

Although the trial proceeded smoothly and without incident for the most part, a major melee erupted in the courtroom when the verdicts were announced on December 12, as the defendants and several members of their families, who had been in the audience, got into a fracas with police officers and guards. Sullivan County Sheriff Walter J. Flynn reportedly had a valuable wristwatch damaged beyond repair in the brawl, but no injuries were reported.

Goldberg, who was just 19 years old at the time, later testified that he had brought six revolvers from New York City to Monticello where they were to be used in the robbery. The guns were recovered at the scene, and officials later said that more than one of them had already been fired, but damaged firing mechanisms or faulty ammunition had prevented them from going off. Goldberg was sentenced to an indeterminate term in the Elmira Reformatory.

The Farm Rest, on Route 17, about a mile outside the village of Monticello on the way to Liberty, had previously been raided a number of times when it had been in business as the Cherry Lawn, but it re-opened shortly after each crackdown. It was back in business not long after Mangan’s September, 1935 raid, as well.

Recounting the case in a January 1, 1953 article announcing that one of the bandits, Frank Mattera, was up for parole, the Liberty Register newspaper called it “one of the most spectacular of an era in Sullivan County marked by numerous gambling raids and climaxed by the marginal operations of Murder, Inc., a Brooklyn syndicate which had hired killers.”

A greater journalistic understatement has likely never been published.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. Email him at [email protected]. His Retrospect column runs every Friday in the Sullivan County Democrat newspaper.

PHOTO CAPTION: Sullivan County Court Judge George L. Cooke presided over the trial of five of the Farm Rest Bandits in December of 1935.

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