A significant anniversary went by largely unnoticed this spring, completely overshadowed by the celebrations surrounding America’s 250th birthday.

The Town of Fallsburg turned 200 years old in March. It is a milestone worth noting, even if belatedly.

In his 1873 History of Sullivan County, James Eldridge Quinlan writes that Fallsburgh (the “h” wasn’t officially dropped until 1968) “was erected by an act of the Legislature of New York, on the 9th of March, 1826, and taken from Thompson and Neversink.”

Quinlan further records that “the act declared that the first town-meeting should be held at the schoolhouse near the Neversink Falls on the first Tuesday of April 1826. At this meeting the following persons were elected: Herman M. Hardenbergh, Supervisor; Richard A. Reading, Town Clerk; John Crawford, James Brown and Cornelius D. Eller, Assessors ; Harley E. Ludington, Henry Misner and John Eller, Commissioners of Highways; Elnathan S. Starr, Thomas Lawrence and John Hill, Commissioners of Common Schools ; Henry Mead and Josiah Depuy, Overseers of the Poor ; Warren Barlow, Collector ; Warren Barlow, Philip C. Ludington, Daniel Couch, and Alexander C. Sloat, Constables ; and Thomas E. Hardenbergh, William Hill and Julius I. Starr, Inspectors of Common Schools.”

And Quinlan observed that “the migratory habit of our people is illustrated in the fact that more than one-half of the family-names which appear in the above list are no longer borne by residents of the town.”

Of course, regular readers of this column know that the original plan for organizing the town did not include the name Fallsburgh (or Fallsburg) at all. The first inclination was to name the newly formed town Lockwood, after Thomas St. John Lockwood, and this would have been done, except for the protestations of the man himself, who, Quinlan records, "thought no resident was entitled to the honor of having his name thus perpetuated."

There is no denying that the town of Fallsburg owes much to Lockwood, who bought out the saw and grist mills built in 1808 and 1809 by Henry Reed and Herman Ruggles when he came to this area. He also purchased the mill of Jacob and Thomas Powell. As Quinlan writes, he "accomplished much in developing the natural resources of the Falls. He erected buildings, and induced others to settle in the place." He eventually owned five mills at the falls, including a paper mill.

Lockwood was instrumental in the construction of the Ulster-Orange Branch Turnpike, which was chartered in 1808 and completed in 1818, and in the construction of the stone arch bridge over the Neversink at Old Falls, built in 1819 (it was destroyed in 1952 to make way for a "more modern" structure). The turnpike, which much aided development and settlement of the town, began at the Newburgh-Cochecton Turnpike in Montgomery, and passed through Burlingham, Roosa Gap, Summitville, and Sandburg, and then through Old Falls and on to Liberty. The roadway was constructed with funds obtained by taxing the landowners who resided within five miles of it. When many of these landowners were unable to pay the resulting property taxes and their parcels were auctioned off, Lockwood bought thousands of acres at the tax sale. He owned over 10,000 acres of land at his death in September 1837.

It was the fact that the Neversink River flowed within its boundaries that led to the initial growth of Fallsburg. Specifically, it was the Neversink Falls, the 23-foot drop in the river which provided not only the original name of the hamlet in which it was located, but eventually of the township itself. Quinlan wrote that "the water power of Fallsburgh is almost inexhaustible, and with enterprise and capital sufficient to render it available, may yet add immensely to the population and wealth of this town."

Of course, by the time Quinlan was writing, the hamlet had a number of thriving industries, despite having lost one of its most lucrative, the tannery. Prior to that time, in the words of Hamilton Child, in his Gazetteer and Business Directory for Sullivan County 1872-73, tanning "was one of the leading branches of industry" in the town of Fallsburgh. And one of the principal tanners, Rufus Palen, became one of the most important and influential men in the town’s history.

Palen came from a family of tanners in Ulster and Greene Counties. He arrived in Fallsburgh in 1831, and with his partner, Matt Adams, established one of the first tanneries in Sullivan County, utilizing the falls for power and the water from the river to treat the hides. The Palen tannery was able to tan from 10,000 to 15,000 hides, but it was soon outpaced by other tanneries capable of turning out 35,000 hides or more.

Rufus Palen was elected to Congress in 1838. As a consequence of this, Edward and Arthur Palen and their cousin Nicholas Flagler, became active in the Palen tannery at the falls, which soon became known as Palen & Flagler. It survived Rufus Palen’s death from tuberculosis, and thrived during the Civil War, but was shut down shortly thereafter because of a lack of bark.

>From that point on, the town of Fallsburg has had to re-invent itself many times. From the industrial center of Sullivan County, it became one of the county’s most prominent resort areas. With the demise of the hotels, the prisons within the town provided employment for hundreds throughout the county, and another major employer, Sullivan County Community College, now known as SUNY Sullivan, opened its doors in 1963. The town is also home to several of the oldest family-owned businesses in the county.

It has been an eventful 200 years, to be sure, but who can doubt there will be much more to come?

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. E-mail him at jconway52@hotmail.com.