HURLEYVILLE — Henry MacAdam and his brother Gordon are not just brothers. They are also co-chairmen of the One-Room Schools project in the town of Thompson, and the Neversink-Hackle Dam Hydroelectric Project exhibit. Both of the projects took months of work, but they didn’t stop there. Then the brothers coordinated a host of volunteers who created a display of both projects that was unveiled on Sunday, July 24 at the Sullivan County Museum & Cultural Center in Hurleyville. Now visitors can see — and hear for themselves — what Henry and Gordon have researched about a fraction of Sullivan County’s history.

In late 2016, Henry and Gordon focused on the one-room schools, researching and collecting stories from former students, and obtaining historical plaques to record where these structures once stood. They identified 20 rural schools that existed in the town of Thompson from 1830 to the last which closed its doors in 1960.

The MacAdam brothers credited county historian John Conway with a Retrospect article about the Hackle Dam Project that intrigued him. The Hackle Dam School District #20 was located at the south end of Katrina Falls Road. The exhibit shows how the proposed hydroelectric dam would have affected the school and that now non-existent logging community. 

With the skills of New York-New Jersey Trail Conference volunteer Nancy Bachana, an historic tour was also developed through the Neversink Gorge which visits the stone ruins of the dam and lumber mill started by the Dutch settler named Hackle for whom the community was named. 

Sunday afternoon, Gordon MacAdam revealed a long list of others who incorporated their skills to create the projects and display. Historical society member and volunteer N. Fred Fries offered more research on the Hackle Dam topic. Glenn Smith and Orshii Boldis helped create a model of what the dam’s watershed would have looked like. Maps were created at Kristt Company.

There was input from Gordon’s right-hand man, Paul Lounsbury, and the late Allan Wolkoff, who was the Town of Thompson historian. 

Skeptics might think that there is no history in a project that failed to produce the hydroelectric dam the financial backers wanted. But in 1913, the information that investors like J. P. Morgan wanted to back the project with $10 million in funds, creating thousands of jobs and altering the structure of many prosperous farms along the corridor, was front page news. 

What the MacAdam brothers did in creating the One Room School-Hackle Dam Project exhibit was to give perspective to what might have been.

The exhibit is open to the public at the Sullivan County Museum & Cultural Center, 265 Main Street, Hurleyville. For hours and more information, call (845) 434-8044 or email info@scnyhistory.org.