West Kill welcomes Palmer for Patriots Day celebration

WEST KILL―Nobody could argue with anything Greene County Historian Jonathan Palmer said when he returned as guest speaker for the yearly Patriots Day celebration in West Kill last Saturday.

Palmer was invited back by Lexington Town Historian Mary Palazzolo and Deputy Town Historian Christine Dwon to help honor the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and late Town Historian Karen Deeter.

“Since the town of Lexington’s Bicentennial Celebration of 2013, Lexington has held a Patriots Day with presentations of local history, local authors, a dedication of the Lexington Memorial Garden in Karen Deeter’s memory and much more,” Dwon said, introducing Palmer.

Dwon, sharing a previous quote from Palmer, added, “History is our tacit acceptance that everything disappears no matter what, but you preserve what you can. If people didn’t forget things, we wouldn’t need history.”

Palmer was back at the West Kill-Lexington Community Center after wowing a crowd of area residents with an in-depth presentation on Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette, a year ago.

Through no fault of his own, he was sheepishly less armed for the situation of his latest lecture which he called, “Sourcing Revolution: Understanding Local Documentation of the War for Independence.”

“I’m not an expert on the Revolutionary War. To me, it is more interesting what happened after 1783,” Palmer noted, focusing on the date of the signing of the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the war.

“So, the objective of my journey here today, as a student of this stuff, is to have you leave with an idea of a place you can go to find out what you might want to know,” he said.

“And now that I have told you nothing about the Revolution,” Palmer added, eliciting laugher from the crowd, “I can also tell you it is an uphill battle to find out anything about Greene County and its participation in, or contributions to, the Revolution.”

**There is a perfectly logical explanation for the literary struggle, Palmer explained, referencing the classic Beer’s History of Greene County, New York, published in 1884.

The author of that chronicle, in a short section titled “The Revolution and the War of 1812” wrote, “having no organization at the time, this county, as such, could take no part in the exciting scenes accompanying the development and progress of the war for independence.

“Its towns likewise have left no record of their action because they were not then organized. The people did play a part in that great drama,” the Beers history states.

“But most of the facts concerning their action were buried with them or have only been preserved in isolated and scattered records which have fallen into obscurity too deep for the means at our disposal to bring to the surface and unite so as to give a generalized or at all complete detailed view of the revolutionary period here,” the author noted.

“The people were moved by great commotions which stirred the hearts of the colonies but we may suspect that the phlegmatic Dutchmen moved slowly, and many of them took but an indifferent interest in the success of the colonies. and the English settlers were here in numbers too few to bear any important part in the work.

“None of the battle scenes of the war were enacted upon the soil of Greene County. But amid all the circumstances the people of this section, the Great Imbought District and the District of Coxsackie, furnished their quotas of men and means for the prosecution of the war,” the Beers history states.

So, while Greene County and the town of Lexington were surely impacted by the War for Independence, it was perfectly logical that Palmer didn’t have much to profess about it, and no one could dispute him if he did.

However, the popular historian was able to provide a reliable road map for other folks to follow in their search for what has contributed to the overall archives since the Revolution and 18th Century ended.

“We have to remember that America existed differently then,” Palmer said. “There was no United States government as we know it today, no federal infrastructure to do this reporting.”

On the bright side, Palmer added, “it is amazing how much of the secondary source materials we do have are corroborated by accounts of raids that happened in places like Cairo.”

So, the hunt for history is not in vain, even given the fact that, in terms of the Revolution, “Lexington is a place that people would pass through. We have reports of skirmishes in Prattsville, but no backup,” Palmer said.

Veterans of the War for Independence are laid to rest in area graveyards and Greene County will be paying homage to the 250th Anniversary of America, beginning on May 17 at the Bronck House Museum.

“That will be the county’s kickoff event,” Palmer said, noting towns and villages are also holding their own recognitions of the occasion.

The Bronck House event will include military reenactors, a fife and drum corps, open house for the museum, and lectures.

Those festivities will be followed by a July 3 gala on Main Street in Catskill organized by Greene County Tourism, featuring the unveiling of a time capsule at the new Justice Center wing of the county courthouse.