Hudson River sightseeing

We’re spending the weekend on dry land, currently staying with Kathleen’s sister, Therese, and her family in Wappinger's Falls, NY, about 10 miles from where Dragonfly is docked in Poughkeepsie. The Wappinger were a loose confederation of Algonquian-speaking Native Americans, whose name comes from the Algonquian word for “easterner.” The name Poughkeepsie comes from a nearby spring where natives once gathered to weave lodges from cattail reeds and translates to “the reed covered lodge by the little water place.”

Saturday was a full day of sightseeing, primarily in Hyde Park. We started at Springwood, the Hudson River estate that was the birthplace, home and final resting place of our 32nd president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. An only child, FDR was born into a life of wealth and privilege. He was inspired by the political success of his distant cousin Theodore, recruited by the New York Democratic Party and encouraged to enter politics by his bride, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, another distant cousin and Theodore’s niece. 

FDR contracted polio at the age of 39, and worked hard to overcome and conceal the extent of his disability for the remainder of his life. He successfully ran for State Senator and Governor of New York and unsuccessfully for Vice President with Al Smith, before easily defeating Herbert Hoover in the 1932 Presidential election, adding Hoover’s name to the list of U.S. presidents who ran for reelection and lost. Bonus Question: Can you name the other nine? (Answer at end of post).

Fun Fact: FDR often traveled to the Georgia Warm Springs Center for treatment and rehabilitation. In 1938, he created the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to support this center and aid polio victims around the nation. The Foundation’s fundraising urged Americans to send in their loose change and became know as “The March of Dimes,” as it is known today. FDR’s efforts were honored following his death with his likeness memorialized on the U.S. dime in 1946.

Next we visited Val Kill, a part of the Roosevelt family estate a few miles away. Here is where Eleanor spent most of her time and co-ran a small manufacturing community with two friends. She never failed to be at her husband’s side as First Lady, and helped care for him after he became disabled, but their marriage was complicated by the presence of FDR’s strong-willed mother, Sara, who still owned Springwood, and the discovery of Franklin’s affair with Eleanor’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Map Link: Home of FDR, Hyde Park, NY

Last on our old-house circuit was the Vanderbilt Mansion, a national historical site that has preserved the display of wealth of one of America’s richest families during the Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This 1899, 54-room seasonal home and the surrounding 600 acres were owned by Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt, part of the third generation of Vanderbilts, whose fortune was made in shipping and railroads. (Yes, that’s a quinceanera photo shoot happening on the front steps).

After our deep dive into the world of old money, we returned to the present and met the rest of the Williams family for dinner at Terrapin Restaurant in Rhinebeck, NY. Then we visited Oblong Books, a Williams favorite, and took this selfie at the Beekman Arms Inn, America’s oldest operating inn, first opened at this location in 1766.

Bonus Question Answer: Ten U.S. presidents have lost their reelection bids: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Benjamin Harrison, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump. Other presidents have served only one term, but did not run for a second.