Hooks, Ladders, and Churches, Oh My!

A story that I’ve been developing is one of the relationship between the minstrel shows hosted by the Hook & Ladders Company in New Paltz and the AME Zion church fires on Pencil Hill. Stumbling upon these two items in the archives of Elting Memorial Library, I noticed that the highest amount of local and mention of these minstrel shows occurred during the same period as the recurring fires at the local black church. The causes of these fires are unknown.

The minstrel shows and fires both took place during the 1920s. I am under the impression that the cause of these church fires was increased racial tension due to the greater number of minstrel shows occurring in the town. The Pencil Hill AME Zion Church was up the hill from what is now Water Street, and across the road from the current Southside student housing and Windsor Court housing. That hill would’ve been heavily forested in the early 1900s, as the student housing buildings are newer—the pavement of the road perpendicular to pencil hill doesn’t match that of Pencil Hill in terms of tone and quality, suggesting it’s paving at a different time period. So, this church would’ve been surrounded by trees and removed from the center of town by about half a mile, completely out of sight from Main Street.

This church was especially underfunded compared to Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church, which incurred damages during a storm during the 1910s but was able to be quickly repaired and with much enthusiasm. During the Zion church’s multiple destructions, articles were published in both the New Paltz Times and the New Paltz Independent, asking for financial support for months on end, suggesting their difficulty in scraping donations, and implying a poor relationship with the rest of the town as compared to Saint Joseph’s. These fires happened every few years or so, and then seemed to occur on an annual basis during the 1920s. During that period as well, an unnamed reverend from the church mentioned that the New Paltz Hook and Ladder’s Company was not helpful in investigating the fires.

This Hook and Ladders Company was the private New Paltz fire department before it was phased into a governmental department. They were interested in expanding and improving their company and sought ways to increase their funding. Known to host annual picnics during the summer, they began to see greater profit in hosting minstrel shows instead. The reception for these shows was fabulous and the turnouts were quite lucrative. The minstrels were played by the firemen themselves. There was no clear ending to these shows, but they appear to have slowly faded from record, no longer being an annual event for the locals to look forward to. These spectacles took place in the college’s Studley Theater and the New Paltz Middle School.

Like the shows, the church slowly faded from record. The librarian from Elting reached out to the AME Zion Church community inquiring for more information from the Pencil Hill Church, but they never responded. I too, have reached out to the community and have not had a single response. I will continue to investigate these items and learn whatever else there is to learn.