Orchard Visits

The project team met with three apple growers of northern Dutchess County during the project period, each of which had very different operations and provided insights into the economic and technological changes they have noticed during their experiences as farmers. Read the students' reflections on the visits:

Historic Places of Interest

In the process of researching the Fraleigh family and agricultural changes in northern Dutchess County, we quickly learned that the family's business history extends well beyond Peter P. Fraleigh's Rose Hill Farm. Marrying into the family were a number of other prominent Red Hook families that owned businesses, including apple orchards. Together with Rose Hill, these businesses illuminate some of the important changes in experienced by farmers in this area. Below are these historic places.

  • John Curtis, whose daughter married into the Fraleigh family, had a hardware store in downtown Red Hook. His diary, written in the mid-19th century, documents his daily life and is included in the Fraleigh Collection at Historic Red Hook.
  • William Seward Teator, related to the Fraleighs by marriage, inherited his father's farm in Upper Red Hook, building it into an international exporter of Hudson Valley apples. Bard EH Winter Session 2016 focused on this apple grower, building this website: The Life and Times of W. S. Teator. The extensive archive of Teator's operations are also housed in the Fraleigh Collection at Historic Red Hook.
  • Harvey Losee married Rosalie Mae Fraleigh (daughter of John A. and Lucy Curtis Fraleigh), and they purchased several acres of land in Upper Red Hook to begin apple farming. Their son, John Losee carried on the business after his father's death. His memoirs and photographs are an incredible archive of apple farming in the area during the Great Depression and the World Wars. These documents were generously provided by his granddaughter, Sarah K. Hermans.

Map of these places