Welcome back to One Century Ago, a collaboration between Patch and the .
Each week we bring you the front page of a local newspaper that covered the news in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow (North Tarrytown) one hundred years ago. This front page comes from the Tarrytown Press-Record. The Press-Record was published as a weekly from 1893 to 1946 and has been preserved by the Historical Society on microfilm.
Friday, March 29, 1912:
Primaries go Smoothly
The first primaries under the new primary election law were held throughout the state on March 26, 1912. Although there was trouble in Greater New York when the printers failed to produce the ballots in time, there were no technical hitches in this county. The voting was slow, with only about 50% of enrolled voters from all parties voting. The regular party nominees for delegates were elected throughout the county.
Musical Play a Success
An unusually large audience gathered at the Asbury M. E. Church to watch a musical play called Our Minister’s Honeymoon. Since it was a slow week for news, the Press-Record gave a detailed account of the baffling and possibly surreally avant-garde plot which involved a new minister and his bride, accompanied by a maid of honor, six bridesmaids and a college chum called Teddy Spangles, along with a congregation who vie with each other to present pairs of shoes to the minister, but neglect to pay his wages, forcing him to turn to Teddy Spangles for money, but Spangles was in love with the maid of honor and only had $1 to spare...
Luckily, readers would have been relieved to learn, the minister managed to go on his honeymoon after all.
YMCA Building Ready for Occupancy
Almost two years after the initial fundraising campaign, the YMCA building on Main Street was ready for members to move into the new building, and the Press-Record gave a review of the planning process.
In July 1910 the residents of Tarrytown were “considerably agitated” over the announcement that a committee of 100 had been formed to carry out a whirlwind fundraising campaign lasting one week. The objective was to raise $100,000, with a further $35,000 promised by John D. Rockefeller if this objective was met. Despite the determination with which the committee faced the task, many in the villages “shook their heads in doubt” at the idea of raising so much money in just one week.
However, at the stroke of midnight on the final day of the campaign the President of the Association, Robert Patteson, announced that all the hard work had not been carried out in vain. The grand total raised during the seven days was calculated to be $100,113.22.
The next problem the committee faced was the selection of a building site, which may sound deceptively straight forward, but caused a great deal of debate and argument before was chosen. Even this did not unanimously please everyone, as a number of people objected to the fact that the site was not equidistant from Tarrytown and North Tarrytown. Happily, in 1912 the Press-Record was pleased to report that these objections had largely died down.
With the building completed in good time by 1912, and almost all of the subscriptions collected, the YMCA members were ready to move in, and the residents of the Tarrytowns looked forward to the opening ceremony.
