A Brief History of Millbrook

Although the name ‘Millbrook’ originated only in the 1860s – and Millbrook was not officially incorporated as a village until 1895 – the earliest settlements in the area were much older.  The land was originally part of a grant given in 1697 to nine men by the royal governor of New York.  The Nine Partners Patent, as it was known, encompassed nearly 150,000 acres stretching from the Hudson River to the Connecticut border. 

It is unclear when the first settlers arrived in what would eventually become the Town of Washington, but by the years before the American Revolution there were two well established enclaves: Mechanic, on the south side of today’s Millbrook near Route 343 and Hart’s Village, on the northside of the village near Route 44. 

Despite being separated by little more than a mile, Mechanic and Hart’s Village were founded for very different reasons.  Mechanic was settled by Quakers around 1740 who constructed a brick meeting house, which still stands, and a boarding school, the Nine Partners School, that educated Quaker students from all over the Northeast.  Among the students to study at Nine Partners, which sought to inculcate in its charges a spirit of reform and social justice characteristic of Quakerism, were the abolitionist and suffragist Lucretia Mott and Daniel Anthony, whose daughter Susan would work with Mott in the suffrage movement.

Hart’s Village, meanwhile, was founded around a fast flowing section of the Wappinger Creek largely for its economic potential.  The water power the creek generated was used to run a number of mills – several of which still exist today along Hart’s Village Road – that produced flour, lumber, coffee, and cloth, among other products.  The area was named for Philip Hart, the most prosperous of the mill proprietors, whose house stands today just west of the creek.              

There are, in fact, several surviving structures that date as far back as the 18th century from these earliest settlements, although their original functions have largely been obscured by the village’s evolution.

By the time of the Civil War the industrial activity of Hart’s Village had gone quiet as mills closed or moved off to larger communities.  But a new arrival to the area – the railroad – ushered in a fresh era of economic opportunity and gave birth to the Village of Millbrook that we know today.  George Brown, a New York City banker who had recently moved to the community, bought up land in the area and financed the Dutchess and Columbia Railroad, which began operating in 1869.  The line, which carried both passengers and freight – especially milk from Dutchess dairy farms – ran parallel to Front Street along the village green, where the station was located, behind what today is the post office and Merritt Books, and across the Wappinger Creek over a trestle bridge.

The railroad station was named ‘Millbrook’ after Mr. Brown’s property, which he had named ‘Millbrook Farm’.  New development soon followed, in particular along Front Street, where warehouses and businesses that relied on easy access to the railroad were constructed, and Franklin Avenue, which became the commercial heart of the expanding community.

Millbrook was not officially incorporated as a village until 1895 in order to be able to receive as a gift from the Thorne family – who had been prominent members of the community since the 18th century – a school building.  The Millbrook Memorial School served as the village’s high school until the 1960s and remains one of Millbrook’s most well-known structures. 

It was also around this period that the area started to become a popular destination for America’s Gilded Age elite.  Country estates were built throughout the Town of Washington, and members of the moneyed classes - Charles Dieterich, a founder of Union Carbide, Harry Flagler, the son of a founder of Standard Oil, and Margaret Carnegie Roswell, the daughter of Andrew Carnegie, to name just three of many – soon arrived.  For those whose stays were more temporary, a large hotel, Halcyon Hall, opened on the south side of the village in the 1890s.  It quickly proved a failure, but became the centerpiece of Bennett College, an all-girls school that operated through much of the 20th century and whose ruins are still visible.

In the 1960s, Millbrook became infamous when Timothy Leary, the ex-Harvard professor and evangelist for hallucinogenic drugs, took up residence in the old Dieterich estate, drawing hippies, curiosity seekers, and poet Allen Ginsberg to the normally quiet village. 

The Millbrook Historical Society strives to preserve all periods of the our shared history – from the earliest Quaker settlers, to the arrival of the railroad, to the Italian immigrants and robber barons who made Millbrook home – so that residents and visitors alike can appreciate the people and the events that have made Millbrook what it is today.