Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery

09/22/2026

Walter E. Walker and Poughkeepsie’s Water Supply
By Shannon Butler

During the past 200 years or so, the City of Poughkeepsie has earned several interesting nicknames. The Queen City, the City of Schools, and the not-so-flattering, Sickly City. The reason for the last nickname was due to the fact that our water supply was not always the cleanest. This can lead to major illnesses that break out and spread, particularly things like typhoid fever. So, to take on the role of supervisor of the City Water Works, one had better be prepared for the job and know what they are doing. One such man was Walter Edmund Walker, and he took great pride in his work and served Poughkeepsie through ten changes of the city’s administration.
Walker was born in England in 1879, and he studied engineering there before he and his wife Edith sailed to America in 1907. They happened to sail on the maiden voyage of the RMS Lusitania, which was the famous Cunard ocean liner that would later be sunk by a German U-boat in 1915, killing 1,198 passengers. At first, the Walkers lived in Newark, New Jersey before coming to Poughkeepsie in 1911. That’s when Walter got his job for the City Water works department. He served as the Chief engineer of the City Water Works for over 36 years and at that time, it was his responsibility to improve our water supply, both its bacterial levels and how it made its way into our homes and businesses.
In the beginning of his work, one of the first projects he worked on was installing a steam pumping system and then later he installed two electrical motor driven pumps, but he made the decision to keep the old steam pumps just as a standby in case the power went out. In 1921, Walker gave a lecture to members of the Poughkeepsie Rotary club at the Nelson House Hotel in which he explained that Poughkeepsie’s water supply was better than it ever had been, as they tested it daily and killed any bacteria with “an injection of chlorine gas and alum.” In 1922, Walker was a part of the work that began on a new pumping station, pipelines, and a city cistern that could hold 5 million gallons of water. The city’s Cistern is a fascinating design because it has minimal reinforcement at the perimeter, unreinforced columns with a scalloped floor, and a vaulted parabolic ceiling. It relies on the pressure of the soil above to distribute loads across the grid of 187 columns which all stand about 13 feet apart and the tallest point is about 21 feet high. That cistern remained active until 2018.
The Walker’s had two children, Austin, who worked as an attorney here, and Barbara. Both Walter and Edith were active in local Masonic organizations and were members of the First Congregational church. Walter retired from his position in July of 1947 and would vacation in Florida with his wife from time to time until her death in 1958. Walter applied for entry into the Vassar Home for Aged Men in 1965 where he remained until his death on October 16, 1967. He and his wife are buried here in Lot # 294 Section G.

References:
Poughkeepsie Eagle News, Oct 6, 1921, May 23, 1947, April 29, 1958
Vassar-Warner Home Records – Application for Walter E. Walker
Walter Edmund Walker in Dutchess County, New York, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1932-1989

09/03/2026

One of our Permanent Residents, John Guy Vassar Jr., played a major role in several Poughkeepsie charities.

John Guy Vassar Jr.: A Life and the Orphanage That Never Existed For anyone who has ever lost a parent, life can be a bit of a struggle. It was even harder in the 19th century, especially if you lost your father, who was likely to be the bread winner. In May of 1811, an explosion occurred at the bre...

08/14/2026

Anandabai Joshee, M.D. - Our Most Popular Resident
By Shannon Butler

People often wonder which grave is the most visited or perhaps the most famous in the entire cemetery. It would surprise many people to know that it's not a celebrity or a politician, it's a doctor! The headstone of a young female physician from India, who traveled across the world just to receive a proper education, is actually the most visited here at Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery. Anandabai Joshee was born in Pune on March 31, 1865 and raised in a Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin family. Her birth name was Yamuna but her husband, Gopalrao Vinayak Joshee, renamed her Anandi, which means ‘the joy of my heart’ in Marthi. They were married when she was just nine years old, a common practice in their traditions. Although Gopal was a widower and twenty years her senior, he wanted to make sure that Anandi was properly educated, which was considered very progressive for their time.
Like many teenagers in India in the 19th century, Joshee was educated by Christian Missionaries, whose goal was more so to convert Hindus into Christians than to make scholars. Joshee would later write how irritated she was by the missionary teachers, “I have all along found the missionaries very headstrong, and contemptuous of the faiths of others. How arbitrary would it be if I were to say that all you believed was nonsense, and all I believed was just and proper!” She expressed her disappointment in being forced to read the bible and even threatened to drop out until her husband convinced her to read what they told her so that she could continue her studies.
When Joshee was just 14 years old, she gave birth to her first child who died soon after. This tragedy could have been prevented if only they had access to proper medical care. American friends who knew her well said that Joshee became convinced that if she could study to become a doctor, she could help prevent such deaths among her people. Joshee was painfully aware that no college in her country would allow her the freedom to study medicine. In fact, the ability for women to study medicine was still a fairly new idea here in the United States and had not fully been accepted in all colleges. However, it seemed far more likely that she would succeed in her goal here over any other place.
Her husband Gopalrao wrote a letter in 1878 which explained his wife’s desire to study medicine and that financial assistance was needed for them to accomplish this endeavor. His letter was published in the 1879 edition of The Missionary Review. This letter happened to catch the eyes of a prominent member of the Carpenter family, Mrs. Theodosia Eighmie Carpenter, and she found herself drawn to Joshee’s story. Carpenter began a long series of correspondence with Joshee which shows not only her interest in learning about a woman from India with an entirely different background from her, but also a desire to further the cause of women’s rights in some way. Carpenter managed to convince her family of the importance of sponsoring this young woman.
Joshee sailed from Calcutta, India, for America on April 7, 1883, being the first high-caste Brahman woman to come to the United States. She moved in with the Carpenter family to their home in Roselle, New Jersey. She remained in her traditional Indian garb while staying here, as she saw herself as the only representative of Indian women in this country. In 1883 Joshee was enrolled in the Pennsylvania Medical College with the help of the Carpenter family and graduated on March 11, 1886, with a medical degree. She was the first Hindu woman to receive a Degree of Doctor of Medicine in any country in the world in a time when very few prominent American women had accomplished this.
She received word that she had been appointed as a physician and would be in charge of the female ward at the Albert Edward Hospital, back home in Kolhapur, India, and she would be granted a salary of 300 rupees per month. She thanked the family that had supported her dreams and set sail for home in October of 1886. Sadly, she was not in her position long before she succumbed to tuberculosis, something she had been struggling with while studying in America, and she died on February 26, 1887. She was not yet 22 years old. Her last words were said to be, “I have done all that I could.” Her husband decided to have her ashes sent back to America to be buried with the family that had made her feel like she was one of them. Today, Joshee is celebrated as a feminist and serves as an inspiration to young women throughout India, and it's these young women who make pilgrimages to her grave here in Poughkeepsie on their own journeys to become great doctors.

Sources:
Kosambi, M., Ramaswamy, R., Kolhatkar, M. and Mukherji, A., 2019. A Fragmented Feminism: The Life and Letters of Anandibai Joshee. Routledge India.
Shakti, Street” Anandabia Joshie (1865–1887) http://www.streeshakti.com/booka.aspx?author=16 .
Carpenter Family Plot File, Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery Archives, Poughkeepsie, New York.
Sarasvati, Pundita Ramabai, “The High Caste Hindu Woman,” (Philadelphia, 1888) https://archive.org/details/highcastehinduwo025195mbp/page/n5/mode/2up
Educating Women Physicians of the World: International Students of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1883-1911. 2015 Pripas-Kapit, Sarah Ross

07/20/2026

Paul MacCormac - The $7000 bride and a Fast Car
By Shannon Butler

Some stories are just too crazy that they simply don’t seem true. However, with the case of Paul MacCormac, his entire adult (albeit short) life seemed like it was made to print. He was a man of wealth and odd tastes, who loved fast cars, annoying the police both on and off the road, and not-so-easy women, well, at least one woman. He made some smart financial decisions but was not terribly smart behind the wheel. What you are about to read may sound like fiction, but we assure you, it's all true.

Paul MacCormac was born in Poughkeepsie on May 12, 1877 to very wealthy parents. Mary Dawson, his mother, came from a prominent Quaker family and his father Dr. James MacCormac, had been a successful physician, so much so that the family had a fine house on the road to Hyde Park. Both of his parents died within a few months from each other in 1900 and as their only son, Paul inherited two large fortunes at the age of 23. He quickly sold part of his parent’s property to a local dry goods merchant named Charles Converse and his wife Carrie, and built a fancy barn nearby with “a suite of apartments on the second floor which were furnished with Oriental magnificence.”

He earned a reputation for causing trouble with the local police by setting off explosives late at night, just for the fun of it. His name began appearing in the Poughkeepsie Journal for his eccentricity and his love of fast things, both horses and automobiles. In 1902, it was reported that he had purchased two 13 feet long Boa Constrictors as pets but decided he wanted their skins and cut their heads off! That same year, it became clear that many people in the area were becoming irritated with Paul’s obsession with fast cars and his speeding through the roads around Dutchess County. In 1904 he was arrested for speeding and paid a $75 bail as he claimed that he had just made $17,000 on a cotton deal and could afford it. It is said that some of his friends believed that his fast driving would be the death of him. In 1901 he was referred to as the “Little joker” as he had everyone fooled into believing that he had married a New Haven girl, but he admitted it was just a prank.

Interestingly, Paul had become quite friendly with Mrs. Carrie Converse (the wife of the man who had purchased some of his property), so friendly in fact that he had convinced her to run away with him. He sold whatever property he had left and the two left town. Carrie headed to California in the hopes of establishing herself legally so that she might bring suit for divorce. Meanwhile, Paul met with Mr. Converse to make a deal to purchase his wife. “Converse wanted $10,000 to drop the suit for damages” MacCormac said, “I told him that was too much. We talked for an hour or more and finally decided on the terms. He agreed to accept $7000, of which $2000 was to go to the lawyers.” Paul and Carrie married but she lost the custody of her son and the press had a field day with stories of the “$7000 Wife.”

Sadly for the two lovebirds, their marriage did not last long, and the premonitions of some of Paul’s friends came true. In August of 1907, while speeding on a winding road outside of Norwalk Connecticut, Paul tried to avoid a collision with a carriage driven by two women. He swerved and ran headfirst into a giant oak tree. The accident sent him flying from the automobile fatally wounding him, while his wife was pinned between the tree and the car, killing her instantly. Paul remained unconscious in the hospital for a couple of weeks before finally succumbing to his injuries on September 8th, 1907. He is buried here alongside his parents. So remember that even if you have all of the money in the world, it won’t save you from bad driving. Be safe out there!

References:
The New York Times - Aug 30, 1903
Poughkeepsie Journal/ Eagle News - Dec 10, 1900, May 7, 1901, June 1, 1901, Mar 13, 1902, May 28, 1902, Sept 9, 1907
The Sunday Star - Sept 24, 1905
New York Tribune - Dec 12, 1904

Images:
Photo of Paul and Carrie MacCormac in an old automobile, from the collections of the Local History Room at the Poughkeepsie Public Library.
Newspaper clipping from the Sunday Star, Sept 24, 1905.

07/02/2026

Poughkeepsie’s Artist: Thomas Weeks Barrett Jr.
By Shannon Butler

The Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery is home to some very interesting people, including several artists. Perhaps the most famous of these is our own hometown boy, Thomas Barrett. Not only is he well known here, but his work is in the collections of several museums. Though he never found fame in his own time, much to his dismay, today we consider him one of the reasons why a strong arts community not only exists here but still thrives.
Thomas Weeks Barrett Jr. was born here on September 12, 1902, into a family of means. They lived comfortably at #55 Noxon Street, where they had been for quite some time. His father, Thomas Sr., was a Poughkeepsie native who worked as a banker. First at the Poughkeepsie National Bank, he then served as the treasurer of the Poughkeepsie Trust Company and later became its Vice President in 1941. Tom Sr. was a man who clearly worked to improve his city, something Thomas Jr. would try to do as well, and he served on several committees, including the one that saved the Glebe House on Main Street and the committee that built St. Francis Hospital as well as the Nurses’ Home.
His mother, Katherine Stoughtenburgh, was a member of the old and prominent Dutch family who first settled Hyde Park, the Stoughtenburghs. She was born in Hyde Park but spent much of her young life down in Washington DC where her father served as the Superintendent of the Washington asylum. Which was no doubt a fascinating experience for her growing up. His mother was involved in the local chapter of the D.A.R. and their church. His sister, Elizabeth, also lived in the home on Noxon Street and worked in banking and helped raise money for various organizations and things like the Victory Calendars. She would prove to be an artist as well.
Thomas went to school at Poughkeepsie High School but never graduated. Health problems were said to be the reason for his lack of attendance and his eventual total abandonment of school. Based on his diary entries and letters to friends and family, he does appear to have been sick often with headaches and the flu. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. There, he studied decorative design under Henry Hunt Clark. On his summer breaks, he would come home to Poughkeepsie and work where he could, including painting signs for the Dutch reformed church in 1920, and in his personal diary he wrote, “I wish they’d hurry up and pay me for those 6 signs I made for the Dutch reformed church 3 weeks ago. Wish I was rich and then I wouldn’t have to worry -Hot dog! If I were rich I’d have some fun. I wouldn’t pinch a dollar so tight that I’d make the eagle scream the way I do now - Hot dog, again!” He had discovered that art was something he could do well and graduated from college in 1926.
After graduation, he moved down to New York City, where he worked as a commercial artist making playing cards for Macy’s. Based on his personal diaries, he painted, drank (despite it being Prohibition), and partied. He soon found his way back to Poughkeepsie just before the stock market crash in 1929. He stayed busy in Poughkeepsie with work in woodcuts, greeting cards, bookplates, and posters. In 1934, he organized the first fine art exhibit in Poughkeepsie at the Luckey-Platt store on Main Street. Another local artist, Lee Miller, who had made a name for herself in the world of fashion and photography, sent some of her works to display as well. The show was a great success and inspired Barrett along with other local artists, to create the Dutchess County Arts Association the following year.
He scribbled down some thoughts about his life in 1932, which read “Painting is my work for two reasons – that it suits my physical temperament, and that it affords me more genuine pleasure than anything else excluding factors of appetite.” He went on to say, “I like to work when I have real reason to – when I am moved to work. I like to eat and drink, I like comradeship, of men and women, I like modern music – Debussy, Gershwin, some jazz orchestras such as Cab Callaway's’. The rhythmic weight of Gershwin and good modern jazz are as satisfying to me as good German food.”
Thomas had this great desire to get Poughkeepsie into the arts movement and to improve the city’s cultural identity. There were times when he seemed to love Poughkeepsie for its potential but hated the leadership for its lack of movement. He scribbled this note on a piece of paper in 1943, “In Poughkeepsie, there is no civil pride. That means respect - and a city is made up of people - in this case people void of self-respect. They are run by a political machine malignant at the core as the people behind it are out for money and to the exclusion of ideals, considerations of future growth, and general humanitarianism. Minor dollar dictators, milking the public - which remains forever docile and without benefit except those promised and in rare instances, grudgingly given, minor dictators slow about sewers, quick about pinball machines.” His paintings are mostly of Poughkeepsie, and in many cases, they depict either a depression era or a wartime vibe.
He also believed that his work would be his early demise, as he wrote in his personal papers. And he wasn’t wrong. After a mixture of overworking himself and the overconsumption of alcohol, he became ill on Tuesday, November 18th, 1947, and was sent to St. Francis Hospital. On Thursday, the 20th, he died from pneumonia; he was 45 years old. He is buried here alongside his family.

06/18/2026

Today, on the anniversary of his death, we celebrate the life of John Peter Adriance, one of our permanent residents here at Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery! Adriance was born in Poughkeepsie in 1825 and attended the Dutchess Academy, located at the time on the site of what is now the Vassar-Warner Home on the corner of South Hamilton and Ho**er Avenue. Afterwards, he attended the Poughkeepsie Collegiate School on College Hill.

After working for various hardware stores he purchased the patents for a mower in 1857, originally made by Aultman and Miller of Canton, Ohio. Mr. Adriance named the mower the “Buckeye” and this is the machine that made Adriance a very wealthy man. In 1863 he teamed up with Isaac Platt and built a factory at the Poughkeepsie waterfront to start their empire of selling mowers and reapers. By the 1870s, Adriance, Platt and Company were shipping mowing machines all over the world.

Adriance, however, eventually succumbed to his heart ailments and died at the age of 66 on June 18th, 1891. Poughkeepsie benefitted from his wealth when his children used some of his fortune to create the Adriance Memorial Library a few years later. He and his wife Mary are here at the top of the hill next to the Smead mausoleum. Stop by and visit!

06/08/2026

Here at Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery, one can find several forms of Cemetery Art. From the beatiful forms of architecture found in our many mausoleums, to the busts of some notable figures, to the various symbols of mourning found on headstones. Come take a walk and see what you might find.

05/27/2026

Rufus Anson - Daguerreotypist
By Shannon Butler

Today, we live in the modern age of easy photography. Anyone can whip their smartphone out of their pocket and snap a picture. If it didn’t come out the way they wanted it to, they can snap it again, several times more, even, and then edit it quickly all with their hand held device. We can then send that photo to anyone and share it with the world, all by pressing a button. And if we want copies, we can just print them out. We’ve taken this technology for granted. We don’t know how good we have it until we take a step back into the 19th century when photography was born. The first photographers were known as daguerreotypists, active between 1839 and the 1860s, when newer technologies came into being. The photos they made were direct positive images fixed on a sensitized silver-coated plate in a camera obscura. The daguerreotype was generally described as a “mirror with a memory” as the images were mirror-like in quality. Today, you can find dags (as collectors call them) in antique shops all over the world, but rarely is the name of the daguerreotypist on it, with few exceptions.
As we have mentioned in an earlier article, the cemetery is home to one daguerreotype, which is embedded on a headstone (this is incredibly rare), but we are also the final resting place of a well-known and successful daguerreotypist, Rufus Anson, and his name is definitely all over his work. He was born here in Dutchess County somewhere around 1821, and as a child, he grew up in the village of Stanford. He came to Poughkeepsie on and off during the course of his life, first in the summer of 1847 when he and another local daguerreotypist (and another resident of this cemetery), Samuel L. Walker, set up a gallery to display their images at 294 Main St. near Liberty St. He remained there through the year and in May of 1848, he married a Poughkeepsie girl by the name of Harriet Myers. There is a mention of their wedding in the Poughkeepsie Eagle on May 20th, 1848. They lived in a house owned by Margaret Sherman on Garden Street, not far from Samuel L. Walker’s house. Exactly one year after their wedding, they had their first child, Franklin.
Anson did not remain in Poughkeepsie for long (though he would return). In order to become more successful in his line of work, he made his way down to New York City in 1852. He opened a studio on Broadway at number 633 before eventually establishing a grand art gallery at number 589 Broadway in 1853. An interior of his gallery was showcased in the December 8th, 1860 edition of the New York Illustrated News. The scene depicted a grand hall filled with portraits, molded ceilings, and fancy gas light fixtures for ample lighting. The article that accompanied this image mentioned that Anson had a full staff of assistants “altogether there are twenty-four persons engaged in the establishment, including operators, artists, finishers, burnishers, etc.”
Anson’s gallery was the place to visit when you came to New York, and he claimed it to be one of the largest operations of its kind, capable of producing hundreds of photos a day. He made sure that the world knew his work by placing his name on most of his daguerreotypes, either on the matting or somewhere on the frame. That’s why his work is easy to identify and why he appears to be the best known daguerreotypists in museum collections today. You can find his work in private collections and at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the George Eastman Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Recently, one of his works sold at auction for a record $46,000.
The building that had housed Anson’s gallery was up for sale by 1866 and by that point, the art of photography had changed. Daguerreotypes were out, and Tintypes, which were much cheaper and easier to make, were in. Anson appears to have ended his career in photography at this point and made his way back to Poughkeepsie briefly to open a new venture, a hotel. An article in the Poughkeepsie Journal in April of 1874 proclaimed that Anson had purchased the old “Nesbitt’s dining establishment” and set it up in the “European plan with Ladies and Gents dining rooms and ice cream parlors.” Sadly this endeavor was short-lived as Anson “finding it difficult to weather the dull times” could not make it work.
His wife Harriet died in 1880 and she is buried here in the plot owned by her parents in Section J, lot 62. Anson would live on until 1886, when he died on March 21st. He is buried in a plot that his sister Elizabeth Anson Wilson owned in Section 2. For some reason, his sister never installed a headstone on his grave. It does seem odd that the man who didn’t want his name to be forgotten in the world of photography doesn’t have a headstone for us to identify his final resting place.

12/15/2025

12/15/2025