The First (?) Home Improvement Store in Highland

 More than a century before Lowe's opened their establishment in Highland, Stephen H. Yelverton's store in New Paltz Landing was supplying local homeowners with all the latest devices needed to improve their homes. 
       
​The Yelverton name is familiar in Highland history.   Before 1754, Anthony Yelverton built the oldest known house/store on the western shore of the Hudson, opposite Poughkeepsie, in one of the few places that allowed access to the river.  It was located in the town of New Paltz, so the waterfront area became known as New Paltz Landing, a name that continued decades after the town of Lloyd was separated from New Paltz in 1845.

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Anthony constructed mills and established a ferry which ran between Highland and Poughkeepsie. Anthony's son, Anthony, and grandson, Anthony, gradually sold off the businesses in New Paltz Landing by 1812. 
 
Various Yelvertons appear in the later censuses, but Stephen H. Yelverton first appears in the 1860 census as a "tinman" who, according to the census, was born in 1836 in Greene County.  About 1858, he married Sarah M. Osborne and their first child, Alfred F., was baptized January 6, 1860 in Holy Trinity Church in Highland.   A daughter, Jane,was born in 1862.

​According to this advertisement in the New Paltz Times on September 28, 1860, Stephen Yelverton had been in business for eight years.   The ad mentions his tin-working skills and goes on to list all items an 1860 homeowner might require to make their life easier.   (The 2021 winter storm and power outages are a reminder of a life without electricity, running water and central heat – standard living conditions for our ancestors). 

By April of 1862, Stephen Yelverton's  business must have been thriving;  he took out a full column advertisement in the New Paltz Times, featuring many models of  cook stoves. 

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​A three column advertisement in October 1862, features a fancier version of a stove for the parlor.

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​New technology, "the novel and wonderful Cooking Animal, the AEovapor" was advertised in December of 1864.  

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Anthony Yelverton appears in the 1865 Agricultural census and then apparently drops out of sight. .   An article published in the Hudson Daily-Star on December 13th of the year, explains his disappearance. 


Perhaps he sorted things out…on July 20, 1871, the New Paltz Independent reported    

No record of this medical treatise was found.