Throwback Thursday: January 13, 2022

We’re excited about next week’s talk on the Newburgh-Walden Trolley, that we wanted to share these images recently discovered in our archives related to the Newburgh Branch of the Erie Railroad!

Taken in the late 1920s, these photos show the stationmaster at Washingtonville’s Erie Depot. The stationmaster was responsible for the day-to-day operations of their assigned depot, which included helping passengers purchase tickets, tracking freight deliveries, sending telegrams, reporting oncoming trains to other dispatchers, and listening for trains on other lines. The gentleman in these photos is possibly Edward David Parks (1891 – 1983). Edward worked as a station agent in Pine Bush, New York, and Bergen County, New Jersey before being assigned to Washingtonville from 1928 to 1936. At the end of his tenure, he was then transferred to the Erie Station in nearby Monroe, New York but remained socially active in Washingtonville. Edward David Parks died on June 11, 1983 at the age of 91 and was known as a lifelong resident who was an active member of the Board of Trade, and United Methodist Church. He and his wife Florence Clarice McCall Parks (1898-1978) are both interred at Slate Hill Cemetery in Goshen.

Bibliography

McCue, Robert. Erie Railroad’s Newburgh Branch. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014.