Postal Milemarker 80

80 Miles to N. York

Location:

This mile marker stone is located within the property boundaries of the Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery [4] within the Town of Poughkeepsie (just south of the border with the City of Poughkeepsie). It is located just inside the metal fence on the northeast corner of the cemetery. Coordinates are 41.687288, -73.931746.

History:

In 1934, the Dutchess County Historical Society’s Committee on Milestones [1] surveyed “the few remaining brownstone mile posts located on the Albany Post Road” between Wappingers Falls and the Dutchess-Columbia County line. They did not locate #80.

Per the 1980s information collected by James & Marguerite Spratt [2], the stone was located on the south end of the cemetery but was missing at the time of the Spratts’s research.

As of 2010, the stone was located [3] just inside the metal fence on the northeast corner of the cemetery.

Around 2007, the Friends of Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery paid to have a “housing construction” built around the stone to help preserve it [4]. This is presumably the gray stone “house” currently present around the stone, and therefore means the stone has been at its current location since at least 2007.

Sources:

[1] Dutchess County Historical Society Year Book, 1935, page 17 “Report of Committee on Milestones Read at Annual Meeting in May, 1935”, https://books.google.com/books?id=E9spAQAAMAAJ

[2] Marist College Archives & Special Collections on-line exhibit “The Milestones of Dutchess County”, http://library.marist.edu/archives/DCM/index.html [link broken as of 7/14/21]

[3] Photographed by Stephanie Lewison

[4] Email from Linda Silkworth (Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery Office Manager) to Stephanie Lewison on 7/14/2021