By Chris and Claudine Klose
Thanks to a generous donation to our collection by HRH member Pamela Bentien, we have almost a complete run of another wonderful local paper: The Barrytown Explorer! Below, HRH members Chris and Claudine Klose write about the publication of the paper, the donor of the new collection, and the digitization process.
This piece first appeared in our January 2022 Member Newsletter. Interested in receiving these exciting stories from our history community your inbox? Become a member today!
Masthead of the Barrytown Explorer
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. The U.S. successfully countered the following April with “Explorer,” from Cape Canaveral, in Florida. The Space Race was on!
Not one to be outdone by either superpower, Red Hook School board member, dairy farmer, Livingston/Astor/Chanler family scion, bib-overalled raconteur and generally acknowledged most eccentric man-about-town Chanler Chapman launched the Barrytown Explorer newspaper in June, trumpeting:
Chanler Chapman, owner of Sylvania in Barrytown, as a young man, holding the halter of a cow
“Let’s Go. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Blast Off! You are sailing through space.
John J. Navins has painted Barrytown Post office inside and out.
The Explorer thrusts up over the Hudson Valley using solid fuel of facts, facts so hot they occasionally burn our launching pad. Buster Coon of the Red Hook Fire Company is standing by to put out the flames.
This paper is interested in four subjects. First, the Neighbors and their families; second, good schools in good Communities; third, a fair price for milk at the barn door for Dairy Farmers; Fourth, the Truth, always the truth.”
Last year we were grateful to Bill Wilken for generously funding digitization of the Red Hook Advertiser. This year, we are now fortunate to have heard from Pamela Bentien, who donated her parents’ collection of Barrytown Explorers to complete the partial runs owned by us and by Bard College’s Archives.
Although she resides in Troy, Bentien has deep roots in Red Hook. Her parents, Robert B. Bentien and Elaine (Saulpaugh) Bentien, had lived in Annandale for many years; her maternal grandfather, Robert Hartnett, was head gardener at Rokeby. As early, avid subscribers, the Bentiens savored and saved every issue of the paper, despite moving away from Red Hook. We are grateful to Pamela for helping us to preserve this one-of-kind chronicle of local history, poetry, wit, and wisdom. Our thanks go to Bard College for stepping forward to digitize the 24 years of the Explorer’s marvelous idiosyncratic run. Under the direction of college archivist Helene Tieger, Bard students are to digitize more than 2,500 pages by month’s end.
We will let you know when they are available for your reading pleasure!
Note: For more about Chanler, enjoy the video of a 2001 remembrance at the Elmendorph Inn -“Chanler Chapman: They Threw Out the Mold!” and this 1977 Sports Illustrated article.
Collections Committee member and volunteer Nancy Bendiner working on the assessment of the new collection
To prepare for digitization and prevent deterioration, these papers will be unfolded and re-housed in acid free archival boxes.