HOME || CEMETERIES || SCAVENGER HUNT || MAP || MERCHANDISE
Sheridan S. Fraleigh
Born 1868 Died 1876
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. Two markers: The original marker is a small, marble stone in the northeast corner at the tree line, another granite footstone is in his parent’s plot on the same hill to the southwest of the first one.
Sheridan Shook Fraleigh was named for his uncle, Sheridan Shook, a wealthy New York City developer originally from Red Hook. He was the first son of Irving Fraleigh and Almina Cookingham. Irving shipped freight out of Barrytown with Phineas L. Tyler and Captain John P. Carnwright of the steamer Sarah Smith. Irving’s father Peter Fraleigh was a farmer, and their farm on Route 199 east of town remained in family hands until the beginning of the 21st century.
On Monday, July 24th, 1879, little Sheddy Fraleigh went fishing with two other boys where the Sawkill meets the Lakeskill near the intersection of what is today Route 199 and Crestwood Road. After fishing, they went for a dip. Part of the creek was described as being 12 to 14 feet deep where they swam. Three boys went in and only two came out alive. The Hudson Register reported that “after some time [the same day, Sheridan’s] body was recovered by sinking a horse rake in the hole and getting it fast to the corpse.” Edmund Bassett, author of two memoirs about life in Red Hook in the nineteenth century “...arrived at the scene of the tragedy before he was found and saw this poor little body taken from the water and wrapped in a blanket, in the arms of his heart-broken grandfather.” At the time, he was Irving and Almina’s only child.
Sheddy was laid to rest with his family in the Shook vault in this cemetery, but his rest was interrupted in 1984 when the vault was deemed unsafe and torn down. The most recent interment in the vault had taken place in 1927, and since then it succumbed to the elements and a lack of maintenance. Sheddy’s remains, and those of his grandmother, Lydia Shook Fraleigh, her parents George Shook and Margaret Allendorf, Sheridan Shook’s second wife Ellen Maria Gillespi, and her mother Eliza R. Gillespi were removed, though it was remarked at the time it was now impossible to tell who was who.
Sheridan’s marker was a part of this plot and was saved and moved to the new burial place. It was reported that the stone that made up the vault was not salvageable which might explain why his Shook family members’ names are engraved on the reverse of Sheddy’s tiny monument. His name is also engraved on a granite marker in his Fraleigh family plot a short distance to the southwest.