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Sylvester Feller
Born 1853 Died 1902
Red Hook Methodist Cemetery. Granite tablet with a horizontal cylinder atop it, southwest side near the fence.
Sylvester was the son of Henry Augustus Feller and Catherine Snyder. He was a farmer and resided in Red Hook. On Sunday, March 22nd, 1902 his oldest son, Fred, came home after serving three years in the army in the Philippines. Two hours later that night, Sylvester headed out to the post office at Barrytown. He chatted with Horace Plass for a bit, then went to cross the train tracks. He stood on the northbound tracks to wait for a long southbound freight train to pass, which might explain why he didn’t hear the approach or the whistle of the northbound express train that struck and killed him instantly.
He was survived by his wife Grace, three sons, and two daughters. When Grace tried to sue the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad in 1904, they argued that Sylvester was the negligent party for standing on the tracks. The ‘towerman’ swore he heard the express train blow its whistle and the freight train conductor said he yelled at Sylvester to look out as his own (presumably slow-moving) train passed him. The case was dismissed. His wife Grace Levenworth is buried beside him despite the fact that she remarried Gordon Merrihew after Sylvester’s death.