NEW YEAR'S PAST
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"The house warming held at Fred Reinhardt's future home on New Year's eve was well attended by all the young people of Montague. The music was furnished by the Montague band."
JANUARY 3, 1901 THE TRI=STATES UNION
FYI This home still stands on River Rd.
"There will be a mite social and union watch service at the Montague
Reformed church, new year's eve, and
Rev. E. L. Patterson and Rev. H.
Bockmyer will have charge of the service."
DECEMBER 9, 1915 THE EVENING GAZETTE
Some New
Year Customs
"THE sole record of the observance
of the New Year by the pilgrims
in the new world, named New
England, was most prosaic, most brief.
"We went to work betimes," said Alice
Morse Earle, the famous investigator
of old-time American customs. Many
of the good Puritan ministers thought
the celebration or even notice of the
day In any way savored of improper
and unchristian reverence for the
heathen god Janus. Yet they came
from a land where New Year was second in importance and in domestic observance only to Christmas. Throughout every English county New Year's
eve was always celebrated. In many
it was called by the pretty name of
Singing E'en, from the custom which
obtained of singing the last of the
Christmas carols at that time.
In Scotland the last day of the year
was called by the uglier name of Hogmanay, a name of unknown and inexplicable derivation, and in Scotland
It was regarded as the most popular
of all the "draft days," as the Christmas holidays were termed. Scotch
children of the poorer class In small
towns still ask on that day from door
to door at the house of wealthier families for a dole of oat bread, calling out
"Hogmanay" or some of the local rimes
which are given in Chambers' "Popular Rimes of Scotland," such as:
Hogmanay,
Trollolay.
Give us of your white bread
And none of your gray!
They also ask for cheese, which they
call "nog money," and Brand's "Popular Antiquities" gives this begging
rime used by Scotch children:
Get up, gude wife, and binno sweir
Deal cakes and cheese while ye are here,
For the time will come when ye'll be dead
And neither need your cheese nor bread.
As the children on these forays are
swathed in great sheets formed Into a
deep bag or pouch to carry the oatcake, they form quite a mumming and
fantastic appearance."
DECEMBER 31, 1917 THE EVENING GAZETTE
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"The beginning of the real growth of Port Jervis came with the opening of the Erie Railroad. On New Year's Eve, 1847, the first engine to come to Port Jervis was pushed over the tracks by man-power, so that the railroad might be open before the dawn of the New Year, 1848."
JULY 6,1918 THE EVENING GAZETTE
