Office of the Town Historian
Beekman is full of Historical, Civic, and Recreational points of interest.
The “Know your Town” project was developed by the Town of Beekman Recreation Director with collaborations by the Town of Beekman Library staff and the Town of Beekman Historian.
These points of interest have been plotted on Google Earth along with descriptions and photos.
The Farms of Beekman
The Green Haven Correctional Facility Dairy Barn c.1956
Years ago Beekman was farm country. Wherever you see a residential development today, there once stood a farm. Eighty years ago in the 1940 tax roll you can see that under the land use column there were more than 50 farms. The farms raised dairy cows, cattle, hogs, sheep, feed corn for their livestock, chickens for eggs, and grew fruit orchards. The 1940 tax roll is posted (the PDF file at the bottom of the page) so one can get an idea of how many Beekman farms there were over 80 years ago. If you look at the tax roll you’ll see the family surnames in column 3. The land use (residential, farm etc.) is in column 6 and the number of acres is listed in column 7. The tax roll did not use addresses, column 5 shows the surnames of abutting property owners. Back then the milk producers were Connecticut Milk and Brock Hall. Their tankers would run to Beekman daily to pick up milk from the dairy farms. Today there are no dairy farms left in Beekman.
The Place farm was located at the corner of Route 55 and Pleasant Ridge Road (where the Kindred Creeks farm is today). The Place farm raised dairy cows, pigs and chickens. The last operating dairy farm in Beekman was the Green Haven Farm located on Route 216 across from the Green Haven State Correctional facility.
See a few pictures of the Green Haven farm construction dated c.1956 and picture of the Place farm in 1934. The pictures are posted in the PDF files at the bottom of the page. A special thank you to Ms. Nancy Lynam and Ms. Emma Place Allen for the pictures.
Stormville skydivers over Green Haven Correctional Facility
Sky Divers at the Stormville Airport, heading for the landing zone on the north edge of the airfield. The Green Haven Correctional Facility can be seen below.
Most Frequently Asked Questions
The most frequently asked questions we get are, do you have any family records, do you have any history on property, houses or farms? Rather than duplicate all the available online information, please refer to the document below named ” Web Site Links ” which are helpful website links that can be used to research families, deeds, and records. Especially those records prior to the 1930’s which are stored in digital archives.
Please note that some of these links, such as Family search or Ancestry, may require you to create a login account or charge a monthly fee but many are free. If you have trouble with the link by selecting Ctrl and left click with your mouse, then copy and paste the link into your web browser (recommended browsers are MS Edge, Google Chrome or Firefox).