
Poughkeepsie’s Best-Kept Secrets: The Intriguing Lives Of Local Legends
Historic People from Poughkeepsie That You Never Knew About
Poughkeepsie is home to more than just serial killers. Here is a list of people you probably didn't know are from Poughkeepsie:
Carolyn Garcia, a.k.a. "Mountain Girl," was born on May 6, 1946, in Poughkeepsie. She attended Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park. Shortly after she was expelled from high school, she moved to California and became a Merry Prankster. Eventually she met and subsequently married Jerry Garcia, the lead vocalist and guitar player of the band Grateful Dead.
The stapler is older than you might think! Samuel Slocum invented it in Poughkeepsie in 1841 but called it "The Machine for Sticking Pins in Paper."
Born in Poughkeepsie on April 13, 1899, Alfred Mosher Butts attended Poughkeepsie High School and graduated in 1917. He became an architect and board game designer. He is best known for inventing the board game Scrabble in 1931.
Thirty-one years before Wilbur and Orville Wright would invent the first airplane and successfully take flight at Kitty Hawk, nineteen-year-old Nellie Thurston took to the sky. In 1871 she became the first U.S. woman to fly solo in a hot-air balloon which took off from Eastman Park in Poughkeepsie.
On Thanksgiving weekend in 1965, Arlo Guthrie and his friend, Richard Robbins from Poughkeepsie, were arrested for littering in Stockbridge. The story was immortalized in Arlo's Vietnam protest song Alice's Restaurant.
Jane Matilda Bolin was born on April 11, 1908, in Poughkeepsie. She was the first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the first to join the New York City Bar Association, and the first to join the New York City Law Department. She also was the first Black woman to serve as a judge in the United States when she was sworn into the bench of the New York City Domestic Relations Court in 1939.
What is Poughkeepsie Known For According to Outsiders
Gallery Credit: Conor Walsh
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