Pelham Town Historian

10/18/2025

Today, October 18th is the 249th anniversary of the Battle of Pelham, when four regiments of American patriots led by Colonel John Glover managed to delay the British in their march across Pelham. Vastly outnumbered, the courage, determination, and ingenuity of these American troops allowed General George Washington and the Continental Army to retreat from Manhattan north to White Plains. Without the Battle of Pelham, the American cause would have been lost just a few months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
https://pelhamtownhistorian.com/battle-of-pelham
Next year will be the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Pelham, America's Declaration of Independence, and the start of the Revolutionary War. Please send me an email or PM if interested in volunteering to work on a celebration of this semiquincentennial.

05/26/2024

Tomorrow's annual Memorial Day Parade has been cancelled due to expected torrential rains, but the annual ceremony remembering and honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice will go on, indoors at the Manor Club. The name of William Thoman will be read among the long list of Pelhamites who gave their lives in wars to defend our country. Here is the story of how he perished in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic just shy of his 22nd birthday:

The pages of the Pelham Sun in the late 1930s are filled with mentions of the awards and accomplishments of the young boy scout, William P. Thoman. He was racking up merit badges at a rapid clip on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout in one of the seven troops of Pelham Scouts. In November 1935, he r...

03/06/2024

Last week, the oldest known living (current or former) Pelhamite passed away at 104 years old. He was the last surviving member of a famous family that made Pelham their home for over two decades beginning in 1921. Here's the story of that Pelham Family:
https://pelhamtownhistorian.com/manger-family

02/25/2024

I am pleased to report a new on-line database containing digitized copies of historic Pelham newspapers, including the Pelham Record (1913-14), the Pelham Sun (1910-2005), and the Pelham Weekly (1992-2001). The database can be accessed here:
https://news.hrvh.org/veridian/cgi-bin/senylrc-pelham
Most of the issues are converted from microfilm, although later issues of the Pelham Sun were digitized from hard copies. Note that this database is an on-going, work in progress as there are missing issues of the Pelham Sun that were never in our collection but where (hope springs eternal that) a copy might be located. In addition, more recent copies of the Pelham Weekly (2006-2015) are not yet included as they had never been microfilmed and, as funding becomes available, will need to be digitized through the much more expensive process of scanning hard copies.
The original hard copies of the Pelham Sun will be re-located from Pelham and preserved in the climate-controlled facilities of the Westchester County Archives in Elmsford.
Thank you to Town Supervisor Dan McLaughlin and the Pelham Town Council for making funding available to undertake this project.

HRVH Historical Newspapers provides access to digitized copies of historical newspapers from the Hudson River Valley region of New York State.

05/27/2023

At Pelham's annual Memorial Day Service on Monday, Harry Patterson will be the first name read among the long list of Pelhamites who gave their lives in wars to defend our country. Here is his story as representative of just one of the many who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the freedoms we enjoy:

https://pelhamtownhistorian.com/harry-patterson

Last year's Memorial Day post was about Eli P. "Tim" Howard, one of the greatest athletes in Pelham Memorial High School History who lost his life in a second tour in Vietnam. Thanks to former Pelham Mayor Joe Durnin, the American Legion Post 50, Pelham, has selected LTC Howard's daughter, Captain Deidre Thomas, to be the Grand Marshall of this year's Pelham Memorial Day Parade. She will be accompanied by her sister, Lisa. (The story of Tim Howard can be seen here: https://pelhamtownhistorian.com/eli-howard Though their father grew up here, this is the first time they have been to Pelham. Thanks to Pelham School District Facilities Manager, John Condon, they were able to tour PMHS today where their father graduated in 1946. They also had a great visit at the home of fellow classmate, Dr. Jim McElhinney, PMHS '46. The parade steps off from the Manor Club at 11:30 am and Captain Thomas will deliver the keynote address at the annual ceremony at Town Hall at the end of the parade.

Harry Patterson was the youngest of ten children of Pelham’s first Justice of the Peace, Edward Alexander Patterson, and his wife, Margaret Jane Campbell Patterson. The Pattersons were among the first residents of “Pelhamville,” settling about 1866 in a home at the very north end of First Aven...

10/05/2021

In 1928, seven years after PMHS opened, the school had its first band and a graduating senior wrote what would become the PMHS fight song for several decades. What was "The Pelican Parade," what did it sound like, who wrote it and what became of him? Find out here: www.pelhamtownhistorian.com/pelicanparade

07/22/2021

On the eve of the Opening Ceremonies tonight in Tokyo (tomorrow morning, New York time), here is the second installment of the story about Pelham Olympians, which now spans more than 100 years from the first known Pelham Olympian in 1904 to the last Pelham Olympian, Meg Gaillard in 2004, and taking us to this moment as PMHS graduate Kate Douglass is about to compete in Tokyo. In total, 12 Pelham Olympians have been identified and are included here:

New research and never-before-seen photographs on the twelve Pelhamites who competed in Olympic Games.

07/17/2021

Celebrating the opening of the ###II Games of the Olympiad in Tokyo and cheering on Pelham's own Kate Douglass as she competes on the Women's swim team in the 200M individual medley event.

After tracking down descendants and family members of Pelham's earliest Olympians, this is the first in a two-part web post taking a look back at past Pelham Olympians, starting with Warren Wood, a gold-medal winner on the U.S. Olympic Golf team in 1904. The quality of his character and good sportsmanship are made clear thanks to his granddaughter, Wendy Southwell Fuchs (PMHS 1965), who provided an intimate bio about him from the Pelham Country Club at the time of his passing. The accomplishments and life of 1912 Track Olympian and former Pelham resident, Carroll Haff, are documented thanks to his grandchildren who have shared with us extremely rare photos and information from his personal Olympic scrapbook.

https://www.pelhamtownhistorian.com/pelham-olympians

Pelham has always been an athletic town and, not surprisingly, has a long history of residents who competed in Olympic Games.

07/03/2021

Happy Independence Day! What was Pelham like on the Fourth of July in 1910? Take a trip through a collection of photos from the Town Historian Collection documenting the day.

The firing of 21 guns went off at 4:30am, July 4, 1910, waking up the population of just 2844 in the small town of Pelham and commencing a day-long celebration of America’s independence.  From the size of the crowds, it seemed the whole town had turned out by the time a parade kicked off from Pel...

06/04/2021

Pelham in 1934, like the rest of the country, was in the throws of the Great Depression. Yet the pages of the PMHS Pelican yearbook that year contain a series of unifying artwork, signed by “M. Nakayama,” that conveyed nothing but optimism for the future. As we finish a month recognizing the contributions of Americans of Asian Pacific heritage, here is the story of that artist and her family’s life and contributions in Pelham.

As the PMHS Pelican yearbook board assembled at the start of the 1933-34 school year, the country was in dire straits. After the stock market crash of 1929, the policies of President Hoover to impose new tariffs on foreign imports, more than double the top federal income tax rate and maintain -- and...

05/30/2021

At Pelham's annual Memorial Day Service on Monday, Americo Colautti will be named among the long list of Pelhamites who gave their lives in wars to defend our country. Here is his story as representative of just one of the many who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the freedoms we enjoy today in the United States.

Profile of a Pelham Hero