Hiddenbrook and Margaret Sanger

The brook at Hiddenbrooke

Hiddenbrooke 
Listen below to Shannon Murphy talking about her growing up at Hiddenbrooke and her hopes  for Hiddenbrooke's future,  and Ursula Taylor talking about her memory growing up in Hiddenbrooke. Also, visit the Hiddenbrooke Facebook  page for more information or the Hiddenbrooke web site 

Hiddenbrooke is a nearly 100 acre public open space preserve for sitting, walking and hiking, located at the foot of Mount Beacon.

Description:
Hiddenbrooke is a beautiful preserve of streams, springs, woods, fields and wildlife located at the base of Mount Beacon. Enter through the stone pillars marked Hiddenbrooke, off of Depuyster Avenue. Walk along the paved road, passing by the open fields, streams and forests that give this place its beauty and character. Although lying at the foot of the mountain, the land is mainly gently sloped and easily accessible. 

The park adjoins a Carmelite Monastery. 

History: In the mid-1800s the English mercantilist John Maddock purchased over 500 acres of mountainside property and named it Hiddenbrooke. Italian masons were brought in by Maddock to build the many stone and brick structures that adorned the property, and elaborate gardens and paths were created. In the early 1900s, Maddock sold the property to Alfred Slee, of 3-in-1 Oil. After marrying Margaret Sanger, Slee traded properties with an Ursuline Order of nuns living in nearby Fishkill. The Ursulines moved to Hiddenbrooke in the early 1920s, completing construction on the only remaining structure at Hiddenbrooke, the Chapel, in 1923. Many houses were dismantled over the years, and a fire destroyed the main house in 1972, leaving the Chapel and a one room hermitage intact. By the early 2000s, the Ursulines had left the property, and wanted to sell. A citizen group formed at this time, seeking a way to steward Hiddenbrooke into the future. In the November 2006 general election, after identifying Hiddenbrooke for its cultural, historic, and aesthetic value, Beacon citizens voted in favor of a $1 million bond for the preservation of Open Space. Leveraging that money, the city was awarded a $550,000 grant from New York State Parks and Recreation, $550,000 from Dutchess County Open Space and Farmland, and a $175,000 line item from Senator Steve Saland's office. Hiddenbrooke was purchased by the City of Beacon in December of 2007, preserving this splendid sanctuary in perpetuity. 
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In order to begin the rehabilitation of Hiddenbrooke, it will take thought ,planning and funds.  You can make a donation to this project by going to the connection at the Hiddenbrooke.org web site. 
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This following report is based on  a book: "Margaret Sanger:  a Life of Passion" ... by Jean Baker
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Born 1879 in Corning New York. Maggie Higgins..   Died in 1966  in Tucson Arizona and buried here in Fishkill cemetary.   She had a remarkable life.   
Number 6, of eleven children. Her mother was pregnant 18 times in 32 years of marraige, and died of TB, 6 years after last child born,at the age of 48. .
Her sisters paid for her to go to Claverick College in Hudson NY
After mother died she had to go back home and care for the other children for a year , but then went to nursng school at White Plains.
In 1902 met William Sanger , a draftsman , and quit nursing school.  Got pregant and had first child. After, had TB went to sanitarium, upsate and improved. TB would recur many times in her life .William bought a home at Hastings on Hudson. They had two more childrn..   

In 1910, home burned down and they moved to NYC, to a tenement,where mother in law watched childrem  Husband became an artist , instead of a draftsman. And she became an activist.
1911 joined socialist movement in NYC in Greenwich Village, wrote for the “New York Call”. Worked with Emma Goldman, and other socalists.  Assisted in the Lawrence Textile workers strike. 
1912, working as a visiting nurse ,  for the Henry Street Settlements,  ( connected with our Settlement Camp site in Beacon)  met a woman who had just had an abortion and infection. Woman asked doctor how to prevent pregnancy, and doctor said he didn’t know . The woman came back with infection again, and died.. Then, Margaret decided to spend her life in the issue, which she naemd “birth control.”

1873, Anthony Comstock , a member of a fundamentalist church went to Congress to ask for a law to punish anyone sending, in mail, contraceptive information, and prohibiting physicians from giving this info to patients. It was passed, and he became an agent of the post office to do this.
Sanger still wrote articles in newletters explaining  “ What every girl should know”.e
The people in the Village were free thinkers and many did not believe in being faithful to their spouses....Margaret was one.  Her first lover was a man named John Rompass, a Greek anarchist. This issue  became a conflict between her and her husband.  And for the rest of her life she had many lovers , who remaned loyal and adored her even after their physical  relationships ended.
In 1913 , She and her family went to Paris. but she came back with her childen  3 months later.  She published an newsletter ,called The Woman Rebel”  10 cents a copy to earn money.  She was arrested in 1914, under the Comstock Laws. She also published a text  “ Family Limitation”, which sold 160.000 copies. Rather than face trial she went to England.

In England she connected with Havelock Ellis and the Neo Malthusians,who believed in eugenics...the idea that we should limit our population especially limiting people who were deemed inferior.
In 1915, her husband came back to America, was selling her  books and got arrested under the Comstock Laws.. Also, in that year her yougest daughter died in a boarding school where living conditions were very bleak.  Margaret came back to the USA for her trial, but attitudes here had changed, and the government withdrew its case.   In 1916, she delivered 119 speeches in every major city in the US..  She opened the Sanger Clinic in Brooklyn, and was arrested under the Comstock Law again. She spent 30 days in prison.

In 1921 she got a divorce from her husband and also met Noah Slee,the man who discovered  3 in 1 oil, and was a millionaire. He had lived at Hiddenbrooke, with his  wife, Mary Roosevelt West Slee and three children.. He was in his 60s and she in her 40s. In 1922, they got married with the agreement that she could continue doing what she had been doing in her life.  He was madly in love with her, transferred Hiddenbrroke to a convent, in exchange for Willow Lake in Fishkill ,nearby, and built an estate there for her at a cost of  $1 M.  If you go to Home Depot and drive on the road going left from there , you can still see the estate. For the rest of his life , he would be a major supporter of her organizations and journals, in spite of her not always being there for him.

In 1923, a new Sanger Clinic opened with a physician in charge, and operated for many years, but was eventually closed because of the Comstock Laws. However,in 1929 the case was dismissed
In 1935 she went on a world tour , talking with Ghandi in India. He believed celibecy or self control was the only birth control. In 1935, a court case allowed her clinics to accept birth control supplies.  She was on the cover of Life magazine.

1943 her husband had a stroke, and she spent a year nursing him until he died. He, as well as she, are buried in the Fishkill Cemetery.
1946. She  started organizing Planned Parenthood. Worked with philanthropists to fund research on birh control pull. In 1959,  first trials for bc pill.  1965, Buxton v Griswold in Connecticut. Supreme Court overruled state court, to allow counseling about contraception.

She spent the last years of her life in Tucson Arizona, and in 1962 placed in a nursing home with leukemia, senilty and agitation. Died in 1966, buried in Fishkill, NY.

Her friend Garth Carlo wrote of her ” You did not have the advantages of a complete or  formal education,not training as a speaker, and you did not have an organization to back you up, but you won because you had consecration, devotion, compassion and a ceaseless desire to be  of greatest service to mankind.”

Here is a link to another brief outline of the life of Margaret Sanger 

 http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/aboutms/index.html 

Here is a link to a note about Willow Lake , where  A. Noah Slee and Margaret Sanger moved after living in Hiddenbrooke.
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/willowlake.html

Editorial about this history:   
When you read about the lives of Margaret Sanger, her family in Corning New York, her first husband, William Sanger and second husband , Noah Slee, you can feel the energy that was there for us, the 99% during this period.  In my opinion, this was an energy based on love.

When Sanger was in her 60s and 70s,  the issue she began addressing more was not only birth control, but the issue of our increasing population with limited resources for us, and how to address that. That is is still an important issue for us to address.

The other part of the story, is that this battle that she had was for the 99%,  not just with opposition from the 1 %, but with  support from many in the 1%.  It is important for us to realize this as we see people demonstrating in the streets against the 1 % today.  Why not enlist some to help us, as Ralph Nader has said in his book " Only the Rich Can Save Us." ?  Jim Krivo

water color painting of Hiddenbrooke by Tim Delaney