Historic Graveyard Tours at St. James’ Church

              As seen on Ken Burns’              “The Roosevelts”!

Rebecca Brien Howland Roosevelt      (1831–1876)

Born in New York City, Rebecca was raised for life as a married socialite, proficient in French, piano, flower arranging, and entertaining. At 22, she married her second cousin James Roosevelt and moved to his home at Mount Hope on the border of Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park, where the couple became active parishioners at St. James’s Church. Their only child, James Roosevelt Roosevelt — nicknamed “Rosy” — was born a year after the wedding. After Mount Hope burned while the family was traveling, they sold the property to the state and settled a few miles north at the river estate they always called Hyde Park, now known as Springwood. Her heart began to fail as James entered local politics, and in the summer of 1876 she died of a heart attack at 45 aboard a sailing expedition on Long Island Sound.  This loss led to James’s second marriage, to Sara Delano, and the birth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

    Clifford Benjamin Wells                               (1939–2020)

Cliff to everyone who knew him was born and raised in Poughkeepsie, where he literally married the girl next door, his wife of 57 years. He spent his working life at IBM, a job he never entirely loved and whose dark-suit dress code he quietly skirted. A lifelong car enthusiast who treasured a 1954 Lincoln Capri and dreamed of a Ford Mustang Shelby, he passed the passion
down through countless trips to the races at Lime Rock with his sons and later his grandchildren, just as his own father had taken him to the old Arlington Speedway. At St. James’ Church he served on the Vestry and as Senior Warden, giving generously of his time and talent and never wanting to miss a coffee hour with his church family. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s
disease late in life, he died in 2020 amid the Covid pandemic. Cliff left behind the legacy he valued most: being fully present with family, friends, neighbors, and anyone he happened to meet on any given day.

              John George Bodenstein                                             (1850–1935)

Born in Hesse-Kassel, Germany, John came to America in 1858 with his family fleeing the aftermath of the failed 1848 Revolution. They settled in Staatsburg, New York, in 1864. His father ultimately opened blacksmithing and ice tool shop in Staatsburg. At 23, John married
Louisa Hess. After his father died, John and his brother Henry ran the business — securing patents for their father’s tool designs — and by 1890 John became sole owner of the Staatsburg Ice Tool Factory, employing up to 20 workers, rebuilding after a fire destroyed it in 1919, and also producing ironwork for the enlargement of Mills Mansion and “ice creepers” for walking safely on ice. John was one of the original Vestrymen at St. Margaret’s Church and helped
found the Staatsburg Gun Club, where he was known as a crack shot. He was also a member of the Staatsburg Fire Department.            

      Louisa Hess Bodenstein (1850–1923)

Louisa Hess was raised in New York City, and in 1873 began a marriage to John Bodenstein that lasted 50 years. The two families were doubly joined when her younger sister Mary married John’s brother Henry. She and John had two sons, and she took pride in having picked a good husband and father. Staatsburg was her home, a place where she knew her neighbors, watched their children grow, celebrated their weddings, mourned their losses, and helped where help was needed. Living fully within the Hudson River ice culture, she saw enormous change — horses to cars, telegraphs to phones, and, hardest for the family business, ice harvesting to refrigeration.

   Alice Beal “Allelu” Kurten (1930–2016)

Her father, 60 and already the father of three sons, proclaimed at her birth, “ALLELUIA, it’s a
GIRL!” — and Allelu she remained, treasuring the name after he died when she was two. Her mother then married the headmaster of the Hotchkiss School. Allelu graduated from Vassar in 1952 and married John Kurten that June, sharing 50 years until his death in 2002. Known for her tennis ball puppets and her work with the Pied Piper troupe, she served as Secretary General of UNIMA’s American chapter from 1979 to 1992 and on the Jim Henson Foundation board from 1988 to 2010. At Vassar she sang with the a cappella Night Owls and the prize-winning folk group the G-Stringers. A long-time member of the Garden Club of Orange and Dutchess Counties, she was the force behind the Beatrix Farrand Garden Association at Bellefield, and in 2012 Allelu’s Garden was dedicated at St. James’ Church.

    Elbridge Thomas Gerry (1837–1927)                                                                             Born into a family wealthy since the republic’s earliest days, Elbridge Thomas Gerry was the grandson of the founding father and Vice President of the same name — the reluctant namesake of “gerrymandering.” He graduated from Columbia College in 1858, joined the New York Bar in 1860, and built his reputation on major civil and criminal cases. In 1867 he married Louisa Livingston, of one of New York’s wealthiest families; they shared more than 50 years. In 1874 he took the case of nine-year-old Mary Ellen McCormack, an abused and neglected child whose foster mother he saw sent to prison — inspiring him to help found the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He was equally known for his mansion at Fifth Avenue and 61st Street, modelled on a wing of a French chateau in Blois, with ballrooms that hosted dinner dances for 500 and a reinforced library holding 30,000 law books; it was later torn down to make way for The Pierre Hotel.