Glenarm: Home to Civil War general, later physician/financier/mayor, now Memorial Park

The Glenarm estate of Dr. William F. Drake appears — misspelled Gelnarm — on this 1891 map at the northwest intersection of South Broadway (right vertical road) and Dows Lane (below, horizontal) and is bounded at left by the Old Croton Aqueduct State Park trail. The area is today the upper level of Memorial Park. The neighboring property of Alfred J. Manning, Spring Brook, is the lower level playground of the park at Station Road and South Broadway. (Frederick W Beers, David Rumsey Historical Maps)

Glenarm, off South Broadway in Irvington, was once the estate of Civil War Brigadier General C.P. Buckingham and physician-financier-politician William Francis Drake, M.D.

If you hail from Irvington, you almost certainly have spent time at the site of Glenarm — since 1928 the upper level of the village's Memorial Park.

In the early 1880s, Drake served as President of the Irvington Board of Trustees — the post equivalent to mayor today, while living with his wife and nine children, ages 12 to 36 and the husbands of two of his daughters, at Glenarm, the Manhattan-based family's country estate.

His property lay off South Broadway north to near Station Road, south to Dows Lane and west to the Croton Aqueduct, the Old Croton Trailway State Park today. It comprised much of what is now Memorial Park.

Drake’s legacy in the village can be seen on Main Street at the Irvington Fire Department headquarters across from Town Hall. On March 24, 1880, Drake read a petition from several residents asking the Board of Trustees to establish or organize a fire company. His reading took place at the Atheneum which stood on the location of today’s Town Hall. Residents had sought to establish a fire company since the village was first incorporated within the Town of Greenburgh in 1872.

Members of the fledgling Irvington Fire Association — Irvington Volunteer Fire Department today — are shown with their horse-drawn pumper in front of Town Hall circa 1900. Irvington’s Board of Trustees President at the time — the title is mayor today — Dr. William F. Drake was instrumental in the 1880 birth of the department. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection.)

Drake’s introduction of the petition to the Board of Trustees paid off as the structure of an Irvington Hose and Fire Engine Company began to take shape on April 15, 1880.

While it was on Drake’s watch that the Irvington Fire Department breathed its first breath, his personal story was a remarkable one. Born in Natick, Massachusetts in 1819, he studied medicine and practiced medicine for a total of 20 years in Boston, London and finally New York before giving up practice in 1861 and joining his brothers’ investment firm Drake Brothers on Wall Street.

He invested in the newly organized American District Telegraph Co. and was soon named general manager. He later became general manager and superintendent of the New York Stock Exchange before his death from heart disease in Manhattan in 1886.

This image from the pages of an 1873 issue of the weekly Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper shows the Drake Brothers investment firm near Wall Street in the building at bottom left. The illustration shows brokers and investors panicking at the close of the New York Stock Exchange at noon Saturday, Sept. 20, 1873. (Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1873)

Before Drake purchased Glenarm, it was briefly the property of Union Army Civil War Brigadier General Catharinus Putnam Buckingham, a special aide to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton from 1862 to 1863. Buckingham may be best known as the officer who, on Nov. 9, 1862, delivered the order from President Abraham Lincoln to Major General George B. McClellan relieving McClellan of command of the Union Army of the Potomac in favor of Major General Ambrose Burnside. 

Civil War Union General Catharinus Putnam Buckingham (March 14, 1808-Aug. 30, 1888) was appointed assistant adjutant general of the Ohio Commissary in May 1861 and was promoted to adjutant general in July. A year later, in July 1862, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general of U.S. Volunteers and was assigned to special duty as assistant to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton at the War Department in Washington, D.C. He lived in Irvington at his Glenarm estate at what is now Memorial Park from 1865  to 1868 while working in the grain elevator business in Brooklyn after resigning from the military in February 1863. (Matthew B. Brady photo, ca. 1860, Library of Congress)

McClellan failed in his attempt at revenge, falling to the Republican Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election as the Democratic Party nominee.

Buckingham was born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1808, the grandson of French and Indian War colonial officer and Revolutionary War General Rufus Putnam (1738-1824). Putnam was instrumental in the settling of the Northwest Territory in present-day Ohio following the American victory in the Revolutionary War and became known as the "Father of the Northwest Territory."

Buckingham, whose mouthful of a name led to him being known as “C.P.,” won appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Class of 1829 in 1825. He was a member of a freshman or “plebe” class that included future Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, Johnston, the Army of the South. Lee would go on to surrender his force to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Courthouse, Va. Johnston oversaw the largest surrender of the war on April 26, 1865 to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman at Bennett Place in Durham Station, N.C., agreeing to disband the forces from North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Buckingham, Lee and classmate Charles Mason were among the top scoring graduates in their West Point class. In fact, Mason, who quit the military in 1831, remains the No. 1 graduate in Academy history, followed closely by No. 2 Lee. Mason graduated with a total of 1,995.5 points out of a possible 2,000 (99.8 percent). Lee 1,966.5 (99.3 percent).

Buckingham finished either third or sixth in the Class of 1829 — accounts vary, but was so outstanding academically that he was named to teach mathematics at West Point a year after graduating. He later taught math and science (called natural philosophy at the time) at Kenyon College in Ohio from 1833-36, when he went on to own and run the Kokosing Iron Works in Knox County, Ohio.

(For trivia buffs, the No. 3 all-time West Point grad was, and remains, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Class of 1903, with 2,424.12 out of a possible 2,470 points, or 98.1 percent. ... Mason made his mark as a civilian going on to become Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court.)

During the Civil War, Buckingham was primarily occupied with recruiting volunteers to serve in the Union Army and in 1863, at the request of Congress, he wrote a bill enabling the drafting of Union soldiers, a bill that was passed with little change to his original wording.

Buckingham, who had been involved in construction of grain elevators at the Illinois Central Railroad yard in Chicago before joining the Union Army, resigned his military commission in 1863 to reestablish that business, this time in Brooklyn, during which time, he established his Irvington estate.

He left Irvington for Chicago in 1868 to join two of his brothers in managing grain elevators he had built there at the dawn of the decade, eventually forming the Chicago Steel Works with them in 1873. He remained president of that company until his death 15 years later.

After Drake’s death, the property was sold to architect Alfred John Manning, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Great Britain, who already owned a small neighboring tract at the southwest corner of Station Road and South Broadway. Manning would design Irvington's Town Hall which was built in 1902. He incorporated the two properties into one. 

Manning married Elizabeth "Bessie" Rutter, daughter of New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Co. President James H. Rutter, of Irvington. The couple wed at St. Barnabas Church in Irvington in April 1885. Bessie's father passed away from complications of diabetes within two months of the wedding.

Daniel Gray Reid, who bought the Richmond Hill estate directly across Broadway from Glenarm, purchased and absorbed the complete Manning property sometime after 1908, the last year Mrs. Manning appeared to still own the northern 2.5 acres of the property (the lower park playground area today at the southeast corner of Station Road and South Broadway). The Mannings had been sued for mortgage delinquency in 1903 involvng an acre of their South Broadway property and both Alfred and Bessie were chased by creditors to court fairly regularly for several years thereafter. 

The Village of Irvington appears to have purchased what is now Memorial Park in an auction by Reid's heirs in 1928.

Memorial Park is pictured from its main baseball field abutting Dows Lane looking north towards the tennis courts in 1970. The fields pictured were once part of the estate of Dr. William F. Drake, who died in 1886. Drake's home would have been located in the vicinity of the second base bag on the main baseball field (pictured), and extending to the right, east. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection.)

MEMORIAL PARK, A LOOK BACK: Researching this story, the murky history of Memorial Park began to come into focus. The old Drake estate was used as a baseball field by local Irvington teams, including the Catholic Club which was affiliated with Immaculate Conception Church. It was the venue for games against other town-, church- and business-affiliated teams at least as early as 1922 when the property was owned by Reid. The venue was known as Mitchell Field at the time.

After the property's purchase by the village in 1928, planning included expanding the its facilities to include a football field for Irvington High School, then located on Main Street, site of today's middle school. Foes of the project were incensed when work began without a bidding process. Turns out the village's Board of Trustees and Mayor Matthew J. Murtha, whose backing of the purchase of the new park reportedly earned it the nickname "Murtha's Folly," were actually on site to OK the work when what they called a low-price offer was made to do it.

The park was known colloquially as the South Broadway Playfield for the better part of five years until it was renamed "Alexander Hamilton Park" in September 1933 to honor Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, father of Col. James Alexander Hamilton, Hamilton's third-born son, whose nearby South Broadway estate "Nevis" was named to honor his famous father's Caribbean island birthplace.

By July 1935, village Trustees revisited the naming issue and changed the name to Memorial Park. It was originally suggested that the name should be "George E. Duggan Memorial Park," honoring the only Village of Irvington police officer to be slain in the line of duty.

Duggan, a motorcyle patrolman, was shot and killed on South Broadway in 1929 by an absconding fugitive.

Bouresches, a French commune at Belleau Wood near the Marne River is shown after its liberation by American and French troops in June 1918. U.S. Marine Pvt. Philip Michael McGovern of Irvington was killed in action on June 11, 1918 during a successful Allied counterattack in the famed Battle of Belleau Wood that raged from June 1-June 26, 1918 and halted the Germans' spring offensive of 1918. We know that McGovern's 5th Regiment attacked for the first of five times on June 11 at 4 a.m., eventually being forced into hand-to-hand combat with bayonets and fists. McGovern was one of 1,811 Americans killed in the 26-day battle. The French were so impressed by the Marines' tenacity that they renamed Belleau Wood "Bois de la Brigade de Marine" — "Wood of the Marine Brigade" — at war's end. The 5th Regiment was awarded the Croix de guerre, the first iteration of what would become the famed Croix de Guerre, for valor. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Opponents thought it would be more appropriate to use the generic Memorial Park name to honor many Irvington residents deserving remembrance, including the 150-plus who had served in World War I, specifically the five who died during or in the immediate aftermath of that war. It was a remarkable number for a village with a population of only about 2,500 at the time.

The five dead soldiers included:

⬛ U.S. Marine Corps Pvt. Philip Michael McGovern, killed in action on June 11, 1918 at the Battle of Belleau Wood (notably, it is claimed, but not proven, that Marines were nicknamed "Devil Dogs" by their German counterparts after that battle for the ferocity and tenacity they displayed during it).

U.S. Marine Pvt. Philip Michael McGovern is shown in uniform c. 1918. He was killed in action on June 11, 1918. (Photo from publication posted online by Cathy O’Neill)

⬛ U.S. Army Sgt. Louis Bernard Kindervatter was erroneously listed as missing in action and presumed taken prisoner by German forces on July 19, 1918 — he remained listed as missing until May 1919. He was later reported by a returning military comrade to have been wounded in action on July 19, 1918, and to have died of those wounds in a hospital in Tours, France on Sept. 18, 1918. The non-profit American War Memorials Overseas organization reported in 2008 that Sgt. Kindervatter's remains were found in France in 1935, but not positively identified until 1936. At that time his remains were laid to rest in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, Departement de la Meuse, Lorraine, France next to Belleau Wood.

Sgt. Kindervatter's name remains etched on the Tablets of the Missing at the Buzancy Military Cemeter seven miles south of Soissons, France. Poignantly, it is misspelled Kindervater with one T instead of two. It is possible Kindervatter's remains were originally buried with those of other unidentified soldiers at Buzancy. The remains of 71 other unknown soldiers remain interred there.

⬛ U.S. Army Pvt. Frank Edward Farrell, 30, of Taxter Road in the rural hamlet of East Irvington (nicknamed Dublin at the time because of the number of Irish immigrants living there), died of an accidental gunshot wound while cleaning his weapon at a shooting range near Spartanburg, S.C., on March 15, 1918. 

Farrell, born on April 8, 1887 in Irvington, was a steam fitter for Manhattan heating contractor Frank M. Wear with offices at 206 E. 29th St. Farrell enlisted on July 28, 1917 and served in the 71st Infantry before transferring to the 105th Infantry. He was one of seven children raised by Patrick and Bridget Farrell, both Irish immigrants. Patrick was a gardener by trade, likely on one of the Gilded Age estates of the area. His mother, father, five sisters and brother survived him.

⬛ U.S. Army Sgt. John Donahue Kelly Jr., 23, of 18 South Dutcher St., who died of bronchial pneumonia at Camp Hancock, Ga., on Nov. 17, 1918. He was the son of John D. Kelly Sr., a carpenter who was elected to several terms as the village's Collector of Taxes, and Mary A. (Dinan) Kelly, a mother and homemaker. He had been born on Aug. 17, 1895. 

In civilian life, he worked as a junior clerk under pharmacist/proprietor John H. Barr at the Irvington Pharmacy, 46 Main St., southeast corner of South Dutcher and Main. He was also the recording secretary of the Irvington Fire Association, forerunner of today's Irvington Volunteer Fire Department. On June 5, 1917 he successfully sought exemption from the new federal military draft, claiming to be the sole support for three sisters all under age 12. Interestingly, the girls appear to have actually been 13, 12 and 7 and their father was alive, living in the home and apparently working. John Jr. was drafted, however, in July 1918, likely because his brother, James, had graduated from high school and was working to support the family and/or so was his father. Mother Mary (Dinan) Kelly had died in 1915, but it would appears that John Sr. was still working as a carpenter until he died in 1930 at about age 62.

⬛ U.S. Army Pvt. George Hazlett (sometimes mispelled Haslett), 30, of 30 Main St., (he listed 3 N. Cottenet St. — the southeast corner of Main and North C streets as it was called at the time — as his address when he enlisted), who died in France of influenza and bronchial pneumonia on Nov. 12, 1918 — and was buried at a U.S. Army Cemetery in France. 

His remains were later returned to Irvington and were re-interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. 

His father, Thomas, was an Irish immigrant who worked as a gardener, again likelly on one of the area's Gilded Age estates, who was 34 years older than his mother, Annie, an English immigrant who was 22 when George was born. George had three younger brothers, Harry, Robert and Thomas. Thomas served in World War I and survived. George was a plumber in civilian life. He was serving with the 1st Pioneer Infantry Regiment which lost 110 men in battle and 47 others, including Hazlett, to disease.

Artist Frank Earle Schoonover painted The Battle of Belleau Wood in 1919. It
depicts the U.S. Marines in action in the battle that raged from June 1-26, 1918 and lives on in USMC lore. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Privates Hazlett and Kelly died quite likely as a result of the Spanish influenza pandemic that swept through battle-torn Europe and came to the U.S. with returning service members.

French artist Georges Scott created this illustration, American Marines in Belleau Wood (1918), for French magazine Illustrations. It shows U.S. Marines on attack and taking German prisoners (hands raised, left). (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

FINAL DAYS OF IRVINGTON NEIGHBORS McGOVERN & KINDERVATTER

Private McGovern was 18 when he enlisted in the Marine Corps on April 26, 1917, less than a month after the U.S. Congress declared war on Imperial Germany. He was in the first wave of U.S. troops to arrive in France as part of the American Expeditionary Forces in late June 1917. The AEF made history as the first American soldiers deployed overseas to defend foreign territory.

McGovern was the eldest of seven children — and only son — born to Irish immigrant parents and naturalized U.S. citizens Michael McGovern and wife Mary (Kiernan) McGovern. Michael McGovern was a coachman after his 1880s arrival in Irvington, later a delivery driver for a local grocery store and by the time of his son's enlistment a gardener on the Gregory estate on the south side of Harriman Avenue directly east of the eventual Richmond Hill estate.

The McGoverns were living on Barney Lane, today's Station Road, at the time of Philip's death, but Philip had spent his earlier teen years at 88 Main Street, site of the Irvington Volunteer Fire Department today, opposite Town Hall. 

This list, published in the Friday, July 4 1919 edition of The Irvington Gazette newspaper, shows the names of all the U.S. military members from Irvington who served during the Great War as well as several who served in relief roles. The dead are marked by asterisks. Please click on image to view larger, more legible type.

For the record, while Pvt. McGovern and Sgt. Kindervatter died within 10 miles of each other in France, quite likely less than that, Kindervatter and McGovern lived one door apart on Main Street across from Irvington Town Hall in their teens, Kindervatter at 84 Main, McGovern at 88 Main. Kindervatter's home still stands, directly east of the Irvington Volunteer Ambulance Corps headquarters.

American Expeditionary Forces commander Maj. Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing pins the Distinguished Service Cross on Lt. Col. J. M. Cullison, commander of the 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division, in France on Sept. 7, 1918. Pictured with his back towards the camera is Maj. Gen. Charles P. Summerall, the 1st Division's commander.. Those three officers commanded Irvington hero Louis B. Kindervatter who died a the Battle of Soissons on July 19, 1918. (National Archives and Records Administration, U.S. Army War College Historical Section, World War I Branch, Wikimedia Commons public domain)

Like McGovern, Louis B. Kindervatter was a volunteer. He reported for duty at the Army's Fort Slocum in New Rochelle on Jan 26. 1916. Originally a private, Kindervatter was promoted to corporal in October 1917 and to sergeant in January 1918. He was killed in the key Battle of Soissons, fought by American, British and French troops against the Germans from July 18-22, 1918. 

Like McGovern, Kindervatter was in the first wave of the American Expeditionary Forces to arrive in France. His regiment sailed with the Big Red One, simply known as the 1st Expeditionary Division at the time, on June 16, 1917. Those original American troops began training under the direction of AEF commander Maj. Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing. 

The Soissons campaign was part of the Allies' Aisne-Marne counter-offensive drawn up reverse gains by Imperial Germany made in its since-stalled spring offensive. The goal of the battle was to cut off the kaiser's two main Marne salient road and rail supply lines between Soisson and Chateau-Thierry. It would theoretically force the Germans to retreat and surrender their spring gains.

The battle was the turning point of the war. Germany went on the defensive for the rest of the war before the Nov. 11 armistice.

Sgt. Kindervatter was the youngest of three children and only son born to German immigrant father Henry. His mother Anna (Dale) Kindervatter was born in Illinois. Her father, Augustus, was a Union officer who fought in the Civil War. Her two uncles (her father's brothers) also fought against the Confederacy. Albert O. Dale was killed in action in June 1862. Her uncle Martin survived, as did her father.

Kindervatter was assigned to the 26th Infantry Regiment, Company H which was in turn attached during World War I to the U.S. Army's famed 1st Division, the so-called "Big Red One." The 26th remains attached to the Big Red One today and has its own nickname, Blue Spaders, from the term "Blauerspadern" used by the Germans to describe its distinctive regimental insignia.

At Soissons, Kindervatter and the 26th reached their objective on the 18th, the opening day of the battle, beginning at 4 a.m. and capturing the town of Missy-aux-Bois by 9 a.m. before being pinned down just shy of the Soisson to Chateau-Thierry Road by German machine gun fire.

The following morning, Sgt. Kindervatter's last day alive, the 26th crossed and cut off the road by 4:30, but was pinned down again by German fire. At 5 p.m. the 26th resumed its attack and advanced 1.83 miles, taking part in the capture of Ploisy.

At some point during that day, Sgt. Kindervatter was lost.

Kindervatter's father never learned his son's fate since Henry Kindervatter died on Jan. 26, 1919, before Louis' death was confirmed. Henry and Anna had abandoned Irvington and moved to Manhattan by that time, perhaps overwhelmed by the grief of losing their daughter, Ida, to pneumonia in late 1915 and the uncertainty of their son's battlefield fate.

Interestingly, Pvt. McGovern and Sgt. Kindervatter gave their lives on the same front about five weeks apart, McGovern's comrades ending the German spring offensive and Kindervatter's comrades driving the Germans onto the defensive for the rest of the war.

The two men died between five and 10 miles apart, and Kindervatter is buried at the foot of the hill on which stands the village McGovern helped capture, Belleau Wood. The Belleau Wood Battlefield is preserved as a memorial directly attached to the cemetery in which Kindervatter is buried.

Mayor Matthew J. Murtha broke a 2-2 tie vote to negate the Duggan Memorial Park name and the generic Memorial Park name passed by a 3-1 vote.

For the record, the bridge over the Metro North Railroad tracks from North Buckhout Street to River Road passing Matthiessen Park is the Patrolman George E. Duggan Memorial Bridge in Duggan's honor.

Irvington's fledgling American Legion Post 345 was named in honor of McGovern, the villages's first soldier killed in action in the World War, when it was founded on Sept. 5, 1919. The post was named "Philip McGovern Post 345, American Legion." 

The post held its first formal event to honor McGovern in November 1919, packing Irvington Town Hall for a ticketed dance featuring McGovern's family and more than 100 of the 151 Irvington residents who volunteered or were drafted into the war effort, both domestically and abroad.