Week of April 4
April 3, 1875 – 150 YEARS AGO
Rockland County Journal
AROUND HOME
☞ Gone out for the season—the fire in the grocery stores, and the sitters go mourning about the streets.
☞ These would be nice nights for moonlight walks if the walking was only good and it was only moonlight.
☞ D. E. Felter & Co., Rockland Lake, have been building three handsome ice-wagons for the Ridgewood Ice Co.
☞ We have heard of no book peddlers or lightning-rod gents being frozen to death in this vicinity during the past winter.
☞ Three hundred tons of Rockland county ice were shipped on Thursday, 25th ult., by steamer Crescent City, for Havana.
☞ Dedication and entertainment at new S. of T. Hall next Wednesday evening. Invitations issued by the members to their friends.
☞ The glacial deposits on the south side of Main Street are likely to remain all summer unless our Street Commissioner helps them off.
☞ The spring thaw has gullied out deeply many of our streets, and the expense of getting them in order will be no trifling matter.
☞ One of the benefits of macadamizing is that now while the bottom has fallen out of ordinary roads, our Broadway is in a dusty condition.
April 2, 1925 – 100 YEARS AGO
Pearl River News
OLD CIVIL WAR VETERAN DIES AT TAPPAN
Hermann Hausmann, of Tappan, died on Tuesday the 24th, in his 84th year. He was a veteran of the Civil War and was one of the first of 50,000 Germans to respond to Lincoln’s call for volunteers. He was a member of Co. E., 8th Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He served under Col. Bleuker and General Sieger. Burial was on Friday, the 27th, from the home of his daughter, Mrs. Emma Hardie, of 180 East 31st Street, Kew Gardens. Besides the daughter there are four sons living.
NYACK WOMEN PLEASED AT PEARL RIVER SCHOOL
A bus load of members of the Parent-Teachers’ Association accompanied the Nyack basketball team to Pearl River last Thursday night and not only were they enthusiastic over the showing of the home boys but were especially pleased with the Pearl River Building.
The visitors were taken on a tour of inspection by the principal and the large class rooms, the well equipped gymnasium with its showers, the excellent ventilation system, the general sanitary conditions, its fine lavatories, assembly hall, and commercial rooms.
“When one knows how the local team has been handicapped by lack of gymnasium facilities it is wonderful that our basketball team is so good,” a member of the association said.
April 2, 1975 – 50 YEARS AGO
The Journal News
CONVICTION APPEALED — HE IS A “PAUPER”
A disbarred Spring Valley attorney and former rabbi says he will appeal his conviction for mail fraud in a $200,000 insurance swindle on grounds that he is “a pauper.”
Louis R. Wolfish, 43, was sentenced Monday to 3½ years in prison for faking his own death and living on the proceeds of his life insurance paid to his wife in Spring Valley.
His indictment on the fraud charge was made public 13 months ago in New York City after an 18-month search for the former attorney by federal officers and Interpol agents.
Wolfish was finally discovered in Passaic, N.J. where he was living as Rabbi Hyam Whale, spiritual leader of that community’s Ahavas Israel Synagogue.
An Israeli official testified during the trial that Wolfish had forged his own death certificate in that country.
Upon his return to the U.S., Wolfish applied for and was hired as rabbi to the orthodox Passaic congregation and collected the insurance money through his wife, Marcia, as her second husband.
At the time of his conviction, a member of the Passaic congregation called Wolfish “a beautiful speaker and a charming personality with youthful good looks that were completely disarming.”
The father of six children, Wolfish is free on $30,000 bail pending the appeal in federal court.
This Week in Rockland (#FBF Flashback Friday) is prepared by Clare Sheridan for the Historical Society of Rockland County. © 2025 by The Historical Society of Rockland County. #FBF Flashback Friday may be reprinted only with written permission from the HSRC. To learn about the HSRC’s mission, upcoming events or programs, visit www.RocklandHistory.org or call (845) 634-9629.
