... Andrew Beers was one of the first to move from Newtown to the Hobart area. He was well educated, being a lawyer and a land surveyor. He was a famous almanac maker, publishing various almanacs annually from 1783 until the 1820s. He is listed in the 1790 census (as of August 1790) in Newtown, Fairfield, Connecticut, so it would seem that he arrived in the Hobart area sometime during 1791 or 1792. According to Munsell’s 1880 History of Delaware County, Mr. Beers lived at the corner of the River Street and Pearl Street intersection (present-day 250 River Street). Near this location, he is credited with building the first lower dam in 1792 and then building the first grist mill at the lower-dam site in 1793. In April 1793, he was elected the first Town Supervisor for the newly formed Town of Stamford. By 1794, as referenced in ads in old publications, Mr. Beers had established a surveying office at his dwelling-house in Stamford, Ulster County, to furnish accurate maps of the Western Territory for new settlers. In May 1796, it was reported in the New Hampshire Journal under Danbury, Connecticut, news that the new dwelling house at New Stamford of Andrew Beers was entirely consumed by fire. Mr. Beers was an active Episcopalian church member. He was a founding member of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Hobart, and he donated the land on Beers’ Pine Hill on which the Church was built. He also founded the first fraternal organization in the area, an organization for masons chartered on April 12, 1796, as the St. Andrews Lodge, F. & A. M., No. 48 (the Lodge was re-designated as No. 45 in 1819; the Lodge’s charter was forfeited in 1832; the Lodge was rechartered in 1853 as St. Andrews Lodge No. 289 and existed until 1996). Mr. Beers acquired a substantial amount of land in the area; by the mid–1790s, he may have owned practically all of the land that comprises the present-day Village of Hobart. A collection of old papers, materials, and correspondence of Andrew Beers (Andrew’s documents start in the 1790s), his son Joseph D. Beers, and
other family members and relatives is available for review at the Yale University Library (see Lewis Perry Curtis Family Papers, Collection MS 587, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; Lewis Perry Curtis was a
descendant of Andrew Beers). Hobart Historical Society member Jim Meagley engaged a graduate student at Yale University in August 2011 to look through some of these materials, which provided some interesting information.
A map from about 1801 was made by Andrew Beers (according to former Town of Stamford historian Donald McPherson). The map depicts the village area around St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. In addition to St. Peter’s Church, this map shows nine buildings on both sides of the river—four on the northern/western side of the river in the Harpersfield
section (all in today’s business district area) and five on the southern/ eastern side of the river in the Stamford section. A number of streets are shown and named; some of these streets no longer exist and some of the names are no longer used. Almost all of these early streets have been found in references in property deeds dated in the early 1800s.
The wife of Andrew Beers, Sarah Gunn Beers, died in April 1803 at the age of 45. She was buried at that time on land belonging to Andrew Beers; this land was later donated to St. Peter’s Church for use as a burying ground and ultimately became part of the Village’s Locust Hill Cemetery. The grave of Sarah Beers is the oldest grave in the Locust Hill Cemetery. Andrew Beers remarried in November 1804 in Danbury, Connecticut, and most likely moved away from Hobart (although he may have still owned land in Hobart until he died in 1824). ...
