And it is said that,
by a mere accident, she just missed contributing a name to the list of
presidents of the United States. The omitted candidate was Nathaniel
P. Talmadge. He could have had the vice-presidential candidacy, the
story goes, in 1840, but would not take it. If he had accepted it, he
would have gone into history not merely as United States senator
from New York and afterwards Governor of Wisconsin territory, but as
president in John Tyler's place.
"In 1844, the New York State Fair was held here somewhere east of what
is now Hooker Avenue. It was an occasion thought important enough then
to be pictured and reported in the London _Illustrated News_. Two
years after the telegraph wires were put up in this city, before they
had yet reached the city of New York. Considering the fact that Prof.
S. F. B. Morse, the telegraph inventor, had his residence here, this
incident was not wholly inappropriate.
"The advent in 1849 of the _Hudson River Railroad_, which was an
enterprise in its day of startling courage and magnitude, constituted
a special epoch in the history of Poughkeepsie and the Hudson River
towns.
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