Pawling, NY was calling me

IN 1787, 230 years ago this very week, our forefathers wrote the Constitution of the United States of America. To honor our God-blessed country, I went to see where we were born.

Upstate, Dutchess County, 90 minutes away as the crow or a Cadillac SUV flies, sits Pawling, NY. Besides boasting USA’s oldest golf course, and forgetting bears and coyotes as current residents, it has housed Norman Vincent Peale, James Earl Jones, Sally Jessy Raphael, Edward R. Murrow, even two-name people like Lowell Thomas and Soledad O’Brien. In the 18th century, called Fredericksburg, it was home to the Continental Army. Still existing is the house where Gen. George Washington plotted strategy for containing the British — long before Netflix’s “The Crown” and before John Lithgow grabbed an award for playing Sir Winston.

Considering Hudson Valley the key to victory, Washington established a line. One side ran from Danbury to the Hudson. Washington’s army of 13,000 (clearly avoiding the bridge named in his honor or they’d still be stuck in Teaneck, NJ) bivouacked around space called Purgatory Hill.

Nearby what served as the hospital for wounded soldiers lay Dr. Fallon Lane, headquarters for the top military surgeon. Historians recall a knoll where troops gathered in 1778. Veteran cemeteries from the 1700s get respected as hallowed ground.

The area’s history, es- tablished earlier by the first Quakers to arrive in 1728, predates the Revolution. 1742 saw NY’s first Friends meeting. A Meeting House Road memorial plaque identifies it as a place of worship. Stone walls outlined properties.

1767 lists their primary move against slavery. Quakers paid identical work wages to slaves as to all others and dug underground tunnels to serve as their protection. Preaching it is not consistent with Christianity to buy and sell our fellow men, Quakers established this new land’s first action to halt the horrific process in 1782.

Also existing is a flagpole dedicated to the memory of George Washington. Would that today’s nation enshrined the same patriotism.