While looking over a list of old requests here at the blog, we came across quite a few for more info on "an Indian mystic who lived in the village for a time" and his connection to the remains of a house above the village's Duck Pond.
Numerous sources indicate that the mystic was Meher Baba (sometimes spelled Mehar) and he was the guest of
Croton playwright Margaret Mayo etal. Click on the photos and links.According to the Women Film Pioneers Project section on Mayo:
"As a resident of Croton-on-Hudson, Mayo was active in environmental and other community issues. In 1932 she arranged for the Eastern mystic Meher Baba to reside for a year in a fieldstone house on her estate, according to the New York Times, a gesture of hospitality reflecting her attraction to the spiritual, thirty years after her first publication in 1901, Our Fate and the Zodiac: An Astrological Autograph Book (N2)."
For more about Meher Baba, click here.
To see the ruins above the Duck Pond, click here.
For much more about Margaret Mayo, courtesy of The Croton Historical Society and more, click here.
For more about The Croton Historical Society, click here.
Lots of strange stuff in Croton, then and now, lol!
ReplyDeleteThe ruins above the Duck Pond have always fascinated me. Th In the 1930s that would uld have been a great location for an "estate." Thanks for posting the item. I wonder what else was on the "estate."
ReplyDeleteSusan Yates
The house over the Duck Pond belonged to Margaret Mayo’s mother, and burned down in 1926. Miss Mayo’s house was at 1 Crest Street, and is still there. Here’s a note from the “Fire” chapter:
ReplyDeleteGomay Realty Company Among Margaret Mayo’s papers is a typewritten document with some handwritten notes, “Gomay Realty Company, Harmon- on-Hudson, New York” with a handwritten date of 1940. The document lists properties by section, block, lot, dimensions, location, buildings, and assessed values by town (Cortlandt) and village (Croton on Hudson). It gives details for each building, including name, description, rental, assessed value, and taxes. For Hill Top Bungalow, the entry says “Section 42, Block B, Lots 77 & 78. Building burned—some value still left in foundations.” A handwritten note adds, “Burned; no rental”.
Some people have been directed to a stone ruin on Crest Street above the Duck Pond (formerly Spring Lake) in Croton as the 1931 fire site. This house was the residence of Margaret Mayo’s mother, Elizabeth Mayo. It burned down on March 13, 1926. It was a huge house, a real show place on Crest Street, according to research by a local historian, Carl Oechsner. It is described on the Gomay document just as “Foundations”. Though both the Harmon and Croton fire departments were called, neither could pump water to save the house because the hydrants were frozen, according to the newspaper account, “Fine Home at Harmon Burns”, Peekskill Evening Star, Peekskill, New York, March 16, 1926.
Marc Cheshire, who along with Carl Oechsner is the creator of “Croton Friends of History” website. He is now village historian for Croton-on-Hudson. He and Carl know about the ruin above the Duck Pond and its history. One of them sent the article, which Carl said that the house was a real show place. The author of the article is confused between Elizabeth and Margaret Mayo, as evidenced by the last sentence.