An Overview of the Idea Behind the Title: “The Ghosts of Joe Shea’s Farm.”

 

My father was among a dying breed of Hudson Valley dairymen clinging to old ways in the suburbs of New York City. He represented the 4th generation to occupy the family farm purchased by our Irish ancestor Joseph Shea in 1866. Some 27 years ago I began writing down my father’s stories with the intent to assemble a chronicle. I wanted to see if I could account for the full history of this enchanted place that had somehow survived that I was committed to preserving. I began to see myself connected to an oral tradition linked back to ancient times.

One of the most intriguing stories my father carried forward from the past—the one that has caused me to spend the last decade with my head buried in the Revolutionary War archives—is a legend said to have been told to Joseph Shea upon his purchase of the property by the farm’s previous owner. It was said a spy was hanged from a tree in the Back Lot of the farm during the Revolutionary War and buried somewhere along a stone wall. My investigation of this has been analogous to opening Pandora’s Box. Let’s just say Joe’s Shea’s Farm is a place where big secrets (aside from the question of a summary hanging) have long been kept. Let’s also say my discoveries have made certain people a little uncomfortable. Whether you believe the legend has been verified or not, its investigation has acted as a portal to a lost chapter of American history, a rather sinister and problematic one I will say.

Where Morton Pennypacker rewrote the Revolutionary War story on Long Island, and where Adrian Leiby reframed the story in the Hackensack Valley of New Jersey, I’d like to think this project will bring into closer focus the complicated political story of the Revolutionary War in the Mid-Hudson Valley in a similar way as those works. At the center of it all is the untold story of the loyalist spy network operated by New York City Mayor David Mathews, an Orange County native, in coordination with his brother Fletcher, then living upon a massive estate here, a portion of which became Joe Shea’s Farm.

—James Robert Flannery Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.