Positively Pawling

by Jan Larraine Cox and photographs by David Cunningham, May 26, 2009

On my first approach to Pawling on Route 55, an old Mahican Indian hunting trail that ran from the Housatonic River to the Hudson, I’m greeted by significant landmarks: On the left is America’s oldest municipal nine-hole golf course, which was built by Pawling resident and New York senator John Dutcher in 1890; on the right, one finds Kane House, which served as George Washington’s headquarters in 1778, while he was planning key strategies to win the Revolutionary War. The town of Pawling was founded that same year, but the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) had settled there earlier, in 1730, and built the Oblong Friends Meeting House, which can still be seen today. “The Oblong” refers to the two-mile-wide strip of land that New York received in exchange for Connecticut’s Panhandle following a series of territorial disputes in the late 1600s.

The Quakers of the Oblong Friends Meeting are historically noteworthy because they abolished slavery almost 100 years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, on the grounds that subjugation of one’s neighbor runs counter to Christian virtues.

Just before the entrance to the village of Pawling stands best-selling author Norman Vincent Peale’s Center for Positive Thinking. The approach to life that Peale promoted through his book The Power of Positive Thinking, which has sold over 22 million copies, permeates the town of Pawling, where he lived with his family for nearly 50 years, and where his daughters Elizabeth and Margaret continue to be active in the community.

Other notables who’ve lived in Pawling include Governor Thomas Dewey, who lost a close popular vote to Harry Truman in the 1948 presidential race; publishing giant William Ziff, Jr. who, at 25 years of age, took control of his father’s Ziff-Davis Publishing Company and built it into a conglomerate; author, broadcaster, and world traveler Lowell Thomas, who created in Pawling a “History of Civilization” fireplace out of beautiful stones gathered and donated by presidents and celebrities from around the world at the clubhouse of the Quaker Hill Country Club. Today’s residents include broadcaster Sally Jesse Raphael, actor James Earl Jones, and former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas Hoving.

GROWTH SPURT
Meeting Chamber of Commerce volunteer president Peter Cris near the railroad stop at the McKinney & Doyle eatery, I quickly surmise this is a center of activity for Pawling. Folks are busily coming and going from the restaurant, which is owned and operated by local Shannon McKinney, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America.