Page 46 - Dutchess Tourism 2024

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DUTCHESS COUNTY DESTINATION GUIDE
Poughkeepsie
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
DUTCHESS COUNTY
HUDSON RIVER
FISHKILL
Origin: English
Origin: English, Lenape
Origin: Dutch
Dutchess County is named after Mary of Modena, then Duchess of York
and wife of the future King James
II of England. The county’s name is derived from the archaic, 17th-century spelling of “duchess.” In 1683, Royal Governor Thomas Dongan established the original 12 counties of New York, naming them after the aristocratic titles of the royal family.
Henry Hudson, an Englishman working for the Dutch East India Company, sailed up the river that now bears his name in 1609, laying claim to the region for the Dutch Republic. By the time European immigrants settled along the Hudson, the river had been home for centuries to the indigenous Wappinger people and other members of the Algonquin Federation. The southern half of the Hudson River’s 315-mile course from the Adirondack Mountains to New York Harbor is an estuary (a brackish body of water that forms where the freshwater of a river and the saltwater of the ocean come together). The ebb and flow of the tide makes the arm
of the sea run both north and south, which led the native Lenape people to call it the Muhheakantuck, or “the river that flows both ways.”
The name Fishkill is derived from two Dutch words: Vis (meaning “fish”) and Kill (meaning “creek, stream or water channel”). Fishkill was settled by the Dutch in 1714.
POUGHKEEPSIE
The town of LaGrange is named
after the estate in northern France owned by Gilbert du Motier — better known as the Marquis de Lafayette. A major general under George Washington in the Continental Army, the Marquis de Lafayette lived at “Chateau de la Grange-Bléneau” (“La Grange,” as it was later known) from 1799 until his death in 1834. Lafayette visited Dutchess County
in September 1824 as part of his farewell tour, offering inspiration
for the town’s name.
Origin: Wappinger
The Wappinger tribe named this area Uppuqui, meaning “reed-covered lodge,” along with ipis (meaning “little water”) and ing (meaning “place”). This all culminated in Uppuqui-ipis-ing, which translates to “the reed-covered lodge by the little water place.” Variations of the name included “Pokeepsing,” “Poughkeepsing”
and finally, “Poughkeepsie.”
LAGRANGE
Origin: French