Sep 8, 2007

New life for Garrison House as couple takes over landmarkBy Michael RandallRecordOnline.com

Fort Montgomery — Holly and Bob Gokey always looked longingly at the yellow house on Route 9W as they drove past.

“I always said to my husband that if that house ever was for sale, I would buy it,” Holly said.This year, it went on the market, and in February they bought it.

What they bought isn’t just any little yellow house by the side of the road. They bought a piece of history. They bought the Garrison House.

And now it’s going to become a bed-and-breakfast-style inn. And the big red barn out back? That’s where the luncheonette will go some day.

This will be the first time the public will be admitted to the historic part of this home where local figures in the American Revolution once lived.

The Garrison family built the original part of the house in 1751. In 1777, Isaac Garrison and his son Beverly were captured by British soldiers while trying to deliver supplies to Fort Montgomery, which was under siege.

The fort fell, but it was the colonists’ scrappy fighting there and elsewhere along the Hudson River valley that helped prevent the British plan to capture New York and divide the colonies.

One of the home’s post-Revolutionary boarders was Margaret “Molly” Corbin, who was wounded in battle manning her husband’s cannon after he was killed. Disabled, she was granted a lifetime half-pay pension, and is buried in the West Point Cemetery.

Over the years, additions were made to the house. The Chimney Corner Tea House, the only part of the house ever open to the public before, operated in the front addition in the early 20th century.

Now, if everything falls into place for the Gokeys, the Garrison House will enter a new phase in its history.

Holly’s already opened a gift shop in the old Tea House, where she sells sunglasses, local history books, candles, figurines, postcards, birdhouses made by local artisans and other arts-and-crafts items.

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