History

The Sweet Homestead endured as the domestic and working center of the family farm for three generations between 1845 and 1923. The land was purchased in 1841 and was originally part of the Livingston Manor. The farmhouse and barns were built in circa 1845 by Fyler D. Sweet and Dorothea Sweet as part of a 240-acre diversified farm. Fyler and Dorothea Sweet had nine children and the Greek Revival farmhouse was built to accommodate a large family.

Fyler D. Sweet (1808-1889)

Over 48 years, Fyler Sweet built and operated a successful family farming enterprise based on diversified cash crops including oats, hay, rye, potato and Indian corn (a crop adopted from the native Mahican people), as well as wool and butter - in addition to the family’s subsistence crops. Notably, by 1858 Fyler’s eldest son, Hoffman Sweet (1830-1910), owned and operated the Sweet Hotel in Copake Flats. In 1870, widowed daughter Betsey Sweet Sherman (1834-1912) and her only child, two-year old Frank Sherman (1868-1938) joined Fyler’s household where he lived for most of his adult life with his wife, mother and two children.

Frank Sherman (1866-1938)

In 1888, the farm was passed on to Frank Sherman at age 20 and his wife Nannie Miller (1866-1959) a year prior to Fyler’s death. He developed and operated the enterprise as a dairy farm until 1923. During Sherman’s lifetime, agriculture in Columbia County was evolving from diversified farming to specialized production of fruit and dairy in response to the growth of urban markets made possible by the expansion of the railroad. Advances in dairy husbandry began in the 1880s with the adoption of the modern corn silage and the emergence of the iconic silo. Sherman was an early proponent of “scientific farming” and led “Copake in the matter of the silo”. The early 20th century was an era of progressive reform in the U.S. in response to industrialization and monopolies when interest in cooperatives intensified. Sherman was a founding member and leader in both the local Grange and the local Farm Bureau, organizations that were pioneers in spreading cooperative principles into agriculture. Under Sherman’s leadership, early accomplishments of the Copake Grange included supporting the New York State Grange in sponsoring an Agricultural College at Cornell University, establishing the Dairyman’s League Cooperative, and establishing the county’s Farm Bureau.

 In 1923 and with no land heirs, Frank Sherman at age 57 sold the farm to Dr. Frank E. Miller of New York City for use as a gentlemen’s country home. The 1930 Federal Census shows that Frank was living in a non-farm residence in nearby Ancram, New York with his wife Nannie and daughter Harriet. Frank died in 1938 and is buried at the E and M Church Cemetery in the hamlet of Copake alongside his wife Nannie, daughter Harriet, and nearby his parents, Betsey Sweet Sherman and Ebenezer Sherman, and grandparents, Fyler D. and Dorothea Sweet.