Today, Germantown is under pressure to new residential developments. Major national events like the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic have intensified peoples’ desire to move from the urban to rural.

Germantown’s fairly centralized location between Albany, NY, Boston, MA, and New York, NY makes it desirable for those wanting a change of pace. The majestic Catskill Mountains, which come closest to the Hudson River across from Germantown, often cause newcomers to fall in love with the scenery.

In 2006, Germantown passed a new comprehensive plan that addressed the land’s inability to accept additional residential well-and-septic systems. An extensive condominium development proposed for Lower Main Street, which drew much opposition, was scrapped during the Great Recession.

A Dollar General store proposal in the late-2010s received even more significant opposition. The Dollar General project resulted in a lawsuit — a proxy war between long-term residents and relative newcomers — that eventually reached the NYS Supreme Court. Ultimately, Dollar General won the suit.

The Germantown Library, previously confined to small spaces in the current and prior Town Halls, opened its existing home in February 2008. The Germantown Central School District completed a substantial addition in 2002 and another in the late 2010s.

The Germantown Fire Company was organized in 1908 in the middle of a decade-long outburst of notable fires throughout town. Harry George, Jay C. Moore, and George R. Sharpe held office for long stretches, serving 62 years as Town Supervisors. In 1911, a dock for steamboats was built in Cheviot.

In 1923, a fire (known as the Great Fire) started under the Grange Hall bandstand, consuming the building and seven others in the heart of Main Street. In 1924, the Germantown High School opened and eventually absorbed other local districts. The ice industry in the town declined in the first quarter of the century. Many public roads were improved, some rerouted, and some abandoned entirely. Uniform naming of roads came into effect sometime after 1950.

The Half-Moon Anchorage was decommissioned in 1958. Passenger rail service to Germantown ended in the late 1950s. The last Germantown train station was decommissioned in 1961. Agriculture became more uneconomical for a variety of reasons. Former farms eventually returned to the forest or fell victim to the builder’s backhoe. In the final quarter of the 20th-century, Germantown became a popular retreat for the wealthy from NYC and elsewhere.

Palatine, Cheviot, and Lasher Parks were established quickly between 1978 and 1983. Roe Jan Park was established later in the 1980s. Upon the death of Preservationists Ernst and Friedl Ekert in 1989, the 1767 Reformed Parsonage was bequeathed to the town. The town developed a sewer district along Hover Avenue and Main Street as part of the building of Palatine Manor in the late 1990s.

The early 1800s saw the influx of several West Camp and Kingston Dutch families, including Clum, Overbaugh, DeWitt, and several others. Many prominent men in town affairs were Democrats, particularly the Young America faction, though this would change rapidly after the Civil War.

In the early 1800s, the Reformed Church relocated to cemetery hill. In 1805, Reverend Valentine Rudiger Fox sold the Reformed Parsonage on Maple Avenue (circa 1767) to Maria Ten Broeck Delamater, sister-in-law of the former long-time minister, Gerard Daniel Cock.

In the early 1810s, a vote within the Lutheran Congregation prompted the church to relocate to Viewmont, where it remains active to this day. On March 26, 1845, nine Germantown residents drowned in a rowboat accident off of East Camp Landing (today called Cheviot).

The Hudson River Railroad first ran through Germantown in October 1851, connecting the town more easily to Albany and NYC. However, river transport persisted.

By the mid-1800s, a small but stable African American neighborhood emerged along Maple Avenue comprised of descendants of locally enslaved people. Research by Bard College archaeology students is uncovering the stories of these people — Maria Ten Broeck Delamater and the Clow, Sharp, Robinson, and Persons families.

The Half-Moon Anchorage and Recreation Center was built in 1879 at “New Germantown Dock” in North Germantown. Fruit production of all varieties was the primary industry though many men also made their living as boatmen, ice harvesters, carpenters, and other trades.

In 1710, Colonial New York Governor, Robert Hunter, purchased 6,000 acres of land on behalf of the English Crown from Robert Livingston to provide subsistence for the Palatine German refugees indentured to produce turpentine, pitch, and resin for the British Navy.

Unlike the English, Philip Otterness says that the Palatines’ ‘understanding and appreciation of Indian culture increased’ over time (Otterness, 2004: 118). Furthermore, Reverend Haeger of the Reformed Chruch reportedly ‘baptized an Indian who “spoke Dutch, and thus made his confession of faith publicly before the [Reformed] Congregation” in East Camp (Otterness, 2004: 118).

In 1712, the Crown’s financial support for the project ended, prompting many Palatines to move to the Schoharie Valley to establish several stable communities. These Palatines became friends with the Mowaks, members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Additional Palatine families left East Camp over the following years to settle in other parts of the Hudson Valley, the Schohaire River Valley, and Pennsylvania.

In 1740, the remaining Palatines in East Camp received property titles from the English Crown. Johann Thiel (Diell) Rockefeller, Sr., one of the later Palatines to arrive in the 1750s and 60s, heavily influenced Germantown’s economy and contributed to the development of homes and businesses along Main Street.

In October 1777, during the height of the American war for Independence, British soldiers burned the Clermont (Livingston) mansion, and Continental soldiers briefly stationed themselves near the old churches. Oral histories from several Germantown families tell the soldiers were marching and burying their silver nearby for protection.

Before European contact, Germantown was part of the traditional homelands of the Mahican and Wappinger-Lenape People. The Roeliff Jansen Kill marked the boundaries between their transitional lands, though travel between the two areas was likely common.

In 1683, Robert Livingston the Elder, seeking to establish a manor of his own, purchased land at the mouth of the Roeliff Jansen Kill from the Mahican people, and in 1686 he received a royal patent for 160,000 acres of land comprising the lower third of present-day Columbia County.

In the 1690s, Dirck Wesselse Ten Broeck (1638-1717) purchased a small portion of Livingston’s Manor along the Roeliff Jansen Kill, which included the northern of Germantown. On the eastern (or north) side of the Kill, Ten Broeck built his Bouwerie (‘farm’ in Dutch), which still stands on Buckwheat Road in the town of Clermont.