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#TBT Harry L. and Adele Dow Sisco Family (1959). Image appeard in a feature in the Journal News in February, 1979.

HARRY L. SISCO by Isabelle Savell © South of the Mountains 1976-04, Vol. 20, No. 2

It was a short obituary. Harry L. Sisco, a lifelong resident of Rockland County had died, leaving his wife, Adele, and five children. But in South Rockland, where he had lived all his life, memories going back decades and generations began to pour forth. The Siscos have been part of Rockland’s history since long before it was a county. Dr. Carl Nordstrom, the Rockland historian, thinks they may be "the single largest black family in Rockland County", and one of the oldest. It is possible, he thinks, they were descendants of a sailor, named Jan Francisco, who was on a Spanish or Portuguese ship captured by the New Amsterdam Dutch in 1643.

In Rockland history, the earliest Siscos appear in a survey report on the Cheesecocks Patent by Charles Clinton, who noted seeing in 1739 somewhere near the present day Airmont the home of Samuel Francisco, a free Negro. The Siscos appear thereafter in various Rockland records, their names variously spelled. Eventually they gravitated to the southeasterly part of the county and became part of its history. Sometime, possibly before the Revolution, they were among a group of black farmers who settled on land just south of Palisades and now encompassed by the Palisades Interstate Park. They called their little community "The Mountains" also known as “Skunk Hollow”. 

Some Palisadians thought they came there to escape racial tensions in New York. Dr. Nordstrom thought they were drawn there because it was kind of no-man’s land, long claimed by both New York and New Jersey and there¬fore passed over by those looking for secure titles. In any event, the black settlers built houses, cleared and planted enough land to sustain themselves, erected what is believed to have been the first black church in Rockland County and next to it a cemetery. H. Archer Stansbury, an octogenarian of Closter Road, Palisades, recalls visiting the little church on festival days when there was a ceremony called "marching through the wilderness". After hymns and prayers in the church, the congregation did indeed march through the verdant, creation-fresh woods of the Palisades, returning enhanced and exalted to generous refreshments at the church.

The community endured until around 1915 and then vanished. Today there are left only shards and mouldering foundations. Still standing in the cemetery is the gravestone of Jane, the 14-day-old daughter of John and Jane Sisco, "who departed this life March 4, 1846". 

That the history of "The Mountains" survives at all is due in no small measure to Harry Sisco, his daughter, Mrs. Shirley Sisco Swann and his niece, Mrs. Frances Pierson of Piermont. In 1974 they assisted Dr. Nordstrom, Dr. Jacqueline Holland, the Rev. C. J. Ross of the Sparkill’s St. Charles A.M.E. Zion Church, Leonard Cooke and others, in reconstructing its story as well as that of the black community of the Sparkill area. Later Mrs. Pierson assembled and mounted two exhibitions at the Piermont Village Hall—photographs and artifacts relating to the blacks of the area, including the community called "The Mountains".

Priscilla Sisco Swann (L) and Frances Sisco Pierson (R).  Clipped from The Journal News,  04 Jun 1994, Sat,  Page 15

It seems probable there were Siscos in other parts of south Rockland. Frank Bertangue Green in his "History of Rockland County" (A. S. Barnes & Co., 1886) notes that early in the 1800’s a Negro wheelwright, whose daughter was a Mrs. Sisco of Piermont Avenue, Nyack, erected and ran a grist mill and a carding mill at Tappan Slote. Toward the end of the century, the Siscos appeared in the old Nyack and Piermont directories. Peter Siscoe, a laborer, was listed in Piermont in 1894 and Abram Sisco, a coachman of Sparkill in 1897. Abraham Sisco was Harry’s uncle. He became a trustee of St. Charles A.M.E. Zion Church.

The Siscos were living in Sneden’s Landing across from the Presbyterian church in the gray house now occupied by Harry and Dorothy Davis when Harry was born. He was the seventh of eight children. His father Sam, a coachman and barber, worked for some of the well-to-do families of the area —the Winthrop Gilmans, the Agnews and the Foxes. Sam’s children, among them Susan, Sadie, Lenore, and Harry, became an integral part of the life of the community. For a time, the family lived in "The Mountains’’, or, as it was sometimes called, "Skunk Hollow". Harry remembered playing as a boy in the old church which by that time was unused and going to ruin. When school was in session he and his brothers and sisters, in fair weather and foul, walked the dirt road euphemistically called "the Boulevard” from "The Mountains’’ to the Palisades School.

Eventually there came to "The Mountains" a spunky little girl named Adele Dow, great-granddaughter of Hanna Whitehead Oliver, an Iroquois Indian. Harry fell in love with her and on August 13, 1925 they were married by the Rev. R. F. Pile of St. Charles A.M.E. Zion Church. To them were born in the succeeding years, six children, of who five survive. The sixth, Ramon, died suddenly at the age of 21 soon after returning from service in the Korean War.

Frances Sisco (Pierson) and Adele Dow Sisco at the Blacksmith Tea Shop, 1928-1932, in uniform. Courtesy of the Alice Gerard Collection of the Palisades Free Library

The news of Harry’s death on February 28, 1976 set the whole community to reminiscing about him as though an era had passed for in myriad ways he had been a part of many lives. "He was more than a good man; he was an in­stitution," mused Mrs. Mildred Post Rippey. "He and his family knew their worth. They worked their way into our hearts.” Her mind went back to the little school in Palisades, built in 1860’s and now a community center, which she attended with Harry’s older sisters and, later, Harry. Every class day began with the children, in double seats, rising to salute the flag, march around the room, sing a hymn, say a prayer1, and then start classes. On Sundays, Mrs. Rippey remembered, many of the same children, Harry and his sisters among them, would assemble at the Presbyterian Church for Sunday School. One Easter Sunday, she and Susan Sisco were chosen to go through the community bearing Easter lilies to the sick.

Mr. Stansbury remembered Harry as the bugler of Boy Scout Troop No. 1 of Rockland County, which he organized on May 15, 1919. "Harry was a good Scout," he said. "He earned, and I remember giving him a good conduct badge." To Miss Emma Stewart came the memory of Harry as the boy who pumped the organ at the church on Sundays, first for Mrs. Lydia Post and later for Miss Stewart’s sister, Mrs. Everett Martine. For that chore, he received ten cents a week.

Mrs. Eric Gugler, one of the surviving children of Francois and Mary Lawrence Tonetti, the sculptors of Snedens Landing, recalled the Sisco family when they lived across from the Presbyterian Church.

"We played together, we grew up together, we put on plays together, we went to school together, and we all loved Harry’s twinkling eyes and beautiful smile,” she said.

It was the Fox families of Palisades with whom Harry was chiefly identified, however—Seth, Arthur, Miss Jenny, William, and in his last years, William’s widow, Mrs. Violet Fox. For almost a half century Harry served one or another of the families as caretaker, handyman, driving instructor, mechanic, snow plougher, philosopher, counsellor and friend. The adults respected and relied upon him. The children loved him, for Harry had a special no-nonsense rapport with them; he was their stern but unfailing ally. Elizabeth Fox, now Mrs. W. Arnold Finck, recalled that when winter snows came, the little Foxes would take to the long steep hills with their sleds, while Harry, driving a tractor with a flat, triangular wooden snowplow attached, went out to clear the roads. "Somehow,” she said, "Harry always managed to be at the bottom of the hill, ready to start up, just as we reached there on our sleds, so we never had to climb the hill.” Somehow, too, he kept an eye on them, whether they thought they needed it or not. Somehow, he had a sixth sense for danger or mischief or the need for communication or support. He counselled them sternly to obey their parents and to "straighten up and be somebody”.

"He was more successful than anybody else in talking sense into my head,” Dr. Donald Finck told his mother one day, a touch defiantly. To which Mrs. Finck replied smilingly, for she had also benefitted from Harry’s tutelage, "Yes, I expected him to.”

In their own children, Harry and his wife, Adele, instilled the same sense of personal worth and responsibility, with the following results:

Harry L. Sisco, Jr., is director of field services for Henderson Industries Automatic Weighing Systems, West Caldwell, N. J., and also assistant pastor of Berea Seventh Day Adventist Church, Nyack. 

Priscilla Sisco Swann, with an associate degree in applied science, is em­ployed by the Rockland County Health Department in public health education. She is also secretary-bookkeeper for the Seventh Day Adventist Westchester Area Elementary School in New Rochelle, one of the founders and a member of the board of directors of the Nyack Headstart Nursery School, and a board member of the Rockland Community Action Council. 

Barbara Sisco Peterson is a computer programmer at Dairylea Cooperative, Inc., Pearl River. 

Shirley Sisco Swann is quality control department head in electronic stampings, Plessy Montvale of Montvale, N. J. 

Judy Sisco Peaks is assistant supervisor of data processing and control at Burlington Industries, Rockleigh, N. J. 

In his last years, Harry, severely crippled by arthritis and walking with a cane, functioned as a chauffeur for Mrs. William Fox, proudly driving her 1950 Packard, which he kept as sparkling bright as a new-minted gold piece.

On August 16, 1975, the Sisco children gave a dinner-dance for their father and mother at the Holiday Inn, Orangeburg, in celebration of their golden wedding anniversary. It was a grand affair, to which young and old, friends and neighbors, black and white, to the number of 60-odd, came to express their admiration and love. Harry, resplendent in a white Tuxedo and ruffled shirt, was in a mood to match the occasion.

On December 1, 1976 he was hospitalized with a heart attack and family and friends spent anxious weeks of waiting. Mrs. Finck telephoned him at the hospital and Harry chided her gently for not coming to see him.

"I was told that no one but your family could see you,” she explained.

"I know,” said Harry, "but I’ve told them at the desk that you’re my family even if you don’t look like it.”

By the end of the month, Harry was home and feeling better each day. His wife left him in a cheerful mood the morning of February 28 to do some errands. She told friends who inquired about him at the supermarket that he was on the mend. When she returned home, he was gone.

There was a service at the Berea Seventh Day Adventist Church in Nyack. Members of Elks Lodge 424 of Nyack served as pallbearers. Then they took Harry to Palisades and laid him to rest in the old cemetery beside his parents, his brothers and the son he had lost after the Korean War. There, among other notables of Palisades such as Jonathan Lawrence Elder-Senior of pre-Revolutionary note; the redoubtable Molly Sneden, mistress of the Revolution­ary War ferry; Winthrop S. Gilman, the banker, builder and historian; and others who did so much to create and maintain the rare and special aura of the little hamlet, Harry Sisco, now and for 71 years an integral part of its history, is at home.

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We are pleased and honored to feature Harry L. Sisco during  Black History Month.

To listen to oral histories from Judy Sisco Peaks visit the archive here:  https://www.hrvh.org/cdm/search/collection/larc/searchterm/judy%20sisco/field/all/mode/all/conn/and/order/nosort/ad/asc