History
Oral lore says that in 1861, 125 men supposedly gathered in an informal meeting and passed by 85 to 40 a resolution to secede from the United States. Because Town Line was never an incorporated municipal entity in the first place and had no well-defined boundaries, the resolution had no legal effect; neither the Confederacy nor U.S. ever formally recognized the action. The town historian says there are no written records of what happened. Several members of the German-American community fled to Canada; five residents crossed the Mason-Dixon Line to fight with the Confederates in their Army of Northern Virginia, and twenty residents fought for the Union Army.
In 1945 Town Line gained national publicity for the 1861 vote, after Vicksburg, Mississippi and Dade County, Georgia both held ceremonial votes to rejoin the union. Town Line held a ceremony on January 24, 1946 to "rejoin" the Union, along with a vote (overseen by Hollywood celebrity Cesar Romero) in which the meeting voted, 90 to 23, to rescind the old vote.
Read more about this topic: Town Line, New York
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“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
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