{"id":7052078,"date":"2026-08-31T00:24:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/timothy-cole-the-happy-vagabond\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T00:24:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:24:26","slug":"timothy-cole-the-happy-vagabond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7052078","title":{"rendered":"Timothy Cole: \u201cThe Happy Vagabond\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div style=\"--awb-text-color:var(--awb-color2);--awb-text-font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;--awb-text-font-style:normal;--awb-text-font-weight:400;\">\n<p>By Shannon Butler<\/p>\n<p>If you have been reading our blogs posts for long enough, you\u2019ll know by now that Poughkeepsie has been home to some interesting characters. We\u2019ve had plenty of artists, musicians, and politicians, as well as some eccentrics. Poughkeepsie has attracted great minds for various reasons, from our convenience to the train and New York City, to our picturesque river views, and our once successful industrial haven. So what inspired a world class engraver to move to Poughkeepsie? Timothy Cole was one of the last great masters of the art of wood engraving, and his pieces are still considered masterpieces. Of all the places he called home during his interesting life, he decided that Poughkeepsie would be his last home.<\/p>\n<p>Born in England on April 16, 1852, his family immigrated to the US when he was a little boy. The family settled in Chicago, where 16-year-old Cole learned the art of lithography. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the family\u2019s business, and they moved to New York City to start again. Here, Cole found work as an engraver for several different magazines including <em>Scientific American<\/em> and <em>Hearth &amp; Home<\/em>. In 1875, he married his wife, Annie Carter, and built a Gothic cottage on Long Island where they began raising a family that included their four sons. Cole was an avid reader and \u201cno book agent ever called at the Gothic house in vain.\u201d He was known for buying expensive books and had amassed an impressive library.<\/p>\n<p>In 1883, the publishers of <em>Century<\/em> magazine sent him to Europe to engrave the works of the Old Masters. Over the next twenty-seven years he moved his family to several different countries while engraving the works of painters like Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Rubens, Hogarth, and many others. By the early 20th century, he found his way to Poughkeepsie to visit a friend and fell in love with the area. The architecture of Vassar College reminded him of Europe, and he decided to purchase land and build a house on Ferris Lane, which he completed in 1917. The house was a \u201crectangular bungalow consisting of three rooms built around a central chimney.\u201d There was a lovely pine tree out front that Cole nurtured as he had buried the ashes of his young son Walter there.<\/p>\n<p>In his later years, he received many awards for his work, including a gold medal from the Paris Exposition in 1900, and the Grand Prix at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. In 1906, he was unanimously elected to the National Academy of Design, and in 1914, he was given an honorary Master of Arts degree from Princeton University. In 1929, he designed a book plate for Calvin Coolidge that was lauded as the \u201cmost beautiful plate,\u201d and is housed in the New York State Library in Albany. His final honor was in 1930, when Dartmouth College gave him an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.<\/p>\n<p>During his life, he managed to painstakingly complete over 500 engravings.<\/p>\n<p>For the last 18 years of his life, he made Poughkeepsie his home and was the talk of the town. He was happy to give lectures on art and his own career. He even showcased an exhibit of his work here at Adriance Memorial library in 1921. People would walk up to his door where they would be greeted by a sign that read \u201cNot at Home,\u201d even when he was at home, but did not wish to see people. However, his son claimed that he would always welcome strangers in and happily talked about and sold his work from his home.<\/p>\n<p>Not long before Cole\u2019s death, a poet by the name of Robert Underwood Johnson, wrote a poem for the <em>New York Evening Sun <\/em>in which he asked if Poughkeepsie was worthy enough to be the home of such an artist? \u201cFair though you be Poughkeepsie, and proud of your Learning\u2019s fane, I give you a thought \u2013 Are you worthy of Cole of Ferris Lane?\u201d Cole continued working and taking long walks on Ferris Lane until his death on May 17, 1931, at the age of 79.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Shannon Butler If you have been reading our blogs posts for long enough, you\u2019ll know by now that Poughkeepsie has been home to some interesting characters. We\u2019ve had plenty of artists, musicians, and politicians, as well as some eccentrics. Poughkeepsie has attracted great minds for various reasons, from our convenience to the train and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[1940,1868,49230,17151],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7052078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-cole","tag-happy","tag-timothy","tag-vagabond"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Timothy Cole: \u201cThe Happy Vagabond\u201d - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7052078\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Timothy Cole: \u201cThe Happy Vagabond\u201d - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Shannon Butler If you have been reading our blogs posts for long enough, you\u2019ll know by now that Poughkeepsie has been home to some interesting characters. 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