The Foshay Family

The Foshay Family. Builders of Businesses and Faith. No fewer than 25 members of the Foshay clan are buried here. Descended from a French immigrant, the Foshays came to this area in the 18th century; the earliest settlers were buried in Sparta and then relocated to Dale in 1901. , Barney Foshay (1823-1889) was a builder and engineer. In the 1860s, he worked on the lower arch of the Double Arch Bridge; his name is in the keystone on the west side. He married twice and had two sons, both of whom died young. The Foshay family were avid Methodists, and Barney was on the building committee of the Highland Avenue Methodist Church, completed in 1889. , Barney's brother, John Foshay (1813-1883), had two sons: Wilbur Fisk Foshay (1839-1923) and Joseph Burton Foshay (1848-1903). (Wilbur may have been named for Wilbur Fisk, a prominent Methodist minister.) The two became leading merchants. From 1868 to 1898, they ran Foshay Brothers Dry Goods at the southwest corner of Spring and Maih. Built in the 1870s, the Italianate Foshay building (shown here) was a focal point of the block. , Wilbur married Ida Foster (1855- 1933) in 1885. She did not follow the Methodist tradition but founded Ossining's Christian Science congregation. Early services were held in Wilbur and Ida's home on Ellis Place before First Church of Christ, Scientist, Ossining was completed in 1927. (The church closed in 1975 and is now a private home.) Upon her death in 1933, Ida left the Dale Cemetery Association funds for an outdoor chapel and columbarium, located up the hill in Section 5. , Wilbur and Ida did not have children. Joseph's son, Wilbur Burton Foshay, born in Ossining, built the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis. That structure still stands, but the Foshay building in Ossining was demolished during Urban Renewal in the 1970s.