MIDDLETOWN. A city in Orange County, N. Y., 67 miles northwest of New York City, near the Wallkill River, and on the Erie, the New York, Ontario and Western, and the New York, Susquehanna and Western railroads (Slap: New York, F 4). It is the scat of a State Hospital for the Insane (homeopathic), and has a public library and a fine high school building. The centre of an agricultural and dairying district, enjoys a consider able trade in the products of the region; and among its industrial establishments are woolen and straw bat factories, car shops (N. Y., 0. and W.) saw and file works, cigar factories, a tannery, a milk-eondensery, and manufactories of shirts and cut glass. The city is governed, under a revised charter of 1902, by a mayor. elected every two years. and a efiniiii(M council which elects the city clerk, corporation counsel, and engineer. and confirms the executive's nomi nations to the board of health. other municipal
officials being chosen by popular vote. The city owns and operates the water-works. Population, in 1890, 1E917; in 1900, 14,522. Settled before the Revolution and named from its central loca tion between Montgomery rind Mount Ilope, :Mid dletown was incorporated as a village in 184S, and was chartered as a city in 1888. Its situa tion as the half-way station between the Hudson and the Delaware rivers, on the old Slinisink road leading to the 'far West' of New York State, made it of considerable importance in the later years of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century; while its position as a termi nal of the Erie Railroad, and the consequent es tablishment of a foundry about 1845, gave it a start as an industrial centre.