After 1800, the Somers Hamlet began to rise to some degree of prominence as a result of the endeavors of one unique entrepreneur, Hachaliah Bailey. Bailey was born on July 31, 1775 and came to prominence as the second person in the United States to purchase (for $1,000) and own an African elephant. Bailey took possession of this elephant in 1808 and subsequently named her Old Bet. After buying Old Bet, Bailey invested heavily in what was called the traveling menagerie business, which was a forerunner of the later animal acts of the American Circus popularized by people like P.T. Barnum. Between 1808 and 1816, Bailey would travel the Northeast, amassing a great fortune exhibiting exotic animals, such as monkeys, lions, tigers, zebras, leopards, and camels.

At the same time that Bailey was traveling the Northeast United States with his menagerie, the Somers Hamlet was undergoing a period of profound development. Running through the Hamlet was the Danbury-Peekskill Turnpike, which linked Western Connecticut with the Hudson River. This route was a heavily used thoroughfare for agricultural goods and livestock, like sheep and cattle, and the road was intersected in the center of the Hamlet by the Croton Turnpike. The Croton Turnpike, in turn, was a route on which agricultural goods were transported that essentially straddled the Croton River from its headwaters in Putnam County to Ossining, where it emptied into the Hudson. The route officially opened to travelers in 1807 and was an extremely popular thoroughfare for local farmers and drovers. A toll booth was erected in this area, and though it is not known how much was charged, it is known that cattle were discounted by 25% and charged by the score. Sheep, another popular livestock animal, were not tagged with any toll charge. Thus, with the rise of these two major roads, accommodating and providing hospitality to travelers and drovers became an extremely profitable enterprise, and the first known person to engage in this enterprise was a man named Thomas Leggett, who is believed to have opened an inn on the present site of the Elephant Hotel in 1806.

In 1808, Leggett and others like him became the citizens of the newly named town of Somers, New York. Since Stephentown had been formally established in 1788, administrative problems had abounded, as there were two other New York towns called Stephentown. Mail was frequently delivered to incorrect destinations, and it was decided that the Stephentown established in Northern Westchester County should change its name to resolve the issue. Somers was selected in honor of Master Commandant Richard Somers, a naval hero of the Tripolitan War (1801-1805), whose standing in the United States as a whole remained high despite the fact that he had been killed in action years prior to the town’s renaming (great emphasis was placed by the Federal Government on honoring the heroes of the Tripolitan conflict). Over the years, Somers was referred to by many other names, such as “Somerstown Plains” or simply “The Plains,” and as of 1810, the U.S. Census revealed a population of 1,772 people in this new, prosperous rural community.

With business in the Hamlet booming, it was at this point that Hachaliah Bailey left his mark on Somers history. Bailey used his profits from the traveling menagerie business to invest in the growth of the Hamlet, having recognized its profitably upon his return from traveling the Northeast. Bailey bought up most of the land in the vicinity of the Hamlet, as well as the sections of the turnpike roads that ran through the center of the Hamlet. Over the years, Bailey and his relatives would build many properties in the Hamlet, most notably the Elephant Hotel, which is now a National Historic Landmark. Bailey first began work on the hotel in 1820, purchasing the land that Thomas Leggett had operated his inn on that year. Between 1822 and 1825, construction continued, and the hotel was eventually completed at a site directly on the Peekskill Turnpike. Bailey had reasoned, correctly, as it turned out, that he could profit off the heavy traffic along the road by establishing a thriving hotel, and the Elephant Hotel would remain in the possession of the Bailey family until the early 20^th Century. Shortly after he built the hotel, in 1827, Bailey also erected a statue of an elephant on a pedestal as a monument to Old Bet, the animal that had effectively made him his fortune. Today, both the hotel and the statue are located at 335 Route 202, Somers, NY, and the hotel is a distinguished specimen of an early 19^th Century rural turnpike hotel designed in the Federal style.

Bailey’s success in the traveling menagerie business, as well as his strategic ownership of the land at the crossroads of the turnpikes, would ensure that the Somers Hamlet would economically thrive until at least 1850. On January 4, 1835, in an avid demonstration of this prosperity, 130 showmen, animal owners, and investors agreed to form the Association of the Zoological Institute, which was subsequently headquartered at the Elephant Hotel. The association issued stock for the unprecedented amount of $329,325 and was heavily involved in the importation and exhibition of exotic animals and the ownership of circuses and circus equipment. The Zoological Institute maintained a virtual monopoly over the animal show business in the Northeast between 1835 and 1837, and its members were known colloquially as the “Flatfoots” because they “put their foot down flat” on all competitors. In 1836, though, the institute lost one of its major backers when Hachaliah Bailey sold the Elephant Hotel to fellow menagerie owner Gerard Crane and moved to northern Virginia. In 1837, the national financial crisis that came to be called the Panic of 1837 bankrupted the institute, and the group held one final auction on August 22-23 at the Elephant Hotel in which exotic animals were sold before Crane sold the Elephant Hotel to Horace Bailey, a relative of Hachaliah.

Horace Bailey attempted to revitalize the Hamlet after the Panic of 1837, creating the Farmers & Drovers Bank of Somers, of which he became the first president, in 1839. The bank, which was headquartered in a front room of the Elephant Hotel, proved very successful, and Bailey found himself in secure enough a financial position to donate the land on which St. Luke’s Presbyterian Church would be constructed. Construction had actually begun years earlier, in 1835, on a smaller property that had been sold to the Presbyterians by Hachaliah Bailey for $500 (the property donated by Horace Bailey simply augmented this site). The church was built in the popular Greek Revival Style of architecture, and still stands at 329 Route 100, Somers, NY. At the time of its consecration in 1842, St. Luke’s had a total of 13 communicants. In 1845, Hachaliah Bailey succumbed to injuries sustained from horse kick when visiting Somers. At the time of his passing, the Somers Hamlet had effectively “grown up.” Population data from that year indicates that, after all this development, the Town of Somers had a robust population of 1,761 people.