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HistoryIt all started with John’s Great Aunt, M. Irene P. Duxbury who attended Emma Willard and Vassar College around the turn of the 20th century. The only occupational choice she had in those days was to be a teacher. She taught in and around Millerton through the late 1920s. Mrs. Duxbury was an avid New York State Granger and it was at a meeting in 1932 that a representative from National Grange Mutual Insurance Company spoke to the Millerton Grange membership. Knowing Aunt Irene (she was John’s grandmother’s sister) we presume she asked the gentleman if they were looking for agents. The rest, as they say, is history. She opened an insurance agency selling National Grange products from her home on Rte 199 that year.
Walter Hermans had worked for the State of New York, managing both Bash Bish Falls State Park in Mt. Washington, MA and Taconic State Park’s Rudd Pond area in the late 30’s and early 40’s. After a stint with the Navy during WWII he started a sand and gravel business based on the Hermans Farm on Academy Hill Road in the Town of Milan. With four children to feed and educate he realized by the mid fifties that hauling gravel and laying blacktop wouldn’t be enough to do the job. He spoke with his Aunt Irene about joining her and her budding business and Duxbury & Hermans, Inc. was born.
Not long after the establishment of the partnership, my father bought out the aging Mrs. Duxbury. He paid her a small cash down payment and agreed to pay her $100.00 a month for life. Little did he know that Aunt Irene would live to be 92! Largely by himself, Walter put up a building on Parking Street (now Century Blvd.) in Millerton in 1957. The agency operated from that site until 1982. John’s mother Helen Pulver Hermans also became a licensed agent and for a time operated a branch office in Pine Plains.
After college in 1971 John Hermans joined the agency and worked with his father until his retirement in 1979. John’s brother Dick (owner of Oblong Books and Music in Millerton and Rhinebeck) joined the company for a short while after he graduated from College. John bought the agency that year, moved the offices to larger quarters in the Millerton Super Plaza (now the offices of Davis and Trotta) in 1982 and then moved again to the present location at 66 Main Street in 1984. John’s wife Marty Losee Hermans joined the agency in 1984 and is our resident comptroller and computer guru.
In 1998 Duxbury & Hermans, Inc. bought the Stissing Insurance Agency in Pine Plains from the Bostwick Group.
John’s daughter Sarah who had been working for various radio stations in Poughkeepsie decided to join the company in 2004 and we were thrilled to have the fourth generation of the family involved with the business, but we also consider every one of our employees “family”.
Duxbury & Hermans, Inc. is an independent insurance agency with offices in Millerton and Pine Plains. It employs nine people, serving some 3,000 customers in Northern Dutchess/Southern Columbia and Northwest Litchfield Counties. We provide a full range of products including auto, home, life, health and retirement, business, farm, etc. and we also specialize in second homes and contractors insurance.
Duxbury & Hermans, Inc. Insurance since 1932