Edgar Mayhew Bacon speaks about Malden's most famous resident John Bigelow in his The Hudson River from Ocean to Source.
"Perhaps no writer who has lived on the Hudson has linked so really a generation that has passed with the men of today as John Bigelow,-author, editor, man of affairs, representative of his countrymen both at home and abroad. Mr. Bigelow, born in 1817, had taken an active part in the world's work and had made a reputation in letters before many of the men now before the public had seen the light. He was a partner of William Cullen Bryant in the ownership of the New York Evening Post in 1849, and its managing editor till called by Lincoln in 1861 to represent the United States in France. He was afterwards Secretary of State for New York and filled other important offices. A member of the Chamber of Commerce, the biographer of Bryant and Franklin, trustee under Samuel J. Tilden's will of several million dollars for the proposed New York Public Library, and the editor of Tilden's speeches, Mr. Bigelow's story is one of many and varies activities, and his personality has attracted the friendship of the most distinguished men of the times. He began his life in Malden, N.Y., and finally retired to his delightful home near the shore of the Hudson.
Bristol Beach is today a county park of seventy-three acres with a sandy beach.