History of Duchess county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 11

Author: Smith, James H. (James Hadden); Cale, Hume H; Roscoe, William E
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason & Co.
Number of Pages: 868

USA > New York > Dutchess County > History of Duchess county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 11

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"Finding all efforts at agreement futile, the Legislature in 1860 passed a law directing the New York Commissioners, if, after further suitable efforts, no agreement should be reached, to proceed alone to survey and mark the line, and this was done during the summer and fall of 1860, the line running through the old monuments so far as they could be ascertained, its position being marked at road crossings and angles with suitable monuments of marble or granite. Their work was approved by the Legislature of this State, and generally

* The width of the oblong is 580 rods. French's State Gazetteer, 269, note.

HISTORY OF DUCHESS COUNTY.

acceded to by the people of Connecticut ; still it was not formally adopted by that State, and was not considered a legal line, although it was so de- cided by several suits in this State."

"Thus matters rested for twenty years, until last year, when another commission consisting of Allen C. Beach, Secretary of the State; Augustus Schoonmaker, Attorney General, and Horatio Sey- mour, Jr., State Engineer, on the part of New York, and Origen S. Seymour, Lafayette S. Foster and William T. Minor, on the part of Connecticut, were appointed to finally settle the subject, if pos- sible. This Commission * * * agreed in favor of the line as surveyed and established in 1860, and their action has been ratified by this State and we believe also by Connecticut."

May 15, 1731, a patent designed to convey the whole of the Oblong Tract, was granted in London to Sir Joseph Eyles, Jonathan Perrie, John Drum- mond and Thomas Watts. June 8, 1731, a patent for the greater part of the same tract was granted by the Colonial government to Thomas Hawley and others. Tlie English patentees brought a bill in chancery to repeal the latter; but the defend- ants filed an answer containing so many objec- tions against the English patent that the suit was for some time unprosecuted. The American patentees maintained possession, though the con- troversy was only terminated by the war. of the Revolution.

May 31, 1733, in conformity with the petition of the English patentees, the Oblong was annexed to the contiguous counties in this State. December 17, 1743, South, Beekmans, Crom Elbow and North Precincts were extended across the tract to the Connecticut line; and March 9, 1774, the patent was divided into lower, middle and upper districts, to facilitate the collection of quitrents.

Many of the old patents to lands were very defective, and led to much controversy and litiga- tion. The Poughkeepsie patent, under which all the owners here held their titles proved to be fraudulent and the occupants finally kept their farms solely by right of occupation. Some of the others were very absurd and had to be modified to prevent insurrection .* The want of knowledge of the geography of the country led to indefinite boundaries and ambiguous descrip- tions thereof; it also favored the fraudulent prac- tices of those who were sufficiently unscrupulous to take advantage of it. A communication from Hon. Cadwallader Colden, under date of June 9,

1736, to Hon. George Clarke, President of the Council of New York, who was " deeply interested in large tracts of land," sufficiently indicates these facts, and deprecates the practice of granting patents in England, as tending to that confusion which we have seen was occasioned by the con- flicting patents for the Oblong. It says :-

"It is very difficult for the King's officers, who live in the Province, to guard against frauds in petitioning for lands described by natural limits, such as brooks, hills, springs, &c., though actual surveys be made previous to the grant, because the names of such places being in the Indian tongue are known to few Christians, so that the proprietors afterwards are sometimes tempted to put those names upon other places that they think more con- venient for them, and it is impossible for the su- perior officers to guard against the unfaithfulness of those that they are under a necessity of em- ploying in surveying lands especially in remote parts of the country. Now Sir, if it be so diffi- cult for the officers who live on the spot to pre- vent abuses, how much greater must it be at such a distance as England is from us, where the situ- ation of the parts of this Province is not in any manner known, and how great will the temptations be to attempt frauds. Indeed the common method of obtaining grants of land in this country is at so easy a rate that I can not think that any man in this country would endeavor to obtain a grant in England upon the usual quitrents unless he had something private in view which he thought could not be kept secret in this country. This method of granting land in England if encouraged must of course be of great prejudice to the settling of the country and the improving of the uncultivated lands."*

During the latter half of the eighteenth century a very large portion of the settled parts of this State was held by patroons enjoying manorial privileges, and the cultivators occupied these farms on leases for one or more lives, or from year to year, stipulating for the payment of rents, dues and services, copied from the feudal tenures of England and Holland. Almost every incident of the tenures in socage and villenage were imposed by contract upon the manorial tenants. Purvey- ances, fines for alienation, and other similar con- ditions, burdened most of the farmers.

Although Duchess county as at present bounded, was not burdened with manorial patents, like the adjoining county of Columbia, the counties of Greene and Ulster on the opposite side of the river, and other counties in the State, it was not entirely free from the evils of the feudal system which was transferred from Holland and England and engrafted upon the soil of this State, nor

* Poughkeepsie Weekly Eagle, July 8, 1876. Col. Hist. IV., 391, 396.

* Col. Hist. VI., 68.

THE FIRST SETTLER IN DUCHESS COUNTY.

from the violence which they engendered, though the violence here was quite insignificant compared with that which distressed other counties, in which armed associations of anti-renters opposed the legal authorities, provoked bloodshed, and finally developed a political party, through whose agency the wrongs of the oppressed tenants were re- dressed.

From an article in the Poughkeepsie Weekly Eagle of July 8, 1876, we quote what is said in respect to the disquieting influences of this move- ment in this county :----

"The anti-rent war begun in Columbia county in 1766,* in the refusal of settlers to pay rents claimed by the original proprietors, and soon spread into Duchess. William Pendergast, of Do- ver or Pawling, was the leader of the dissatisfied settlers in this county, and he gathered a band under him who threatened to resist the payment by force of arms. There was a small detachment of British regular troops stationed at Poughkeepsie and to enforce his authority the sheriff was com- pelled to call on them. Finally a body of insur- rectionists gathered on Quaker Hill, which was so formidable that two hundred men and two field pieces were sent from New York to re-inforce the grenadiers at Poughkeepsie, and with this force the outbreak was suppressed. Pendergast was taken prisoner and brought here to be tried for high trea- son. His defense was conducted by himself and wife, the latter showing so much ability that the Attorney General lost his temper and moved that she be turned out of court, as she might too much influence the jury. The motion was denied with a sharp rebuke from the Judge ; but the jury found Pendergast guilty and he was sentenced to be hung. As soon as the result was announced, his wife, who seems to have been a woman of extraordinary per- severance and energy, started immediately for New York to ask for a reprieve from the Governor until the King could be heard from. How prompt and efficient she was in what she undertook is shown by the fact that she went to New York, saw the Gov- ernor, got the reprieve, and returned in three days, just in time to prevent an attempt by his followers to rescue him that would probably have resulted unfavorably in the end. Such a woman could hardly be expected to fail in what she undertook. She followed up her success with an application to the King himself, and in six months a full pardon came from George III., and Pendergast and his noble wife went home amid great rejoicings."t

CHAPTER VIII.

FIRST SETTLEMENTS - TRADITIONS RESPECTING THEM-PROJECTED SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENG- LANDERS AT THE MOUTH OF WAPPINGER'S CREEK -NICHOLAS EMIGH SUPPOSED TO BE THE FIRST SETTLER-SETTLEMENTS AT POUGHKEEPSIE AND RHINEBECK-THE PALATINES-HUGUENOT SET- TLERS-ENVIRONMENTS OF THE PIONEER SET- TLERS - PROGRESS OF SETTLEMENT - FIRST CENSUS OF DUCHESS COUNTY, 1714-FREEHOLD- ERS IN DUCHESS COUNTY IN 1740-DESCRIP- TIONS OF THE COUNTY IN 1756 AND 1813- POPULATION OF COUNTY AT DIFFERENT PERIODS FROM 1714 to 1880 -- PRESENT STATUS OF THE COUNTY-ENROLLMENT OF QUAKERS IN 1755- SLAVES IN DUCHESS COUNTY IN 1755-EARLY CIVIL PROCESSES-OATHS OF ABJURATION AND FEALTY IN 1760-OBSERVATIONS ON DUCHESS COUNTY IN 1780-'82, BY THE MARQUIS DE- CHASTELLUX.

A S the law provided that all lands not improved or settled " in three years or some other number of years" should return to the grantor, we find that small beginnings were made in various parts of the county soon after the issue of these patents for lands. The precise date and location of the first settlement is not definitely known. It is doubt- ful if there were any settlements in the county prior to the issuance of the Rombout Patent, though tradition asserts that there were.f It is said that the first settler was a man named Hoff- man, who ran away from a Dutch ship of war in New York Harbor, and found a resting place some- where on Wappinger's Creek, where he married and raised a family .¡ We may, doubtless, trace a connection between this traditionary individual and a Martinus Hoffman, whom we find endeavor- ing to conciliate the Indians, one of whose num- ber was shot by a white man at Rhinebeck, in 1748. In French's State Gazetteer we find further refer-

* A letter from Governor Hardy to the Lords of Trade, Dec. 22, 1756, shows that violent opposition was manifested at that time by the tenants on Livingston Manor, and that Adam Rypenberger, a poor tenant of Mr. Livingston's, who accompanied the sheriff upon summons to eject a tenant named IIendrick Brusies or Brusie, was shot. Col. His. VII., 206 .- Doc. His. III., 818.

t These disturbances occurred in 1766, and extended to what then con- stituted the counties of Albany, Duchess and Westchester. They were committed by an organization known as the "Sons of Liberty," and were not quelled without bloodshed .- See Col. His. VII., 825, 845, 846, 849, 867, 879.

* A writer in the Poughkeepsie Weekly Eagle of July 8, 1876, says : " There is evidence that some part of Dutchess county was occupied dur- ing the rule of the Dutch Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, prior to 1664. * * * In the history of the Esopus war with the Indians in 1663, reference is made to Capt. Covenhoven, who lived among the Wappin- gers." We have not been able to find such evidence. Covenhoven was, indeed, an active participant ir. the Second Esopus War, and was sent to release the prisoners captured by the Esopus Indians in the attack on Wiltwyck. In the performance of the latter office lie "lay several days near the Wappinger Indians who acted as mediators in the affair ; " but we fiud nothing to indicate that he ever settled among them. Benson J. Lossing, LL.D., in Sketches of Local History, published in The Dutchess Farmer of Dec. 12, 1876, says, when the county was organized, in 1683, " there were no white inhabitants on the domain."

t Poughkeepsie Weekly Eagle, July 8, 1876. + Col. Hist. VII, 250.

HISTORY OF DUCHESS COUNTY.

ence to this individual, in the following copy of a letter, now in possession of T. Van Wyck Brinker- hoff, of East Fishkill :-

"In the year 1823, I saw Isaac Upton, a coaster from Newport, who informed me that about 1760 he came up the North River to Poughkeepsie, and, in company with another person, went to Mabbitt's store, in Washington, on business. That on their return, they took a circuitous route from Pleasant Valley, and passed a German by the name of Hoffman, who was then 118 years old. He sup- posed himself to be the first white settler in Duch- ess county ; and that, when young, he deserted from a Dutch ship of war in New York, squatted where he then lived, built him a shanty, and lived a number of years a solitary life without being able to find a white woman for a wife ; that afterward, finding a German family at Rhinebeck, he married, and had lived where he then was to that advanced age. I was informed that he died two years after- ward, at 120 years. (Signed,) PAUL UPTON."

A settlement was projected in the county as early as 1659, and had it been successful, would doubtless have changed the preponderating charac- ter of the early settlers. But it was destined to fail. In that year, in consonance with the spirit of en- croachment which more especially characterized the settlers in Connecticut, Massachusetts claiming under her charter the country north of the 42d° of latitude from the Atlantic to the Pacific, granted " a plantation in the neighborhood of Fort Orange, to several persons of respectability residing within her jurisdiction." With a view to locating this grant, an exploring party proceeded during the summer to Beverwyck, (Albany,) and after examining most of the lands along the east bank of the Hudson, they announced their intention to establish a vil- lage near the mouth of Wappinger Creek, "where the country, in point of beauty and fertility, sur- passed anything they had seen in the East." As this spot was a great distance from the settled parts of New England, and difficult of access, in con- sequence of the intervening wilderness, the project- ors applied to the Dutch authorities for leave to proceed thither by the North River. Director Stuyvesant, foreseeing the injury which such an establishment would work on the Dutch interests in New Netherland, determined to anticipate their project by purchasing the lands and establish thereon a village of some twenty-five or thirty families. He therefore wrote to the directors of the Dutch West India Company, urging them to send hither, by the first vessels, a colony of Polish, Lutheran, Prussian, Dutch or Flemish peasants.

The Englishmen, in the meantime, obtained from the commissioners of the United Colonies

letters to Director Stuyvesant, soliciting in their behalf the right of passage through the Hudson. Stuyvesant, not unmindful of the experience with the Connecticut colonists on the Connecticut River, determined to oppose a repetition of that experience by all the means within his power. Conscious of his inability to coerce compliance, he sought to avert the misfortune by an explana- tion of the reasons which impelled him to refuse. These, however, did not satisfy the General Court at Boston, for they immediately sent a deputation "to communicate their honest intentions in this matter, and to demonstrate the equity of the motion of the commissioners in their behaf." They asserted their intention to plant the land about the upper waters of the Hudson, not actually in possession of the Dutch, and affirmed that permission to pass the Hudson should not preju- dice the rights of the Dutch. A wordy encounter ensued, during which Stuyvesant declared that he could not grant the right of free passage through their rivers to Massachusetts, nor any other govern- ment, " without a surrender of their honor, repu- tation, property and blood, their bodies and lives." " Circumstances, however, interposed, and for a moment interrupted the designs of the New Eng- landers. A revolution restored monarchy to Eng- land, and those of Boston abandoned, for the time, the design of seizing on the North River."

The first settlement of which we have authentic information was made in Fishkill, by Nicholas Emigh or Eighmie, but authorities differ as to the date of settlement. One author* says he came in 1682, " and bought a tract of land of the Indians, but finding it already covered by a patent, he repur- chased of those holding it a portion of what is known as the Clove, near the middle of the county, where he settled and where some of his descend- ants still remain." Says Mr. Lossing, in Sketches of Local History, before refererred to, Einigh (whose father a native of Holstein on the borders of Hol- land, had followed Prince Rupert into England in the time of the Civil War, and remained in Scot- land,) came to this country in 1686, at the instance of Robert Livingston, "a landless, but shrewd adventurer from Scotland," who, in 1683, inarried Alida, the young widow of Rev. Nicolaus Van Rensselaer and daughter of Philip Pietersen Schuy- ler, (the first of the Schuyler family who settled in this country,) and with her money bought an im- mense tract of land on the north border of this county, to which that portion lying west of Roelaff

* Poughkeepsie Weekly Eagle, July 8, 1876.

EARLY SETTLEMENTS IN DUCHESS COUNTY.

Jansen's Creek, comprising the present towns of Clermont and Germantown, formerly belonged.

Settlement under Robert Livingston, whose family filled a conspicuous niche in our colonial and revolutionary history, commenced prior to 1686, but apparently made slow progress ; for Earl Bellomont, in a letter to the Board of Trade, dated January 2, 1701, says of it : "Mr. Living- ston has on his great grant of sixteen miles long and twenty-four broad, but four or five cottagers, as I am told; men that live in vassalage under and work for him and are too poor to be farmers, having not wherewithall to buy cattle to stock a farm."

Under such harsh conditions were the fortunes of our pioneer settler-young Emigh-cast, and we need not wonder that he became dissatisfied, and left the Livingston domain, He bought an island in the Hudson just below Albany and settled on it with his young wife, a pretty Dutch lass from Hol- stein, whom he courted and married on the long ocean voyage to America. But there they were drowned out the next spring by a Mohawk flood, and removed to the site of Fishkill, where he bought of the Indians a tract of land extending from the Fishkill to Poughkeepsie, and from the Hudson to the Connecticut line. Here also he had the misfortune to locate on land covered by patent ; for the island on which he previously set- tled, constituted a part of the Manor of Rensse- laerwyck. He subsequently removed to, and pur- chased of the patentees, a large tract of land in the Clove, some of which is still in the possession of his descendants.

During their residence in Fishkill his wife gave birth to a daughter, who received the name of Katrina, and was the first white child born in the county. At maturity she married a young. Hol- lander named Lasink, (Lossing,) who moved up from New York about 1700. The young couple settled in the town of East Fishkill, where they raised a family of eight children-four sons and four daughters-who lived to a good old age, the seven younger ones surviving the oldest, who died when the youngest was seventy-five years old. From this family descended the distinguished his- torian Benson J. Lossing, LL. D., of Dover.

The settlements in Poughkeepsie and Rhinebeck were nearly contemporaneous with those in Fishkill. At Rhinebeck a considerable number of Palatines had settled in the early part of the eighteenth cen- tury. They were German refugees from the banks of the Neckar and the Rhine, who were hired of

the Elector of the Palatinate by Queen Anne, and served in her army during the war of the Spanish succession, 1702-1713. In 1709, the project of establishing them in the English-American colonies was broached; and in the summer of 1710, a col- ony numbering 2,227 arrived in New York, and were located in five villages, on either side of the Hudson, those upon the east side being designated as East Camp, and those upon the west, as West Camp. Three of these villages were located on six thousand acres of land, which originally con- stituted the town of Germantown, in Columbia County, and were purchased of Robert Livingston by Gov. Robert Hunter, Sept. 29, 1710, because, from the growth of pine timber they bore, they were especially adapted to the industry in which it was designed to employ the Palatines, viz : raising hemp and making tar, pitch and resin for the royal navy. The other two villages were located on the opposite side of the river, in Ulster County, on lands which were then unpatented. This little col- ony received many marks of the kind care and beneficence of Queen Anne, under whose special patronage it was planted. The management of their affairs was entrusted to a board of com- missioners, consisting of Robert Livingston, Rich- ard Sackett,* John Cast, Godfrey Walsen, Andrew Bagger and Henry Schureman. The first settle- ments commenced by small lodges or temporary huts, each of which was placed under the superin- tendence of some principal man, from whom they took their local names, with the addition of dorf, the German word for village. The names by which they were officially known, however, were Anns- berry, from Queen Anne ; Haysberry, after Lady Hay, wife of Governor Hunter ; Hunterstown, after Gov. Hunter ; Queensberry, after the Queen, &c. Their numbers in the respective villages May 1, 17II, were as follows :-

ON EAST SIDE.

Hunterstown

334

Queensberry .

350

Annsberry 252

Haysberry 258

1194

ON WEST SIDE.

Elizabethtown

148

Georgetown . III

New Village 324

583

1777

* Richard Sackett was one of the patentees of the Little Nine Partners Tract, and the pioneer settler of Amenia, where he located early in the century.

HISTORY OF DUCHESS COUNTY.

The enterprise, however, proved unsuccessful, for the Palatines soon became restive under the restraints imposed on them. They scattered, many of them removing to the Mohawk and Schoharie valleys, and some, as we have seen, to Rhinebeck. The six thousand acre tract was subsequently granted to those willing to remain on it, (for some were restrained there against their wish,) in accord- ance with the petition of Jacob S. Sharp and Chris- tophel Hagadorn, in behalf of sixty-three families so inclined, to whom was secured the tracts on which they had settled and made improvements, on the payment of the usual quitrent. In 1718, these Palatine families were distributed * as follows :-

ON EAST SIDE.

Hunterstown 25 families,

109 persons.

Kingsberry. 33

104

Haysberry .

Rheinbeck. 35

140

ON WEST SIDE.

New Town

14 families, 56 persons.

George Town.

Kings town 15

Wessels pretended land. 7

Kingstown Sopes. IO

At New York and places adjacent.

150 66

In Seven Townships in

Schoharie . . .170

680 66

Among the early settlers was a considerable number of Huguenots, fragments of that terribly persecuted class who fled from France on the re- vocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV., in 1685, to the number of eight hundred thousand, and took refuge in Holland, Germany, Switzerland and England, whence many emigrated to this coun- try, locating most numerously in this State in the counties of Orange and Ulster, though the most opulent settled in the city of New York. They were a most valuable acquisition to the feeble set- tlements in this vicinity; for their industry and skill made them welcome in every Protestant coun- try, and contributed largely to the development not only of the physical features of the country, but also of the liberal tendencies of the people. They introduced into England arts of which France had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly, and into North Ger- many, manufactures which, hitherto unknown, put a new aspect on that country ; their persecutions awakened the religious sympathies of New Eng- land, and their skill and intelligence infused energy and system into whatever they undertook.

While the Dutch settlers were striking sturdy blows in the reclamation of the wilderness which marred the beautiful and fertile valleys of the west- ern portion of the county, the enterprising New England colonists, especially of Connecticut, were forcing a passage across rugged mountain peaks and planting the evidences of advancing civiliza- tion in its eastern wilds. Thus we find in the con- stituent elements of the population a healthy com- mingling of that volatile enterprise characteristic of the New England yeomanry and the sterling qualities and plodding energy of the more phleg- matic Dutch burghers.

The first settlers were generally poor and de- voted to husbandry. They sought here homes and subsistence for themselves and families, such as could be coaxed in an humble way from the fruitful soil, which rewarded abundantly even a moderate industry. Their beginnings were of a most primitive character. Their wants were few and little sufficed to supply them ; for their simple lives were not cursed with the artificial wants which tax the energies of the present generation. Cor- nelis VanTienhoven, Secretary of the Province of New Netherland, thus describes the houses which prevailed in 1650, nearly forty years before the rude beginnings were made in this county :- .

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History of Duchess county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 11

Author: Smith, James H. (James Hadden); Cale, Hume H; Roscoe, William E Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason & Co. Number of Pages: 868

Author: Smith, James H. (James Hadden); Cale, Hume H; Roscoe, William E
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason & Co.
Number of Pages: 868