USA > New York > Westchester County > History of Westchester County, New York, from its earliest settlement to the year 1900 > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66
which crosses the Harlem River over High Bridge; the new is carried underneath the stream.
-
---
--
South of the Croton River the next Hudson tributary of interest is the Sing Sing Kill, which finds its mouth through a romantic ravine crossed by the notable Aqueduct Bridge. Next comes the Pocantico River, entering the Hudson at Tarrytown. The last feeder of the
HIGH BRIDGE (WASHINGTON BRIDGE IN THE DISTANCE).
11
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTY
Iludson from Westchester County, and the last received by it before discharging its waters into the sea, is the Sawmill cor Nepperhant River, at Yonkers. To this stream is due the credit for the creation of a very considerable portion of the manufacturing industries of the county, and consequently, also, to a great extent, that for the building up of the City of Yonkers.
Into the Spuyten Duyvil Creek empties Tibbet's Brook, a small runlet which rises in the Town of Yonkers and flows south, passing through Van Cortlandt. Lake (artificial ).
The most noteworthy of the streams emptying into the Sound is the Bronx River, whose outlet is between Hunt's Point and Cornell's Neck. The Bronx lies wholly within Westchester County, having its headwaters in the hills of the towns of Mount Pleasant and New Castle. It traverses and partially drains the middle section of the county. This river, with other waters which have been artificially connected with it. affords to New York City a water supply of its own. quite independent of the Croton system -- a fact, perhaps, not generaily understood. It is dammed at Kensico Station, making a storage reservoir of 250 acres. A similar dam has been thrown across the Byram River, and another across the outlet of Little Rye Pond. By the damming of Little Rye Pond that body of water, with Rye Pond, has been converted into a single lake, having an area of 280 acres. The three parts of this system-the Bronx, Byram, and Rye Pond reservoirs-are, as already stated, connected artificially, and the water is delivered into a receiving reservoir at Williams's Bridge through the so-called Bronx River pipe line, a conduit of forty-eight- inch cast-iron pipe. The portion of the Bronx watershed drained for this purpose has an area of thirteen and one-third square miles.
East of the month of the Bronx River on the Sound are the outlets of Westchester and Eastchester Creeks-tidal streams-emptying. respectively, into Westchester and Eastchester Bays. The Hutchinson River rises in Scarsdale and flows into Eastchester Bay. The Mama- roneck River has its source near White Plains and Harrison, finding its outlet in Mamaroneck Harbor. The Byram River, which enters the Sound above Portchester, and at its mouth separates our county from Connecticut, drains parts of North Castle and Rye. Blind Brook empties at Milton, after draining portions of Harrison and Rye. Most of the streams flowing into the Sound afford, by the rettux of the tide, an intermitting hydrantie power.
The Mianus River, rising in North Castle, and Stamford Mill River. rising in Poundridge, find their way to the Sound through Connecticut. Some minor streams in the northern section of the county flow into Putnam County.
12
IIISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY
The lakes of Westchester, like the hills and streams, boast no fea- tures of exceptional interest, but are strictly in keeping with the quiet beauty of the general landscape. The largest, as already men- tioned. is Croton Lake, entirely artificial; and we have also seen that
SCENE ON THE BRONX RIVER.
several of the natural lakes have been utilized for purposes of water supply. Lake Waccabue, in the Town of Lewisboro, has, since 1870, been connected with the Croton system. It covers over two hundred acres, and is very deep and pure. In the Town of Poundridge several
13
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTY
ponds have been artificially joined to one another, forming a hand- some body of water, called Trinity Lake, a mile and a quarter long, which supplies the City of Stamford, Conn. A dam twenty feet high has been erected across its outlet. Other lakes of local importance and interest are Peach Lake, on the Putnam County border; Mohegan and Mohansic lakes, in Yorktown; Valhalla Lake ( through which the Bronx River flows), between Mount Pleasant and North Castle; Rye Lake, near the Connecticut line; Byram Lake, in Bedford and North Castle, the feeder of the Byram River, and Cross Pond ( 100 acres ) in Poundridge.
The rocks of Westchester County consist mainly of gneiss and mica- schist of many dissimilar varieties, and white crystalline limestone with thin interlying beds of serpentine, all of ancient origin and entirely devoid of fossils. Professor Ralph S. Tarr, of Cornell Univer- sity, in a recent series of papers1 on the geology of New York State, embodying the latest investigations and conclusions on the subject. assigns to the southern angle of the State, including Westchester County, the name of the " Gneissic Highland Province." This prov- ince, he says, is of complex structure, and one in which, in its main and most typical part, the rocks are very much folded and disturbed metamorphic strata of ancient date. "These rocks," he continues, " are really an extension of the highlands of New Jersey, which reach across the southern angle of New York, extend northeastward, and enter Connecticut. Besides these Archean gueisses there is some sandstone and a black diabese or trap, which form the Palisades, besides extensive layers of limestone, gneiss, and schist, which extend across the region occupied by the City of New York. This whole series of strata is intricately associated. Except at the very seashore line, the province is a moderate highland, with rather rough topog- raphy and with hills rising in some places to an elevation of 1,000 or 1,200 feet above the sea level. Where there is limestone or sand- stone in this area, there is usually a lowland, while highlands occur where the hard gneiss comes to the surface not immediately at the seashore. This is extremely well illustrated in Rockland County, where the gneissic Ramapo Mountains are faced at their southeastern base by a lowland, a somewhat rolling plain, which, however, is bounded on its eastern margin by another highland where the trap of the Palisades rises close by the Hudson River."
In the opinion of Professor Tarr, this region, with the large Adiron- dack area, at the beginning of the Paleozoic were mountainous lands facing the sea, which stretched away to the westward, and beneath which all the rest of the site of New York State was submerged. The
Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, vol. xxviii.
14
HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY
southwestern Highland mountains extended northward into New England, and toward the east they probably reached seaward along the present coast line. This mountain range extended southwestward along the eastern part of the seacoast States, and west of it was a great sea in the present Mississippi Valley. Whether the Adiron- dacks and this Highland mountain range were ever connected, and what was the actual extension of the two areas, can not be told in the present state of geological knowledge, the record of much of the early history having been hidden beneath the strata of later ages. However, in very early Paleozoic times the waves of the sea beat at the western base of the southern Highlands, and these were then at least separated from the Adirondack area, which was at that time an island in the Paleozoic sea.
Professor James D. Dana, in an inquiry concerning the relations of the limestone belts of Westchester County, arrives at the conclu- sion that, with those of New York Island, they are probably of Lower Silurian age, assigning also to the same age the comformably asso- ciated metamorphic rocks. He holds to the view that Westchester County belongs to the same geologic period as the Green Mountain region, resembling in its order that portion of the latter which is now western Connecticut. Other geologists find reason for believing that the Westchester rocks are older than those of the Green Mountain area, and belong to an even earlier age than the Lower Silurian. It is pointed out that the marbles of Vermont and the marbles of West- chester County, with their associated rocks, are essentially different from one another, and can hardly, therefore, belong to a common formation; the Vermont marbles being found in a single belt and being almost pure carbonates of lime, and of mottled and banded appearance, fine grained, with gray siliceous limestones, quartzites, and slates identified with them; whereas the Westchester marbles constitute a series of parallel belts and are " coarsely crystalline dolo- mites ( double carbonates of lime and magnesia ), generally of uniform white or whitish color, and have no rocks associated with them that can represent the quartzites and argillites of Vermont."
Still another opinion regarding the origin of the rocks of the West- chester County regions is that of Prof. I. S. Newberry, who believes that they date from the Laurentian age.
The limestone beds are distributed through every geographical sec- tion of the county. At Sing Sing occur marble deposits-very heavy beds which have been extensively quarried. It was, in fact, largely for the purpose of employing convict labor for the quarrying of the marble that this place was chosen as the location for the New York
15
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTY
State Penitentiary. The Sing Sing marble, however, although an admirable building stone for many purposes, is of comparatively coarse and inferior quality, becoming stained in the course of time by the action of the sea air on account of the presence of grains of iron pyrites. Marble is also quarried at Tuckahoe.
AAbundant indications are afforded of extensive and radical glacial action. " Croton Point, on the Hudson, and other places in the county. show evidences of glacial moraines. Deep stria and lighter scratches still remain upon many exposed rock surfaces, and others have been smoothly polished." A prominent feature is the presence in great profusion of large granite bowlders, undoubtedly transported by glaciers from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, with an inter-
EARLY NAVIGATION IN THE HIGHLANDS.
mingling of bowlders of conglomerate from the western side of the Hudson, the latter containing numerous shell fossils. The so-called " Cobbling Stone," in the Town of North Salem, is a well-known speci- men of the glacial bowlers of Westchester. It is a prodigious rock of red granite, said to be the solitary one of its kind in the county.
The minerals found in the county, in greater or lesser quantities. embrace magnetic iron ore, iron and copper pyrites, green malachite, sulphuret of zine, galena and other lead ores, native silver, serpen- tine, garnet, beryl, apatite, tremolite, white pyroxene, chlorite, black tourmaline, Sillimanite, monazite, Brucite, epidote, and sphone. But Westchester has never been in any sense a seat of the mining industry proper, as distinguished from the quarrying. In early times a silver
16
HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY
mine was operated at Sing Sing, very near where the prison now stands, and not far from the same locality an attempt was made some seventy years ago to mine for copper. Both of these mining ventures are of mere curious historical interest, representing no actual success- ful production of a definite character. In the ridges along the north- ern borders of the county considerable deposits of iron ore are found. It is stated by Mr. Charles E. Culver, in his History of Somers, that the iron ores of that town have, upon assay, " yielded as high as 61 per cent." Peat swamps, affording a fuel of good quality, exist in several parts of the county, notably the Town of Bedford.
There are various mineral springs, as well as other springs, yiekling water of singularly pure quality, the latter being utilized in some cases with commercial profit. A well-known mineral spring, for whose waters medicinal virtues are claimed, is the Chappaqua Spring, three miles east of Sing Sing.
The prevailing soil of Westchester County is the product of disinte- grations of the primitive rocks, and is of a light and sandy character, for the most part not uncommonly fertile naturally. although the methods of scientific farming, which have been pursued from very early times, have rendered it highly productive. It is not generally adapted to wheat, summer crops succeeding best. Drift deposits and alluvium occur along the Sound and in some localities elsewhere, with a consequently richer soil. Agriculture has always been the repre- seutative occupation, although during the last half century extensive manufacturing industries have been developed in several localities.
CHAPTER HI
THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
T was not until 1609, one hundred and seventeen years after the discovery of the New World, that European enter- prise, destined to lead to definite colonization and develop- ment, was directed to that portion of the North American continent where the metropolis of the Western hemisphere and the Empire State of the American Union have since been erected. The entire North American mainland, in fact, from Florida to Hudson's Bay, although explored by voyagers of different nationalities within comparatively brief periods after the advent of Columbus, had been practically neglected throughout the sixteenth century as a field for serions purposes of civilized occupation and exploitation. The early French attempts at settlement in Canada, in the first half of that cen- tury, and the colonizing expeditions sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to the shores of North Carolina, in the second hall, were dismal failures, and in the circumstances could not have resulted differently. For these undertakings were largely without reference to intelligent and pro- gressive cultivation of such resources as the country might afford. being incidental, or, at least, secondary, to the absorbing conviction of the times that the How they tooke Jam prifence 7 5%intheVaze 1607. riches of India lay somewhere beyond the American coast bar- rier, and would still Anth bindeth afalu age tohis arm "fighteth with the King of Pamaunkee and ull hir company, and flew 3 of them." vield themselves to bold search. Naturally, few men of substantial FROM AN OLD FRINT. character and docent antecedents could be persuaded to embark as volunteers in such doubtful enterprises. The first settlers on the Saint Lawrence were a band of robbers, swindlers, murderers, and promisenous ruttiaus, released from the prisons of France by the government as a heroic means of providing colonists for an expedition which could not be recruited from the people at large. The settlers sent by Sir Walter
18
HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY
Raleigh under his patent from Elizabeth in 1585 for establishing colo nies north of the Spanish dominions in Florida were, according to Bancroft, a body of " broken-down gentlemen and libertines. more fitted to corrupt a republic than to found one," with very few mechan- ies. farmers, or laborers among them-mere buccaneering adven- turers, who carried fire and sword into the land and had no higher object before them than to plunder and enslave the natives. It is true that very early in the sixteenth century the fishermen of Nor- mandy and Britanny began to seek the waters of Newfoundland for the legitimate ends of their vocation, and soon built up a gainful trade, which, steadily expanding and attracting other votaries, employed in 1583 more than four hundred European fishing craft. But this business was conducted almost exclusively for the profits of the fisheries, and although the vessels devoted to it ranged all along the New England coast, there was no consecutive occupation of the country with a view to its earnest settlement until after the dawn of the seventeenth century.
Throughout the era of original American discovery and coast ex- ploration, the returning mariners had agreed in describing the re- gion to the north of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea as utterly lacking in indications of accumulated riches, inhabited only by savage races who possessed no gold and silver or other valuable prop- erty, enjoyed no civilization, offered no commodities to commerce ex- cept the ordinary products of the soil and the chase, and could com- municate nothing definite respecting more substantial wealth farther to the west. The ancient civilizations of Mexico, Central America, and Peru having been subverted by the Spanish conquistadores, and their stores of precious metals largely absorbed, it was fondly hoped that the unpenetrated wilds of the north might contain new realins with similar abundant treasures. Narvaez, in 1528, and De Soto, in 1539, led finely appointed expeditions from the Florida coast into the interior in quest of the imagined eldorados-emprises which proved absolutely barren of encouraging results and from which only a few miserable survivors returned to tell the disillusionizing tale of dreadful wilder- ness marches, appalling sufferings, and fruitless victories over wretched tribes owning no goods worth carrying away. The impress- ive record of these disastrous failures, in connection with the uni- formly unflattering accounts of the lands farther north, deterred all European nations from like pompons adventurings. The poverty of the native inhabitants of North America saved them from the swift fate which overtook the rich peoples of the south. and for a century preserved them even from intrusion, except of the most fugitive kind.
This fact of their complete poverty is by far the most conspicuous
19
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
aspect of the original comparative condition, in both economie and social regards, of the North American Indians, as well as of the his- tory of their gradual expulsion and extirpation. Possessing nothing but land and the simplest concomitants of primitive existence, they did not present to the European invaders an established and meas- urably advanced and affluent organization of society, inviting speedy and comprehensive overthrow and the immediate substitution on a general scale of the supremacy and institutions of the subjugators. Dispersed through the primeval forests in small communities, they did not confront the stranger foe with formidable masses of popula- tion requiring to be dealt with by the summary methods of formal conquest ; and skilled in but few industries and arts, which they prac- tired not acquisitively but only to serve the most necessary ends of daily life, and maintaining themselves in a decidedly struggling and adventitious fashion by a rude agriculture and the pursuits of hunt- ing and fishing, their numbers in the aggregate, following well-known laws of population, were, indeed, comparatively few. Yet the same conditions made them the ruggedest, bravest, and most independent of races, and utterly unassimilable. Thus, as found by the Europeans, while because of their poverty provoking no programme of systematic conquest and dispossession, they were foredoomed to in- evitable progressive dislodgement and ultimate extermination or segregation. The cultivated and numerous races of Mexico and Poru, on the other hand, exciting the cupidity of the Spaniards hy their wealth, were reduced to subjection at a blow. But though ruthlessly slaughtered by the most bloody and cruel conquerors known to the criminal annals of history, those more refined people of the south had reserved for them a less melancholy destiny than that of the untutored children of the wilderness. Their survivors read- ily gave themselves to the processes of absorp- tion, and their descendants to-day are coheirs, in all degrees of consanguinity, with the progeny of BOWS AND ARROW? the despoiler.
The origin of the native races of America is, in the present state of knowledge, a problem of peculiar difficulty. Nothing is contributed toward its solution by any written records now known to exist. None of the aboriginal inhabitants of either of the Americas left any writ- ten annals. The opinion is held by some scholars, who favor the the-
20
HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY
ory of Asiatic origin, that when the as yet unpublished treasures of ancient Chinese literature come to be spread before the world definite light may be cast upon the subject. There is a strong probability that the civilization of the Aztees was either of direct Mongolian derivation or partially a development from early Mongolian transplantations. This view is sustained, first, by certain superficial resemblances, and, second, by various details in old Chinese manuscripts suggestive of former intercourse with the shores of Mexico and South America. The belief that man's initial appearance on this hemisphere was as a wan- derer from Asia finds plausible support in the fact of the very near approach of the American land mass to Asia at the north, the two be- ing separated by a narrow strait, while a continuous chain of stepping- stone islands reaches from coast to coast not far below. Accepting the Darwinian theory of man's evolution from the lower orders, the idea of his indigenons growth in America seems to be precluded; for no traces have been found of the existence at any time of his proximate ancestors-the higher species of apes, from which alone he could have come, having no representatives here in the remains of bygone times.
The question of man's relative antiquity on the Western hemisphere is also a matter of pure speculation. Here again the absence of all written records prevents any assured historical reckonings backward. Ancient remains, including those of the Aztees and their associated races, the cliff-dwellers of Arizona and the mound-builders of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, are abundant and highly interesting. but their time connections are lacking. Yet while the aspects of the purely historical progress of man in the New World are most unsatis- factory, anthropological studies proper are attended by much more favorable conditions in the Americas than in Europe. In the Old World, occupied and thickly settled for many historic ages by man in the various stages of civilized development, most of the vestiges of prehistorie man have been destroyed by the people; whereas these still have widespread existence in the New.
In the immediate section of the country to which the County of Westchester belongs such traces of the ancient inhabitants as have been found are in no manner reducible to system. There are no ven- erable monumental ruins, nor are there any of the enrious " mounds " of the west. Varions sites of villages occupied by the Indians at the time of the arrival of the Europeans are known, as also of some of their forts and burial grounds. Great heaps of oyster and clam shells here and there on the coast remain as landmarks of their abiding places. Aside from such features, which belong to ordinary historical associa- tion rather than to the department of archeological knowledge, few noteworthy " finds " have been made. Several years ago much was
21
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
made in the New York City newspaper press of certain excavations by Mr. Alexander C. Chenoweth, at Inwood, on Manhattan Island, a short distance below Spusten Duyvil. Mr. Chenoweth unearthed a variety of interesting objects, including Indian skele- tons, hearthstones blackened by fire, implements, and utensils. There can be no doubt that these remains were from a period antedating the European discov- ery. But they possessed no importance beyond that fact. With all the other traces of the more ancient in- habitants which have been found in this general re- VASE FOUND AT INWOOD. gion, they show that hereabouts Indian conditions as known to history did not differ sharply, in the way either of improvement or of degeneration, from those which preceded the beginning of authentic records.
Verrazano, the French navigator, who sailed along the coast of North America in 1524, entering the harbor of New York and possibly ascending the river a short distance, speaks of the natives whom he met there as " not differing much " from those with whom he had held intercourse elsewhere, " being dressed ont with the feathers of birds of various colors." " They came forward toward us," he adds, " with evident delight, raising loud shouts of admiration and showing us where we could most securely land with our boat." In similar words Henry Hudson describes the savages whom he first took on board his vessel in the lower New York Bay. They came, he says, " dressed in mantles of feathers and robes of fur, the women clothed in hemp, red copper tobacco pipes, and other things of copper did they wear about their necks." Their attitude was entirely amicable, for they brought no arms with them. On his voyage up the river to the head of naviga- tion. Hudson was everywhere received by the Indian chiefs of both banks with friendliness, and he found the various tribes along whose borders he passed to possess the same general characteristics of ap- pearance, customs, and disposition.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.