USA > New York > Orange County > The history of Orange County, New York > Part 25
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 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97
During the Revolution there were few changes in county matters, but March 7th, 1788, the legislature of the State enacted that subdivisions of counties should be called towns instead of precincts. By that act Orange County was divided into the towns of Haverstraw, Orangetown, Goshen, New Cornwall. Warwick and Minisink. The southern boundary of the latter was the State line of New York and New Jersey.
The town of Minisink under that formation was bounded on the east by the Wallkill River, northeast and north by the town of Wallkill and the Ulster County line around on the northwest to the Delaware River, and the State line.
In 1798 the town of Deer Park was created and it cut off from Mini- sink its over-mountain lands, which had belonged to old Minisink, and thus cut off the base whence the name had been derived. Since then the town has held to the name, a reminder of its old associations and of being once the home of a part of the Minsi Indian tribe.
In 1825 the town of Calhoun was formed principally from Deer Park and Wallkill, and formed part of the boundary of Minisink on the north. In 1833 the name of Calhoun was changed to Mount Hope.
In 1849 the town of Wawayanda was erected from the northeastern portion of Minisink, and took the place of Wallkill in the boundary of the former.
In 1853 the town of Greenville was taken from the westerly portion of Minisink, and fixed the boundaries of the latter as they now are.
GEOGRAPHICAL.
The line between the States previously referred to, on a westerly course has set-offs to avoid great obstacles in some places, but where it bounds
280
THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.
Minisink it is a straight line. It crosses the Wallkill a short distance south of Unionville.
Millsburg, is a small village, named from the large mills once located on Boudinot's Creek at that place. Extensive saw-mills, grist, cider, and plaster mills, were for a long time kept there by John Racine, and did a very large business for years after his death. They are now gone. Down stream a short distance were other grist and saw mills, of which one, a grist mill, is still in existence and managed by Frank Mead. A lit- tle farther down the stream were once very large woolen carding and fulling mills, where cloth was made of the finest quality. These are now in ruins.
Boudinot's Creek has gone by various names, such as Indegot and Bandegot, but antiquarians have now settled upon the derivation of the name from Elias Boudinot, and the probabilities are that they are right. Elias was a merchant in New York City, and speculated in the lands out in the wilderness, as many others were doing in those times. The records show that he bought, June 10th, 1704, of Philip Rokeby, one-third of his share in the Wawayanda patent; also, August 8th, 1707, a twelfth part of the patent. He soon sold out his interests in the patent and so far as we have been able to find, never saw the creek in question, and he cer- tainly never made a settlement in this county.
Rutger's Creek was undoubtedly named from the circumstance of Anthony Rutger's buying of the widow and son of John Merrit, one-half of the one-twelfth of the Wawayanda patent allotted to Daniel Honan, who had in 1705 sold it to Merrit.
The creek in question rises in the town of Greenville and flows east- ward near Unionville, where it takes a northeasterly course through Waterloo Mills, Westtown, Johnson's, and then southerly through Gard- nersville to the Wallkill. Its Indian name is not knowlì.
Tunkamoose Creek, a small tributary of the Wallkill near Unionville, has what is claimed to be an Indian name, but we cannot verify it.
The Wallkill is said by Haines to have drawn its name from some families of Walloons who settled by it, and it has also had various other derivations alleged. Its Indian name is well known. In the very early surveys about Franklin Furnace, N. J., in 1712-15, the surveyors have written the name plainly, Twischsawkin. That this name was not of a mere local application is shown by the fact that on a map accompanying
281
TOWN OF MINISINK.
Smith's History of New Jersey, made and published in London, Char- ing Cross, by William Faden, December Ist, 1777, from surveys made in 1769 by the commissioners who ran the State line, the name Twischsawkin is applied to the stream. On that map there is not a settlement marked from Goshen to Mackhackemeck in this county. In Sussex County the set- tlement of the Walling brothers, where Joseph Walling kept an inn, now Hamburg, N. J., is marked "Wallins." They were located there some- where about 1725-1730, and a brother settled in this town of Minisink at about the same time, by the river. We take him to have been the first settler in the town, and mention is made of him later. The true derivation of the name Wallkill is due to their settlements. The name "Wallins" was known far and wide to the stragglers who first came into the neigh- borhood and the river that ran by their locations, first called by visitors, Wallinskill, about 1750 got abbreviated to "Wallkill." The Walloons spoken of by Haines were undoubtedly "Wallins." The Indian name Twischsawkin has been interpreted to mean "abundance of wild plums." A land abounding in snakes comes nearer its true meaning in our study of the Minsi language.
Unionville village, assumed to be derived from the union of good feel- ings following the settlement of the line between the States of New York and New Jersey, is near that line, and is believed to have been settled about 1738. It now has three stores, two hotels, coal and feed stores, a system of waterworks owned by a private company, three churches, and other places of business. It was incorporated as a village in 1871, Septem- ber 26th. Isaac Swift was the first president.
Westtown, a village so named because it was situated at the western limit of the settlements when Goshen was headquarters of civilization in the county, has three stores, two churches, one hotel.
Johnsons, so-named after William Johnson who gave the land for the Middletown, Unionville & Water Gap Railroad when it passed through the town where the depot is now located, has three good stores, two feed and coal stores, one hotel, and Borden's large milk and cream plant, and is a place of considerable business.
Gardnersville, on Rutger's Creek, about two and a half miles southeast of Johnsons, is mostly in the town of Wawayanda, and derived its name from the Gardner family who once owned extensive grist, saw and cider mills there. It is now mainly known from the feed mills of John R. Man-
282
THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.
ning, at present its principal industry. In the early settlement of the coun- try there was a defensive place near, known as Fort Gardner. Its location is not precisely known. In some records it is spoken of as being southward from where Westtown now is. It was most probably at Gardnersville. An old stone building on the late Lain farm is the "Fort Gardner," says one tradition.
Waterloo Mills (derivation of name unknown) since the decline of the milling industry has nothing now to show of its former important grist mills but the ruins.
FIRST SETTLEMENT AND POPULATION.
Of the first settler in the present territory of this county, Patrick Mac- Gregorie, whose brother-in-law, David Toshuck, is spoken of in Rut- tenber & Clark's History of Orange County (p. 13) as having "closed his earthly career in the bosom of his family at Plum Point," we desire to mention. In New Jersey Archives, Vol. I, p. 460, it says: "David Toshuck, of Moneyweard, partner with James, Earl of Perth, Captain Patrick Mac- Gregorie, all sharers in Proprieties," were so mentioned in 1864. In a note on Vol. IX, p. 337, mention is made of the will of Edward Antill proven in New York, April 7th, 1725, wherein he gives his wife all his interest in a "certain proprietyship formerly purchased of David Toshuck, laird of Minnevarre." On p. 338 it is stated that Edward Antill, Jr., came into the possession of the laird of Minnevarre's broad acres at Raritan landing in Middlesex County where he spent the most of his life." Don- ald Macquirrish, of Murderer's Creek, is mentioned with David Toshuck, of Minnevarre, Scotland, in a deed dated March 13th, 1687. From all which we have doubts as to the death of the aforesaid David Toshuck at Plum Point.
Governor Dongan bought, October 25, 1684, of three Indians, one of whom was Joghem or Keghgekapowell, for ninety pounds and eleven shillings in goods, all the land from the mouth of Murderer's Creek on the Hudson, to a "water pond upon the said hills called Meretange." The latter is the present Binnewater pond in Greenville. This purchase em- braced about thirty by forty miles of the territory of Orange precinct, and a part of the lands in three towns. It lapped on other grants also. September 12, 1694, he sold it to Captain John Evans. In the latter sale
283
TOWN OF MINISINK.
went a house on Plum Point, which Captain MacGregoric had built there on his land by advice of that very Governor, who also sold the land with- out any scruple.
Lord Bellomont, in reviewing the transaction afterwards in writing January 2, 1701, to the Lords of Trade, said :
"Capt. Evans's great grant of 40 miles one way and 30 another, has but one house on it, or rather a hut, where a poor man lives, built by Patrick MacGregorie, a Scotchman, who was killed at the time of the Revolution here, and his widow compelled to sell her house and land to Capt. Evans for 30 or 35 pounds."
The foregoing was not only a concise history of the first settlement in this county, but it was in reality the first census, and shows that then, 1701, there was not a single person in the limits of our three towns as a permanent settler. It may be said in apparent contradiction that a census taken by Bellomont in 1698 showed this county to have in it 29 men. 31 women, 140 children and 19 negroes. They were all located along the Hudson River, in what is now Rockland County. Yet there was at that time a blacksmith, William Tietsort (Titsworth ), in Minisink, near where Port Jervis now stands, who had settled there in 1698 at the request of the Indians to work at his trade for them. In 1703, the county had 268 people in it; in 1712. 439. The Gumaer patent was settled on in the Neversink valley by this time, but there is no record of any settler in our three towns at that time. In 1723 the census showed 1.097 white and 147 colored people in the county. The owners of the big patents used great inducements to get settlers to locate on their land, and it is probable that some were in our territory but not of record. In 1737 there were 2.840 : and in 1746. 3.268 people in the county.
Inman Walling was a settler, probibly 1725-1730, by the Wallkill. east of present Westtown, and John Whitaker died in 1742 near where Unionville now is, and had been a resident there, no one knows how long. Ilis will on record in the surrogate's office in Goshen, liber .A. page 221, mentions his wife Eve. sons Richard. Peter and John, and daughters Jean and Elizabeth. Their descendants are vet residents of the town and of Sussex County adjoining. Those two families were probably the first permanent ones in this town of Minisink. There were others in the limits of what is now Wawayanda at or about the same time.
There were two Smith families early in the precinct of Minisink. One
284
THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.
of them, Benjamin, settled near the present Slate Hill village, and the other on the farm now owned by J. Cadigan near Johnsons, where he kept an inn, the place being known as Smith's Village for at least seventy- five years.
Other settlers came in rapidly. William Stenard in 1749; Captain John Wisner from Warwick in 1776; George Kimber in 1750; Caleb Clark in 1800; William Lane in 1760. In an assessment roll made for Goshen pre- cinct in 1775 Godfrey Lutes, Peter Middagh, Daniel Rosencrans, Inman Walling, Peter Walling, Increase Mather, John Whitaker, Jr., and Eben- ezer Beers were shown to reside in this town besides the other first settlers mentioned.
The census of the county in 1756 showed it to have a population of 4,446 whites and 430 slaves. In 1771 there were 9,430 whites and 662 negroes.
The Horton family were early residents of this territory, but we have no positive data of their first advent. October 20, 1764, a line run to divide the county into two precincts was described as "beginning near the new dwelling house of John Manno, and thence on a course which will leave the house of Barnabus Horton, Jr., ten chains to the westward." His house we do not think was in this town. A Barnabus Horton in 1813 lived near what is now South Centerville in Wawayanda. Gabriel Horton, justice of the peace, 1839-1843, lived about a mile and a half west of present Slate Hill in Wawayanda. William Horton in this town was a holder of important local offices, and his son Charles W. Horton, former supervisor, is now one of the leading citizens, as is also his neighbor, Reeves Horton.
In 1835, ten years after the town of Calhoun ( Mount Hope) had been set off, the remainder of the territory in old Minisink had 4,439 inhabi- tants, and the present limits of this town about 1,000.
In 1850 the town of Wawayanda was taken off, and in 1853 the town of Greenville. In 1855, by the first census after their elimination, this town had a population of 1,295.
Since then its limits have remained unchanged. In 1860 its population was 1,266; in 1865, 1,209, a decrease owing to the civil war; in 1880, 1,360, including the incorporated village of Unionville, which had 316; in 1905, the last census taken, 1.354, including Unionville-a gain in 50 years of 59, which may be mainly said to be in Unionville.
285
TOWN OF MINISINK.
The first incorporated company to do business in the town was the Goshen and Westtown Turnpike Company, chartered June 1, 1812, con- sisting of Reuben Hopkins, Freegift Tuthill, Benjamin Strong, Stephen Jackson, James Carpenter, D. M. Westcott, "and such other persons as they shall associate with them." The purpose was to build a turnpike road from the State line to Rutger's Kill near the mill of Jones & Vancleft (at Gardnersville ). Thence it ran to Pellet's round hill and the Goshen and Minisink turnpike.
The Middletown, Unionville & Watergap Railroad Company was incor- porated and completed ready for business by June 10, 1868, from Union- ville to Middletown. Later it was leased to the Oswego Midland Rail- way, and still later its 13.30 miles of track were leased by the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad Company, by which it is now operated, under Erie Railroad supervision.
MILITARY.
There appear to have been no conflicts with the Indian owners of the territory of the three towns under consideration, and its white set- tlers, previous to the Minisink war, or as some historians call it, "The French and Indian War" of 1754-1758. We call it the Minisink war, be- cause the Minsi tribe, at the outset of the war between France and Eng- land, which led to the great struggle between Canada for France and the colonies of our country for England, got permission to take up the hatchet against the settlers in Pennsylvania Minisink from their (the Minsis') masters, the Six Nations, to avenge their wrongs in that region. The wrongs were alleged to be that the proprietors of Pennsylvania had cheated the Indian owners of the lands there, and there is now no doubt that the allegation was true. There was no redress to be had for an Indian wrong in those years. Teedyuscung and the leaders of the Indians issued imperative orders that the war should be confined to Pennsylvania and they were pretty generally obeyed. Occasional straggling parties of them, however, in small numbers, disobeyed orders in order to avenge some injury to some person or clan, and passed through east of Shawangunk Mountains on marauding expeditions. They were vagrant Indians who had no standing as warriors in their tribe and they perpetrated wanton
286
THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.
murders without the knowledge or sanction of their leaders. Of this class no doubt were the ones who surprised a man named Owens at work in Dolsen's meadow, in what was then Dolsentown, now in Wawayanda, near Middletown, in 1756, and shot him. David Cooley, who is believed then to have had a settlement at what is now the Charles O. Carpenter farm near Pine Hill cemetery, about a mile south of where Dolsen was located, alarmed at the murder of Owens, moved his family to Goshen. The next spring he moved back. That summer a party of Indians, in passing by his place, shot a woman of his household who at the time was passing from the outdoor oven to the house.
A company of militia had been organized in 1738 in the county called the "Company of the Wallakill ( Willinskill)"; but none of the 144 names of its members appear to belong to our territory, except it may be those of John Monell. Lieutenant William Borland, Benjamin Haines, James Monell, Johannis Crane and James Davis. John Bayard was its captain.
The murder of the widow Walling in 1758 was mentioned in the Phila- delphia Gasette and in New York papers in that year and made a pro- found impression throughout the colonies.
In the Revolutionary War, Colonel Allison's Goshen regiment contained some names belonging to this territory. The officers of its Wawayanda company were : Captain, William Blair ; lieutenants, Thomas Wisner and Thomas Sayre, Jr .; ensign, Richard Johnson; of the Drowned Lands company-captain, Samuel Jones ; lieutenants, Peter Gale and Jacob Dunning ; ensign, Samuel Webb; of the Pochuck company-captain, Ebenezer Owen ; lieutenants, Increase Holley and John Bronson ; ensign, David Rogers ; of Minisink company-captain, Moses Courtright ; lieuten- ants, John VanTile and Johannes Decker; ensign, Ephraim Middaugh. The latter lived in the township of Wantage in 1764, where he was com- missioned as an ensign of Captain Kirkendal's company by Governor William Franklin. The late S. M. Stoddard of that township had and exhibited to the writer the last named commission. Middaugh went with General Hathorn to the battle of Minisink, where he was killed.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The town of Minisink was bonded in 1869, for $75,000 to aid in extend- ing the New York Midland Railroad from Unionville farther south. This
287
TOWN OF MINISINK.
has not been paid in full yet. The sum of $3,280 was ordered to be raised by tax on the town of Minisink by the board of supervisors on the 22nd of November, 1907, to pay principal and interest on those bonds.
The first town meeting after the town of Minisink was organized, took place at the house of John Van Tuyl, April 1, 1789. Its territory then covered the three towns, and that house supposed to be the old stone house now in Greenville, on the former Jonathan Van Tuyl farm, later the Hallock house, was a convenient place for the gathering.
August II, 1864, the present town was bonded for $25,000 to pay bounties for volunteers in the Civil War. It was paid off, principal and interest, in eight equal installments as they fell due.
Hulet Clark bought land in Minisink in 1828 in the present town of Minisink, where he died March 31, 1857. His son, William Harvey Clark, early gave evidence of the good judgment and business ability which his future life carried out. He married Emily Robertson of Wawayanda and they lived on the old homestead near Westtown, where he died in 1907. Ilis son. Robert H. Clark, is the present supervisor of this town, resides on the old homestead, and is establishing a business reputation as popular and able as that which distinguished his father and which will make his name long remembered in local annals.
In March, 1799, the Legislature of the State passed an act for the gradual abolition of slavery. All slaves were to become free at a certain age. As an instance of its working, there was Frank Bounty, a col- ored man, for whom Joseph Davis of Wawayanda had traded a pair of oxen when Frank was a young man. When the time arrived at which the law gave Frank his liberty he was called up by Mr. Davis and told that he was then a free man. Frank asked him if he could not stay on with him, but Mr. Davis said he could not, for the reason that people would then say that he was being coerced. Mr. Davis gave him some money and told him he must go and do for himself, and Frank told the writer that was one of the saddest days of his life.
Mr. Davis also gave him the use of a house and lot in Brookfield or Slate Hill which he might, and did, enjoy for life by paying the taxes on it. It was the last house on the west side of the street in the west end of the village at that time. There he raised a large family.
Not all negroes were so lucky. Some of them were old and worn out and their masters were glad to get rid of caring for them.
288
THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.
In the early history of the town in all its farming communities, the farmers raised sheep, and made a double use of them. The rams were used to churn with on the big wheel and on endless chain churning ma- chines then used, and the wool sheared from all the sheep was carded, sometimes by hand, at other times in factories, and woven or spun into stockings, mittens, and cloth, to furnish wearing apparel. Up to 1850, butter was the chief product of the dairies in the town. Then selling milk came into general practice, and making butter, milling flour for home use, and traveling on horseback went out of fashion.
The farmers universally kept sheep, raised the wool to make the clothes for the members of the family, and at the same time used the large sheep to churn with upon a tread or sweep power. Up to 1850 butter and hogs were the chief products. It is less than 200 years since the first squatters settled in the limits of the three towns of which we write. The first cus- toms to pass away were their friendly associations with the few Indians who clung to their old hunting grounds with death-like tenacity. Then the hostilities engendered by the helplessness of the Indians and the con- sequent overbearing attitude of the settlers passed by, leaving a trail of traditions and savage memories. Then followed the old logging, stone picking. mowing, husking and quilting bees or frolics in which whiskey was used as a general beverage. Then came the passing of the use of whiskey for the universal medicine and social welcome. Next passed the days when women carded the wool and spun and wove it, and knit every- where, knit, knit, knit. Next passed the days when the young ladies worked samplers, and helped in the harvest and hay fields, and grew up vigorous, stout and healthy. Next passed the fishing with fikes and racks and the hunting for wolves and foxes. Now have arrived the days when fish and game are about extinct.
Now are the days when the farmers sell their milk and buy their butter ; when they sell little else than milk and have become a great generation of buyers ; when social visits are about unknown ; when the old time good- natured sports and merriment are frowned upon ; when men no longer meet on the streets and argue politics, but bury themselves in a newspaper on the trains or in any resting place and read, read, read; when women no longer knit and spin; when the girls no longer will do outdoor work and dreadfully dislike to do indoor work; when, instead of the big boys and girls going to school a few months in the winter season, they all
289
TOWN OF MINISINK.
go away to boarding school. In noting these and other changes which have taken place in the towns as the years have fled, it is noticeable that the people generally live better, even luxuriously, compared with former years, but are their public and domestic relations happier ?
200
THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.
CHAPTER XXI.
TOWN OF MONROE.
BY M. N. KANE.
T HE territory comprising the present town of Monroe is part of the Cheesecock Patent granted by Queen Anne, March 25, 1707. The Cheesecock tract was surveyed by Charles Clinton, father (I George and James Clinton, and grandfather of Dewitt Clinton. His field book, the original of which is in the possession of Hon. MacGrane Cox, of Southfield, N. Y. (Mr. Fred J. Knight, Civil Engineer, of Mon- roe, N. Y., having a copy), contains much information and many inter- esting incidents of the early history of this section.
The town was set off from the precinct of Goshen in 1764 and named Cheesecock. This name continued until 1801, when it was changed to Southfield. On April 6th, 1808, it took the present name Monroe, in honor of James Monroe, the fifth President of the United States.
In 1863, the town (like ancient Gaul), was divided into three parts by the erection of the three towns of Monroe, Highland and Southfield, which division was the same as the present towns of Monroe, Woodbury and Tuxedo, except that the then town of Monroe embraced a small portion of the present town of Woodbury.
In 1865 the three towns were dissolved and the whole original territory restored to the town of Monroe. In 1889 it again underwent the Gaelic operation resulting in the creation of the present towns of Monroe, Woodbury and Tuxedo. Monroe contains an area of 11,500 acres, Wood- bury 23,000 acres and Tuxedo 50,000 acres.
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.