The history of Orange County, New York, Part 38

Author: Headley, Russel, b. 1852, ed
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Middletown, N.Y., Van Deusen and Elms
Number of Pages: 1342

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There are two Grand Army Posts in Middletown, viz: General Lyon Post, No. 266; Captain William A. Jackson Post, No. 301.

Middletown has a very efficient Business Men's Associaton, which was incorporated November 20, 1902.

The banking interests of Middletown are represented by the following banks: First National Bank, capital $100,000 ; Merchants' National Bank. capital $100,000; Orange County Trust Company, capital $100,000; and the Middletown Savings Bank. These institutions are all in a healthy and prosperous condition and have, in the aggregate, deposits amounting to about the sum of $8,000,000.

There are, in addition to the above, thirty-five incorporated companies in Middletown, representing manufacturing, mercantile, mechanical and financial enterprises. The largest employers of labor are the Borden's Condensed Milk Company, the New York, Ontario & Western Railway Company shops, Howell-Hinchman Company, and the Union Hat Com- pany.

The cemetery grounds of the Hillside Cemetery Corporation, formerly Hillside Cemetery Association, are located in the southwest part of the city. The cemetery had many natural advantages from contour of the land, virgin forests and running streams. To these have been added about twelve miles of macadamized roads and drives, with gracefully curving paths and winding walks. A great deal of shrubbery and many flow- ering plants have been set out and in the summer the scene is a most lovely one. Surely Hillside Cemetery is a beautiful resting place for the dead.

Samuel C. Howell.

425

TOWN OF WALLKILL.

Middletown has a most complete water system supplied by three reser- voirs, located in the towns of Wallkill and Mount Hope, and named re- spectively, Monhagen, Highland and Shawangunk. All water for do- mestic use is thoroughly filtered before being conveyed to the city.

The city has several miles of well paved streets, and is lighted by both gas and electricity.

The telephone system consists of two companies. The Orange County Telephone Company has about 1,600 telephones in use, and also does the long-distance business in the city for the Hudson River Telephone Com- pany. The Middletown Telephone Company has about a score of sub- scribers in the city. It also has connection with several outside indepen 1- ent companies.

With its location, financial ability, numerous business enterprises, its many social, benevolent, charitable and religious associations and institu- tions, its splendid school system, and with the enterprise, energy and business ability of its citizens, the Middletown of to-day is only a begin- ning of the greater Middletown which will occupy this central part of Orange County in the years to come.

To sum up the history of the town of Wallkill were an easy task, and so saying is to speak in the highest praise of the town. Its course has been peaceful, quiet, serene; its politics have never been infected by scandal and corruption ; the red glare of warfare-aborignal or other- wise-has not shone athwart its pages ; it has been a history in which the husbandman has dominated the scene and has been the central actor. Agriculture has been the mainstay of a people pious an 1 Go I-fearing, the descendants of those sturdy New England and Long Island ancestors who built the meeting-house and the school as soon as ever the settlement was made.

We dwellers in the Wallkill of to-day have every reason to be thank- ful that our history has been what it has; if it has lacked romance of excitement, it has likewise abounded in a peace that has meant prosperity.

Of late years the flood of immigration has sent its waves to our thresh- olds, and we find in our villages, on our farms, and toiling along our railroads the children of Italy. of Hungary, of Austria, of Russia an 1 the more remote East. What the picture will be a century hence, what sort of an amalgamation will have taken place, we cannot foresee. Cer- tain it is that, if he is to remain with us, we must e lucate the alien, teach

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THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.

him our ways, prepare him for citizenship, and do all we can for him morally and intellectually, and that will surely involve amalgamation. At any rate, this is a force that is bound to change our town's history, in the next hundred years, from anything that has gone before it. We should face the problem-meet it with those most forcible of weapons, Education and Law.

For the rest, acting the role of prophet is not difficult. Wallkill's lines have been cast in pleasant places and will probably so continue to be cast. We anticipate nothing marvelous, look forward to naught phe- nomenal, expect no revolutions. Our townspeople will pursue the even tenor of their way on their pleasant farms and in their quiet villages ; they will know neither the bleak necessities of poverty nor the anxieties of extreme wealth; all will be medium, which is the happiest state of all. We are content with that. Our Wallkill is well beloved; we would not trade it for anything different or more brilliant ; we would have it as it has been, not meaning stagnation, of course, yet not longing for the "boom" which newer and less firmly established and less well-grounded communi- ties are forever invoking.

Wallkill, in many ways, realizes one's ideal of a rural township-well governed, knowing neither financial extreme, and with a people contented, and at peace.

Ferdinand V. Sanford

427

TOWN OF WARWICK.

CHAPTER XXIX.

TOWN OF WARWICK.

BY FERDINAND V. SANFORD.

T HE derivation of Warwick, according to Mr. Thomas Kemp, mayor of Warwick. England, who has written a "History of Warwick and Its People." is from the Saxon "Wara" which in that tongue signifies inhabitants, and "wic"-a town or castle, or hamlet, a bank or crook of a river. So that Warawic, or Warwick, signifies no more than the inhabitants of the town or castle upon the bank of the river. Other Saxon forms of the name found are Werhica, Wyrengewyk, Woerinc- wic, and Wering-wic.

The history of our Warwick from the earliest times has been written by Eager and Ruttenber in their publicatons-that of the last-named writer coming down to the year 1880.

EARLY SETTLEMENT.

The present sketch is intended rather to supplement these earlier ac- counts than to re-write all of the past history, by recording principally the events which have occurred since 1880.

The town or township of Warwick was erected from the precinct of Goshen in 1788, and derived its name from the plantation of Benjamin Aske, one of the orignal grantees of the Wawayanda patent. Upon the sub-division of the patent among twelve patentees, Aske's share was a tract nearly in the form of a parallelogram, which extended from Wick- ham's or Clark's Lake, on the northeast, to the farm now owned by Townsend W. Sanford, on the southwest, with an average width of a mile, and containing 2,200 acres of land. Aske named this tract, "War- wick." from which fact it is supposed that he came from Warwickshire, England. The date of the Wawayanda patent is March 5. 1702-1703. which was the peculiar style of writing year date a couple of centuries ago. The document is signed by the twelve chiefs. all making their mark in the presence of witnesses, one of them Chuckhass, the chief who lived

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THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.

in this town and for whom Chuck's Hill is named. This patent embraced at that time practically all of Orange County as it existed in 1703.

By deed dated February 28, 1719, Aske sold to Lawrence Decker, yeo- man, for £50, 100 acres, in the deed described as "being part of the 2,200 acres of land, called Warwick," showing that previous to that date Aske had bestowed the name of Warwick upon his tract. Later deeds to Thomas Blaine and Thomas DeKay contain similar recitals.

The pioneers of Warwick were principally English families who came hither from Long Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Among them we find the names of Armstrong, Baird, Benedict, Blaine, Bradner, Burt, DeKay, Decker, Demarest, Ketchum, Knapp, McCambley, Post, Roe, Sayer, Sly, Sanford, Welling, Wheeler, Wisner, Wood and Van Duzer. Most of these settlers have left descendants who still live in the town or village.

During the Revolution there were a few Tories near Warwick, but the majority of the people were loyal to the country of their adoption, an 1 many of them enlisted for service.

John Hathorn, colonel of the Warwick and Florida regiment, Captains Charles Beardsley. John Minthorn, Henry Wisner, Jr., Abram Dolson, Jr., John Norman, Henry Townsend, Nathaniel Elmer, John Sayer : Lieu- tenants Richard Welling, Samuel Lobdell. Nathaniel Ketchum, George Vance, Peter Bartholf, Matthew Dolson, John Hopper, John DeBow. Anthony Finn, John Popino, Jr., Richard Bailey, John Kennedy, John Wood, and many others rendered valuable services during the Revo- lution.

While New York City was in the hands of the British, the most trav- eled road between the Hudson River and the Delaware ran through War- wick. It is said that Washington passed through Warwick twice during the war, and was entertained by Colonel Hathorn at the Pierson E. San- ford stone house near the village, on one of these occasions, at least.

For some time after the Revolution there were not more than thirty houses in the village. In 1765 Daniel Burt built the shingle house, now owned by Mrs. Sallie A. F. Servin. the oldest house in the village. In 1766 Francis Baird built the stone house now owned by William B. Sayer, which was at one time used as a tavern, and in some of the old maps Warwick is called "Baird's Tavern."

James W. Knapp.

429

TOWN OF WARWICK.

DEVELOPMENT.

The town of Warwick is the largest in area of any of the towns of the county, containing 61,763 acres, or nearly double that of any of the others, and being a little more than one-eighth of the area of the whole county. Its assessed valuation of real and personal property in 1906, was $2,863,010. The taxes levied upon that valuation for last year were $22.745.12. Population according to State census of 1905 was 6.691.

Within the last generation the town has greatly improved its public highways and bridges. With the advent of the bicycle, automobile and other motor vehicles, the demand for better road facilities has been felt, and this demand has been and is now being supplied. Under the State law providing for the construction and improvement of the highways at the joint expense of the State and county, the sum of $15.387.40 has been expended by the county, and the additional sum of $1,602.60 by the State, up to the year 1905, for acquisition of rights of way, engineer- ing and cost of construction of 4.67 miles of road from Florida to War- wick, known as Road No. 93. so that under the good roads law ( Chap. 115, Laws 1898) we have nearly five miles of finished work done. Plans have also been approved by the county and its share of the cost appro- priated for the building of 6.92 miles of road from Warwick to Green- wood Lake at a total estimated cost of $54,250, which will undoubtedly be built as soon as the Legislature makes appropriation for the State's share of the cost.

Sirce 1883 the town has constructed several new iron bridges, viz : on the east arm of Greenwood Lake, at Main, South, Lake, Elm and Bank streets in the village of Warwick ; also at Florida, Kimball's Point, Garners' Island across the Pochuck Creek, one between the towns of Goshen and Warwick, and one between the towns of Minisink and War- wick. also at Bellvale and New Milford, these substantial structures replacing the old wooden bridges of the past. An elevated bridge across the tracks of the Lehighi and Hudson River Railway Company was con- structed to avoid the grade crossing at Stone Bridge at the joint expense of the railway company and the town, costing nearly $8,000, of which the town's share was one-quarter of the whole cost, made a most desirable improvement in this part of the town.

The town constructed a new road along the east side of Greenwood

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THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.

Lake in 1889, the land being donated by Alexander Brandon, trustee, and others, to the town, and the latter building the same at a cost of over $7,000. This improvement opens up a large tract of land for building purposes, the road extending to State line of New York and New Jersey.

In 1902, by a vote of the taxpayers, a change was made in the manner of working the highways from the labor to the money system. Under the old system something over 5,000 days would be assessed for labor, but a considerable portion would never be worked and in consequence our highways would suffer. Under the present method the sum of $5.593 was expended by the town in 1906, in cash upon our highways, and the additional sum of $2,000 State aid, with uniformly better results every- where.

The total mileage of public roads is nearly 200 in the town, and the sum of $25 per mile was expended upon every mile in that year and ad- ditional sums of $10 per mile upon those roads more frequently traveled.

This amount was for all the road districts outside of the incorporated village of Warwick, which is a separate road district maintained by the corporation. The valuation for 1907 was $1 of tax for every $300 of as- sessed value.

Town boards of health have been maintained since 1881 and consist of the supervisor, town clerk, justices of the peace, a citizen member and a physician, known as the health officer. Rules and regulations governing the proper observance of health are published each year by this official body, and prompt action taken in case of any outbreak of disease, and measures instituted to control and prevent the spread of the same. As a result of the labors of these organizations and those in the incorporated villages of our towns, the public health has been safeguarded, and no serious epidemics have been experienced.

The town has seventeen separate school districts, where the common school is maintained, and two union free schools at Florida and War- wick, under the supervision of the Regents of the University at Albany. In these latter schools our young people are graduated, prepared for the different walks of life, and many entering colleges to prosecute their studies further for the learned professions. Under the present State law education is compulsory, between the ages of eight and sixteen, and parents, guardians and employers detaining the child between those ages are liable to fine and imprisonment.

431

TOWN OF WARWICK.

Under the compulsory education law our town appoints annually for each of the school districts an officer known as the truant officer, whose duty it is to look after the interests of those who will not look after their own, and compel all children within the school age to be in atten 1- ance upon the public school during the required period. The State appor- tionment of school funds for 1907 for the town was $4.300.

The town has six election of poiling places, known as Districts Nos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. No. I inchides the voters in the Amity an 1 Pine Island district. No. 2. those in Florida and vicinity : Nos. 3. 4 an 1 5. the village of Warwick, Bellvale and New Milford; No. 6, Greenwool Lake and Sterling. The total vote polled for Governor in the town in 1906 was 1,218.

The principal farm products are dairying, onions, peaches, apples, hay and potatoes. Milk is condensed at several places in the town. The mineral products are iron, granite, mica, white and blue limestone. The white limestone is very valuable for fluxing purposes and in the manu- facture of Portland cement. Large deposits of the same are found in the western part of the town, running from near Florida to the Vernon Valley. The blue limestone is valuable for building purposes and is found very generally in different parts of the town. Clay beds also exist at Florida and at Durland's, from which brick have been manufacture 1.

The present bonded debt of the town ( 1907) is $4.950, bearing 4 per cent. interest, which is very small considering the amounts expende ! in the construction of the new iron bridges in the town during the last thirty years-nearly twenty-and the cost of new road construction an l for damages to the town roads and bridges caused by the great floo 1 of 1903, when one bridge was completely destroyed. and nine were dam- aged. besides the damages to many of the public roads, and other small bridges.

VILLAGES AND HAMLETS.

Warwick

The village of Warwick was known as early as 1719, but was not set- tled until about 1764. It is the largest village in the town and the only one incorporated. Its area is 395 acres, and its population ( 1905) was 1.767. It was incorporated under a special act of the Legislature in 1867.

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THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.

and re-incorporated under the general village law in 1901. Built on rolling land in the valley west of the Warwick Mountains, it is an ideal spot for country homes. The land is well drained, the Wawayanda Creek flowing through the center of the town in a southeasterly direction. The mean elevation of the valley is 550 feet, and the nearby mountains rise to a height of 1,200 to 1,400 feet. The varied pastoral scenes of wood, stream and meadow, with here and there a lake, and the tall peaks of the Catskills in the distance greeting the eye from these heights, are said by travelers to equal, if not surpass, anything else of the kind in all the wide world.

Fine roads, affording delightful drives, extend from Warwick, in every direction, some among the neatly kept farms in the valley and others through winding ways among the hills. With such an unrivaled environ- ment, Warwick has grown famous for its own peculiar beauties. One cannot say that our village is quaint or old-fashioned, with swinging gates, grassy lanes, and moss-covered roofs; rather, it has an air of smartness, blended with polished repose. It is a pretty park with velvety lawns, showing to vast advantage groups of flowering shrubs, unmarred by fences, and with the houses well apart, giving an air of freedom · from cramped conditions.

Not only the fine mansions that have been built by prosperous country merchants, professional men and city folk, but also the modest homes of the village mechanics and artisans, all show the same indvidual public spirit, not to be outdone in keeping things spruced up and freshly painted. Here and there are old homesteads where son has succeeded father for generations, yet the old homes look well and becoming in their new and airy clothes. The advent of broad avenues and flag walks have forever effaced the winding trails, and with them much of the sweet Indian legen- dary has been obliterated. For all these rolling hills were once covered with chestnut, birch, maple and pine trees. There is something pathetic in the passing of the redman, the type of years gone by, as the impress of civilization unrelentingly, step by step, has crowded upon his tepee and forced him westward.

Yet the maples, as planted by our fathers, forming bowers over streets, are more beautiful than the pine tree. We have no "Unter den Linden," but we might claim an "Unter den Maples."

Warwick has been called the Queen Village, also a Village of Homes.

William Moore Sanford.

433

TOWN OF WARWICK.

If she is not truly the former, she is easily and far away a village of homes."

As carly as 1830 Henry William Herbert, an English gentleman and writer, better known as Frank Forester, visited the village and stopped at the old inn, known as Tom Ward's, now and then called the Wa- wayanda House. Forester has celebrated us in his famous book of sporting tales and adventures called "Warwick Woodlands," in which he tells many a quaint tale of the doings of himself and mine host Ward. (whom he cleverly calls Draw by simply inverting the letters of the name ). and of many other sportsmen of that carly day.

No one has ever paid our vale and village a higher tribute than For- ester, when he said :

"In all the river counties of New York there is none to my mind which presents such a combination of all natural beauties, pastoral, rural, sylvan and at times almost sublime, as old Orange, nor any part of it to me so picturesque, or so much endeared by carly recollections, as the fair vale of Warwick. Throughout its length and breadth, it is one of the most fertile and beautiful, and the most Arcadian regions of the United States ; poverty in its lower and more squalid aspects, if not in any real or tangible shape, is unknown within its precincts ; its farmers, the genuine old solid yeoman of the land, the backbone and bulwark of the country. rich as their teeming pastures, hospitable as their warm hearts and ever open doors, stanch and firm as the everlasting hills among which in truly pleasant places their lines have fallen, would be the pride of any nation, kingdom or republic; its women are among the fairest daughters of a country where beauty is the rule rather than the exception. Sweet vale of Warwick, sweet Warwick, loveliest village of the vale. it may be I shall never see you more, for the silver cord is loosened. the golden bowl is broken, which most attached me to your quiet and seques- tered shadcs. * May blessings be about you, beautiful Warwick ; may your fields be as green. your waters as bright, the cattle upon your hundred hills as fruitful, as in the days of old."

In 1883 the village voted the sum of $600 to lay the sidewalks over the Main street bridge. In 1886 the sum of $4.200 was voted by the tax- payers to buy the lot and build the brick building occupied by Excelsior Hose Company. In 1880 an application was made to the trustees for the organization of the Goodwill Hook and Ladder Company. In 1891

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THE COUNTY OF ORANGE.

a truck was bought for said ladder company at a cost of $600. The sys- tem for working the village streets was changed in this year to the money system. In 1895 a number of the citizens contributed the sum of $433 03 for the purchase of a sprinkling cart, a proposition pre- viously submitted to the taxpayers for the purchase of the same having been defeated at a special election. In 1896, Raymond Hose Company No. 2, to look after the interests of the village in the west end, was organized by consent of the trustees.

In 1897, the sum of $500 was voted for the purpose of a fire alarm. In this year the first and only franchise ever granted by the village was given to Sharp & Chapman for a term of fifty years, for an electric light plant.

These parties having failed to carry out their agreement, the village the next year granted a franchise for the same purpose to the Warwick Valley Light and Power Company, of the same duration.

Since 1898 the village has been lighted with electric light at a cost of about $2,000 per year, the present plant consisting of ninety-seven in- candescent electric lights and six 2,000 candle power arc lamps.

In 1900 the taxpayers voted the sum of $1,600 for the purchase of a lot and the building of a hose house for the Raymond Hose Com- pany.

In 1901 a proposition to reincorporate the village under the general village law was carried. A special election held the same year to vote upon the proposition of paving our streets with Telford pavement and asking for the sum of $10,000 for that purpose, was defeated by only three votes.

In 1902 the heirs of the late George W. Sanford donated the sum of $1,250 to the village for the purpose of a drinking fountain, which has been erected and is placed at Fountain Square, corner of Main and East Main streets.

In July, 1906, Warwick, England, celebrated the two thousand years of her past history in a great historical pageant upon the grounds of Warwick Castle. Invitations were issued to all the Warwicks of the world-fourteen in all-to be present and participate in these festivities. Our board appointed its president, Ferdinand V. Sanford, as its repre- sentative, who attended the celebration, and delivered in person the fol- lowing resolutions of greeting and congratulation :

Henry A. Benedict.

435

TOWN OF WARWICK.

HONORABLE THOMAS KEMP.

Mayor of the Corporation of Warwick, England.

Sir :

Accept congratulations and greetings from your daughter and namesake across the sea, on the occasion of your great historical pageant, wherem somewhat of your ancient and honorable past is reproduced, not merely in centuries, but in millen- niums of time.

As Americans we are proud of our English ancestry, and of that mighty nation. on whose empire the sun never sets, whose history is the history of everything that makes for progress, a higher civilization and the enlightenment and uplifting of mankind.

May God continue to bless England and America, the leading Christian nations of the earth, whose history teaches the world of the transcendent value of the life, liberty and happiness of man.

Done at Warwick, New York, United States of America, on the twenty-sixth day of May in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and six.

THE VILLAGE OF WARWICK. By FERDINAND V. SANFORD, President, CHARLES WUTKE. GEORGE 11. STRONG.

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The history of Orange County, New York, Part 38

Author: Headley, Russel, b. 1852, ed Publication date: 1908 Publisher: Middletown, N.Y., Van Deusen and Elms Number of Pages: 1342

Author: Headley, Russel, b. 1852, ed
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Middletown, N.Y., Van Deusen and Elms
Number of Pages: 1342