History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 3

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438

USA > Pennsylvania > Monroe County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 3
USA > Pennsylvania > Pike County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 3
USA > Pennsylvania > Wayne County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 3

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Great antiquity has been claimed for the Dutch settlements in the Lower Pennsylvania Minisink, and many careless writers have bold- ly asserted as if it were a proven fact, that the Dutch were located upou the Delaware in what are now Monroe and Pike counties, not only be- fore the coming of Penn in 1682, but prior to the settlement of the Swedes on the lower Del- aware, and that this region was therefore the first in all Pennsylvania occupied by Europeans or white people. There is not a particle of ab- solute proof for such an assertion and yet there is considerable presumptive evidence tending towards the creation of an opinion, that the re-

gion in question, if not the first portion of the Province actually settled was among the first temporarily occupied by white men.

Resting the claim for the early settlement of the Pennsylvania Minisink and of Monroe County solely upon the well authenticated loca- tion of Nicholas Depui3 npou the west side of the Delaware in 1727,4 and the locality still maintains the distinction of priority of settle- ment over any other equidistant from Philadel- phia. The site of Depui's settlement within the present county of Monroe is about seventy- five miles iu au air line from the Pennsylvania metropolis. Now the segment of a circle swept by a seventy-five mile radius from Depui's on the Delaware, to the Southern boundary of the State with Philadelphia as a centre, will be found to pass almost exactly through the centre of Monroe, Carbon, Schuylkill and Lebanon counties ; through the western part of Lancaster, crossing the Susquehanna near Columbia and passing Southward, nearly centrally, through York county. Outside of this quarter circle- to the northward and westward-it is believed there were few if any permanent settlements prior to Depui's. Thus Monroe county and the lower Minisink are justly entitled, on thorough- ly attested facts, to hold a prominent place among the pioneer settlements of Pennsylvania.

As to the occupation of the Minisink for many years prior to the Depni settlement there can be no doubt-and yet as to the exact tinie that the first comers arrived in the region there exists no authoritative data. Whether any of the settlers who preceded Depui in the Mini- sink, as a whole, were located on the Pennsyl- vania side of the river is very doubtful. There is no weighty authority for the opinion that they did, and no ground for an assertion that

1 The settlers at Cushntnnk, in Damascus township, Wayne County, regarded themselves as within the Mini- sink country.

" The battle opposite the mouth of the Lackawaxen, between the forces of Brant and the whites, on July 22, 1779, has been commonly called "the Battle of the Mini- sink," indicating that the region was regarded as a part of the Minisink.

3 See postea this chapter ; also the Chapter on Smithfield township in the History of Monroe County.

4 This date rather than 1725, is now regarded by Mr. Luke W. Brodhead as the proper one to be employed in fix- ing the time of Depui's location. There is no positive evi- dence that he was permanently located in the Pennsylva- nia Minisink prior to 1727, although he doubtless visited the site of his future home, in 1725, the year designated by many writers as that of his settlement. Mr. Brodhead has stated in his work upon the Delaware Water Gap, that he settled at Shawnee in 1725, but more recent investiga- tion have convinced him that the later date is correct.

WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

they did not ; but even if it be admitted that some of the people on the Delaware before De- pui's time had habitations on the Pennsylvania side, it cannot be claimed that they were more than mere transient dwellers here, or what would be called in more modern colloquial Eng- lish, "Squatters."

The whole assumption-and it is a reasona- ble one-that the Dutch were in the Minisink many years before the first recorded permanent settlements were made, rests upon the existence of the old mines in Pahaquarry 1 township, Warren County, N. J., and the "old mine road " from Esopus, now Kingston on the Hud- son, to the Delaware, in the vicinity of those mines, and upon a few isolated facts in Dutch Colonial history. And in this connection it may be added that, paradoxical as it may seem, the silence of history proves much concerning these traces of early occupation. The absence of any record of the work done here is the best proof of its antiquity.

Here was a road abont one hundred miles in length, constructed with care and so well that it was still in a condition to be easily traveled when the English first obtained knowledge of the country, and here in the mountains of Pah- aquarry, about half way between the Delaware Water Gap, and Walpack Bend were extensive openings, the remains of mines in which some enterprising people had sought and found cop- per.2 The English had no knowledge of these works until long after they had been abandoned, and the few early records which remotely al- lude to them have all come from the Dutch.

1 This name is corrupted from the original Indian name of the Delaware Water Gap " Pohoqualine," called also at different periods Pahaqualong and Pahaqualia, meaning a river passing between two mountains.

2 Mr. Luke W. Brodhead says : "The mines appear to have been worked to a considerable extent. Two horizon- tal drifts of several hundred feet in length penetrate the side of the mountain, a few hundred feet above the river Delaware with several smaller openings adjacent.

A company was formed in 1847 for reworking these mines, at which time large trees were growing on the debris the Holland miners had removed.

The late George R. Graham, of Philadelphia, was at the head of the new organization and during the progress of the work in the summer of 1847 the place was visited by a party of editors, among whom was the late Horace Grecley.

The Hollanders who had found the Hudson in 1609, built a fort at Albany in 1614, and bought the Island of Manhattan in 1626 for sixty guilders, (twenty-four dollars) had domin- ion over the country as far west as the Delaware until it was wrested from them by the English in 1664. They had disputed the possession of the lower river with the Swedes and lad exer- cised their usual energy in zealously seeking commerce throughout the region which they claimed, and were beyond, going in the middle of the seventeenth century, at least as far west- ward as the Susquehanna. That the mines on the Delaware were theirs, is an undeniable in- ference from the fact of their connection by the "mine road " with one of their chief settlements, Esopus. The work of making both road and mines was done in obedience to tlie prominent national characteristic of seeking wealth, and it is plain that works of so great an extent and importance must have had their inception many years before the Dutch overthrow, for of course all labor upon and use of them was abandoned after that event. There are some shreds of evi- dence to support this reasonable and almost universally accepted theory.

The Dutch were the first Europeans who had knowledge of the territory which is now Penn- sylvania. Soon after they had established a trading-post at the site of Albany, in 1614, three of their men wandered out into the in- terior along the Mohawk River and crossed the dividing water-shed to Otsego Lake, the very head of the Susquehanna River. They came down this river, and by the Lackawanna and the Lehigh, passed over to the Delaware River, where, below the Trenton Falls, they were res- cued from the Minsis, who held them in captivity, by Captain Hendricksen, who happened to be there exploring the bay and river. These three Hollanders were the first white men that ever set foot on Pennsylvania soil. It is possible that they may have given the first knowledge of the Minisink Country. In 1646, Andreas Huddle at- tempted to ascend the Delaware, above the Falls, but was stopped by the Indians. It is thought by Hazzard and several other students that he was trying to reach the mines in the Minisink, and that there was, at that time, a Dutch colony there.

LELL CUCCU COOF U

SETTLEMENT OF LOWER MINISINK BY THE DUTCH.

In 1655, Van der Donk published a history in which he says : " Many of the Netherlanders have been far into the country, more than seventy or eighty leagues from the river and seashore. We frequently trade with Indians who come more than ten and twenty days' journey from the interior."

The most direct testimony about the mines, appears in the Albany Records under date of April 25, 1659,1 where oceurred this entry : " We lately saw a small piece of mineral which was sueh good and pure copper that we deemed it worth inquiring of one Kloes de Ruyter about, as we presume he must know if the faet is as stated. He asserted that there was a copper mine at the Minisink."

This, at least, fixes the faet that a mine was known, somewhere in the Minisink, as early as 1659, two eenturies and a quarter ago, or sixty- eight years before the Depui settlement on the Pennsylvania side of the river.

Thomas Budd, in his aceount of Pennsylva- nia and New Jersey, published in London, 1684, says : " The Indians go up the Delaware in eanoes from the Falls (Trenton) to the Indian town ealled Minnisink." He speaks of the exceeding rich open lands of the Minisink, but gained no reliable information of the first set- tlement of this region.

We now leave, for a time, the lower Mini- sink country, for the purpose of introdueing a few facts chronologieally in order, eoneerning the upper Minisink.

The first recorded visit to any part of the Minisink region was by Captain Arent Sehuy- ler, in 1794. He was sent out by Governor Fletcher, who was ruler of the Province of New York under the erown of England, and the mission with which he was charged was to aseertain whether the Mensi Indians had been tampered with by the French ; that is, whether the emissaries of the French in Canada had sought to enlist them with the Canadian tribes against the English. Schuyler penetrated the northern Minisink to or near the site of Port Jervis, N. Y., but in his journal he makes no allusion to settlers there or to any knowledge

he might have obtained of settlers further south. The journal of his journey is given plaee here because it is the earliest record of a visit by a white man to the territory under eon- sideration. It reads as follows :

"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY.

"In pursuance to your Excell : commands I have been in the Minissink Country of which I have kept the following journal : viz

" 1694 ye 3rd of Feb. I departed from New Yorke for East New Jersey and came that night att Bergen- town where I hired two men and a guide

"Ye 4th Sunday morning-I went from Bergen and travilled about Ten English miles beyond Hagh- kengsack to an Indian place called Peckwes.

" Ye 5th Monday-From Peckwes North and he west I meet about thirty-two miles, snowing and rainy weather.

" Ye 6th Tuesday-I continued my Journey to Ma- gaghkamieck [Indian name for the Neversink] and from thence to within half a days journey of the Minissink.

" Ye 7th Wednesday-About eleven oclock I ar- rived at the Minissink and there I met with two of their sachems and severall other Indians of whome I enquired after some news, of the French or their In- dians had sent for them or beeu in ye Minissink country.

" Upon which they answered that noe French nor any of the French Indians were nor had been in the Miuissink country nor there abouts and did promise yt if ye French should happen to come or yt they heard of it that they will forthwith send a messenger and give yr Excellency notice thereof.

" Inquireing further about news they told me that six days a goe three Christians and two Shawans In- dians who went about fifteen months a goe with Ar- nout Vielle into the Shawans country were passed by the Minissink going for Albany to fetch powder for Aruout and and his company ; and further told them that sd Arnout intended to be there with Seaven hundred of ye sd Shawans Indians, loaden wth beaver and peltries att ye time ye Indian corn is about one foot high (which may be in the month of June)

"The Minis-ink Sachems further sd that one of. their Sachems and other of their Indians were gone to fetch bevor and peltries, which they had hunted ; and having no news of theni are afraid yt ye Sinne- ques have killed them for ye lucar of the beaver or because ye Minissiuck Indians have not been with ye Sinneques as usual to pay their Dutty and therefore desier yt your excellency will be pleased to order yt the Sinneques may be told not to molest or hurt ye Minissinck they be willing to continue in amity with them.

1 Albany Records, vol. IV, p. 304.

WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

" In the afternoon I departed from ye Minissincks, The 8th 9th and 10th of Feb I travilled and came att Bergen in ye morning and about noone arrived att New Yorke

"This may it please your Excell: the humble re- porte of your Excellencys most humble servt.1 " Arent Schuyler "

In 1696 Governor Fletcher granted authority to certain citizens of Ulster county to obtain deeds from the Indians for lands in the New York Minisink. The document reveals the names of several of the applicants whose descen- dants ultimately became settlers in the Penn- sylvania Minisink (in Pike County) and is therefore of sufficient interest to warrant its insertion here. It reads as follows :

" By his Excellency the Governor in Coun- cil the ninth day of January, 1796.

" Whereas Jacob Ruthe, Jacob - 2 Gerryt 2 Aaron Rose, Thomas Naseon, Johannes Westphalen,3 Thomas Quick, Tennis Quick, Hendrick Janse, Cornelius Switz, Claas West- phalen,3 Simeon Westphalen,3 Hendryck Decker, Cornelius De-,2 Jan Middaugh, Daniel Honaw, Cornelius Claas, Peter Jacobs, Direk Vandebergh and Cornelius Christian, have made application nnto me for license to purchase vacant unimproved land in the Minnisink Country called Great and Little Minnisink, for their encouragement. I have with advice and consent of the council granted and by these presents do grant full liberty to the aforesaid suppliants to purchase from native proprietors four thousand acres, that is for each two hundred acres, in order to their obtaining patents for the same. Provided that they shall make their purchase and return the Indian deed into the Secretary's office in the space of one year and day from and next after the date of these presents, for which this shall be to them a sufficient warrant." 4

Dated as above, Benjamin Fletcher.

Here we find the earliest mention of several names since well known in Pike County, viz Quick,5 Decker, and Westphalen (Westfall).

The precise date at which the upper and New York portion of the Minisink was settled cannot be fixed, but there is reason to believe that abont 1690 one William Tietsort came to the Dela- ware and that he was the first settler on the western border of Orange Conuty. He located at Maghaglıkemek. In 1697 what was called the Minisink Patent was granted to Arent Schuyler. This was not the Minisink Patent usually alluded to under that name, but a kind of a floating patent of one thousand acres which included a tract of land on the run called by the Indians Minisink, and " before a certain Island called Menayak which is adjacent to or near to a certain tract of land called by the Indians Maghaghkemek." The Swartwout Patent was granted the same year to Thomas Swartwout, Jacob Caudebec, Bernardus Swart- wout, Anthony Swartwout, Jan Tyse, Peter Guimar and David Jamison. Then the Chesekook, Waywayanda, and Minisink Patents were granted, respectivly in 1702, 1703 and 1704. The best authorities on the history of Ulster and Orange Connties make the earliest settlements upon and about the site of Port Jervis, (after Tietsorts) to have begun prior to 1700 and name Jacob Caudebec6 and Peter Guimar,6 as the first settlers. Some indeed have placed these nien in the Minisink as early as 1690, but that is a palpable error for when the Swartwont Patent was granted (1697) Swartwout and Guimar were residents of New Paltz or of Esopus. The location of these set- tlements was known as the " Upper Neighbor- hood", being in the valley of the Neversink at Peenpack.7

A few years later, probably prior to 1710, a number of families came into what was sub- sequently called "the Lower Neighborhood" and located on either side of the Neversink, from what is now Huguenot, south to Port Jervis. These families came from Ulster County and were all Hollanders or of Holland descent, as indicated by their names : Cortriglit, Van Auken,

1 Documentary History of New York, Vol. IV., p. 98.

2 Names which are illegible.

3 Westphalen undoubtedly became Westfall.

4 Colonial Records of New York.

5 It was doublless from Thomas Quick mentioned in the

grant of Governor Fletcher, that the noted " Tom" Quick, of Pike County was descended.

6 The names are now spelled Cuddeback and Gumaer.

7 Now known as Port Clinton, on the Delaware and Iludson Canal.

SETTLEMENT OF LOWER MINISINK BY THE DUTCH.

Westbrook, Decker, Knykendal, Westfall and others. The settlements from Port Jervis south- ward were undoubtedly inade about the same time as those above and by people connected not only by the ties of nationality but of con- sanguinity, for the same names as those given and others of Hollandish extraction are found in the records pertaining to the territory all along the New Jersey side of the Delaware to the Water Gap. A student of New Jersey history 1 places the movement southward at an earlier date than some other authorities, saying : " Just prior to the year 1700 many of the Low Dutch farmers from Ulster County, New York, together with fugitives from the States of Europe, principally from France, commenced the establishment of a chain of kindred settle- ments along the Mackockemack (Neversink) and Delaware Rivers extending from Ulster County on the north to the Delaware Water Gap at the south, and covering a stretch of territory about fifty miles in width and of variable width."

Substantiating this opinion there is docnmen- tary evidence. "The Precinct of Minisink" was laid off in what is now the northern part of Sussex county, New Jersey, in 1701. It ex- tended along the river from Carpenter's Point to the lower end of Great Minisink Island and was the first municipal division or organization in old Sussex (now divided into Sussex and Warren counties). That region was then with- in the jurisdiction of New York, and the inhab- itants voted for at least eight years with the people of Ulster County, and afterwards gave their votes in Orange County until the settle- ment of the boundary line controversy placed them within the jurisdiction of New Jersey. The establishment of a voting precinct in this region presupposes that there were a considera- ble number of voters in the region.

Edsall2 is inclined to the opinion that these early settlers, concerning whom there are authen- tie data, were of the number who worked the Pahaquarry mines, prior to the period on which history sheds its first light, and presumptively

before 1664. He says (speaking of the miners and builders of the Esopus Road) : " The main body of these men are believed to have returned to their native land, yet a few undoubtedly re- mained and settled in the vicinity of their aban- doned mines. In this county, (Sussex) we class the Depuis, Ryersons and probably the West- brooks and Schoonmakers (Shoemakers) as among the descendants of those ancient immi- grants." As a matter of fact this is possible ; it is even probable, but it is by no means " un- doubtedly" established.

The whole matter of the early settlement of the lower Minisink so far as it can be proven may be summed up together with two or three mere probabilities as follows: The region was certainly known to the Dutch soon after the middle of the Seventceenth Century. The mines were probably worked and the Esopus road built by some of the people prior to 1664 ; some of these early adventurers may have re- mained in the country and become permanent settlers ; the actual, authenticated permanent set- tlement of the region, began in the northern or New York Minisink in the Neversink valley and the vicinity of Port Jervis, about 1697-1700, and extended rapidly southward in the valley of the Delaware to the Water Gap, confined for the most part for many years to the eastern, or New York and New Jersey side of the river ; that the settlers were nearly all Holland Dutch, and that the original tide of immigration and the earliest waves of accession rolled from the same source and direction, from Ulster County and Esopus on the Hudson, from the northeast, by way of the Mine road and the valley of the Delaware. With this, and the statement that it is possible there were settlers in the Pennsyl- vania Minisink, prior to 1727, but that none can be proven earlier than Nicholas Depui's in the year mentioned,-we close a concise summa- ry of what is known and what is simply prob- lematical concerning the beginning of the Mini- sink settlement.

Having now related something of the early history of the upper Minisink and traced the general movement of population southward in the Delaware Valley, we will revert to the De- pui settlement of 1727, made upon lands bought

1 B. A. Westbrook, Esq., of Montague.

2 B. B. Edsall Esq., in Sussex Centennial Address, 1854.

WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

privately from the Indians1 at Shawnee, in Smithfield township, Monroe County, then Bucks. It was here that was made the second recorded visit by a stranger to this miniature, wilderness surrounded, world, this peaceful Ar- cadia, practically almost as remote from the busy marts and centres of commerce of the New Con- tinent, as if it had been located a thousand in- stead of one hundred miles from New York and Philadelphia. The visitor-or obtruder -was Nicholas Scull. The authorities of the Penn province only learned in 1729, that in- truders had come upon their lands along the Delaware, and they sent Scull, a surveyor and trusted man of affairs, to investigate the facts. We have an account of this first appearance of a Pennsylvanian in the Minisink-which comes to us from a second, or rather third hand-in the narrative of Samuel Preston, the pioneer of Stock port on the upper Delaware, who himself visited the lower Minisink in 1787. The ac-

1 Depui probably knew nothing as to what Province he was in the jurisdiction of. He purchased in 1727, of the Minsi Delawares a large portion of the level land along the river, on which the town of Shawnee now stands and also the two large islands in the Delaware-" Shawano " and Manalamink, and received from the Indians a deed (for a copy of which see the Chapter on Smithfield township, Monroe County). In September, 1733, he purchased the same property, in all six hundred and forty-seven acres, from William Allen, a large land owner, who had bought from the Penns, and then first held legal title under the laws of the Province.

Concerning the purchase from the Indians, Sir William Johnson says (MSS. Sir William Jolinson, XXIV. 14.) : " An elderly man who lived in the Highlands, and. at whose house I dined on my way from New York, some years ago, told me that he lived with or in the neighbor- hood of Depui and was present when the said Depui pur- chased the Minisink lands from the Indians; that when they were to sign the deed of sale he made them drunk and never paid them the money agreed upon. He heard the Indians frequently complain of the fraud and declare that they never would be easy until they had satisfaction for their lands."

There was certainly something irregular in the transac- tion, for the deed contains no consideration and was there- fore void according to law, but that Depui was guilty of a positive or purposed injustice does not seem probable, for the Indians are known to have lived on terms of peace with him. Depui was a man of politic, as well as peaceful na- ture, and far too shrewd to have offended a people among whom he was living almost completely isolated from his own race.

count which he gives of Scull's visit in 1730 he received from John Lukens, who as a lad ac- companied Scull upon his tour, and doubtless talked with him about it in later years to re- fresh his boyhood memory. Mr. Preston's letters2 have been often quoted and have been largely instrumental in misleading various care- less writers and readers in regard to the antiq- uity of the Minisink settlement. They contain several manifest errors, and by no means if thoughtfully read, establish any solid ground for the claim of such extreme earliness as many historians make for the permanent settlement of the region-that is of an unbroken, consecutive occupancy of the country from a period ante- dating 1664. Nevertheless, they are full of interest and suggestiveness. Following is a copy of the letters :

"In 1787, the writer went on his first sur- veying tour into Northampton County. He was deputy under John Lukens, Surveyor Gen- eral, and received from him, by way of instruc- tions, the following narrative respecting the settlement of "Minisink " on the Delaware above the Kittany or Blue Mountains : that the settlement was founded a long time before it was known to the Government in Philadel- phia. That when the Government was in- formed of the settlement, they passed a law in 1729 that any such purchase of the Indians should be void, and the purchasers be indicted for forcible entry and detainer, according to the laws of England. That in 1730 they appointed an agent to go and investigate the facts; and the agent so appointed was the famous surveyor, Nicholas Scull ; and that he (John Lukens) was Scull's apprentice, to carry chains and learn surveying. That he accompanied Scull, and they both understood and could talk the Indian language. That they had great difficulty in leading their horses through the Water Gap to Meenesink Flats, which were all settled with Hollanders; with several they could only be un- derstood in Indian.

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History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 3

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co. Number of Pages: 1438

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438