Quaker Hill Part 2

The feeling between them was far from friendly. Their disputes had been very bitter, and Rye and Bedford had revolted from New York's jurisdiction. Their whipping-posts stood ready for the punishment of any from the river settlements who committed even slight offenses within their limits. As the two peoples naturally repelled each other they had left a strip of land, comparatively unoccupied, between them. This continued in nearly a north and south line, parallel with the river, and a little more than midway between it and the Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts lines, as far as they extended. Into and through the strip of land the Quaker stream flowed, like a liquid injected into a fissure in the rocks. Each Quaker home as it settled became a resting place for those who followed, for it was a cardinal principle of Quaker hospitality to keep open house for all fellow members, under all circ.u.mstances.

[4] "One First Day morning, in the mellow October days of that year, the worshipping stillness of the Friends' Meeting was broken by the tramp of horses, and the jangling of spurs, as a band of soldiers rode up, dismounted and entered the building. They remained quiet and reverent, till the handshaking of the elders closed the meeting; then the commanding officer rose, and in the name of the Continental Congress took possession of the building for a hospital for the troops, and as such it was used all that winter. After this meetings were held in the 'great room' in the house of Paul Osborn, and were often frequented by soldiers stationed in the place, who listened attentively to the speaking, and left quietly at the close of the meeting."--Richard Osborn--a Reminiscence, by Margaret B. Monahan, Quaker Hill Local History Series, No. VIII.

[5] In the garret of the Meeting House rifle-ports, cut through the original planks, were discovered by the present writer.

[6] "Bodily functions are facilitated by atmospheric conditions which make evaporation from the skin and lungs rapid. That weak persons whose variations of health furnish good tests, are worse when the air is surcharged with water, and better when the weather is fine; and that commonly such persons are enervated by residence in moist localities but invigorated by residence in dry ones, are facts generally recognized.

And this relation of cause and effect, manifest in individuals, doubtless holds in races."--Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, p. 21.

CHAPTER III.

THE a.s.sEMBLING OF THE QUAKERS.

The social mind of the Quaker Hill population was formed, at the settlement of the place, in a common response to common stimuli. The population was congregated from Long Island and Ma.s.sachusetts settlements, by the tidings of the opening of this fertile land of the Oblong for settlement in 1731. I infer from the fact that settlements were previously made on both sides, at Fredericksburgh on one side, and at New Milford on the other,--at New Milford there was a Quaker Meeting established in 1729, fifteen years before Quaker Hill--that the value of the lands in the Oblong was well advertised. From the fact noted by James Wood (The Purchase Meeting, p. 10) that "the first settlement in any considerable numbers was upon Quaker Hill in the Oblong," I infer that the uncommon promise of this hill land had been made known to the Quakers then a.s.sembling at this "Purchase in the Rye Woods," and that Quaker Hill was settled in response to the stimulus of valuable, fertile lands offered for occupation and ownership.

It seems to have been the desire of the first settlers to form a community where they could live apart, maintain their form of religion and possess land fertile and rich. The Quakers are always shrewd as to economic affairs, and the business motive is never lost sight of in the spiritual inner light. In choosing Quaker Hill soil they selected ground which after one hundred and sixty-seven years is the richest in the region, sustains the best dairies, and is able longer than any other in the neighborhood in time of drought to afford abundant green gra.s.s and verdure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP No. I.

QUAKER HILL AND VICINITY. (From Robert Erskine's Map, 1778-1780, in De Witt Clinton Collection, New York Historical Society.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP No. II.

QUAKER HILL AND VICINITY. (Based on a tracing of United States Geographical Survey.)]

To this place thus secluded, came Benjamin Ferriss in 1728, and Nathan Birdsall. They settled upon the sites marked 31 and 39; which are 1,200 and 1,100 feet above the sea, and very near the highest ground for many miles. There was at this time, 1729, a meeting of Friends at New Milford, nine miles away; but these two men came from Purchase Meeting in the town of Rye, forty miles directly to the South. There soon followed others, bearing the names, Irish, Wing, Briggs, Toffey, Akin, Taber, Russell, Osborn, Merritt, Dakin, Hoag. In ten years the tide of settlement was flowing full. In forty years the little community was filled with as many as could profitably find a living.

Complete records of the sources of this immigration are not available.

John c.o.x, Jr., Librarian of the Yearly Meeting of Friends, says "the records do not show in any direct way where the members came from. A few came from Long Island meetings by way of Purchase, but most of them from the East, and I believe from Ma.s.sachusetts. Indirectly the records show that the members occasionally went on visits into New England, and took certificates of clearance there (to marry)." Dartmouth, Ma.s.s., a town between Fall River and New Bedford, was the original home of so many of them that it easily leads all localities as a source of Quaker Hill ancestry. The Akin, Taber, Briggs families came from Dartmouth, which was in a region of both temporary and permanent Quaker settlement.

Quaker Hill, R. I., is within fifteen miles of Dartmouth. The residents of Quaker Hill, New York, preserve traditions of the returns of the early Friends "to Rhode Island." There is a Briggs family tradition of the first pair of boots owned on the Hill, which were borrowed in turn by every man who made a visit to the ancestral home at Dartmouth.

It is probable also that some of the original residents came from Long Island, though from what localities I do not know. The minutes of Purchase Meeting at Rye, through which meeting most of the Quaker Hill settlers came, indicate in only a limited number of cases that the immigrant came from a farther point; and leave the impression that the Friend so commended to the Oblong was already a resident of "the Purchase," or of its related meetings at Flushing on Long Island. An example is the case of William Russell and his wife, notable pioneers, the earliest residents of Site 25, whose letter from Purchase Meeting in 1741 indicates only that they came to Oblong from Purchase.

The settlement of the Hill continued from the early years, 1728-1731, at which it began, until 1770, when the community may be said to have been complete. The land was supporting by that time all it would bear. Since that time the number of houses on the Hill has remained about the same, as will be seen from a comparison of the Maps I and II, the one made for Washington in 1778-80 and the other being a tracing of the map of the Topographical Survey of the United States Government of recent date.

The extent of this population resident upon the Hill is shown in the lists of persons whose names appear in Appendix A, which is a census of the heads of families in the Meeting in the year 1761; added to which is a list of names which appear in the minutes of the Meeting in years immediately following. These lists show the growth of the population under study, in the years from 1761 to 1780, for there are whole families omitted from the list of 1761, who are named in the minutes in succeeding years. An instance is that of Paul and Isaac Osborn, who came from Rhode Island in 1760.[7]

As this list of members of the meeting shows the actual size of the population resident upon the Hill in 1761, the other list published in Appendix B, containing the names of those who traded at the Merritt store in 1771, exhibits, with startling vividness, the importance of Quaker Hill at that time. Little as the place is now, and geographically remote and hard of access always, it was evidently in the years named a center of a far-reaching country trade. This list is published in full, exactly as the names appear on Daniel Merritt's ledger, to convey this impression; and by contrast, the impression of the shrinkage in the years since the railway changed the currents of trade. It is published also as a basis of this study, being a numerical description, in the rough, of the problem we are studying. And a third use which such a list may serve is that of information to those interested in genealogy. It is a veritable mine of information, suggestion, and even color, of the life of that time--as indeed are the ancient ledgers, bound in calf, and kept with exquisite care, by this colonial merchant. In these old records are suggested, though not described, the lives of a hard-working, prosperous population, filling the countryside, laying the foundations of fortunes which are to-day enriching descendants. It was a community without an idler, with trades and occupations so many as to be independent of other communities, hopeful, abounding in credit, laying plans for generations to come, and living bountifully, heartily from day to day.

Every item in these mercantile records is of interest and full of suggestion, from the names of the negro slaves, who had accounts on the books, to the products brought for sale by one customer after another, by which they liquidated their accounts; from the "quart of rum" bought by so many with every "trading," to the Greek Testament and Latin Grammar bought by solid Thomas Taber, who wrote his name in real estate by his thrift and force, if he did not write it in dead languages.

[7] Richard Osborn--A Reminiscence, by Margaret B. Monahan, Quaker Hill Local History Series, No. VIII, p. 10.

CHAPTER IV.

ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE QUAKER COMMUNITY.

The economic activity of the early Quaker Community was varied. All they consumed they had to produce and manufacture. Though the stores sold cane sugar, the farmers made of maple sap in the spring both sugar and syrup, and in the fall they boiled down the juice of sweet apples to a syrup, which served for "sweetness" in the ordinary needs of the kitchen.

Every man was in some degree a farmer, in that each household cultivated the soil. On every farm all wants had to be supplied from local resources, so that mixed farming was the rule. The land which its modern owners think unsuited to anything but gra.s.s, because it is such "heavy, clay soil," was made in the 18th century to bear, in addition to the gra.s.s for cattle and sheep, wheat, rye, oats and corn, flax, potatoes, apples. Of whatever the farmer was to use he must produce the raw material from the soil, and the manufacture of it must be within the community.

Two lists which come to us from early days cast light on the population and occupations of the early period. One is the sheriff's list of landowners in Dutchess County in 1740, on which is no name of any farmer then resident on Quaker Hill. The other list is that of those who claimed exemption from military duty in 1755; 38 are from Oblong and 21 from Beekman, many of them being Quakers resident on the Oblong. This list is as follows:

Joshua Shearman, Beekman Prec'nt, shoemaker; Moses Shearman, Beekman Prec'nt, laborer; Daniel Shearman, Beekman Prec'nt, laborer; Joseph Doty, Beekman Prec'nt, blacksmith; John Wing, Beekman Prec'nt, farmer; Zebulon Ferris (Oblong), Beekman Prec'nt, farmer; Joseph Smith, son of Rich'd, Beekman Prec'nt, laborer; Robert Whiteley, Beekman Prec'nt, farmer; Elijah Doty, Oblong House, carpenter; Philip Allen, Oblong, weaver; Richard Smith, Oblong, farmer; James Aiken, Oblong, blacksmith; Abrah'm Chase, son of Henry, Oblong, farmer; David Hoeg, Oblong, ----; John Hoeg, Oblong, farmer; Jonathan Hoeg, Oblong, blacksmith; Amos Hoeg, son of John, Oblong, laborer; William Hoeg, son of David, Oblong, farmer; John Hoeg, son of John, Oblong, farmer; Ezekiel Hoeg, Oblong, laborer; Judah Smith, Oblong, tailor; Matthew Wing, Oblong, ----; Timothy Dakin, Oblong, farmer; Jonathan Dakin, Oblong, laborer; Samuel Russell, Oblong, laborer; John Fish, Oblong, farmer; Reed Ferris, Oblong, shoemaker; Benjamin Ferris, Junr., Oblong, laborer; Joseph Akin, Oblong, blacksmith; Israel Howland, Oblong, farmer; Elisha Akin, Oblong, farmer; Isaac Haviland, Oblong, blacksmith; Nathan Soule, son of George, Oblong, farmer; James Birdsall, Oblong, laborer; Daniel Chase, Oblong, farmer; Silas Mossher, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; William Mosher, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Silvester Richmond, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Jesse Irish, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; David Irish, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; William Irish, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Josiah Bull, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Josiah Bull, Junr., Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Allen Moore, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Andrew Moore, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; William Gifford, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Nathaniel Yeomans, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; Eliab Yeomans, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer; William Parks, Oswego in Beekman Prec't, farmer.

This list mentions six occupations: the farmer, blacksmith, tailor, shoemaker, carpenter and laborer. With these six a frontier community could live, for every man of them was a potential butcher, tanner, trader. There is record of others in later years, when the communal life had become differentiated. There were at various times in the Quaker century stores at four places on the Hill. The Merritt store, at Site 28, descended to the sons of Daniel Merritt, and finally to James Craft.

There was a store in Deuell Hollow, kept by Benjamin and Silas Deuell for several years. There is extant one bill of merchandise purchased by them of Edward and William Laight, merchants of New York, the amount being 200 and the date Feb. 25, 1785. The Akin stores at Sites 47 and 46, were kept by Daniel and Albro Akin, and the store at Site 53, by John Toffey. These stores during the period of the Quaker community were in trade largely by barter, taking all the commodities the farmer had beyond his immediate use, and selling sugar, coffee, cloth and other commodities which after 1815, as will be shown later, rapidly increased in number and in quant.i.ty. The use of money increased at the same period. The phrase still lingers in Quaker Hill speech: "I am going to the store to do some trading," though the milk farmer has engaged in no barter for fifty years.

In the culminating period of the Quaker Community, which followed the Revolutionary War, the following were some of the occupations practiced on the Hill, the record or remembrance of which is preserved:[8]

Abram Thomas was a blacksmith, at Site 14,[9] and is said to have made the nails used in building the Meeting House. George Kirby, at Site 99-1/2, had a blacksmith shop; there was another at Site x100, now abandoned on Burch Hill, kept by Joel Winter Church, where Washington's charger was shod, and the bill was paid at the close of the war.

But the most notable smithy was at Site 41, where now stands one of the oldest houses on the Hill. Here Davis Marsh wrought in iron, and the sound of his trip-hammer audible for miles smote its own remembered impression upon the ears of those ancient generations. Doubtless the favored location of Marsh's shop in the neighborhood most central, as is shown in Chapter III, Part III, gave it greater use. There was at one time a forge in the Glen at Site 66, to which magnetic ore was hauled from Brewster to be worked.

A "smith shop" is also noted on Erskine's map for Washington in 1778 at Site x111. The most important manufacturing business of the community, however, was the wagon-worker's shop at Site 45, kept by Hiram Sherman.

Under the general t.i.tle of wagon maker he manufactured all movables in wood and iron, from fancy wagons to coffins.

Other trades were of increasing variety as the century of isolation proceeded. Shoemakers went from house to house to make shoes for the family, of the leather from the backs of the farmer's own cattle, tanned on the farm or not far away. Reed Ferris was a shoemaker, in whose residence at Site 99 Washington was entertained in September, 1778, until he took up Headquarters at John Kane's. Stephen Riggs was a shoemaker. Three tanneries were maintained on the Hill in the bloom of the Quaker community by Ransom Aldrich about Site 13; Amos Asborn, at Site x21, who also made pottery there; and Isaac Ingersoll, at Site 134.

Albro Akin had a sawmill in the Glen, and a gristmill was also located there in an early period. William Taber had a gristmill and also a cloth mill, consisting of carding machine, fulling mill, and apparatus for pressing, coloring and dressing cloth. John Toffey, at Site 53, and Joseph Seeley, at Site 15, and some of the Arnolds, near Site 12, were hatters. Jephtha Sabin, at Site 74, and Joseph Hungerford were saddlers and harnessmakers.

Every farmer and indeed every householder raised hogs. Pork was salted, as it is to-day, for winter use, in barrels of brine. Hogs also were extensively raised and butchered for market, at a year and a half old, the meat being taken to Poughkeepsie by wagon, and thence to New York.

Many who raised more pork than their own use demanded exchanged it at the stores. Fields of peas were raised to feed the hogs.

Sheep also were raised for their wool; their meat afforded an acceptable variety in farmer's fare and their hides had many uses. David Irish, Daniel and David Merritt, Jonathan A. Taber and George P. Taber were farmers whose product of wool was notably fine and abundant. Jonathan Akin Taber "kept about eleven hundred sheep, some merino and some saxony."

b.u.t.ter and cheese making were an important part of the business and income of the farmer's family, the b.u.t.ter being packed and sent weekly to the Hudson River boats for New York markets, or to Bridgeport or New Haven--a two-days' journey in either case. The cheese was ripened, or cured, being rubbed and turned every day, and kept until the dealers came around to inspect and purchase. On every farm was kept a flock of geese, which were picked once in six weeks to keep up the supply of feather beds and to furnish the requisite number for the outfit of each daughter of the family.

In the year 1767, Oblong Meeting took action which resulted, after seven years of agitation, in the clear declaration by the Yearly Meeting of New York, earliest of such acts, in favor of the freeing of slaves. This was one hundred years before the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation.

Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America" says that "Members of the Society of Friends took the lead in the opposition to slavery." There had been action taken in 1688 by a small body of Germantown Quakers, in the form of a pet.i.tion to their Yearly Meeting against "buying, selling and holding men in slavery." But to this the Yearly Meeting, after eight years of delay, replied only that "the members should discourage the introduction of slavery, and be careful of the moral and intellectual training of such as they held in servitude."

Meantime the Quaker Meetings on Long Island, in New York and Philadelphia took action recognizing slavery, with only a gradual tendency to regard the inst.i.tution of slavery with disfavor. Now the time had come for putting the denomination in array against the inst.i.tution.

There was a preacher of the Quakers who traveled much from 1746 to 1767 through the colonies, proclaiming that "the practice of continuing slavery is not right;" and that "liberty is the natural right equally of all men." In the last year of his propaganda occurred the event notable in local history. This was thirteen years before the action of the State of Pennsylvania, which initiated the lawmaking for emanc.i.p.ation among the northern colonies. It was "twenty years before Wilberforce took the first step in England against the slave-trade." The record of this action is as follows:

"At a (Yearly) Meeting at the Meeting House at Flushing the 30th day of the 5th month, 1767, a Querie from the Quarterly Meeting of the Oblong in Relation to buying and Selling Negroes was Read in this meeting and it was concluded to be left for consideration on the minds of friends until the Next Yearly Meeting. The Query is as follows: It is not consistent with Christianity to buy and Sell our Fellowmen for Slaves during their Lives, & their Posterities after them, then whether it is consistent with a Christian Spirit to keep those in Slavery that we have already in possession by Purchase, Gift or any otherways."