F 
 129 
 
 Ql2\Nl^ 
 
 QUAKER HILL 
 
 CliOCAIi HISTORY) 
 
 S E R I E S 
 
 in. (SluaKer Ibttl in tbe 
 lEiabteentb Century 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. WARREN H. WILSON 
 
Class 
 
 Book^_^IlW7, 
 

 MAP OF QUAKER HILI. AND \ ICIK 
 
1 i 
 
 ir 78-80— See Descriptive Note, Page 68 
 
QUAKER HILL 
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. WARREN H. WILSON 
 
 READ AT THB THIRD ANNUAL MEETING OP THE 
 
 QUAKER HILL CONFERENCE, SEPTEMBER THE 
 
 SEVENTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND ONE. 
 
 PtTKJSHKD BT THB QUXKBR HiLL CONFBRBNOB ASSOOIXTION 
 
 QuAKBR Hill, New York 
 1905 
 
PuDlicatioits 
 
 Of the Quaker Hill Conference Association 
 
 A Critical Study of the Bible, by Rev. Newton M. 
 Hall of J^pringfield, Mass. 
 
 Tlie Relation of tlie Church at Home to the 
 Church Abroad, by Rev. George William Knox, D. D.. of 
 New York. 
 
 A Tenable Theory of Biblical Inspiration, by 
 Prof. Irving Francis Wood, Ph. D., of Northampton, Mass. 
 
 The Book Farmer, by Edward H. Jenkins, Ph. D., of 
 New Haven, Conn. 
 
 LOCAL HISTORY SERIES 
 
 David Irish— A Memoir, by his daughter, Mrs. Phoebe 
 T. Waozer of Quaker Hill, N. Y. 
 
 Quaker Hill in the Eighteenth Century, by Rev. 
 Warren H. Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Quaker Hill in the Nineteenth Century, by Rev. 
 Warren H. Wilson of Brooklyn. N. Y. 
 
 Hiram B. Jones and His School, by Rev. Edward L, 
 Chichester of Quaker Hill, N, Y, 
 
 Richard Osbora— A Reminiscence, by Margaret B. 
 Monahan of Quaker Hill, N, Y. 
 
 Albert J. Akin— A Tribute, by Rev. Warren H. Wilaon 
 of Brooklyn. N. Y, 
 
 Ancient Homes and Early Days at Quaker Hill, 
 by Amanda Akin Stearns of Quaker Hill, N. Y, 
 Thomas Taber and Edward Shove— A Reminisoenc* 
 —by Rev. Benjamin Shove of New York, 
 
 Some Glimpses of the Fast, by Alicia Hopkins 
 Taber of Pawling. N. Y. 
 
 The Purchase Meeting, by James Wood of Mt. 
 Kisco, N. Y. ■ '. ; 
 
 Any one of these publicatiOaiJ may be had by addressing 
 the Secretary, Rkv. Edward L. Chichbstir, 
 
 Quaker Hill, N. T 
 Frio« Ten Cents. Twelve Cents Fostpaid. 
 
 
QUAKER HILL IN THE 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 In the eighteenth century Quaker Hill 
 was the chosen asylum of men ot peace. 
 Yet it became equally the rallying place of 
 periodic outbursts of the fighting spirit of 
 that warlike age; and it was invaded during 
 the great struggle for national independence 
 by the camps of Washington. 
 
 There is a dignity common to the noble 
 Washington battling for liberty, and the 
 Quaker pioneer serenely planning seven 
 years before the Revolution for the freedom 
 of the slave. But he was a Revolutionist, 
 they were loyal to King George ; he was a 
 man of blood, brilliant in the garb of a 
 warrior, and they were men of peace, 
 dreaming only of the kingdom of God. 
 He was fighting for a definite advance in 
 liberty to be enjoyed at once ; they were 
 set on an enfranchisement that involved 
 one hundred years ; and a greater war at 
 the end than his revolution. Their records 
 contain no mention of his presence here, 
 though his soldiers seized and fortified the 
 meeting-house. His letters never mention 
 
 3 
 
the Quakers, neither their picturesque 
 abode, their dreams of freedom for the 
 slave, nor their Tory loyalty. 
 
 Each cherished his ideal and staked his 
 life and ease and happiness upon it. Each, 
 after the fashion of a narrow age, ignored the 
 other's adherence to that ideal. To us they 
 are sublime figures in bold contrast cross- 
 ing that far-off stage: Washington, booted, 
 with belted sword, spurring his horse up 
 the western slope of the Hill, to review the 
 soldiers of the Revolution in 1778 ; and 
 Paul Osborn, Joseph Irish and Abner Hoag, 
 plain men, unarmed save with faith, riding 
 their plough horses down the eastern slope 
 in 1775, to plead for the freeing of the 
 slave at the Yearly Meeting at Flushing. 
 
 Both the soldier and the Quaker laid their 
 bones in the dust of the Hill, in common 
 faith in liberty and equality: we have not 
 yet settled the problems for which they 
 fought. The history of Quaker Hill in the 
 eighteenth century is the story of these two 
 schools of idealists, who ignored each oth- 
 er, but were moved with the same passion, 
 obeyed the same spirit. It is said that a 
 locality never loses the impression made 
 upon it by its earliest residents. Certain it 
 is that the roots of modern things are to be 
 traced in that earliest period, and through a 
 4 
 
continuous self-contained life until this day. 
 This *'01d Meeting House" in which 
 we are assembled to consider the past, of 
 which it is a conspicuous monument, was 
 founded and maintained as a house of peace, 
 and its walls echt)ed on every first day to 
 the words of peace; yet it had to share its 
 history with the record of men of war and 
 deeds of blood. It is said that on a certain 
 day in the Revolutionary time the congrega- 
 tion filed out at the close of the meeting and 
 the soldiers marched in. That fabled scene 
 is emblematic of the history of Quaker Hill 
 in the eighteenth century. It is a picture 
 of the plain garb and the scarlet coat; a 
 story told in the Quaker's *' thee and thou " 
 and the soldiers challenge and pass-word ; 
 the men of authority in those days were 
 the Continental officer and theQuaker elder. 
 One feels about him the serene and solemn 
 silence of the Friends' worship, and hears 
 from without the clank of marching men 
 the tramp of horses and the sharp word of 
 command. This very building is a memo- 
 rial to both tendencies. Here are the 
 benches and raised seats for worship, and 
 in the gable ends of the garret above are 
 the portholes in the century old planks for 
 the rifles of armed men. This house has 
 been a meeting-house and a fortress. 
 5 
 
THE OBLONG 
 
 The name of Quaker Hill in the eighteenth 
 century was **The Oblong." That name 
 unlocks the religious history of the past, 
 and is the clue to the path of the locality 
 through every succeeding generation un- 
 til recent times. It is still the name of 
 the Quaker Meeting of this place. The 
 name refers to a strip of land two miles in 
 width, which forms an eastern fringe to 
 New York state, through the counties of 
 Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess. It 
 was granted to New York ; and in com- 
 pensation the lands on which Stamford and 
 Greenwich stand were granted to Connect- 
 icut after a long and bitter dispute. The end 
 of the dispute and the first settlement of the 
 Oblong came, for obvious reasons, in the 
 same years. The first considerable settle- 
 ment of pioneers was made on Quaker Hill 
 in 1731, by Friends, who came from Harri- 
 son's Purchase, now a part of Rye. Mr. 
 James Wood, in his Bicentennial Address 
 in 1895, thus describes the settlement of 
 the Oblong : 
 
 The eastern side of the country had been set- 
 tled by Presbyterians from Connecticut, and th© 
 western side along the Hudson River by the 
 Dutch. The feeling between them was far from 
 friendly. Their disputes had been very bitter, 
 and Rye and Bedford had revolted from N«w 
 
 6 
 
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, paral- 
 lel with the river, and a little more than midway 
 between it and the Connecticut and Massachusetts 
 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 was 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 circumstances. 
 
 There had been a half century in which 
 this was all disputed land, between the 
 Dutch at New York and the English in 
 New England. Then followed a half cen- 
 tury of dispute as to the boundary between 
 sister colonies, which are now New York 
 and Connecticut. As soon as this was set- 
 tled in 1 73 1 the emigration flowed in, and 
 the history of Quaker Hill, the first settle- 
 ment in the Oblong, begins. 
 
 The first settler had been Nathan Bird- 
 sail and his wife Jane Langdon, of Quaker 
 ancestry, who had made a home in 1728 
 on land that is now a part of the Albro 
 Haines estate, and probably near the pres- 
 ent old house owned by the family of 
 Leonard Lyon. They had come from Dan- 
 bury on horseback, because there were no 
 roads north of that point. The next settler 
 7 
 
was Benjamin Ferriss, in 1730, whose house 
 stood in the memory of persons now liv- 
 ing on the John J. Vanderburgh land now 
 owned by the Hoag-Post family, near the 
 tree in the field north of the barns and west 
 of the Meeting-house. 
 
 In the next ten years came many settlers 
 to the Oblong ; among them David Akin, 
 and John, Mary, Elisha and Josiah, his 
 children, from Dartmouth ; from whom, 
 and from his other six children born on or 
 near the Oblong, are descended the various 
 lines of Akins of the neighborhood. At 
 this time also came Paul Osborn, from 
 whose nephew and heir, Isaac Osborn, are 
 descended the Osborns of the Hill. Also 
 Jedediah Wing, Jesse Irish, John Hoag, 
 whose names bespeak their parentage of 
 Quaker Hill families, came; with others, 
 whose names have passed away fromx the 
 list of residents of the Hill. 
 
 The houses in which the pioneers lived 
 for the first few years have been pictured 
 to us by Cornelius Van Tienhoven, an 
 early Dutch official. "They dig," writes 
 he, "a square pit in the ground, cellar 
 fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and 
 as broad as they think proper, case the 
 inside with wood all around the^ wall and 
 line the wood with bark of trees or some- 
 8 
 
thing else to prevent the caving in of the 
 earth ; floor this cellar with planks, and 
 wainscot it overhead for a ceiling ; raise a 
 roof of spars clear up and cover the spars 
 with bark or green sods ; so they can live 
 dry and warm in these houses with their 
 entire families." 
 
 MEETINGS AND MEETING-HOUSES. 
 
 The years 1 740-1 742 are known in the 
 religious history of America as those of 
 ''The Great Revival." In 1740 George 
 Whitefield preached from Philadelphia to 
 Boston. During those three years twenty 
 thousand were added to the churches in 
 Nev/ England. A great revival of piety 
 and a quickening of religious activity were 
 felt in all parts of the country. In those 
 years Quaker Hill came to herself religious- 
 ly, built a meeting-house and organized a 
 local meeting, known as the Preparative 
 Meeting. 
 
 With the early pioneers came the wor- 
 ship of the Friends ; many of them were 
 members of Purchase Meeting, near Rye, 
 the first meeting of Quakers established on 
 the mainland in this state. For a number 
 of years the religious history of Quaker 
 Hill must be read in the minutes of Pur- 
 chase Meeting, in which for the first ten 
 
 9 
 
years the pioneers had their membership. 
 The first mention of a Quaker meeting in 
 this neighborhood is that of New Milford, 
 in the minutes of Purchase, in the seventh 
 month, 1739. The first entry at Purchase 
 concerning Quaker Hill is the reception in 
 1 74 1 of William Russell and hjs wife, who 
 in the following year appears in the minutes 
 as overseer of the weekly meeting at Ob- 
 long. The following year, 1742, has this 
 minut© (the date, 1741, in the original 
 records is evidently the clerk's error, com- 
 monly made at the beginning of a new 
 year): ''was appointed a committee to 
 conclude about the dementions of a meet- 
 ing house to be built at the Oblong, the 
 persons appointed are Benjamin Ferriss, 
 William Russell, James Clement and Thom- 
 as Franklin, and to build a meeting-house 
 there." Three months after Pure^iase 
 Meeting secures the settlement of a Pre- 
 parative Meeting at the Oblong, *'for them- 
 selves and their meetings adjacent." This 
 was a notable year for Quaker Hill, both in 
 rehgious growth, and in the coming that 
 year of well known names to the Hill ; 
 such for instance as Jedediah Wiwg and 
 Ehza his wife from Falmouth. It was a 
 notable gain to the Hill to have as a resi- 
 dent William Russell. He was a progi^s- 
 10 
 
sive and liberal spirit, a Prophet Haggai to 
 make the people arise and build. We will 
 see later that the second meeting-house, 
 now standing, was erected upon his land. 
 His name is connected with every notable 
 event. Even in the War of the Revolution 
 thirty-six years later, he was one of the 
 few Quakers to gain the praise of Wash- 
 ington's officers, for his liberal spirit and 
 kindness to the troops. From the month 
 of his arrival in the community his name 
 is written in the record of every event on 
 Quaker Hill. 
 
 Two years after, in 1744, the meeting at 
 Oblong became a Monthly Meeting ; that 
 is, a permanent and legislative congrega- 
 tion. That same year Oblong took the 
 leadership in the establishment of the first 
 Quarterly Meeting on the mainland in this 
 state ; the first session being held at Pur- 
 chase in 1745. In 1783 Nine Partners 
 Quarterly Meeting was set off. By the 
 year 1800 Oblong, which had remained in 
 Purchase Quarterly, was in Nine Partners 
 Quarterly ; and so remained. In 1744, the 
 year of religious advance, the deed to the 
 land on which the meeting-house here 
 stood was presented. 
 
 The present meeting-house, in which we 
 are assembled, was erected about 1764. 
 11 
 
The first meeting-house was at the end of 
 twenty years too small, and had served its 
 day. It stood upon land which is now 
 owned by Miss Rachel Swan, directly 
 across the road to the south from the pres- 
 ent meeting-house. I am informed by 
 Richard T. Osborn that the piece of land 
 on which it stood extended from this road 
 southward as far on the road to Sherman 
 as the tenant-house on Miss Swan's place, 
 and on the main Quaker Hill road to Miz- 
 zen Top, as far south as a line from that 
 tenant-house toward the barns of Edmund 
 L. Post. This land was used as a burial- 
 ground, the western end of it by the 
 Friends, and the eastern end of it by the 
 Army of the Revolution, which in its 
 winter cantonment here in 1778 buried 
 many soldiers there. The first meeting- 
 house was moved from this site in 1769 to 
 the Osborn Homestead, the present resi- 
 dence of Stephen Osborn, where it was 
 used as a barn for one hundred and fifteen 
 years. It was torn down in 1884 by Ste- 
 phen Osborn, and only a few fragments of 
 it are known to exist, in the form of a staff 
 for an aged saint's support or an ancient 
 timber in a wall. 
 
 The deeds of the land on which this 
 mjeeting-house is built are dated 1764, 4th 
 
 13 
 
month, sixteenth and seventeenth, respect- 
 ively. The land was transferred in two 
 parcels by William Russell and Zebulon 
 Ferriss to the following persons: " Benja- 
 min Ferris, David Akin, Ebenezer Peaslee, 
 David Hoag, Joseph Irish, Nehemiah Mer- 
 ritt, Abram Wing, all of Beekman's Pre- 
 cinct." The first parcel of ground deeded 
 by Zebulon Ferriss on the sixteenth, on 
 consideration of four pounds received by 
 him, was described as follows : ''Begin- 
 ning at the southeast corner of my acre lot 
 at north side of the public road, running 
 west forty feet, north 132 feet, east forty 
 feet, south 132 feet, where it first began." 
 The other deed by which William Russell 
 on the next day tranferred his land on con- 
 sideration of eight pounds received by 
 him, describes its bounds as follows: "Be- 
 ginning at north side of road opposite Old 
 Friends' Meeting-house and at southeast 
 corner of Benjamin Ferris" acre-lot, north 
 i2]4° east between acre-lot and William 
 Russell's land east I2j^^ eight rods north, 
 five rods east, eight rods south to public 
 road and to point of (beginning,) forty 
 rods of land." Both deeds describe the 
 purpose of the transfer as follows: " To be 
 applied to the use and only service of the 
 Society of the people called Quakers, to 
 13 
 
build and erect a meeting-house or meet- 
 ing-houses on, and to accommodate the 
 same; of which land no partition or diver- 
 sion shall ever hereafter at any time be 
 made but shall continue an absolute and 
 entire and undivided estate in common unto 
 them, the said Benjamin Ferris (et al), and 
 to their heirs, survivors and survivor, for 
 the only use and service of the said society 
 as aforesaid forevermore." 
 
 It is evident that this land and the meet- 
 ing-house erected upon it were paid for by 
 subscriptions taken in several meetings 
 with which Oblong was associated. Pur- 
 chase Meeting records in the next year, 
 1765, nth month, 14th, that ''Teddeman 
 Hull brought subscription for raising money 
 towards the meeting house at Oblong, and 
 a receipt from Ebenezer Peaslee for the 
 money which he collected on the subscrip- 
 tion, amounting to forty-three shillings 
 from the Purchase Meeting." A subscrip- 
 tion from "Shepaqua" is acknowledged by 
 Purchase Meeting, receipted for by David 
 Hoag, the amount being £1, 15s. and the 
 purpose thereof the paying for Oblong 
 Meeting house." The minutes of Yearly 
 Meeting show that in 1764 "Quarterly 
 meetings are [officially] desired to order 
 subscriptions for Oblong Meeting-house," 
 
 14 
 
then being erected. And in 1765 the 
 ''meeting-house at Oblong is reported 
 built and money in advance thereon." 
 Also ''Thomas Dobson and Isaac Martin 
 made report that they had settled with the 
 Trustees of Oblong Meeting-house, and 
 that it appeared that the Cost of Said House 
 amounted to £6'](), 9s. and that they had 
 received from our several meetings £^31, 
 19s 3d. So there is a Baliance due for said 
 House of £12^], 9s 9d." 
 
 The dimensions of the house are shown 
 by a previous minute in 1763, by v/hich 
 the Yearly Meeting consents to the proposal 
 to build a meeting-house at Oblong and 
 advises that it shall be "a Framed House of 
 Timber, and the dimensions to be 45 feet 
 long & 40 feet wide & 15 foot stud in 
 height to admit of Gallerys." 
 
 From the time of the erection of the 
 meeting-house for the rest of the century 
 the history of the meeting and the neigh- 
 borhood is one of unbroken prosperity, 
 which the Revolutionary War did not per- 
 manently retard. In 1781 the collections 
 in the meeting at Oblong were one pound 
 and four shillings ; when that at New Mil- 
 ford was four shillings; and that of Appo- 
 quague was eight shillings and nine pence; 
 again it was one pound and twelve shill- 
 15 
 
ings when Appoquague's was fourteeen 
 shillings and three pence, and that of New 
 Milford two shillings and nine pence; again, 
 it was '*in hard money" four pounds three 
 and six, when that of Appoquage was one 
 pound. There are other like indications to 
 the effect that Oblong was in those days a 
 wealthier, and better settled region, with 
 more substantial persons living in it, than 
 the surrounding neighborhoods. 
 
 COUNTY AFFAIRS. 
 
 The most conspicuous town in the 
 neighborhood of Quaker Hill in the eigh- 
 teenth century was Fredericksburg, which 
 is now Patterson village. The whole re- 
 gion was therefore colored with that name; 
 and Washington, who wrote letters from 
 headquarters on the road from Pawling to 
 Quaker Hill — the same road then as now — 
 dated them "Fredericksburgh." This in 
 spite of the fact that Pawling had been set 
 off as a town and named, nine years before 
 his writing. 
 
 When the first settlers came to the Hill 
 the County was becoming so generally 
 settled that laws were being passed to pre- 
 vent damage from swine; it was already 
 forbidden to keep one's pigs in the public 
 road; and the remedy was characteristic of 
 16 
 
the times— they could be shot. Before the 
 first settler on the Hill the width of wagons, 
 from one tire to the other, had been fixed 
 by law at four feet ten inches. But the 
 woods were full of wolves and panthers; 
 and there were Indians who spent their 
 time mostly in hunting. Bounties were 
 offered for the kiUing of the wild beasts, 
 twice as much to a white man as to an 
 Indian. Even after the Revolution the 
 necessity of a vigorous war on wild beasts 
 is shown in the laws and bounties offered. 
 When Oblong began to be settled there 
 were 1,727 people in the county ; and in 
 six years twice as many. Among these 
 were 262 blacks, undoubtedly all slaves. 
 So that, during the years when settlers 
 were pouring in, there were coming with 
 them the seeds of all future controversies 
 and of the making of history; slaves, and 
 those who would free them, meeting- 
 houses and wild, warUke woodsmen who 
 were to enter the army or become the 
 bandits of the period. 
 
 By the beginning of the Revolution one 
 man in twenty in the county was a negro 
 slave. The action taken by Oblong Meet- 
 ing for the abolition of slavery, one hundred 
 years before Abraham Lincoln, was effect- 
 ive only on Quaker Hill. Mr. Archibald 
 17 
 
Jodge, now living, remembers when there 
 were slaves owned in Pawling, on the 
 farms now occupied by E. Irving Hurd and 
 Alexander H. Arnold. The last slave was 
 freed on Quaker Hill in 1779. 
 
 The state of the times is well shown by 
 two lists published about this time. The 
 first a Sheriff's list of the landowners of 
 the county in 1740; and the small number 
 of names indicates that not more than one 
 man in twenty in the county was an owner 
 of land. It shows moreover the name of 
 not one of the families which are known to 
 have been on the Hill at the time. 
 
 The other list is that of the Quakers who 
 fifteen years later, in 1755, claimed exemp- 
 tion from military duty. These names are 
 to Quaker Hill what the cabin list of the 
 passengers on the Mayflower is to New 
 England. These are your fathers, O men 
 of today, for they gave the Hill its charac- 
 ter ! Five years after, as types of the man 
 of affairs — for there are two types of 
 Quakers — John Akin and James Vander- 
 burgh, justices of the peace, took the oath 
 of allegiance to George the Third. Follow- 
 ing is a list of Quakers who claimed exemp- 
 tion from military duty in April 1755, 
 from James Smith's ** History of Dutchess 
 County," page 63: 
 
 18 
 
Joshua Shearman, Beekman Prec'nt, 
 
 Shoemaker 
 Laborer 
 
 Moses Shearman, ,, 
 
 Daniel Shearman, 
 
 Joseph Doty, 
 
 John Wing, 
 
 Zebulon Ferris, (Oblong) ''^ 
 
 Joseph Smith,son of Rich'd, " 
 
 Robert Whiteley, 
 
 EHjah Doty, Oblong House, 
 
 Blacksmith 
 Farmer 
 
 Philip Allen, 
 Richard Smith, 
 James Aiken, 
 Abrah'm Chase, 
 
 son of Henry, 
 David Hoeg, 
 John Hoeg, 
 Jonathan Hoeg, 
 Amos Hoeg, son of John, 
 WiUiam Hoeg,son of David 
 John Hoeg, son of John, 
 Ezekiel Hoeg, 
 Judah Smith, 
 Matthew Wing, 
 Timothy Dakin 
 Jonathan Dakin, 
 Samuel Russell, 
 John Fish, 
 Reed Ferris, 
 Benjamin Ferris, Junr., 
 19 
 
 Laborer 
 
 Farmer 
 
 Carpenter 
 
 Oblong, Weaver 
 
 " Farmer 
 
 Blacksmith 
 
 Farmer 
 
 Farmer 
 
 Blacksmith 
 
 Laborer 
 
 Farmer 
 
 Laborer 
 Tailor 
 
 Farmer 
 Laborer 
 
 Farmer 
 
 Shoemaksr 
 
 Laborer 
 
Joseph Akin, Oblong, Blacksmith 
 
 Israel Howland, '' Farmer 
 
 Elisha Akin, 
 
 Isaac Haviland, " Blacksmith 
 
 NathanSoule, son of George '* Farmer 
 
 James Birdsall, " Laborer 
 
 Daniel Chase, '' Farmer 
 
 Silas Mossher, 
 
 Oswego in Beekman Precn't, 
 William Mosher, 
 Silvester Richmond, 
 Jesse Irish, 
 David Irish, 
 William Irish, 
 Josiah Bull, 
 Josiah Bull, Junr., 
 Allen Moore, 
 Andrew Moore, 
 William Gifford, 
 Nathaniel Yeomans, 
 Eliab Yeomans, 
 William Parks, 
 
 This hst is a fair picture of the times. 
 If one estimate on this basis the full attend- 
 ance at this meeting of Friends, it must be 
 set down as about two hundred and fifty. 
 It is notable how many laborers there are 
 and how few farmers. There are just four- 
 teen farmers mentioned here from Oblong; 
 six men are named as common laborers, 
 20 
 
one carpenter, one weaver, four black- 
 smiths, two tailors and a shoemaker. This 
 was ten years before the Prendergast Anti- 
 Rent War, and titles to land were still 
 insecure. If these men, the cream of the 
 community in physical strength and in the 
 midst of their best years, are not land- 
 owners—the fourteen farmers too may have 
 been tenants— we have a state of affairs 
 likely to produce rebellion. 
 
 The Anti-Rent War of 1766 is a forgotten 
 event. But in that time it excited the 
 people of Dutchess and Columbia Counties. 
 Bodies of armed men assembled, British 
 troopers marched from Poughkeepsie to 
 Quaker Hill, to seize a leader of rebellion; 
 and at the time of his trial at Poughkeepsie 
 in August, 1766, a company of regulars 
 with three field-pieces were brought up 
 from New York. 
 
 ANTI-RENT RIOT. 
 
 The prime cause for this insurrection 
 was the granting of the land in great areas 
 at the beginning of the century to favored 
 proprietors, so that the actual settlers could 
 not become owners but only tenants. 
 Fragments of such great estates remain in 
 the hands of certain families till our time. 
 The ownership of Hamersley Lake by 
 21 
 
the family of that name is an example. 
 The exertion of authority by these mon- 
 opoHsts of natural rights drove the actual 
 tillers of the soil, who had given it its value, 
 to desperation. I have shown that in 1740 
 no land owners were enrolled on Quaker 
 Hill, and that its list of most representative 
 citizens in 1755 contained few landowners. 
 A further cause of this conflict may have 
 been that, in the year of the settlement ol 
 the boundaries of the Oblong it was granted 
 to one company by the British Crown, and 
 to another by the Colony of New York. 
 This brought the title of all the lands on the 
 Oblong into dispute. Moreover, bound- 
 aries were carelessly indicated and loosely 
 described, a pile of stones or a conspicuous 
 tree serving for a landmark. All this 
 worked great confusion, for the settlement 
 of v/hich in a crude community courts 
 were ineffective. 
 
 Finally in 1766, the popular discontent 
 broke out to the north in armed refusal 
 of settlers to pay the rent exacted. The 
 movement spread from Columbia to Dutch- 
 ess County. William Prendergast, who is 
 said to have lived in a house standing on 
 the ground covered by the golf links in 
 Pawhng, was the leader of the insurgents 
 in this county. He assembled a band on 
 22 
 
Quaker Hill so formidable that the Grena- 
 diers at Poughkeepsie waited for reinforce- 
 ments of two hundred troopers and two 
 field pieces from New York before proceed- 
 ing against him. The sight of the red 
 coats was enough. Prendergast surrend- 
 ered. But so great was the local excite- 
 ment that to forestall an attempt at rescue 
 he was taken a prisoner to New York. In 
 July he was brought back for trial; and on 
 the same boat with the King's counsel, 
 judges, lawyers and prisoner came a com- 
 pany of soldiers to put down the continued 
 disturbance in Columbia County. 
 
 The trial occured the first fortnight of 
 August, 1766. Prendergast was assisted 
 in his defense by his wife, who made a 
 strong impression on the jury, proving that 
 her husbsnd, before the acts of which he 
 was accused, was "esteemed a sober, 
 honest and industrious farmer, much be- 
 loved by his neighbors, but stirred up to 
 act as he did by one Munro, who is 
 absconded." So ardent was this woman 
 advocate that the State's attorney forgot 
 himself and moved that she be excluded 
 from the court room. The motion was 
 denied, and the mover of it emphatically 
 rebuked. But there was not lacking proof 
 of the foct of treason, and Prendergast was 
 23 
 
convicted and sentenced to be hanged in 
 six weeks. Then this vahant woman's 
 energy and perseverance rose to their high- 
 est. She set off for an audience with the 
 Governor, Sir Henry Moore, Bart., and 
 returned about the first of September with 
 a reprieve. Just in time she arrived, for a 
 company of fifty mounted men had ridden 
 the whole length of the county to rescue 
 her husband from the jail. She convinced 
 them of the folly of such action as they 
 proposed, and sent them home, while she 
 turned to the task of obtaining a pardon 
 from the King. Here too she was success- 
 ful, who had failed in nothing; and six 
 months later George III, who required six 
 years to be subdued by a Washington, re- 
 leased her husband; and they went home 
 amid great popular rejoicings. 
 
 Although the insurrection failed, its 
 principle was vindicated, and there are evi- 
 dences that in the latter half of the century 
 the discontent of tenants with the feudalism 
 which had caused it, had passed away. 
 
 OBLONG AGAINST SLAVERY. 
 
 Important events now follow hard upon 
 
 one another. The following year is the 
 
 date of Quaker Hill's participation in the 
 
 history of the world. For the clue to this 
 
 24 
 
event I am indebted to Mr. James Wood. 
 In this year, 1767, Oblong Meeting took 
 action whiich resulted, after seven years of 
 agitation, in the clear declaration in favor 
 of the freeing of slaves. This was one 
 hundred years before the Emancipation 
 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 
 petition 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 intro- 
 duction of slavery, and be careful of the 
 moral and intellectual training of such as 
 they held in servitude." There the matter 
 ended. Meantime the Quaker Meetings on 
 Long Island in New York and Philadelphia 
 took action recognizing slavery, with only 
 a gradual tendency to regard the institution 
 of slavery with disfavor. Now the time 
 had come for putting the denomination in 
 ^ray against the institution. 
 
 There was a preacher of the Quakers 
 who traveled much from 1746 to 1767 
 25 
 
through the colonies, proclaiming that ' ' the 
 practice of continuing slavery is not right;" 
 and that ''liberty is the natural right equal- 
 ly of all men." In the last year of his propa- 
 ganda occurred the event so notable in 
 local history. Remember that this was 
 thirteen years before the action of the 
 State of Pennsylvania, action taken under 
 Presbyterian, not Quaker leadership, how- 
 ever, which initiated the lawmaking for 
 emancipation among the northern colonies. 
 It was "twenty years before Wilberforce 
 took the first step in England against the 
 slave-trade." 
 
 *'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 buy- 
 ing and Selling Negroes was Read in this 
 meeting and its concluded to be left for 
 consideration on the minds of friends until 
 the Next Yearly Meeting. The Query is 
 as follows : If is not consistant with 
 Christianity to buy and Sell our Fellowmen 
 for Slaves during their Lives, & their Pos- 
 terities after them, then whether it is con- 
 sistant with a Christian Spirit to keep 
 those in Slavery that we have already in 
 possession by Purchase, Gift or any other 
 ways." 
 
 36 
 
The year after, not without due hesita- 
 tion, a committee was appointed which 
 "drew an Essay on that subject which was 
 read and approved and is as follows: We 
 are of the mind that it is not convenient 
 (considering the circumstances of things 
 amongst us) to give an Answer to this 
 Querie, at least at this time, as the answer- 
 ing of it in direct terms manifestly tends 
 to cause divisions and may Introduce heart 
 burnings and Strife amongst us, which 
 ought to be Avoided, and Charity exercised, 
 and persuasive methods pursued and that 
 which makes for peace. We are however 
 fully of the mind that Negroes as Rational 
 Creature are by nature born free, and where 
 the way opens liberty ought to be extended 
 to them, and they not held in Bondage for 
 Self ends. But to turn them out at large 
 Indiscriminately — which seems to be the 
 tendency of the Querie, will, we apprehend, 
 be attended with great Inconveniency, as 
 some are too young and some too old to 
 obtain a livelyhood for themselves." 
 
 Here, then, is the first action in a legis- 
 lative body, upon the freeing of slaves in 
 America. The "Querie from Oblong" had 
 secured a clear deliverance in favor of the 
 essential right of the negro as a man, in 
 favor of his being freed "where the way 
 27 
 
opened," and against the holding of man 
 for the service of another. The only hesi- 
 tation of the meeting was frankly stated; 
 emancipation was not to be pushed to the 
 point of division of Christians, and was 
 not to be accomplished to the impoverish- 
 ment of the negro. 
 
 Yet if this action seems to any one 
 like *' trimming," it was following other 
 deliverances increasingly clear and em- 
 phatic. Three years later Friends were 
 forbidden to sell their slaves, except under 
 conditions controlled by the Meeting. All 
 through the communities of Friends the 
 agitation was being carried on, and the 
 meetings were anxious to purge them- 
 selves of the evil. 
 
 Finally in 1775 came the clear utterance 
 of the Yearly Meeting in favor of emanci- 
 pation without conditions: *Mt being our 
 solid judgment that all in profession with 
 us who hold Negroes ought to restore to 
 them their natural right to liberty as soon 
 as they arrive at a suitable age for free- 
 dom." At this meeting the Oblong was 
 represented by Joseph Irish, Abner Hoag 
 and Paul Osborn. 
 
 It only remains to picture the rest of the 
 process by which slavery was purged away 
 on Quaker Hill. In 1775 the practice of 
 
 28 
 
buying and selling slaves had come to an 
 end, and no public abuse was noted by the 
 meeting in the treatment accorded to 
 slaves by their masters. The next year 
 there was but one slave owned by a mem- 
 ber of the meeting; and the day he was 
 freed in the fall of 1777 was counted by the 
 meeting so notable that the clerk was 
 directed to make a minute of the event. 
 The owner had been Samuel Field, and the 
 slave was called Philips Another manu- 
 mission in 1779 is recorded, but it was 
 doubtless in the case of a new resident of 
 the Hill, for it is recorded without signs of 
 the joy exhibited in the freedom of Philips. 
 In the years 1782-3 the final act in eman- 
 cipating the local slaves was taken, in the 
 investigation by a committee of the Meet- 
 ing into the condition of the freed slaves, 
 and the obligations of their old masters to 
 them. It was not very cordially received 
 at first, but in the third year of the life and 
 labors of the committee it was reported by 
 them that ''the negroes appear to be satis- 
 fied without further settlement." So in 
 sixteen years the first American community 
 freed herself from slavery. If slavery could 
 have been ended everywhere by this 
 method, we would be today a stronger, 
 nobler and more united country. 
 29 
 
THE QUAKERS IN WAR : LOYALTY 
 
 It must not be thought that the times of 
 the two great wars between the French 
 and the English and the Colonies and Eng- 
 land had no effect upon peaceful Quaker 
 Hill. The meeting did indeed keep its 
 testimony against war clear and distinct 
 before its generation, but it had to exercise 
 ceaseless vigilance. In 1775 Timothy Akin 
 was disowned for ''Training," and William 
 Wing and Abner Hoag, Jr., are so dealt 
 with as to ''acknowledge misconduct" in 
 signing a paper variously described as th» 
 " socetion paper" and the "sassocation 
 paper." Two years after Preserved Dakin 
 "acknowledges misconduct in joining an 
 unlawful combindation." Benjamin Ferris, 
 Jr., the son of the pioneer, expressed his 
 sorrow formally to the meeting, the year 
 of the camping of Washington here, for 
 having "payed a sum of money on account 
 of Not performing military services." Later 
 in that same year, while still the troops 
 were here, Elnathan Field committed the 
 same offence, and was dealt with for a year 
 until he made satisfactory acknowledge- 
 ments. In the last three years of the war 
 Johnan Chase, Isaac Dickerson and Henry 
 Dickerson, and George Soule are com- 
 30 
 
plained of, the first three for military service 
 and the last for hiring a substitute. The 
 two Dickersons were disowned, but Chase 
 made amends to the meeting. More than 
 one urgent message from Philadelphia 
 Friends served to remind the Quakers here 
 of their duty. 
 
 Twice during the war the meeting took 
 action for the relief of communities at a 
 distance, once, after the battle of White 
 Plains, on hearing that "our Friends and 
 others in Westchester county are much 
 Distressed or Necessitated by Reason of 
 the Calamity lately happened among them ;" 
 and the second time in a request to the 
 Meeting for Sufferings to raise money "for 
 release of the Distressed of other Denomi- 
 nations in this season of Colemity." 
 
 The Quakers were generally Tories, be- 
 cause they did not believe in rebellion. 
 Their allegiance during the Revolution was 
 the greatest question of those years. In 
 January, 1777, there were rumors of a 
 Test Act, and a very responsible committee 
 was appointed to wait upon the "pro- 
 vential Congress," to define the relations of 
 the Quakers of this region to the govern- 
 ment. They could call New York a 
 "province" two years after Concord and 
 Lexington. Ephraim Barker was disciplined 
 31 
 
for signing such an act of allegiance. A 
 member of the meeting was appointed, 
 perhaps by civil authority, to read the Test 
 Act to the meeting, but reported that *'he 
 did not feel easy to do so," and the Quart- 
 erly Meeting had to be consulted as to the 
 reading of it. 
 
 In the fall of the year of Washington's 
 presence here with his army, a new effort 
 seems to have been made by Commission- 
 ers of the State of New York, to secure 
 avowal of allegiance to the state from the 
 Friends here, and a very large Committee 
 was formed to consider the matter, and "to 
 wait upon the Governor, Council and Sen- 
 ate of the State of New York, so called," 
 in the matter. No very serious penalty 
 seems to have been inflicted upon any 
 resident of the Hill for disloyalty. There is 
 indeed mention of the release from prison 
 of Edward Brundage; and Enoch Hoag be- 
 ing imprisoned **on suspicion" was "re- 
 putably released" when a committee looked 
 into his case. 
 
 The loyalty of the Quakers to the King 
 was no doubt the actual motive in many 
 things which characterized their action at 
 that time. They were not oppressed, so fai 
 as record goes, yet they could during the 
 Revolution refer to the State of New York 
 32 
 
as ''the alleged state of New York." Their 
 belief in non-resistance was most emphati- 
 cally a belief in non-resistance to George 
 III. This last demure entry in the minutes 
 of Oblong Meeting, April, 1778, I must 
 transcribe: ''The answering of the 14th 
 Query Respecting the Defrauding of the 
 King of his dues is omitted by reason of 
 the Difficualty of the times therefore this 
 meeting desires the Quarterly meeting to 
 Consider whether it would not be well to 
 omit the answering that part of the Query 
 in futur until the way may appear more 
 Clear." This action was taken by the 
 meeting five months before the coming of 
 Washington to the Hill, immediately after 
 the heroic winter of Valley Forge and just 
 before the British retreated from Philadel- 
 phia. An official body which could speak 
 of dues to the king at that time, after their 
 country had been separated from him for 
 three years, surely represented a com- 
 munity in which the great majority were 
 Loyalists, and the disorderly and violent 
 were Tories. 
 
 MEETING-HOUSE A HOSPITAL. 
 
 A letter of great interest to the student 
 of those times was written to the Governor 
 of the State of New York, Hon. George 
 83 
 
Clinton, by Dr. James Fallon, physician in 
 charge of the sick which were left on 
 Quaker Hill, in the meeting-house after the 
 departure of the Continental Army. He 
 could get no one to draw wood for his hos- 
 pital in dead of winter, till finally ''old Mr. 
 Russell, an excellent and open Whig, tho' a 
 Quaker," hired him a wagon and ox-team. 
 He could buy no milK without paying in 
 Continental money, six for one. He de- 
 clared that ''Old Ferris, the Quaker pul- 
 piteer of this place, old Russell and his son, 
 old Mr. Chace and his family, and Thomas 
 Worth and his family, are the only Quakers 
 on, or about this Hill, the public stands in- 
 debted to." The two pioneers of the Hill, 
 the preacher and the builder, were patriots 
 as well. He denounces the rest as Tories all, 
 the "Meriths," Akins, Wings, Kellys, Sam- 
 uel Walker, the schoolmaster, and Samuel 
 Downing, whom he declared a spurious 
 Quaker and agent of the enemy; also the 
 preacher, Lancaster, "the Widow Irish;" 
 and many he called "half-Quakers," who 
 were probably more zealous, and certainly 
 more violent, for Quaker and Tory princi- 
 ples than the Quakers themselves. 
 
 The trouble culminated in Dr. Fallon's 
 impressing the wagons of Wing Kelly 
 and "the Widow Irish," to take fourteen 
 34 
 
men to Danbury and Fishkill to save their 
 lives. Tlie former impress was not resisted ; 
 but the soldiers who took the Irish team 
 had to battle with a mob, headed by 
 Abraham Wing and Benjamin Akin, who 
 used the convalescent soldiers roughly, 
 but could not prevent the seizure. They 
 were not the first men to do violence 
 for the sake of the principle of non-resist- 
 ance. It is a common thing for men to go 
 to war for the sake of peace. 
 
 So bitter were the feelings of that period 
 that mercy to the sick and dying, food and 
 fire to the suffering, were refused by those 
 who advocated gentleness and mercy. 
 
 One can see that modern Quakerism has 
 taken a gentler tone. It is not probable that 
 any nineteenth century Quaker would have 
 refused help in transporting dying soldiers 
 from one hospital to another. It was easier 
 to free one's slaves and to contend for 
 general emancipation than to apply sublime 
 principles in daily emergencies. 
 
 FREE LANCES OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 The period of the great wars was also a 
 time of the prevalence of bandits in this 
 region. The story of their depredations 
 has always been an attractive one, and has 
 furnished many pages for histories of the 
 35 
 
County. I may therefore omit much that I 
 have gathered, so familiar is the story. 
 
 The record of these years, on the pages 
 of the clerk's minute-book, are at once a 
 disappointment to the hopes of the reader 
 and a stimulus to his imagination. One 
 searches in vain for even the slightest trace 
 of the presence in the meeting-house of 
 the troops which trustworthy tradition de- 
 clares were quartered there. There is no 
 record of the presence in the meeting- 
 house of the ** Tories" or guerillas of the 
 Revolution ; and not a word about the 
 makers of the rifle-ports in the gables of 
 this building, which the present writer dis- 
 covered there; unless it be the unruffled 
 and serene utterance, under date of 8th 
 Month, ninth, 1781, the very period at 
 which the ** Tories" must have been at 
 their worst: "Samuel Hoag is appointed 
 to take care of the meeting-house, and to 
 keep the door locked and windows fast- 
 ened, and to nail up the hole that goes up 
 into the Garratt." Can it be that this order 
 was entered on the minutes as a result of 
 that fabled event when the ''Tories" robbed 
 the store on the site of the present Craft 
 place ? They had hidden for that purpose 
 in the loft of the meeting-house and were 
 discovered by some young Quakers who 
 36 
 
were skylarking in the meeting-house 
 under pretense of cleaning it. The story is 
 that one of the young men being dared — of 
 course by a maiden — to open the trapdoor 
 into the garret, and look there for the 
 Tories, found them hiding there. The 
 bandits, being discovered, tumbled down 
 the hole from the garret, and compelled 
 their discoverers to go with them to the 
 store; and proceeded at once to plunder it; 
 relying no doubt on the non-resistant char- 
 acter of the people of the Hill. They 
 stacked their arms at the door and went 
 about their business in a thorough manner. 
 But there was that in the blood of some 
 Quakers there that could not contain itself 
 within the bounds of non-resistance, and 
 one of them, Benjamin Ferris, cried out, 
 "Seize the rascals." In the scrimmage that 
 resulted from the excitement of this remark, 
 a British officer was recognized among the 
 Tories by the young lady who had by her 
 challenge to the young man discovered 
 them, and being taunted by her was so 
 incensed that he stabbed her. It is only 
 said in closing the story that the blood of 
 both the fair and adventurous young 
 Quakeress whose abounding spirits brought 
 on all the trouble, as well as that of the 
 leader of the 'Tories," flows in the veins of 
 37 
 
some who live on the Hill in the twentieth 
 century. 
 
 The '* Tories" of the Revolutionary days 
 furnish the substance for the stories of vio- 
 lence that are told about the fireside to 
 Quaker Hill boys and girls. It is difficult 
 however to persuade those who have heard 
 these tales to relate them. Those who 
 know them best are the very ones 
 who cannot recall them in sytematic or 
 orderly form. I will only mention two 
 of the free lances of the time. The chiefest 
 of all bandit-leaders of those turbulent 
 times was Waite Vaughn. It is related 
 that this fellow was the head of a band of 
 Tories, which means locally the same as 
 the term ''Cowboys" or "Skinners" means 
 in the history of Westchester County. 
 The latter were lawless bands who infested 
 the regions in which the armies made civil 
 life insecure, and subsisted by stealing 
 cattle, plundering houses, robbing and 
 often murdering citizens. "They seemed," 
 says a writer, "like the savages to enjoy 
 the sight of the sufferings they inflicted. 
 Oftentimes they left their wretched victims 
 from whom they had plundered their all, 
 hung up by their arms, and sometimes by 
 their thumbs, on barndoors, enduring the 
 agony of wounds that had been inflicted to 
 38 
 
wrest from them their property. These 
 miserable beings were frequently relieved 
 by the American patrol." 
 
 The famous spy of the Revolution, Enoch 
 Crosby, who is said to have been Cooper's 
 model for the hero of the novel 'The Spy," 
 came to Quaker Hill during the Revolution, 
 and in pursuance of a plan he was at that 
 time following, got together a band of Tory 
 volunteers who were planning to join the 
 British Army, and delivered them to the 
 Continental forces. In this he was assisted 
 by Col. Morehouse, who kept a tavern in 
 South Dover, one-half mile south of the M. 
 E. Church, opposite the brick house, as I 
 am informed by Philip H. Smith. It was 
 here that Marquis de Castellux stopped on 
 his way to meet Washington at Fishkill, and 
 his description of the night spent there is 
 one of the most interesting pages in his 
 *' Travels in North America." The New 
 Hampshire drovers, with their fat oxen for 
 "the Continemtal Army at Fishkill, were a very 
 interesting type to him. To the country at 
 that time they were a familiar figure. I am 
 told that the taverns all along the road from 
 New York to Albany, and from Hartford 
 to Fishkill, were placed about every four 
 miles, for the accommodation of those 
 driving cattle, and of other travelers. 
 89 
 
THE CAMP OF WASHINGTON — TRADITION. 
 
 The encampment on and near Quaker 
 Hill of soldiers of the Revolutionary Arm- 
 ies has always been the most frequently 
 mentioned and the most treasured of the 
 traditions of the place. It has been a 
 matter of interest to sift out the actual 
 facts from the harvest of tradition, to learn 
 how many and what proportion of the 
 army of Washington camped here, for how 
 long, and on what camping site. It is 
 asserted in common tradition that the 
 greater part of the army of Washington 
 was here, and that is the statement in a 
 letter of an eye witness, which I will quote 
 later. I have encountered reasons for 
 doubting this, though in this and other 
 matters I have found the current traditions, 
 so far as they apply to matters of fact, 
 and not to sentiment or to details very 
 precise, to be substantially exact. Now in 
 this case the tradition is that the entire 
 army of Washington camped here for one 
 winter, that the artillery was disposed on 
 the slopes of the hill known as Purga- 
 tory — so named because it is halfway be^ 
 tween Quaker Hill and every where else — 
 the infantry on the valleys adjacent and the 
 cavalry on the ridge above and south of 
 40 
 
the Milan Stedwell place, now owned by 
 B. West Clinedinst. It is asserted that one 
 may still find traces of the ovens in which 
 the soldiers did their cooking, and of the 
 stone houses in which the officers lived. 
 It is hkewise asserted that the Revolution- 
 ary ancestress of Milan Stedwell, Lizzie 
 Brundage, the wife of James Stedwell, 
 Milan's great grandmother, cooked for the 
 soldiers encamped on that hill in an arch- 
 kettle holding two barrels. 
 
 It is related that the soldiers often robbed 
 surrounding farms, and I am told that on one 
 of the forays they entered and robbed the 
 home of Edward and Anna Briggs, lately 
 the residence of Homer Briggs, a half-mile 
 east of the Akin Briggs' place, of the corn 
 stored in an upper chamber. The lady of 
 the house when they came down stairs 
 asked them to stay to breakfast, and they 
 were thereby made much ashamed, 
 and went away declaring they would 
 never rob that house again, because they 
 were treated so courteously. I am not told 
 whether they took the corn with them, or 
 indeed whether they stayed to breakfast. 
 But the story is wholly consistent with the 
 statements of Bancroft and of Irving, that 
 during that winter the troops, while they 
 were well clad with garments sent from 
 41 
 
France, were in sad need of food, often 
 lacking meat for days at a time and again 
 grain for days, and at times being in want 
 of both at once. 
 
 It is also related that the old meeting- 
 house was used for a hospital by these 
 troops, which Dr. Fallon's letter above will 
 confirm, and that they buried their dead in 
 the grounds of the older meeting-house 
 across the road, later purchased by Mr. 
 Bancroft. The meeting assembled in the 
 meantime in Stephen Osborn's house, then 
 the Isaac Osborn house. 
 
 One of the traditions of the troops here 
 is that of the residence here of the noble 
 Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the 
 Revolution. The house which stood on 
 the site of that of Mr. Archibald Dodge is 
 designated by verbal tradition as his quart- 
 ers during that time, in which it is also 
 asserted that the trial of General Schuyler, 
 under the presidency of General B. Lincoln, 
 occurred. The latter is said by some to 
 have occurred in the house by the road be- 
 longing to Mr. T. J. Arnold. Mrs. Jane 
 Crane tells me that Washington had his 
 horse shod many times at the smithy lo- 
 cated on the slope of Birch Hill, south of 
 Will Akin's, by Joel Winter Church, whose 
 autograph she has, and that the Father of 
 42 
 
his country was unable at that time to pay 
 the bill, but did so after the close of the 
 war. This is in harmony with Washing- 
 ton's practice elsewhere. Mrs. Crane also 
 tells me that she had it from Benjamin Havi- 
 land that his father, then a small boy, hv- 
 ing on the Whitehead place, in Haviland 
 Hollow, went up the road toward Quaker 
 Hill to meet and see General Washington, 
 who with his cavalcade of attendant officers 
 and others, came to dine at his father's 
 house, standing in the yard of the White- 
 head place, nearer the road. 
 
 It has been a pleasure, and to some de- 
 gree a surprise, to be able to confirm these 
 traditions of the residence here of Wash- 
 ington and his troops, upon the authority 
 of the best records of the Revolution. The 
 name of the vicinage in those days was 
 Fredericksburgh, a name which is as good 
 a clue to the history of that encampment 
 of the army here as is the name Oblong to 
 the history of local Quakerism. 
 
 QUOTATION OF AUTHORITY. 
 
 The authority for the belief that Wash- 
 ington resided here is, first, Washington 
 Irving, who in his "Life of Washington" 
 says, "Washington moved his camp to a 
 rear position at Fredericksburgh on the 
 
 43 
 
borders of Connecticut, and about thirty 
 miles from West Point, so as to be ready 
 for a movement to the eastward or a speedy 
 junction for the defense of the Hudson." 
 Benson J. Lossing, in his ''Fieldbook of 
 the Revolution," (Vol. I. p. 331,) makes 
 the same assertion. 
 
 The time of this encampment of the 
 army and of its General here was the 
 Autumn of 1778. The circumstances of the 
 preceding summer will be recalled by 
 readers of history. It was the year follow- 
 ing the terrible Winter at Valley Forge. 
 Philadelphia had been evacuated in that 
 Spring and the British army held only two 
 posts on the Eastern coast, New York and 
 Newport. Frederick the Great of Prussia, 
 on learning the facts as to the British retreat 
 to New York, stated his opinion as follows: 
 ** Clinton has gained no advantage except 
 to reach New York with the wreck of his 
 army; America is probably lost to Eng- 
 land." In August of the preceding Sum- 
 mer, Washington, coming to White Plains 
 from which he had been forced away in 
 1776, wrote to a friend: ''After two years' 
 manoeuvering and the strangest vicis- 
 situdes, both armies are brought back to 
 the very point they set out from, and the 
 offending party at the beginning is now 
 44 
 
reduced to the use of the spade and the 
 pickaxe for defense. The hand of Provi- 
 dence has been so conspicuous in all 
 this that he must be worse than an infidel 
 that lacks faith, and more than wicked that 
 has not gratitude to acknowledge his obli- 
 gations." (Bancroft LV, p. 287.) 
 
 In the Fall therefore of 1778, while still 
 the terrible poverty of the government and 
 the weakness of Congress were leaving the 
 army of Washington in a low state of 
 efficiency, yet in the dawn of a day of 
 hope, Washington was called into this in- 
 land neighborhood by the aspect of the 
 British forces in New York. A letter of 
 his, dated from Fredericksburgh, says : 
 " There are but two capital objects which 
 they can have in view, except the defeat 
 and dispersion of this army; and these are 
 the possession of the fortifications in the 
 Highlands, by which means the communi- 
 cation between the eastern and southern 
 states would be cut off, and the destruction 
 of the French fleet at Boston. These ob- 
 jects, being far apart, render it very difficult 
 to secure the one effectually without ex- 
 posing the other eminently. I have, there- 
 fore, in order to do the best the nature of 
 the case will admit, strengthened the works 
 and reinforced the garrison in the High- 
 45 
 
lands, and thrown the army into such po- 
 sition as to move eastward or westward as 
 circumstances may require. The place I 
 now date from is about thirty miles from the 
 fort on the North River (West Point) ; and 
 I have some troops nearer, others farther 
 off, but all on the road leading to Boston, 
 if we should be dragged that way." 
 
 This is the only mention of the locality 
 found in Washington's letters. The above 
 letter is dated the twefth of September, 
 1778, the first date on which he writes from 
 Fredericksburgh. A letter to the President 
 of Congress on the twenty-third, says: 
 * • The army marched from White Plains on 
 the 1 6th, and is now encamped in differ- 
 ent places. Three brigades, composed of 
 Virginia troops, part of the right wing, 
 under command of General Putnam, are at 
 Robinson, near West Point, and two brig- 
 ades more, composing the remainder, are 
 with Baron DeKalb at Fishkill Plains, about 
 ten miles from the town on the road leading 
 to Sharon. The second line with Lord Ster- 
 ling is in the vicinity of Fredericksburgh; 
 and the whole of the left wing at Danbury, 
 under command of General Gates." 
 
 The letters of Washington, dated from 
 his headquarter here, show that he was 
 here continuously, except for an absence of 
 46 
 
a week at Fishkill which was a great depot 
 of supplies, from the twefth of September 
 in that year until the last of November. I 
 can find no other record of his staying in 
 this vicinity, though there were occasions 
 on which he may, as a traveler between Hart- 
 ford and Fishkill, have spent a night here. 
 
 OFFICIAL HEADQUARTERS. 
 
 The Headquarters of Washington in this 
 vicinity are asserted by unanimous verbal, 
 but no written, tradition to have been 
 located in the Reed Ferris house, on the 
 site of which live the Dodge-Arnold family. 
 It is certain that Washington was frequently 
 in this house as a guest, and perhaps used 
 it as a residence. But there is evidence 
 that cannot be mistaken which points to 
 the location of the official Headquarters in 
 a house nearer the village of Pawling, on 
 the site of which the Roberts house now 
 stands. 
 
 This evidence, for which I am indebted 
 to Mr. L. S. Patrick, of Marinette, Wiscon- 
 sin, is as follows: First the map made for 
 Washington in 1778 of Fredericksburgh 
 by Robert Erskine, official historiographer 
 of the Revolution. In this map the Rob- 
 erts location is evidently indicated. Sec- 
 ond, among the personal expenditures of 
 
 47 
 
Washington at this time, of which he left 
 full record, there is mention of many pur- 
 chases from Reed Ferris, but no item 
 indicating occupation of his property 
 or premises. Third, among those expend- 
 itures is one bearing date of November 28, 
 1778, the day of his departure: " To cash 
 paid John Kane for use of his house, &c., 
 144 dollars. The name is spelled " Keane " 
 instead of Kane, but Washington was 
 notoriously independent of the rules in that 
 matter. Fourth, on September 2^, 1778, 
 Governor Clinton wrote to Robert R. Liv- 
 ingston; "The army has left the Plains, 
 and are now posted along the mountain 
 from Danbury to West Point. Headquart- 
 ers at John Kain's at Fredericksburgh, for 
 which place General Washington after 
 having visited the forts, passed through 
 Fishkill on Sunday last." So far therefore 
 as evidence exists it is to the effect that the 
 official headquarters was in John Kane's 
 house on the site of the Roberts house, and 
 that Washington was a frequent visitor, 
 with his officers, at the house of Reed Ferris, 
 on the site of which Mr. Dodge now lives. 
 The house in Pawling, now the residence 
 of Mr. Charles H. Roberts, stands on the site 
 of the Headquarters. It is thus described 
 by Mrs. Elizabeth D. Kane, of Kane, Pa., 
 48 
 
herself a descendant, as was her hus- 
 band, Thomas L. Kane, of John Kane, who 
 owned the place in 1778: "John Kane's 
 house was conveniently built for an officer's 
 headquarters. There was a large dwelling 
 house, connected by a stone walled pass- 
 age, 65 feet long lighted by windows, with 
 a large store building which had dwelling- 
 rooms above. John Kane so describes it 
 in his petition to Parhament in 1794. He 
 says that his 'house being situated near the 
 theatre of war, and in the great route of 
 Congressional troops and militia in going 
 to and returning from the army, he was 
 exposed to the frequent insults of a Hcen- 
 tious soldiery, &c.' 
 
 "The homestead consisted of five lots. 
 87 >^ acres bought from Robert Gilbert Liv- 
 ingstone, 2 1 St October, 1762; 96^ acres 
 also situated in Beekman Precinct, Dutchess 
 County, bought of Beverly Robinson, 21 
 March, 1763; 50 acres from Sarah Bemis 
 in 1770; 30 acres from Wellcom Davis; 67 
 acres from Jos. A. Miller. I do not know 
 on which the house stood. 
 
 "In the year 1820, Aug. 14, John K. 
 Kane writing to his father, Elisha Kane, 
 says: ' I went yesterday to Pawlingstown 
 and ate a bread and cheese luncheon in the 
 house in which you were born. It is now 
 49 
 
a tavern and belongs to Gideon Slocum. 
 His wife's name was Cook, and her mother 
 was an intimate friend of grandmother's. 
 They treated me kindly and would take no 
 pay. The house is ruinous, and Slocum 
 intends pulling it down next year. I made 
 a rough sketch of the front of it.' (Here 
 follows the sketch): 'The extreme build- 
 ings are of wood, the connection of stone. 
 The range of buildings is near loo feet 
 long. The yard in front is planted with 
 poplar trees.' 
 
 "There was a large stone building which 
 had been built for a store-house, with 
 family rooms above; and this connected 
 by a stone covered way with a dwelling at 
 a distance of some fifty or sixty feet. This 
 covered way was lighted by windows and 
 formed perhaps the principal feature of the 
 series of buildings. The dwelling-house 
 was of frame, clap-boarded, two stories 
 high, and finished with some pretensions 
 to style. I found it somewhat decayed, 
 in charge of a family who carried me 
 through it, and pointed out the room which 
 General Washington occupied, when he 
 was the guest of my grandfather in 1778." 
 
 John Kane was a Loyalist, and obnox- 
 ious to the patriots. His estate was 
 therefore, by a law passed in October, 
 50 
 
1779. confiscated, and himself banished 
 from the State on pain of death. The dig- 
 nified old magistrate is said to have been 
 tied to a cart and drummed out of town. 
 He petitioned the Crown for restoration 
 of his property, or recompense for his 
 losses; but he was charged with disloyalty 
 while a member of the Provincial Legisla- 
 ture, and although he made reasonable 
 answer, he got nothing. 
 
 COURT MARTIAL OF SCHUYLER. 
 
 Connected with the stay of the army 
 here and its general officers is the court- 
 martial of General Schuyler for neglect of 
 duty. The whole may be read in the Col- 
 lections of the New York Historical Society 
 for 1879. The charge is stated as follows: 
 
 NEGLECT OF DUTY in not being present at 
 Ticonderoga to discharge the functions of his 
 command, from the middle of June, 1777, until it 
 was no longer possible to maintain Ticonderoga 
 and Mt, Independence, consistent with the safety 
 of the troops and stores; when he should have 
 caused a retreat to be made, for the preservatioM 
 of both, under the fifth article of the tenth seo- 
 tion of the Rules and Articles of War. 
 
 The Court Martial continued its sittings 
 during the first three days of October, and 
 it is perhaps significant that during those 
 three days Washington was absent, while 
 immediately after them he returned. The 
 51 
 
verdict of the court is as follows: *'The 
 Court having considered the charge against 
 Major General Schuyler, and the evidence 
 in his defence, are unanimously of 
 opinion that he is NOT GUILTY of any 
 neglect of duty in not being at Ticonderoga 
 as charged ; and the Court do therefore 
 acquit him with the highest honor. B. Lin- 
 coln, President." 
 
 It is not positively known in what house 
 this Court-Martial sat. Tradition says "a 
 yellow house." Was there one so named 
 and known ? The best of evidence indi- 
 cates that the trial was at Reed Ferriss's 
 house, which was the quarters of General 
 Lincoln, and at times of Washington. On 
 this site lives the Dodge-Arnold fiimily. 
 
 It is interesting to us to know that this 
 verdict of the court-martial, with all the 
 proceedings, was forwarded to Congress, 
 then meeting in Philadelphia, by no less a 
 person than Lafayette, who desired with 
 Washington's endorsement to secure a 
 furlough for a visit to France. To secure 
 that endorsement and to fight a duel, it is 
 said he visited Fredericksburgh. It may be 
 that at this time he was lodged in the old 
 house formerly situated on the site of th« 
 present residence of Richard Osborn. He 
 undoubtedly visited the Commander-in- 
 52 
 
Chiefat this time, and the tradition as to his 
 lodgings is not to be doubted. Washington 
 was frequently the guest of Reed Ferris; 
 who had recently erected a new house, the 
 door-stone of which Mr. Arnold still 
 shows, inscribed with the initials and date, 
 1 77 1, of the erection of the house. Reed 
 Ferris' daughter Molly, nineteen years old, 
 was then the young wife of John Akin, 
 grandson of David Akin, the pioneer of 
 1742, and her first born, Albro Akin, was 
 then six months old. One can imagine the 
 courtly dignity and condescension of the 
 Father of his Country to the fair girl-wife 
 and her infant boy, whom he saw so fre- 
 quently in the house of her father, his host. 
 Albro Akin, that six months' infant, was as a 
 man known personally to many now living 
 on Quaker Hill. His oldest son, Albert J. 
 Akin, is our host, and the President of this 
 Conference. 
 
 From his headquarters here Washington 
 wrote to Gates at Danbury, giving orders 
 as to the repair of the roads to Boston, and 
 announcing his route thither, if the British 
 attack that city, by the way of New Mil- 
 ford, Woodbury to Waterbury and Farm- 
 ington. It was from this place that he wrote 
 the famous business letter dismissing Mr. 
 Jonas Hill from the care of one of his planta- 
 53 
 
tions in Virginia, that in King William 
 County-a letter which exhibits his care of his 
 private business in all of its details, calves, 
 tobacco, profits, accounts, in the very years 
 when he was bearing the burdens of the 
 American Conflict upon his steadfast mind. 
 The letter to Congress discussing a plan 
 of attacking Canada by a combined force 
 of French and American troops and ships, 
 a plan suggested by Lafayette, was written 
 from his residence here. Washington op- 
 poses the plan as calculated to give to the 
 French a too strong footing in America; 
 and with great sagacity and foresight, while 
 declining the suggestion of the President 
 of Congress that he counsel with Lafayette 
 as to his reply, he urges upon Congress 
 reasons drawn from the interests of the 
 American continent in opposition to the 
 project. His opinion, as usual, carried the 
 day; so that, although he fought no battle 
 of the sword or musket in our town, he 
 gained a victory in the profounder arts of 
 the intellect. 
 
 BOARDMAN'S description of WASHINGTON. 
 
 I have reserved until almost my last quo- 
 tation of authorities part of a letter written 
 by one who saw Washington on Quaker 
 Hill, and wrote about it before his death. 
 
The original letter is the property of the 
 Boardman family of New Milford, descend- 
 ants of the writer. Both for its manner 
 and matter I will quote the letter in its 
 original form. 
 
 ** I first saw General Washington on the 
 17th of October, 1778, when for a short 
 time he had his headquarters at a house 
 then occupied by Colonel Kane (great- 
 grandfather of the late Dr. Kane) some two 
 miles westerly of the Quaker Meeting- 
 house on Quaker Hill, in the present town 
 of Pawling, formerly called Fredericks- 
 burgh, Dutchess County, and on the road 
 leading to Poughkeepsie. The encamp- 
 ment of the largest portion of the Conti- 
 nental Army then collected in one place, 
 was on the same ridge of land with the 
 Quaker Meeting-house, and from two to 
 three miles south of it, on the road from 
 Cold Spring to Carmel, the present county 
 seat of Putnam county, and within the 
 limits of the town of Patterson in the same 
 county. I was at that time in my tenth 
 year, and like all boys belonging to ardent 
 Whig families, at that stirring period, was 
 intensely interested in the great events oc- 
 curring around me. My father and mother 
 took me with them to see the camp, then 
 about ten miles distant from their residence. 
 55 
 
The 17th of October was selected as the 
 time for the visit, because it was known 
 that there would be a grand parade and 
 festival on that day, it being the first anni- 
 versary of the surrender of Burgoyne. For 
 the same reason many others availed them- 
 selves of the occasion to visit the camp, 
 and a large crowd of both sexes was col- 
 lected. As everybody was eager to 
 see General Washington, they huddled 
 together on the road leading from the Gen- 
 eral's headquarters to the camp, all on 
 horseback, as everybody then rode who 
 rode at all. The cavalcade of officers and 
 their attendants who had gone to head- 
 quarters to escort the Commander-in-Chief 
 down to the place of entertainment soon 
 made their appearance. As it was passing 
 the company of spectators, my father in- 
 quired of a soldier standing by the road, 
 whether ''his Excellency" was in the train 
 which was just riding by. He answered, 
 I remember thus: — "Yes, sir; he's on the 
 right hand in front on the blaze faced 
 horse," and a noble horse he was. The 
 cavalcade, immediately after it had passed 
 the throng of spectators, wheeled to the 
 left of the road into an open field at the 
 foot of a very abrupt but short ascent to 
 the flat upon the top, where the tables 
 
 56 
 
were set under a long shade of green 
 boughs. As soon as the General's horse 
 came to the foot of the hill he sprang for- 
 ward with the swiftness of a bird, and 
 ascended by leaps rather than the ordinary 
 gallop and reached the top before any other 
 of the escort got half way up. Certainly 
 never before, nor during the long years 
 since, did 1 behold so noble an equestrian 
 figure; for General Washington excelled in 
 horsemanship, as he did in everything else 
 he undertook. 
 
 ''When the general and his attendants 
 had arrived at their destination, the spec- 
 tators dismounted, and took their stand 
 outside the assembly of officers, who joined 
 in numerous parties in conversation for a 
 long time before dinner was served. My 
 eyes were riveted during the whole time 
 upon General Washington, whose noble 
 personal appearance and majestic bearing so 
 far exceeded any other present as to leave 
 no room for comparison. A lofty stature, 
 two inches over six feet, with a form as 
 perfect in its proportions as possible to 
 represent both gracefulness and strength— 
 a nearer and repeated view of him many 
 years afterwards, when in the office of 
 President of the United States, enables me 
 to say that my first sentiment of his per- 
 57 
 
sonal appearance was not mistaken, though 
 formed in the enthusiasm of boyhood. I 
 gazed at him for at least two hours, scarcely 
 having patience to have my attention 
 turned to other distinguished officers whom 
 my father pointed out to me, such as Bar- 
 on Steuben, General Knox and the Baron 
 De Kalb. I then believed that I was look- 
 ing at the noblest and best man in the 
 world, and eighty years of reading and re- 
 flection which have since elapsed have in 
 no wise changed that early impression. 
 The General was dressed in a blue coat 
 with buff facings and large gold epaulets 
 with buff colored small clothes and vest, 
 and boots reaching quite to the knee. His 
 hair, of which he had a great quantity, was 
 craped and turned back from the forehead, 
 and dressed in a very large and long braid 
 or twist upon his back; the whole pro- 
 fusely powdered as was then the fashion. 
 His sword was what was called a hanger, 
 shaped like a sabre but much shorter and 
 lighter. It was worn attached to a belt 
 around the waist under the coat. The 
 handle was of green ivory, the hilt and 
 guard of it silver, and was the same that 
 was presented to Congress some years ago 
 by the relative to whom it was bequeathed 
 by the General's will. Such was my impres* 
 58 
 
sion at the sight of the greatest man of his 
 own or any other age. The picture is 
 stamped on my memory in living light and 
 the time seems only to increase the fresh- 
 ness of the coloring." 
 
 WINTER CAMP ON THE HILL. 
 
 The last letter of Washington written 
 from this town; November 27, 1778, gives 
 the following disposition of his forces for 
 the winter, and throws Hght on the ques- 
 tion of the number of troops he had in 
 this vicinity. From this it would appear 
 that the statement of Mr. Boardman that 
 the largest assembly of the Continental 
 Army was in this vicinity is either to be 
 taken with the allowance due to mere 
 recollection, or is to be understood as 
 referring only to a short period. After 
 locatirig nine brigades of the army west of 
 the Hudson, and six on the east side there- 
 of, of which six one was at West Point, 
 two at Fishkill and Continental Village, 
 which was a small cluster of houses in S. 
 W. PhiUipstown, he continues, "The re- 
 maining three brigades, composed of New 
 Hampshire and Connecticut troops and 
 Hayne's Regiment, are in the vicinity of 
 Danbury, for the protection of the country 
 lying along the Sound, to cover our mag- 
 59 
 
azines lying along the Connecticut River, 
 and to aid the Highlands in any serious 
 movements of the enemy that way." I 
 am inclined to think from this and other 
 statements, uncontradicted by any facts so 
 clear, that the army which was here in this 
 time was never larger than would appear 
 in this statement; while the troops which 
 wintered here cannot have been more than 
 perhaps a regiment or two. However, on 
 this, there is still room for further informa- 
 tion. It is at least probable that the review 
 mentioned by Mr. Boardman, perhaps in- 
 tended as a show of strength to the 
 enemy, was an assembly of the most of 
 the troops between Danbury and Fishkill. 
 The same letter describes the character 
 of the encampment in terms which har- 
 monize perfectly with the local traditions 
 and with the stories on the remains of that 
 encampment on Purgatory Hill. "It is un- 
 necessary to add," continues Washington, 
 "that the troops must again have recourse 
 to the expedient of hutting, as they did last 
 year. But as they are now well clad, we 
 have had more leisure to make some little 
 preparation for winter quarters. I hope 
 they will be in more comfortable situation 
 than they were in the preceding winter." 
 This comparison of Quaker Hill and other 
 
 60 
 
locations in this vicinity with Valley Forge, 
 pictures the winter that followed to the 
 imagination in vivid colors. And every 
 old family in the neighborhood has its tra- 
 dition of the presence at their door of the 
 hungry and needy soldier of the Revolution 
 during that winter. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 With the close of the Revolution the 
 dramatic and interesting history of the Hill 
 in the Eighteenth Century closes. The 
 next era of interest is that of the first forty 
 years of the nineteenth, the era of turn- 
 pikes, the earliest of which, iMarch 30, 
 1802, in this county was *'the Quaker Hill 
 Turnpike," extending from Jeptha Sabin s 
 on Quaker Hill to the foot of the mountain 
 called "Fishkill" thence to Peter Brill's in 
 Beekman. It is the era of the greatest growth 
 and most numerous population the Hill has 
 ever seen, as many abandoned house-sites 
 and half-filled cellars demonstrate; it is the 
 period of the great disruption in the Ob- 
 long Quaker Meeting. 1 have attempted to 
 write of the earlier stratum of history, 
 which is typified by the old field across 
 the road there, long since ploughed up and 
 modernized, in which lie the bones of the 
 Quaker pioneers, who placed no head- 
 61 
 
stones and wrote few diaries and no his- 
 tories; the field sown also with the bones 
 of the soldiers of the Revolution. They 
 He in peace together, those men of the 
 inner light and the outer plainness, and 
 those men who, looking on the outer 
 affairs of life, saw the necessity and re- 
 sponded to the call to take the weapons of 
 death in their hands; who died far from 
 home, in the lingering anguish of the im- 
 provised hospital, in the bare, fireless 
 meeting-house. Side by side their bodies 
 have gone to dust, and side by side their 
 spirits have gone to God who made them, 
 whose mercy was as necessary for the one 
 as for the other. These all died in their 
 faith. God grant that their faith may not 
 die with their descendants and successors. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 James Smith's History of Dutchess County. 
 Philip H. Smith's History of Dutchess County. 
 Lossing's "Field Book of the Revolution." 
 Bancroft's " History of the United States." 
 Irving's " Life of Washington." 
 "Gazetteer of New York," 1812. 
 Akin and Ferriss and Wing and Hoag " Family 
 Records." 
 De Chastellux's "Travels of North America." 
 Anbury's "Travels in North America." 
 Thacher's "Military Journal of the Revolution.'* 
 Wilson's *' Rise and Fall of the Slave Power." 
 
 62 
 
Records of Oblong Meeting House, Purchase 
 Meeting, and of the New York Yearly Meeting. 
 
 Barnum's "Enoch Crosby." 
 
 "The Writings of Washington," especially in 
 Fall of 1778. 
 
 Proceedings of the New York Historical Society, 
 1859, etc. 
 
 Poughkeepsie Eagle, July, 1876, Lossing's Ar- 
 ticles. 
 
 New Milford Gazette 1858, Boardman's Letter. 
 
 Fishkill (New York) Packet, 1776-1783. 
 
 New York Mercury, 1776-1783. 
 
 Public Papers of George Clinton, First Governor 
 of New York. 
 
 Map of Fredericksburgh and vicinity, 1778, by 
 Robert Eskine. Photo by L. S. Patrick; in Lenox 
 Library. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 It seems to me worth while to add a short ac- 
 CK)unt of the records of the Oblong Meeting. It 
 has cost a great deal of time to discover where 
 these records are located ; I am indebted to the 
 generosity of Miss Cornelia Taylor for the means 
 of consulting them. The Meeting was divided in 
 the year 1828 into two bodies of Quakers, of 
 which that retaining the use of the Meeting-House 
 eeased to assemble in 1884. At the time of the 
 division each of the two bodies retained the 
 records in the possession of its members, each 
 lAaintained that it was the original body of the 
 Society of Friends. Until recent days the records 
 were thus dispersed, chiefly in two places. Some 
 of them are in private houses. The Hicksite 
 Quakers through their Yearly Meeting collected 
 most of their records, and put them in charge of 
 
 63 
 
their Custodian, John Cox, Jr., in the safe at their 
 Meeting-house at Sixteenth St. Records in the 
 possession of the Orthodox Friends were collected 
 in the storage vaults of the Produce Exchange, in 
 the charge of Charles W, Lawrence. 
 
 In 1903, by joint action of the Yearly 
 Meetings of the two Societies, the follow- 
 ing "Joint Committee on Records of the 
 Religious Society of Friends" was intrusted 
 with the care of these previous sources: 
 John Cox, Jr., Chairman, 156 Fifth Ave- 
 nue, New York, James Wood, Charles W. 
 Lawrence, Alfred Busselle, Franklin T. 
 Carpenter, Ellwood Burdsall. The follow- 
 ing statement is quoted from their official 
 paper: 
 
 "The records, documents and papers belonging, 
 or relating, to the meetings and their allied 
 organizations throughout the two New York 
 Yearly Meetings (one held at Fifteenth Street, 
 New York, and sometimes called "Hicksite," the 
 other held at Twentieth Street, New York, and 
 elsewhere, and sometimes called "Orthodox,") 
 were brought together in 1904 and placed in the 
 care of this Joint Committee at the Fifteenth 
 Street meeting house, entrance, 226 East Six- 
 teenth Street. 
 
 "All volumes are numbered and catalogued to 
 facilitate examination, and a descriptive "Cata- 
 logue of the Records of, or relating to, New York 
 Yearly Meeting and its subordinate branches," by 
 John Cox, Jr., begun in 1897, is nearing com- 
 pletion. It includes all known records from 1663. 
 
 64 
 
"Many lost volumes and papers have been 
 found and restored. We earnestly request all who 
 have any such books or papers in their possession 
 or who know of such to notify the Committee of 
 the fact, and if not ready to send them promptly to 
 give information as to their nature and period, so 
 that they may be properly listed in the Catalogue. 
 
 "The Records maybe seen in the presence of 
 the Custodian by members of either New York 
 Yearly Meeting without fee. Other persons are 
 charged a fee of $1.00 per hour, minimum fee 
 $1.00. All applications to see the records should 
 be addressed to the Custodian, John Cox, Jr., 156 
 Fifth Avenue, New York, (telephone connection) 
 Examinations to be made at convenience of Cus- 
 todian by previous appointment, or John Cox, 
 Jr., will make the examination and report theron 
 at the same rate. " 
 
 From the year 1 744 Oblong Meeting was 
 a meeting of record, but for thirteen years 
 the records of the minutes were written on 
 loose sheets, which have been lost. They 
 may indeed be in existence, for in 1760 the 
 meeting directed Clerk Zebulon Ferriss to 
 record the minutes for the time he has 
 been clerk; and appoints two to record the 
 previous minutes from the establishment of 
 the meeting. If those two did as they 
 were directed, there should be a book of 
 the oldest records of the Hill in existence; 
 a|nd in any case there may be, in some old 
 leather bound trunk, leaves of records 
 
 65 
 
from 1744 to 1757, whose value is beyond 
 calculation. The minutes of the meeting 
 from 1757 until the division and from that 
 date until the Hicksite Meeting was laid 
 down in 1884, are in the possession of Mr. 
 Cox. From 1828, the year of the division 
 until the present year, the minutes of the 
 Orthodox Friends are in the possesion of 
 Richard Osborn. The minutes of the 
 Women's Meeting previous to 1807 are 
 missing; one volume, from 9th Mo., 14th, 
 1807 to 3rd Mo., i6th, 1835 is with John 
 Cox. In the same place are three volumes 
 of the record of Births, Marriages and 
 Deaths: one from 1745 to 1774; then, after 
 a gap, due to the absence of a volume, is 
 the second, from 1786 to 1866; and a third 
 volume of births and deaths alone from 
 1828 to 1893. Volumes lacking in this 
 greatest collection of the minutes and other 
 records are the records of birth and deaths 
 previous to 1828: and of marriages from 
 1774 to 1786. 
 
 The records of the present Orthodox Meet- 
 ing in full, as well as the following two 
 volumes of the records of the Preparative 
 Meeting of Ministers and Elders at Oblong, 
 are in the possession of Richard T. Osborn 
 on Quaker Hill; first from loth month, 
 1 2th, 1785, to ist month, 13th, 1878; and 
 66 
 
second, from 1878 to present time. An 
 interesting minute in the older of these 
 volumes is the record of the appointment 
 to the ministry of Peter Lossing, an ances- 
 tor I am informed, of Benson J. Lossing, 
 the historian. 
 
 Last of all, the records of births and 
 deaths of the meeting, from 18 10 to the 
 present day, following the line of the Or- 
 thodox society, is in the possession of 
 Robert Post. 
 
 The oldest records therefore of the do- 
 ings in this meeting are contained in the 
 records of Purchase Meeting, the mother 
 society, from the earhest date, about 1741, 
 at which Oblong is mentioned, to 1744, 
 when it became an independent monthly 
 meeting. Most of the early settlers on the 
 Oblong came through Purchase, married 
 under it in many cases and left their names 
 on its pages. 
 
 Probably many of these old records are 
 lost; but there must be some of them still 
 on the Hill, in the old rag and paper bags 
 of old families. There never should be an 
 auction, and never a house-cleaning, with- 
 out an alert watch for the discovery of those 
 old records. The state of an old volume 
 of Men's Minutes of Branch Preparative 
 Meeting is a pathetic record of the care 
 67 
 
that all these books have had. It is en- 
 cased in the original buckskin bag in which 
 it was carried to the meeting by the clerk, 
 doubtless on horse back. Its lids closed 
 with leathern thongs. But sixteen of its 
 leaves, one of them dated 1790, have been 
 mutilated. Out of each page two circular 
 holes are cut away, to make covers for 
 jelly cups. It would seem that a careful 
 clerk had a frivolous granddaughter, who 
 ** probably thought," as John Cox says, 
 ''the minutes were so dry .that they would 
 keep the jelly from moulding." 
 
 MAP OF QUAKER HILL AND VICINITY. 
 
 Made by Robert Erskine, 1778-80, 
 official geographer to the Continental army. 
 Landmarks are as follows: Pawling vil- 
 lage is now located near the words ''Waters 
 divide here." " Fredericksburgh " is now 
 Patterson. "New Fairfield" is now Sher- 
 man. The Old Meeting House is at the 
 cross roads west of "New Fairfield" and 
 east of Hamersley Lake. Original in pos- 
 session of New York Historical Society. 
 
 68 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 109 573 
 
 kU