Of these families, their children and grand-children, the following number of families have removed out of this town:
There may have been a few other families who have removed out of the town whom I have not known.
Of the descendants of those ancients, there now remain, as near as I can ascertain, about 5 families in this neighborhood.
These numbers, 56 + 30 + 5 = 91 families.
There now are about 20 families in this neighborhood who are of the anterior emigration from the upper neighborhood and are included in its calculations.
The following is a calculation of the number of families of each generation of the lower neighborhood, to wit:
The two last 273 + 819 = 1,092 families. To this last number add the 3,000 of the upper neighborhood and the amount is 4,092.
There are two of these prior generations who, by deaths, may fall short of these numbers mentioned, but I contemplate that as great an addition of families exists of the succeeding generation of each neighborhood as will amount to such loss, and that there now are at least 4,000 families in existence of descendants in some degree of the ancients mentioned.
THOMAS WHITE.
This man's services have been of greater benefit and advantage to the third generation of descendants of our neighborhood than those of any other individual, in consequence of which he ought to be held in remembrance by our descendants, and he, together with ourselves, become incorporated in our history as the first important originator of education in it. In justice to the merits of Mr. White in respect of myself, I will here state that by means of his services I have become enabled to write this history and exhibit to its readers the information it contains; and in addition thereto the enjoyment of other sources of knowledge for which and all other blessings we have reason to be thankful, not only to the individual from whom we derived the same but also to that Being who is the originator of all our enjoyments.
The benefits we (who were of the generation mentioned) have derived from him, consisted in the literature he taught us in our childhood and youth at short different periods of time in the schools he kept in our neighborhood, whereby we generally received such a portion of education as enabled each of us to transact his own ordinary business in relation to his dealings with others, which, in our time, had become more necessary than what it was in the days of our forefathers, most of whom kept no written memoranda of their dealings with each other, which in their time (during about ninety years) was unnecessary for the greatest part of them. In addition to these benefits we became more enlightened and enabled to acquire additional knowledge and information by reading, &c. Mr. White and his wife Elizabeth, came to this neighborhood in the autumn of 1776 (as near as I can ascertain) to serve its inhabitants as a schoolmaster and they became residents in my father's house together with his own family, and taught school in one of its rooms during the ensuing winter, and probably until some of their neighbors moved into it and the construction of a fort commenced, and notwithstanding the danger to which the inhabitants of our town became exposed by the invasion of the Indians, he continued to live in the house during a great part of the war, and was in it at the time when the fort was attacked.
When the enemy came in sight, he told Capt. Cuddeback that he was a King's man, but would stand by him to help defend the fort against those savages to the utmost of his power. (He was a warm friend of his native country and its laws). Mr. White was in the fort during the hard winter in the time of the war, and kept a diary from which he ascertained that no water had dropped from the roof of the house during a term of forty days in that winter.
I will here, before proceeding further with the history of Mr. White, narrate how the inmates of the fort managed to sustain themselves during the winter. When the Indians burnt the houses of the neighbors, many of the pots were damaged by these fires. These were used for keeping small fires in them in different parts of the fort house. Two large fires were generally kept up in the two front rooms, and a fire in a stove in another, and in the other room a pot with hot coals, supplied from the fire places, was kept up to warm the room for a dwelling of some of the oldest women. On the chamber, against the sides of the chimneys, pots with fire were kept, supplied with hot coals from the fire places, and also with chips and small pieces of wood.
In the northwest corner of the chamber, a small room was partitioned off for a dwelling of Mr. White and his wife, so that in winter time they were out of the great bustle of those who were in the house. A pot with fire in it was also kept in his room, and sometimes a small fire was kept in one of the foremost cellar rooms for a few soldiers. After the snow became too deep to get wood from where it was previously got, the men first broke a road to a large hickory tree, which stood in a field, under cultivation, of Benjamin Cuddeback, at about one-quarter of a mile distant from the fort. This was cut up and brought to it. The butt log, about three feet thick in diameter, was cut through and served for a log in each fire place. The next log contained all the knots of its large limbs, and could not be cut through nor split with powder, and remained there until it became rotten, long after the war ended. Next a road was broke through the snow about the same distance of the first road, to the Neversink river, which (in ordinary winters generally remained open from the mouth of Basha's kill to the Delaware river, about ten miles distant) was all frozen over with strong ice, so that teams could pass on it.
Along the east bank of the river, trees were cut, so as to fall on the ice, and thereby the men were enabled to get a plentiful supply of wood. In passing to and from the river, a spring brook had to be crossed, which in other winters generally remains open at the place where it was crossed that winter on strong ice. Much snow blew into the brook and coalesced with the water, and all froze together and formed thick, strong ice, so that teams passed over it during the coldest weather in that winter.
I will here resume my history in relation to Mr. White. A few years before he came into the neighborhood, a school house had been built in its central part, about twenty-five rods southwest of Capt. Cuddeback's residence. Mr. Thomas Kyte had been employed to teach school in this house, but, in consequence of much other business, the school was much neglected and very little education was acquired by those he taught, and after he quit, the neighborhood luckily obtained a good teacher by employing Mr. White. He had emigrated into this country from England where he had received his education, and also acquired the trade of manufacturing ropes. He said that every youth in England (when he was there) had to learn a trade, even the King's son, who was expected to become heir to the Crown, had to learn a trade, and that the King, who reigned when he was there, had been taught the trade of weaving silk.
Mr. White was a small, light-built man, very active and quick to perform the business he transacted. The action of his mind was also quick, and more suitable for acquiring a great amount of superficial knowledge than to penetrate and make deep researches into sciences which are difficult to be understood, for which a bright mind of slow action is more suitable. He was also a man of uncommon perseverance to transact the business of his trade, the teaching of his schools, &c., and, whenever he was not employed in either of these, he was generally engaged in reading or writing which he would pursue to a very late hour in the night; and early in the morning, at or before break of day, would be up out of bed, assist his wife to get breakfast, and resume his business. He was very fond of association and delighted to give and receive information, which induced him to write a great many letters to his distant friends and acquaintances, in which he was very expert and never at a loss for matter to make out a long letter, whenever he felt inclined to do it.
I conclude that Mr. White had been taught in one of the best of common schools in England, and in a very perfect manner as far as he had progressed. He was a very eloquent reader, and could perform the same with an air suitable to the nature of the subject on which the reading treated. I have always considered him to have been equal to the best of readers I have ever heard. He was also very perfect in orthography; arithmetic he did not understand as well as some other teachers we have had since his time. He said he had passed through the greatest part of Dillworth's arithmetic at school, but had forgotten some of the rules in the latter part of his assistant, which contained more arithmetic matter than the books now generally used in our common schools. He had some knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, and as much of the French tongue as enabled him to interpret the French words which were interspersed in different parts of a book I read in school the last year he taught in our neighborhood, and, by much reading, he had acquired an extensive knowledge of the English tongue. He said that when at home in his country (which he always called his home) he had free access to a library of books, and that he had read many of them on different subjects, whereby he had received the greatest part of his historical and other information of different kinds.
After his last year's service in our neighborhood he retired to the east side of Shawangunk mountain, into a neighborhood of his former residence, where he continued a few years. During this time, and one or two years previous to it, Moses DeWitt, a son of Capt. Jacob Rutsen DeWitt, a resident of this neighborhood who had, in his youth, become the best scholar in Mr. White's school, and afterwards received a small addition thereto, became well qualified for a surveyor, and was employed as an under-surveyor, when he was about twenty-one years of age, to run the line between the States of New York and Pennsylvania, and afterwards to survey some Government lands at, and in the vicinity of, Tioga Point, and thereafter he and Maj. Hardenbergh obtained the whole business of surveying the military lands in this State. While DeWitt was occupied in that business he concluded to locate in the County of Tioga, and induced Mr. White to move into it. The latter, after becoming a resident in it, became its County Clerk. Mr. DeWitt's mind became changed in respect to locating himself, and he settled in the County of Onondaga. After Mr. White's term of service as County Clerk ended, he removed to the residence of Mr. DeWitt, whose health had become impaired by exposure in the pursuit of his business of surveying, and his constitution continued to debilitate until he was taken with a severe sickness, which, after a short duration, ended his days at the age of about twenty-seven years, at which time he had acquired an estate, in wild lands, worth about ten thousand pounds, New York currency. During the time he was confined to his bed, Mr. White was his affectionate and faithful attendant, but his services did not avail to prolong life, and all hopes of enjoying the remainder of his life, together with his friend, were ended.
After a short stay he removed from the place, which had become a melancholy situation to him, into the County of Orange and bought a small farm in the westerly part of the town of Wallkill, in the neighborhood where his former friends and acquaintances, Elijah and Elisha Reeve, Esqs., Erastus Mapes, Hezekiah Woodward, Alsop Vail and others, lived, where he not only became so situated as to enjoy the happiness of associating with them, but also had access, whenever desirable, to his friends and acquaintances in his former neighborhood on the west side of Shawangunk mountain. Mr. White had no children nor any relatives in this country to attract his affections; these, consequently, became more strongly directed towards those individuals who were the most agreeable to him. He remained in the neighborhood of his residence until death ended his mortal life, and, after his decease, was buried in the graveyard at the Presbyterian church near Otisville. In and by his last will he made several small bequests to his friends, as memorials of his friendship towards them. He also directed the sum of six hundred and twenty dollars, of the avails of his estate, to be kept at interest, payable annually, for the purpose of paying for preaching one sermon in each one of four different Congregations, annually, forever, one of which was the Dutch Reformed Congregation now in Deerpark, (formerly Mahackemeck Congregation), which appears in and by the will to have been intended for the inhabitants of Peenpack, to whom he had become much attached during the different periods of time he resided in it, and consequently also for the benefit of their descendants. [FN] He also bequeathed a few other small legacies to his best friends in the neighborhood of his last residence.
[FN] The other three Churches were the Congregational Church at Middletown, and the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches in Goshen.
The characteristics of Mr. White exhibited indications of his having been descended from a respectable family in his native country. He possessed very honorable and honest principles, also those of morality and piety, which were apparent in his transactions and walks of life, and also in the doctrines he generally advanced when those qualifications became a subject of discourse.
[FN] The statement by the Committee on Publication which appears {at this point} should have preceded both the Preface and Introduction. By an oversight not discovered until too late for correction it became displaced and appears out of its proper order.