Similar tortures were not uncommon among both the Iroquois and Algonquins when they made captives of the whites.
Returning to the Lenni-Lenape of the Hudson River's western lands, there is in Eager's history an account by a Delaware Indian of the reception and welcome by the Indians of the first Europeans who came to their country—on York Island—which is here condensed.
Some Indians out fishing at a place where the sea widens saw something remarkably large floating on the water at a great distance, which caused much wondering speculation among them. The sight caused great excitement, and as it approached news was sent to scattered chiefs. They fancied that it was a great house in which the Mannitto (Great Spirit) was coming to visit them. Meat for sacrifices and victuals were prepared. Conjurors were set to work, and runners were sent out. The latter soon reported that it was a great house full of human beings. When it came near it stopped, and a canoe came from it containing men, one elegantly dressed in red. This man saluted them with a friendly countenance, and, lost in admiration, the Indians returned his salute. They saw that he glittered with gold lace and had a white skin. He poured something from a gourd into a cup, drank from it, filled it again, and handed it to a chief. It is passed around, and the chiefs smell of it, but do not drink. At last a resolute chief jumps up and harangues the others, saying that they ought to drink, as the Mannitto had done, and he would dare to drink, although it might kill him, as it was better that one man should be destroyed than that a whole nation should die. Then he drank, soon began to stagger, and finally fell to the ground. He fell asleep, and his companions thinking that he was dead, began to bemoan his fate. But he awoke, and declared that he had never before felt so happy as when he drank from the white man's cup. He asked for more, which was given him, and the whole assembly imitated him and became intoxicated. After they became sober they were given presents of beads, axes, hoes and stockings. Then the Dutch made them understand that they would not stay, but would come again in a year, bring more presents, and would then want a little land. They returned the next season, began cultivating the grounds and kept bargaining for more land until the Indians began to believe that they would soon want all the country.
The scenes thus described by the Delaware Indian were probably soon after the voyage of discovery by Hendrick Hudson.
The Esopus Indians, according to early records, represented four sub-tribes—the Amangaricken, Kettyspowy, Mahon and Katatawis. In 1677 their chief deeded a large tract of land lying along the Hudson in Ulster and Orange Counties and extending back to the Rochester hills, to the English Government. The tract cannot be clearly defined. Previous negotiations and fighting led to this transfer. In 1663 Wildwijk (Kingston), where an infant colony had been started, was set on fire, and the colonists were attacked and murdered in their homes with axes, tomahawks and guns. They finally rallied and drove the Indians away, but not until twenty-five of them had been killed and forty-five made prisoners. The New Village, as it was called, was annihilated, and of the Old Village twelve houses were burned. When Peter Stuyvesant heard of the calamity he sent a company of soldiers from New Amsterdam to assist the settlers. They were commanded by Captain Martin Kregier, arrived at Wildwijk July 4, and a few days afterward Kregier had a conference with five Mohawk and Mohican chiefs who came from Fort Orange. He induced them to release some of their captives, but his negotiations with the Warranawonkongs were less successful. They were the proprietors of lands in the vicinity of Newburgh, and for some distance above and below the Lenni-Lenape confederacy. They would not agree to terms of peace unless the Dutch would pay for the land called the Groot Plat or Great Plot and add presents within ten days. Kregier would not agree to this, and on July 25th followed them to their castle. They abandoned it, and fled to the Shawangunk Mountains, taking their captives with them. They were followed, and again retreated. Kregier burned their palisaded castle, cut down their cornfields and destroyed about a hundred pits full of corn and beans which were a part of the harvest of the previous year. Then Kregier returned to Wildwijk and guarded the settlers while they harvested their grain. He resumed offensive operations in September, sending out about fifty men to reduce a new castle which the Indians were building "about four hours beyond the one burned." The Indians were surprised, but fought fiercely as they retreated, killing and wounding three of the Dutch soldiers. Thirteen Indians were taken prisoners and twenty-three Dutch captives released. The Indians fled to the mountains, the uncompleted fort was destroyed, and the soldiers carried away much spoil. Another force was sent to the same place October 1st, when the Indians retreated southward, and the Dutch completed the work of destruction, including crops and wigwams around the fort. Later the Indians solicited peace and an armistice was granted. They had suffered severely, and felt crushed, and their allies, the Waoranecks, were also subdued, although their territory had not been invaded. "The embers of their forest worship, which had for ages been lighted on the Dans Kamer, were extinguished forever." In the following May of 1664 they sought and executed a treaty with the Dutch at Fort Amsterdam, whereby the lands claimed and conquered by the Dutch were to remain the property of the conquerors, and the Indians were not to approach the Dutch settlements with arms. The ratification of the treaty was celebrated, and thus was closed the struggle of the Indians for the possession of their lands on the western slope of the Hudson from the Catskills to the ocean. The Minsis remained in the western part of Orange and some adjoining territory, and in 1692 and 1694 were strengthened by additions of large colonies of Shawanoes. For nearly a hundred years after the treaty there was but little trouble between the Indians and the settlers of Orange County.
The incursions during the French and Indian and the Revolutionary Wars properly belong to the military chapter of this history.
There is a tradition, supported by some evidence, that the first settlement of Orange County was in the old Minisink territory along the Delaware River. Although the supposed settlement was mostly in Pennsylvania, the reported excavations, roads and other work of the settlers were mostly in Orange County. The story of the tradition, and evidence that it has a basis of fact, are given in a letter by Samuel Preston, Esq., dated Stockport, June 6, 1828, which is published in Samuel W. Eager's county history of 1846-7, and reproduced in Charles E. Stickney's history of the Minisink region of 1867. Eager says the letter "will throw light upon the point of early settlement in the Minisink country," and Stickney assumes that its second-hand statements are substantially true. But Ruttenber and Clark's more complete history of the county, published in 1881, discredits them. The essential parts of Preston's letter are here condensed.
He was deputed by John Lukens, surveyor general, to go into Northampton County on his first surveying tour, and received from him, by way of instruction, a narrative respecting the settlements of Minisink on the Delaware above the Kittany and Blue Mountain. This stated that John Lukens and Nicholas Scull—the latter a famous surveyor, and the former his apprentice—were sent to the Minisink region in 1730 for the government of Philadelphia; that the Minisink flats were then all settled by Hollanders; that they found there a grove of apple trees much larger than any near Philadelphia, and that they came to the conclusion that the first settlement of Hollanders in Minisink was many years older than William Penn's charter. Samuel Depuis, who was living there, told them that there was a good road to Esopus, near Kingston, about a hundred miles from the Mine holes, which was called the Mine road. Preston was charged by Lukens to learn more particulars about this Mine road, and obtained some from Nicholas Depuis, son of Samuel, who was living in great affluence in a spacious stone house. He had known the Mine road well, and before a boat channel was opened to Foul Rift, used to drive on it several times every winter with loads of wheat and cider to buy salt and other necessaries, as did also his neighbors. He repeated stories without dates that he had heard from older people. They said that in some former age a company of miners came there from Holland; that they worked two mines, and were very rich; that they built the Mine road with great labor, and hauled their ore over it; that they bought the improvements of the native Indians, the most of whom moved to the Susquehanna.
John G Borden
In 1789 Preston began to build a house in the Minisink and obtained more evidence from Gen. James Clinton, the father of Gov. Dewitt Clinton, and Christopher Tappan, Recorder of Ulster County, who came there on a surveying expedition. They both knew the Mine holes and the Mine road, and were of the opinion that they were worked while New York belonged to Holland, which was previous to 1664. Preston did not learn what kind of ore the mines produced, but concluded that it was silver. He went to the Paaquarry Mine holes, and found the mouths caved full and overgrown with bushes, but giving evidence of a great deal of labor done there in some former time.
Ruttenber and Clark's history, as stated, discredit the tradition regarding the early settlement of the Minisink by Hollanders, as accepted by Clinton, Tappan, Depuis, Preston and others. It represents the Mine road to be simply an enlargement of an old Indian trail, and the mines to have been of copper and located in what is now the town of Warren, Sussex County, N. J. It says that the Dutch at Esopus during the war of 1660-63 had little knowledge of the country, even east of the Shawangunk, and that if the Minisink was penetrated at a much earlier period it was by way of the Delaware River. The historian discusses the subject further, and concludes that the first settler of the Minisink was William Tietsort, a blacksmith from Schenectady, who barely escaped the slaughter at that place in 1689, and went to the Minisink country from Esopus, by invitation of friendly Indians, and purchased lands of them in October, 1689. "There is little doubt that he was the first settler on the western border," says the history.
But Stickney, after recapitulating the traditions and evidence of the early settlement of the region, says: "Here generations lived the fleeting span of life in blissful ignorance of any outer or happier world beside, and were alike unknown outside the boundaries of their own domain until some wanderer chanced to come across their settlement, and went on his way, thereafter to remember with gratitude and envy the affluence and comfort that marked their rough but happy homes."
If Tietsort was the first white settler of the Minisink, Arent Schuyler was probably the second, as he settled there in 1697, having been granted a patent of 1,000 acres of its lands by Governor Fletcher. The governor had sent him there three years before to ascertain whether the French in Canada had been trying to bribe the Indians to engage in a war of extermination against the New Yorkers from their fastnesses in the Shawangunk Mountains.
The earliest land transfers and titles were so thoroughly investigated by Ruttenber and Clark that we cannot do better, perhaps, than condense mostly from their history.
Warranawonkong chiefs transferred to Governor Stuyvesant the Groot Plat or Great Plot, as it was called, in which Kingston is now situated. These lands are said to be the first for which Europeans received a title from the Indians, and are somewhat indefinitely described in the treaty with them of 1665 to which reference has been made. They were conquered by Captain Kreiger in 1663, and embraced three townships in southwestern Ulster. Chronology next takes us to the extreme south of Orange County. Here Balthazar De Hart and his brother Jacob, purchased of the Indians "the Christian patent lands of Haverstraw." They were on the south side of the Highlands and extended from the Hudson westward to the mountains. On the presumption that they were included in the boundaries of New Jersey, the Harts soon transferred them to Nicholas Depues and Peter Jacobs Marius, and purchased another tract north of them in 1671, which was bounded by the Hudson River on the east and the mountains on the south. This became the property of Jacobs. They also purchased a tract north of the previous purchase, and including a part of it, which was called Abequerenoy, and passed from them to Hendrick Ryker.
On the north a Huguenot, Louis Du Bois, with some friends who had been driven from France by religious persecution, located first at Esopus in 1660; and in September, 1667, after purchase from the Indians, twelve of them became patentees of a tract of 36,000 acres lying north of the Redonte Creek, as the Warranawonkong was then called. The patent was obtained from Governor Andros in the names of Louis Du Bois, Christian Doyan, Abraham Hasbroucq, Andre Le Febvre, Jean Hasbroucq, Pierre Doyan, Louis Beviere, Anthony Crespel, Abraham Du Bois, Hayne Frere, Isaac Du Bois and Simon Le Febvre, "their heirs and others." Nine families immediately settled on the land and founded New Paltz.
Between Haverstraw and New Paltz Patrick Mac Gregorie, David Fosbruck, his brother-in-law, and twenty-five others, who were mostly Scotch Presbyterians, occupied lands at the mouth of the Waoraneck, and Mac Gregorie purchased for them 4,000 acres on both sides of Murderer's Creek, on which they settled. Mac Gregorie built his cabin on Plum Point, then called Conwanham's Hill, and the cabins of his associates were in the vicinity, and on the south side of the creek David Toshuck, the brother-in-law, who subscribed himself "Laird of Minivard," established a trading post. "Within the bounds of the present county of Orange this was the first European settlement," says the historian, but the precise date is not given. Stickney thinks the year was 1684, but it was probably a little earlier, as about that time Mac Gregorie entered into the military service of the State without perfecting his patent, mistakenly trusting Governor Dongan to protect his interests, who, in 1684, obtained from three Indian owners their title to a tract extending from New Paltz along the Hudson to Murderer's Kill, thence westward to the foot of the high hills, and thence southwesterly along the hills and the river Peakadasank to a pond; and the same year added by deed from several Indians another large tract of the land called Haverstraw. These lands included a part of those which the Indians had previously sold to Mac Gregorie, and others which they had sold to Stephanus Van Cortlandt. The latter had preserved his deed, and succeeded in obtaining a patent attaching them to his manor across the river. Mac Gregorie was killed in the Leslie revolution of 1691. Governor Dongan sold his two purchases to John Evans in 1694, and the latter then proceeded to dispossess Mac Gregorie's widow and her family of their home, when he granted only leases to them and the other Scotch settlers. After some years, however, the Mac Gregorie heirs, in consideration of their original claim, obtained a patent of the Plum Point farm and a mountain tract.
The fourth and largest settlement was made adjoining "the Christian patented lands of Haverstraw" by emigrants from Holland, mostly of the Reformed Dutch Church. They were granted a township patent in March, 1686, under the name of the town of Orange. There were sixteen trustees of this grant, which began at the mouth of the Tappan Creek, extended north to Greenbush, and thence easterly and southerly back to Tappan Creek. The center of the township was Tappan, where a church was organized. The trustees of the grant were Claessen Cuyper, Daniel De Clercke, Peter Harnich, Gerritt Stenmetts, John De Kries, Sr., John De Kries, Jr., Claes Maunde, John Stratemaker, Staaes De Groot, Aream Lammatees, Lamont Ariannius, Huybert Gerryts, Johannes Gerryts, Ede Van Vorst, Cornelius Lammerts.
A vast tract of land immediately west of Haverstraw was conveyed to Daniel Honan and Michael Hawdon, January 25, 1696. Adjoining this on the south were certain tracts containing 2,000 acres which were granted to Samuel Bayard. The Indian deed for this and other purchases was covered by Lucas Tenhoven and embraced 100,000 acres, for which no patent was issued.
V V Headly
Between the Haverstraw lands and the township of Orange was the rocky bluff known as Verdrietig Hook, including Rockland Lake, which became the subject of controversy between the John Hutchins Company and Jarvis Marshal & Company, both parties having obtained deeds, but that of the latter proved to be of prior date (Sept. 27, 1694). A few years later, in 1708, a patent was issued to Lancaster Syrus, Robert Walters and Hendrick Ten Eyck, covering the vacant river point described as beginning at the south bounds of Haverstraw, extending west to Welch's island, thence southerly to the lower end of the island, thence east to the creek running from the pond of Verdrietig Hook, and thence north to the place of beginning, "except the grant of Honan & Hawdon."
Ruttenber and Clark's history states that the indicated foregoing patents covered the entire district from the New Jersey line to New Paltz and west to the line of the Shawangunk Mountains.
Here is the proper place for some statements made by David Barclay in his paper on Balmville read before the Newburgh Historical Society in 1899. He said that Captain John Evans in 1694 obtained from Colonel Fletcher, then Governor of New York, a patent for a tract of land on the west shore of the Hudson, extending from Stony Point to the south line of New Paltz, and westward to the Shawangunk Mountains, including two-thirds of Orange County and parts of Ulster and Rockland Counties, and estimated to contain 650,000 acres. The only settlement thereon at that time was that of Major Gregorie's heirs and followers at Murderer's Creek in the present towns of Cornwall and New Windsor. The patent was afterward annulled by an act of the assembly, which was confirmed, and the title reverted to the crown. Included in these lands must have been those unjustly transferred to Evans in 1694 by Governor Dongan "under the title of the lordship of the manor of Fletcherdom." Ruttenber says that the Evans patents, with others, were for a long time a disturbing element, and were entirely undefined except in general terms.
Near the close of the 17th century there was active competition in the extinguishment {sic} of the Indian titles and obtaining patents, and several patents were granted. Three of them, to associations, were issued at the following dates: Chesekook, December 30, 1702; Wawayanda, March 5, 1703; Minisink, August 28, 1704.
The Chesekook patent was included in a purchase from five Indian proprietors to Dr. John Bridges, Henry Ten Eyck, Derick Vandenburgh, John Cholwell, Christopher Dean, Lancaster Syms and John Merritt. The Wawayanda patent was a purchase from twelve Indians by the same parties, and five more, namely, Daniel Honan, Philip Rokeby, Benjamin Aske, Peter Mathews and Cornelius Christianse. The Minisink patent was to Mathew Ling, Ebenezer Wilson, Philip French, Derick Vandenburgh, Stephen De Lancey, Philip Rokeby, John Corbett, Daniel Honan, Caleb Cooper, William Sharpass, Robert Milward, Thomas Wearham, Lancaster Syms, John Pearson, Benjamin Aske, Petrus Bayard, John Cholwell, Peter Fanconier, Henry Swift, Hendrick Ten Eyck, Jarvis Marshall, Ann Bridges, George Clark.
This last purchase was of parts of Orange and Ulster Counties, beginning in Ulster at Hunting House, on the northeast of Bashe's land, running thence north to the Fishkill River, thence southerly to the south end of Great Minisink Island, thence south to the land granted John Bridges & Company (Wawayanda), and along that patent northward and along the patent of John Evans to the place of beginning. There is no record that the purchasers received a deed from the Indians, and it was reported, probably correctly, that when Depuis obtained the Minisink lands from the Indians, he got them drunk and never paid them the money agreed upon—treatment which they resented for a long time afterward in hostility to the white settlers.
The Chesekook patent was bounded north by the patent line of Evans, west by Highland Hills, south by Honan and Hawdon's patent, and east by "the lands of the bounds of Haverstraw and the Hudson."
The Wawayanda patent was bounded eastward by "the high hills of the Highlands" and the Evans patent, north by the division line of the counties of Orange and Ulster, westward by "the high hills eastward of Minisink" and south by the division line of New York and New Jersey.
The boundary lines of the three patents were defined in such general terms that for a long time they caused trouble as to titles, and in the final adjustment the territory claimed by the Wawayanda patentees was cut off, while on the west a tract called the Minisink angle, embracing 130,000 acres, was formed.
The English government began investigating the patents of such immense tracts in 1698, and the next year caused the Evans patent to be annulled, after which the territory covered by it was conveyed in small tracts issued at different times up to 1775. These conveyances, exclusive of those outside of the present county, were as follows:
Thomas Darlington
Thomas Darlington
Only a small part of the Minisink patent was in the present county of Orange, but the Wawayanda and Chesekook patents were wholly within its limits, and covered its most fertile sections. The Wawayanda patent caused much trouble, and was unoccupied by settlers until 1712, when the surviving shareholders—Christopher Denne, Daniel Cromeline and Benjamin Aske—determined to make settlements thereon, and to facilitate their ends were made justices of the peace. Parties were sent out by each of them, and these began the settlements of Goshen, Warwick and Chester, where houses were soon completed and occupied. The agent who preceded Denne into the wilderness was his adopted daughter, Sarah Wells, then only 16 years old, who was accompanied only by friendly Indian guides. She married William Bull, the builder of Cromeline's house, and lived to the great age of 102 years and 15 days.
Soon after the settlement thus started in 1712 John Everett and Samuel Clowes, of Jamaica, L. I., took charge of the patent, and proved to be enterprising and efficient agents. Recorded sales to settlers and others prior to 1721, as well as to Everett and Clowes, were as follows:
Gov Clinton birthplace
By these conveyances Everett and Clowes came into possession of lands equaling four of the thirteen parts, and, as required by the terms of their deeds, laid out the township of Goshen in 1714, dividing it into farms and opening roads, and assigned 200 acres of land for the support of a minister.
Some of the first settlers—those of 1714—were: Michael Dunning Johannes Wesner, Solomon Carpenter, Abraham Finch, Samuel Seeley and John Holley.
The most prolonged and bitter contest of titles was between settlers of Orange County, mostly in the original Minisink region, and settlers of Northern New Jersey. This was continued for sixty-seven years with occasional border frays. The dispute had reference to the boundary line between New York and New Jersey. King Charles II of England in March, 1663, gave to his brother, the Duke of York, a patent of all lands "from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay." The following year in June the Duke of York granted release of all the territory now known as New Jersey to Lord Berkley and Sir George Carteret. The northern line as described in this grant extended from "the northwardmost branch" of the Delaware River, "which is in latitude 41 degrees 40 minutes and crosseth over thence in a straight line to the latitude 41 degrees on Hudson's River." Sir Carteret took the east half of the province and Lord Berkley the west half. In 1673 the Dutch reconquered New York from the English, but on February 9, 1674, in a treaty of peace between the two nations, it was restored to England. Sir Carteret immediately took the precaution to have a new patent made out, which defined the boundaries in about the same general terms as before. Then came controversies as to which should be called "the northwardmost branch" of the Delaware. The point of 41 degrees on the Hudson was agreed to, but the New Yorkers insisted that the line should touch the Delaware at the southern extremity of Big Minisink island, and the Jerseymen {sic} that the point should be a little south of the present Cochecton. This difference made the disputed triangular territory several miles wide at the west end. Under the New Jersey government the land was parceled out in tracts to various persons, and when these came to take possession the men who had settled upon them long before, resolutely maintained their claims. In the border war that resulted numbers of the Minisink people were captured and confined in New Jersey prisons. The first series of engagements resulted from efforts to obtain possession of the lands of a Mr. Swartwout, who was a major in the militia of Orange County. One day the Jerseymen {sic} surprised him and put his family and household goods out doors. He went to Goshen for help, and a formidable company returning back with him, they in turn put the New Jersey occupants and their goods out of the house, and restored it to the major.
Then a spy was employed to watch the Jerseymen, and through the information which he continually furnished, their future operations were generally frustrated. About 1740 the "Jersey lines" made another attempt upon the major and his possessions, but they were anticipated and driven or frightened back, no one, however, being killed. In 1753 a Jersey raid was made to get possession of the lands of Thomas De Key, colonel of the Orange County militia and a justice of the peace. He tried to negotiate with them, and induce them to wait until the boundary question was determined, but they refused, and he then barricaded himself in his house, and threatened to shoot the first man who tried to enter, and they finally retired vowing that they would bring a larger force. The last important raid was in 1765, on a Sunday, when the Jerseymen came in considerable force resolved to capture Major and Captain Westbrook. They surrounded the church where the Westbrooks were worshiping, and when the service was over there was a fight, amid the screams and sobs of women, with fists and feet, in which the Jerseymen, being the more numerous, conquered and captured the Westbrooks. They were confined in the Jersey colony prison awhile, and then released.
In 1767 hostilities were suspended, and commissioners were appointed to run a boundary line, and soon afterward the territory was surveyed, and about equally divided between the claimants, and peace thenceforth was established between the two sections.
In 1683, when the county was organized, it did not contain more than twenty families. In 1698 a first census was ordered by Governor Bellmont, and it showed the population to consist of 20 men, 31 women, 140 children and 19 negro slaves. In 1860 the population had increased to 63,812; in 1880, it was 88,220; in 1900, 103,850; and according to the last census of 1905, our population was 108,267.
Orange County is unsurpassed by any other in the Empire State in variety of surface features and picturesque beauty of scenery. It has mountain ranges and extended ridges, streams with wide and narrow valleys, and is dotted with lakes and ponds. Along the mountain lines are a few lofty peaks, and there are many isolated hills and rocky precipices. Parts of its boundaries are the Hudson River on the northeast, the Delaware and Mongaup Rivers on the west, and the Shawangunk Kill on the northwest. Near the center the Wallkill winds along its rich valley into Ulster County, and thence into the Hudson. Its principal tributary on the northwest is Rutgers Creek—which also has several tributaries—and others are Monhagen Creek, Mechanicstown Creek and Shawangunk Kill. On the southwest it gathers in the waters of Warwick Creek—which is swollen by smaller streams in its course—and also Quaker, Rio Grande, and Tin Brook Creeks. The Otter Kill flows easterly from Chester into the Hudson. The Neversink flows from Sullivan County through the town of Deer Park, and becomes a tributary of the Hudson. The course of the Ramapo is southerly from Round Pond in Monroe to Rockland County, and it is fed by several other ponds. Other streams, large and small, are numerous.
The central portion of the county consists of rolling uplands broken by deep valleys. The most prominent of the mountain ranges are the Highlands along its eastern border. Their loftiest peak, Butter Hill, is 1,524 feet high, precipitous on the river side, and sloping on the north. Another name given to it is Storm King, because clouds occasionally gather there from different directions and concentrate in storms of rain and lightning. Cro'-nest {sic} adjoins it on the south, and is 1,418 feet above the Hudson. Bare Mountain is next, with a height of 1,350 feet. Mount Independence, with Fort Putnam on its summit, is the background of the West Point plateau. Other well known hills are in this broken range, where Arnold, the traitor, conferred with Andre, the spy, and is more intimately identified with the military history of the country than any other mountain region. It has been written of Butter Hill and Cro'-nest that "they have a charm which might induce a man to live in their shadow for no other purpose than to have them always before him, day and night, to study their ever-changing beauty."
Gate of the Highlands
The Shawangunk Mountains are a spur of the Alleghenies stretching northeast across the western angle of the county. They are less broken than the Highlands, and not so high as the Catskills, but of the same general formation. The western side is precipitous, but the eastern is sloping, and some of its lands are very fertile, producing sweet grasses from which much of the famous Orange County butter has been made. The peaks rise from 1,400 to 1,800 feet above tide water. This range was the original dividing line between the Wawayanda and Chesekook patents.
The Schunnemunk range is on the dividing line of the towns of Monroe and Blooming Grove and a part of that of Blooming Grove and Cornwall. An accepted descriptive phrase for the range is, "the high hills west of the Highlands." North of it, in New Windsor and Newburgh, is Muchattoes hill, west of it Woodcock hill, and southwest of the latter are Round, Mosquito, Rainer's and Peddler's hills; also Torn Rocks, which rise in two rocky peaks 200 feet high. To the southwest, in the town of Warwick, are the Bellvale Mountains, and south of these the Sterling Mountains. Several other mountainous elevations in Warwick and Woodbury punctuate this part of the county and also the border country on the west. The feet of Pochuck Mountain are in the Drowned Lands, and northerly in Warwick are Mounts Adam and Eve, with Adam looking down from his superior height upon the longer Eve. Easterly, in Chester, is Sugar Loaf Mountain, and west of this is Mount Lookout, the principal elevation of Goshen. With the further mention of Mount William and Point Peter, looking down upon Port Jervis, let us clip the long list of Orange County elevations.
Valleys connect mountains and hills. That of the Delaware River, along the border of Deer Park, is narrow and irregular, being much broken by tributaries and mountains. The most of the cultivated lands of Deer Park are along the Neversink valley. The valley of the Wallkill is wide, fertile and beautiful its bottom lands are among the best in the State, and its farmers are prosperous and thrifty. Wide flats, gradual slopes and steep declivities give variety of soil and scenery to the Otterkill valley, and much of its scenery is charming. The same may be said of its tributary, Cromeline Creek. Sugar Loaf valley extends from Sugar Loaf Mountain to the village of Warwick, taking in Wickham Pond in its course, and extending into New Jersey. Smith's Clove, extending from Highland Mills to the Ramapo valley, should be mentioned because it was the birthplace of Chief Justice William Smith, his brother, John Hett Smith, and the notorious Tories, Claudius Smith and his two sons.
One cannot travel far in Orange County in most directions without coming upon a lake or a pond, and there are dozens of them in the southeastern section. These feed its many streams, and when Eager wrote his history he said there was not one town in the county that had not water power to some extent. Beginning in the northern part of the Highlands in Cornwall the lake-and-pond system extends through the towns of Highland and Monroe to Greenwood Lake, thence west and north to Big Meadow Pond in the Highlands. Greenwood Lake, in Warwick, is the largest body of water in the county. It is about nine miles long and one wide, is partly in New Jersey, and is a feeder for the Morris Canal. Sutherland's Pond, half a mile long, southeast from Cro'-nest Mountain, has an outlet which runs into Murderer's Creek. Big Meadow Pond, in Highlands, covers about 300 acres, and its outlet pours over the rocks of Buttermilk Falls. The waters of Round Pond flow into Long Pond under a natural bridge about 80 feet wide, but the stream is lost sight of until it emerges on the other side. This is similar to the outlet of Washington Lake in New Windsor, which emerges at Trout-hole and there becomes a fall of forty feet. Sterling Lake, at the beginning of the Warwick series, covers about sixty acres, and in 1751 iron works were established at its outlet. Round Pond, in Wawayanda, is in shape what its name implies, has no visible outlet, its water is clear, pure and deep, and it is about a mile in circumference. Thompson's Pond, in the northwestern part of Warwick, covers about 100 acres, feeds Quaker's Creek, and this outlet furnishes power for mills. Orange Lake, in Newburgh, covers about 100 acres. But all the lakes and ponds of Orange are too many to be named. They are almost as interesting a feature of the county as its streams.
Orange County is richer in alluviums than any other in the State, as they cover about 40,000 acres. The "Drowned Lands," as they were formerly called, include about forty square miles, and are partly in New Jersey, but mostly in New York, extending in Orange from Cheeunk Outlet in Goshen through Wawayanda and Minisink to the New Jersey line, and covering about 17,000 acres. They contain a number of fertile islands, and thousands of acres of the waste lands have been recovered by means of an artificial outlet, which, at first a mere ditch, has been deepened and widened by the flowing water until the principal flow is through it. These recovered lands are rich and productive. They are belted by the Wallkill and three creeks, and the Wallkill's course through them is long because so crooked. The Gray Court meadows extend from near Craigville in Blooming Grove into the northern part of Chester, and embrace about 500 acres, which are nearly all under cultivation and very productive. They are drained by Cromeline Creek. The Black Meadows, in Chester and Warwick, are about 1,000 acres in extent, and Black Meadow Creek flows through them. Long Swamp, in Warwick, also contains about 1,000 acres, and is drained into New Jersey. Great Pine Swamp extends northward from Howells on the Erie railroad seven miles in the town of Wallkill, and embraces many oases and cultivated farms. There are several other scattered areas of swamp lands. In the marl and peat beds in several localities many bones of the extinct mastodon have been found, including two complete skeletons. One of the latter was taken from a bed near Coldenham in 1845, and weighed 1,995 pounds, and the other from a bed in the town of Mt. Hope, and weighed 1,700 pounds.
The topography of the county has been changed somewhat by its railroads, of which there are 250 miles, not including double trackage or trolley roads. The following places in towns extending across the county have each direct railroad communication north, east, south and west: Port Jervis, Middletown, Campbell Hall, Goshen, Chester and Newburgh. The wagon roads are numerous, generally good, and are charming arteries for carriages and automobiles.
The geology of Orange County is as varied as its topography. Along the eastern feet of the Shawangunk Mountains are Heidelberg limestones, gray and Medina sandstones, shales and grits, and the mountain rocks are mostly sandstones, shales and grits. The grits extend along the top of the range through the county and are from 60 to 150 feet thick. Heidelberg limestone extends from the Mamakating valley to the Delaware River. Grit and red rocks are on the west side of Greenwood Lake, and grit of various colors extends from Round Hill to Woodcock Mountain, and is also found in the southwest base of the Schunnemunk range and in Pine Hill. Grawacke is the rock on the southeast side of the Bellvale range in Warwick, and is found in the town of Blooming Grove in the Schunnemunk range. The Hudson River group occupies a large part of the surface of the county, and consists of slates, shales, grits, limestones, breccias and conglomerates. It extends from the Hudson River through Warwick to the Jersey line, and from the Hudson at Cornwall Landing to four miles above Newburgh. It is stratified with grawacke and grawacke slate. It forms the surface rock of the most of Goshen and Blooming Grove, and parts of Cornwall, New Windsor, Newburgh, Montgomery, Hamptonburgh, Crawford, Wallkill, Mt. Hope and Minisink. Dark Utica slate is found on the banks of the Hudson near Newburgh. Trenton limestone appears in Hamptonburgh near Mount Lookout, and this mountain is composed of Black River limestone, which is also found on Big Island in the Drowned Lands and in Minisink. There is a bed of blue limestone about a mile wide extending from the Hudson at Hampton southeasterly through Newburgh into New Windsor. It is also found in the towns of Cornwall, Blooming Grove, Warwick, Monroe and Goshen. Oolitic limestone is on Big Island, near New Milford, and on Pochunck Neck.
Slate rocks of the Taconic system are above Newburgh, and its limestone between the Highlands and Grove Pond Mountain. Its white limestone appears in Warwick, where it is in narrow ridges separated by other rocks. It is also found along the shore of the Drowned Lands at Amity, and near Fort Montgomery in the Highlands, from which it may be traced by way of Little Pond across the Ramapo. In some localities it is so white as to be translucent. Many different minerals are found in it.
The primary rocks of the county consist of gneiss, hornblende, granite, sienite, limestone, serpentine, angite and trappeau. They extend over parts of several towns, and several mountains and hills are composed of them. Granite is found at the foot of Butter Hill, sienite at Butter Hill and on the east side of Bare Mountain at West Point, gneiss along the Highlands, mica and slate north of Fort Montgomery, angite rock between West Point and Round Pond and at several points in Monroe, greenstone trap at Tuxedo Pond, granular limestone at Cro'-nest and Butter Hill. Quartz rock and hornblende are all along the Highlands and in Monroe and Warwick. Crystalline serpentine is in the white limestone in Warwick, serpolite at Amity, yellow garnet at Edenville, soapstone in Monroe. Large sheets of mica are found southwest of the Forshee iron mine in Monroe, and in this mine, which embraces an entire hill, are red garnet, brown tremoline, carbonate of copper, serpentine, cocolite and umber. In the O'Neil mine, half a mile northeast of the Forshee mine, are crystallized magnetic ore, magnetic and copper pyrites, carbonate of copper, serpentine, amianthus, asbestos, brown and rhombic spars, angite, cocolite, feldspar and mica.
There are beds of arsenical and titanium ores in Warwick and a bed of hemolite ore near Canterbury village. Magnetic oxide of iron abounds in the primitive rocks of the Highlands, and at West Point is associated with hornblende. Beds of lead have been opened at Edenville and in the towns of Mt. Hope and Deer Park, and zinc and copper ores have been found in small quantities. The Sterling iron bed in Monroe, which was opened in 1781, extends over about thirty acres, and has produced so strong an ore that it has been much used in the manufacture of cannon. There are a number of other iron mines. Searches for the traditional silver, gold, lead and tin mines have been without satisfactory results.
Many evidences of glacial action in Orange County include masses of boulders scattered in places throughout the county. These are mostly of granite and gneiss, and there is occasionally one of grawacke. The eastern slope of the Shawangunk Mountains gives evidence of the passage there of an enormous glacier, which ground the rocks into the rich soil that has been cultivated there for 200 years. Some of the county's drift deposits are valuable for casting, brick and pottery making, lithographic stones and glass.
The soil of the semicircular plateau from the Highlands of the Hudson to the Dans Kamer is mostly a mixture of gravel, sand and clay, which form a warm and fertile loam. That of the wide Wallkill valley is alluvium mixed with clay, sand and gravel and is easily worked and richly productive. So is the soil brought down from the hills in the town of Deer Park. The lands on the islands of the Drowned Lands are among the richest in the county. The alluvium of the Otterkill is a sandy and gravelly loam. In other sections of the county there is an alternating variety of soils, rich, medium and poor.
Thos. W. Bradley