Samuel C. Howell.
Middletown has a most complete water system supplied by three reservoirs, located in the towns of Wallkill and Mount Hope, and named respectively, Monhagen, Highland and Shawangunk. All water for domestic use is thoroughly filtered before being conveyed to the city.
The city has several miles of well paved streets, and is lighted by both gas and electricity.
The telephone system consists of two companies. The Orange County Telephone Company has about 1,600 telephones in use, and also does the long-distance business in the city for the Hudson River Telephone Company. The Middletown Telephone Company has about a score of subscribers in the city. It also has connection with several outside independent companies.
With its location, financial ability, numerous business enterprises, its many social, benevolent, charitable and religious associations and institutions, its splendid school system, and with the enterprise, energy and business ability of its citizens, the Middletown of to-day is only a beginning of the greater Middletown which will occupy this central part of Orange County in the years to come.
To sum up the history of the town of Wallkill were an easy task, and so saying is to speak in the highest praise of the town. Its course has been peaceful, quiet, serene; its politics have never been infected by scandal and corruption; the red glare of warfare—aboriginal or otherwise—has not shone athwart its pages; it has been a history in which the husbandman has dominated the scene and has been the central actor. Agriculture has been the mainstay of a people pious and God-fearing, the descendants of those sturdy New England and Long Island ancestors, who built the meeting-house and the school as soon as ever the settlement was made.
We dwellers in the Wallkill of to-day have every reason to be thankful that our history has been what it has; if it has lacked romance or excitement, it has likewise abounded in a peace that has meant prosperity.
Of late years the flood of immigration has sent its waves to our thresh-olds, and we find in our villages, on our farms, and toiling along our railroads the children of Italy, of Hungary, of Austria, of Russia and the more remote East. What the picture will be a century hence, what sort of an amalgamation will have taken place, we cannot foresee. Certain it is that, if he is to remain with us, we must educate the alien, teach him our ways, prepare him for citizenship, and do all we can for him morally and intellectually, and that will surely involve amalgamation. At any rate, this is a force that is bound to change our town's history, in the next hundred years, from anything that has gone before it. We should face the problem—meet it with those most forcible of weapons, Education and Law.
For the rest, acting the role of prophet is not difficult. Wallkill's lines have been cast in pleasant places and will probably so continue to be cast. We anticipate nothing marvelous, look forward to naught phenomenal, expect no revolutions. Our townspeople will pursue the even tenor of their way on their pleasant farms and in their quiet villages; they will know neither the bleak necessities of poverty nor the anxieties of extreme wealth; all will be medium, which is the happiest state of all. We are content with that. Our Wallkill is well beloved; we would not trade it for anything different or more brilliant; we would have it as it has been, not meaning stagnation, of course, yet not longing for the "boom" which newer and less firmly established and less well-grounded communities are forever invoking.
Wallkill, in many ways, realizes one's ideal of a rural township—well governed, knowing neither financial extreme, and with a people contented, and at peace.
Ferdinand V. Sanford
The derivation of Warwick, according to Mr. Thomas Kemp, mayor of Warwick, England, who has written a "History of Warwick and Its People," is from the Saxon "Wara" which in that tongue signifies inhabitants, and "wic"—a town or castle, or hamlet, a bank or crook of a river. So that Warawic, or Warwick, signifies no more than the inhabitants of the town or castle upon the bank of the river. Other Saxon forms of the name found are Werhica, Wyrengewyk, Woerincwic, and Weringwic.
The history of our Warwick from the earliest times has been written by Eager and Ruttenber in their publications—that of the last-named writer coming down to the year 1880.
EARLY SETTLEMENT.
The present sketch is intended rather to supplement these earlier accounts than to re-write all of the past history, by recording principally the events which have occurred since 1880.
The town or township of Warwick was erected from the precinct of Goshen in 1788, and derived its name from the plantation of Benjamin Aske, one of the original grantees of the Wawayanda patent. Upon the sub-division of the patent among twelve patentees, Aske's share was a tract nearly in the form of a parallelogram, which extended from Wickham's or Clark's Lake, on the northeast, to the farm now owned by Townsend W. Sanford, on the southwest, with an average width of a mile, and containing 2,200 acres of land. Aske named this tract, "Warwick," from which fact it is supposed that he came from Warwickshire, England. The date of the Wawayanda patent is March 5, 1702-1703, which was the peculiar style of writing year date a couple of centuries ago. The document is signed by the twelve chiefs, all making their mark in the presence of witnesses, one of them Chuckhass, the chief who lived in this town and for whom Chuck's Hill is named. This patent embraced at that time practically all of Orange County as it existed in 1703.
By deed dated February 28, 1719, Aske sold to Lawrence Decker, yeoman, for 50 pounds, 100 acres, in the deed described as "being part of the 2,200 acres of land, called Warwick," showing that previous to that date Aske had bestowed the name of Warwick upon his tract. Later deeds to Thomas Blaine and Thomas DeKay contain similar recitals.
The pioneers of Warwick were principally English families who came hither from Long Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Among them we find the names of Armstrong, Baird, Benedict, Blaine, Bradner, Burt, DeKay, Decker, Demarest, Ketchum, Knapp, McCambley, Post, Roe, Sayer, Sly, Sanford, Welling, Wheeler, Wisner, Wood and Van Duzer. Most of these settlers have left descendants who still live in the town or village.
During the Revolution there were a few Tories near Warwick, but the majority of the people were loyal to the country of their adoption, and many of them enlisted for service.
John Hathorn, colonel of the Warwick and Florida regiment, Captains Charles Beardsley, John Minthorn, Henry Wisner, Jr., Abram Dolson, Jr., John Norman, Henry Townsend, Nathaniel Elmer, John Saver; Lieutenants Richard Welling, Samuel Lobdell, Nathaniel Ketchum, George Vance, Peter Bartholf, Matthew Dolson, John Hopper, John DeBow, Anthony Finn, John Popino, Jr., Richard Bailey, John Kennedy, John Wood, and many others rendered valuable services during the Revolution.
While New York City was in the hands of the British, the most traveled road between the Hudson River and the Delaware ran through Warwick. It is said that Washington passed through Warwick twice during the war, and was entertained by Colonel Hathorn at the Pierson E. Sanford stone house near the village, on one of these occasions, at least.
For some time after the Revolution there were not more than thirty houses in the village. In 1765 Daniel Burt built the shingle house, now owned by Mrs. Sallie A. F. Servin, the oldest house in the village. In 1766 Francis Baird built the stone house now owned by William B. Sayer, which was at one time used as a tavern, and in some of the old maps Warwick is called "Baird's Tavern."
James W. Knapp.
DEVELOPMEMT.
The town of Warwick is the largest in area of any of the towns of the county, containing 61,763 acres, or nearly double that of any of the others, and being a little more than one-eighth of the area of the whole county. Its assessed valuation of real and personal property in 1906, was $2,863,010. The taxes levied upon that valuation for last year were $22,745.12. Population according to State census of 1905 was 6,691.
Within the last generation the town has greatly improved its public highways and bridges. With the advent of the bicycle, automobile and other motor vehicles, the demand for better road facilities has been felt, and this demand has been and is now being supplied. Under the State law providing for the construction and improvement of the highways at the joint expense of the State and county, the sum of $15,387.40 has been expended by the county, and the additional sum of $1,602.60 by the State, up to the year 1905, for acquisition of rights of way, engineering and cost of construction of 4.67 miles of road from Florida to Warwick, known as Road No. 93, so that under the good roads law (Chap. 115, Laws 1898) we have nearly five miles of finished work done. Plans have also been approved by the county and its share of the cost appropriated for the building of 6.92 miles of road from Warwick to Greenwood Lake at a total estimated cost of $54,250, which will undoubtedly be built as soon as the Legislature makes appropriation for the State's share of the cost.
Since 1883 the town has constructed several new iron bridges, viz: on the east arm of Greenwood Lake, at Main, South, Lake, Elm and Bank streets in the village of Warwick; also at Florida, Kimball's Point, Garners' Island across the Pochuck Creek, one between the towns of Goshen and Warwick, and one between the towns of Minisink and Warwick; also at Bellvale and New Milford, these substantial structures replacing the old wooden bridges of the past. An elevated bridge across the tracks of the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway Company was constructed to avoid the grade crossing at Stone Bridge at the joint expense of the railway company and the town, costing nearly $8,000, of which the town's share was one-quarter of the whole cost, made a most desirable improvement in this part of the town.
The town constructed a new road along the east side of Greenwood Lake in 1889, the land being donated by Alexander Brandon, trustee, and others, to the town, and the latter building the same at a cost of over $7,000. This improvement opens up a large tract of land for building purposes, the road extending to State line of New York and New Jersey.
In 1902, by a vote of the taxpayers, a change was made in the manner of working the highways from the labor to the money system. Under the old system something over 5,000 days would be assessed for labor, but a considerable portion would never be worked and in consequence our highways would suffer. Under the present method the sum of $5,593 was expended by the town in 1906, in cash upon our highways, and the additional sum of $2,000 State aid, with uniformly better results everywhere.
The total mileage of public roads is nearly 200 in the town, and the sum of $25 per mile was expended upon every mile in that year and additional sums of $10 per mile upon those roads more frequently traveled.
This amount was for all the road districts outside of the incorporated village of Warwick, which is a separate road district maintained by the corporation. The valuation for 1907 was $1 of tax for every $300 of assessed value.
Town boards of health have been maintained since 1881 and consist of the supervisor, town clerk, justices of the peace, a citizen member and a physician, known as the health officer. Rules and regulations governing the proper observance of health are published each year by this official body, and prompt action taken in case of any outbreak of disease, and measures instituted to control and prevent the spread of the same. As a result of the labors of these organizations and those in the incorporated villages of our towns, the public health has been safeguarded, and no serious epidemics have been experienced.
The town has seventeen separate school districts, where the common school is maintained, and two union free schools at Florida and Warwick, under the supervision of the Regents of the University at Albany. In these latter schools our young people are graduated, prepared for the different walks of life, and many entering colleges to prosecute their studies further for the learned professions. Under the present State law education is compulsory, between the ages of eight and sixteen, and parents, guardians and employers detaining the child between those ages are liable to fine and imprisonment.
Under the compulsory education law our town appoints annually for each of the school districts an officer known as the truant officer, whose duty it is to look after the interests of those who will not look after their own, and compel all children within the school age to be in attendance upon the public school during the required period. The State apportionment of school funds for 1907 for the town was $4,300.
The town has six election or polling places, known as Districts Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. No. 1 includes the voters in the Amity and Pine Island district; No. 2, those in Florida and vicinity; Nos. 3, 4 and 5, the village of Warwick, Bellvale and New Milford; No. 6. Greenwood Lake and Sterling. The total vote polled for Governor in the town in 1900 was 1,218.
The principal farm products are dairying, onions, peaches, apples, hay and potatoes. Milk is condensed at several places in the town. The mineral products are iron, granite, mica, white and blue limestone. The white limestone is very valuable for fluxing purposes and in the manufacture of Portland cement. Large deposits of the same are found in the western part of the town, running from near Florida to the Vernon Valley. The blue limestone is valuable for building purposes and is found very generally in different parts of the town. Clay beds also exist at Florida and at Durland's, from which brick have been manufactured.
The present bonded debt of the town (1907) is $4,950, bearing 4 per cent. interest, which is very small considering the amounts expended in the construction of the new iron bridges in the town during the last thirty years—nearly twenty—and the cost of new road construction and for damages to the town roads and bridges caused by the great flood of 1903, when one bridge was completely destroyed, and nine were damaged, besides the damages to many of the public roads, and other small bridges.
VILLAGES AND HAMLETS.
Warwick
The village of Warwick was known as early as 1719, but was not settled until about 1764. It is the largest village in the town and the only one incorporated. Its area is 395 acres, and its population (1905) was 1,767. It was incorporated under a special act of the Legislature in 1867, and re-incorporated under the general village law in 1901. Built on rolling land in the valley west of the Warwick Mountains, it is an ideal spot for country homes. The land is well drained, the Wawayanda Creek flowing through the center of the town in a southeasterly direction. The mean elevation of the valley is 550 feet, and the nearby mountains rise to a height of 1,200 to 1,400 feet. The varied pastoral scenes of wood, stream and meadow, with here and there a lake, and the tall peaks of the Catskills in the distance greeting the eye from these heights, are said by travelers to equal, if not surpass, anything else of the kind in all the wide world.
Fine roads, affording delightful drives, extend from Warwick, in every direction, some among the neatly kept farms in the valley and others through winding ways among the hills. With such an unrivaled environment, Warwick has grown famous for its own peculiar beauties. One cannot say that our village is quaint or old-fashioned, with swinging gates, grassy lanes, and moss-covered roofs; rather, it has an air of smartness, blended with polished repose. It is a pretty park with velvety lawns, showing to vast advantage groups of flowering shrubs, unmarred by fences, and with the houses well apart, giving an air of freedom from cramped conditions.
Not only the fine mansions that have been built by prosperous country merchants, professional men and city folk, but also the modest homes of the village mechanics and artisans, all show the same individual public spirit, not to be outdone in keeping things spruced up and freshly painted. Here and there are old homesteads where son has succeeded father for generations, yet the old homes look well and becoming in their new and airy clothes. The advent of broad avenues and flag walks have forever effaced the winding trails, and with them much of the sweet Indian legendary has been obliterated. For all these rolling hills were once covered with chestnut, birch, maple and pine trees. There is something pathetic in the passing of the red man, the type of years gone by, as the impress of civilization unrelentingly, step by step, has crowded upon his tepee and forced him westward.
Yet the maples, as planted by our fathers, forming bowers over streets, are more beautiful than the pine tree. We have no "Unter den Linden," but we might claim an "Unter den Maples."
Warwick has been called the Queen Village, also a Village of Homes. If she is not truly the former, she is easily and far away a village of homes.
William Moore Sanford.
As early as 1830 Henry William Herbert, an English gentleman and writer, better known as Frank Forester, visited the village and stopped at the old inn, known as Tom Ward's, now and then called the Wawayanda House. Forester has celebrated us in his famous book of sporting tales and adventures called "Warwick Woodlands," in which he tells many a quaint tale of the doings of himself and mine host Ward, (whom he cleverly calls Draw by simply inverting the letters of the name), and of many other sportsmen of that early day.
No one has ever paid our vale and village a higher tribute than Forester, when he said:
"In all the river counties of New York there is none to my mind which presents such a combination of all natural beauties, pastoral, rural, sylvan and at times almost sublime, as old Orange, nor any part of it to me so picturesque, or so much endeared by early recollections, as the fair vale of Warwick. . . . Throughout its length and breadth, it is one of the most fertile and beautiful, and the most Arcadian regions of the United States; poverty in its lower and more squalid aspects, if not in any real or tangible shape, is unknown within its precincts; its farmers, the genuine old solid yeoman of the land, the backbone and bulwark of the country, rich as their teeming pastures, hospitable as their warm hearts and ever open doors, stanch and firm as the everlasting hills among which in truly pleasant places their lines have fallen, would be the pride of any nation, kingdom or republic; its women are among the fairest daughters of a country where beauty is the rule rather than the exception. . . . Sweet vale of Warwick, sweet Warwick, loveliest village of the vale, it may be I shall never see you more, for the silver cord is loosened, the golden bowl is broken, which most attached me to your quiet and sequestered shades. . . . May blessings be about you, beautiful Warwick; may your fields be as green, your waters as bright, the cattle upon your hundred hills as fruitful, as in the days of old."
In 1883 the village voted the sum of $600 to lay the sidewalks over the Main street bridge. In 1886 the sum of $4,200 was voted by the tax-payers to buy the lot and build the brick building occupied by Excelsior Hose Company. In 1889 an application was made to the trustees for the organization of the Goodwill Hook and Ladder Company. In 1891 a truck was bought for said ladder company at a cost of $600. The system for working the village streets was changed in this year to the money system. In 1895 a number of the citizens contributed the sum of $433.03 for the purchase of a sprinkling cart, a proposition previously submitted to the taxpayers for the purchase of the same having been defeated at a special election. In 1896, Raymond Hose Company No. 2, to look after the interests of the village in the west end, was organized by consent of the trustees.
In 1897, the sum of $500 was voted for the purpose of a fire alarm. In this year the first and only franchise ever granted by the village was given to Sharp & Chapman for a term of fifty years, for an electric light plant.
These parties having failed to carry out their agreement, the village the next year granted a franchise for the same purpose to the Warwick Valley Light and Power Company, of the same duration.
Since 1898 the village has been lighted with electric light at a cost of about $2,000 per year, the present plant consisting of ninety-seven incandescent electric lights and six 2,000 candle power arc lamps.
In 1900 the taxpayers voted the sum of $1,600 for the purchase of a lot and the building of a hose house for the Raymond Hose Company.
In 1901 a proposition to reincorporate the village under the general village law was carried. A special election held the same year to vote upon the proposition of paving our streets with Telford pavement and asking for the sum of $10,000 for that purpose, was defeated by only three votes.
In 1902 the heirs of the late George W. Sanford donated the sum of $1,250 to the village for the purpose of a drinking fountain, which has been erected and is placed at Fountain Square, corner of Main and East Main streets.
In July, 1906, Warwick, England, celebrated the two thousand years of her past history in a great historical pageant upon the grounds of Warwick Castle. Invitations were issued to all the Warwicks of the world—fourteen in all—to be present and participate in these festivities. Our board appointed its president, Ferdinand V. Sanford, as its representative, who attended the celebration, and delivered in person the following resolutions of greeting and congratulation:
Henry A. Benedict.
Honorable Thomas Kemp,
Mayor of the Corporation of Warwick, England
Sir:
Accept congratulations and greetings from your daughter and namesake across the sea, on the occasion of your great historical pageant, wherein somewhat of your ancient and honorable past is reproduced, not merely in centuries, but in millenniums of time.
As Americans we are proud of our English ancestry, and of that mighty nation, on whose empire the sun never sets, whose history is the history of everything that makes for progress, a higher civilization and the enlightenment and uplifting of mankind.
May God continue to bless England and America, the leading Christian nations of the earth, whose history teaches the world of the transcendent value of the life, liberty and happiness of man.
Done at Warwick, New York, United States of America, on the twenty-sixth day of May in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and six.
The Village of Warwick.
By
To which the mayor replied officially as follows:
Borough of Warwick, to-wit:
At a meeting of the mayor, aldermen and councilors of the said borough in Council assembled, on the 13th day of July, 1906,
It was resolved: That the congratulatory address from the corporation of the village of Warwick, in the State of New York, United States of America, presented to the mayor on the occasion of the recent Historical Pageant, be entered on the minutes of the Council, and that a cordial vote of thanks for their sympathetic greetings be accorded to the sister municipality with an earnest hope for its continued prosperity.
And that a copy of the resolution be sealed and transmitted to the president of the corporation.
During the present year (1907) the village has been the recipient of a fine town clock, presented by Mr. Pierson E. Sanford. The clock is stationed in the tower of the Methodist church on Main street.
At a special election held this year the sum of $4,200 was voted to purchase the building and lots formerly owned by John A. Dator and others, on Main street and Wheeler avenue. It is the purpose of the trustees to change the building, and adapt it for village purposes, such as a village hall, office for records, maps and files, and the rooms of Goodwill Hook and Ladder Company.
New Milford.
The hamlet of New Milford lies southwest of Warwick, and forms a part of the boundary line between New York and New Jersey. It was formerly called Jockey Hollow. It comprises an area of a little more than 2,000 acres of the most fertile and well watered land in Warwick Valley. When the Wawayanda patent was deeded by the Indians to twelve white men in 1702, the twelfth part deed to Cornelius Christiance included what is now known as New Milford. Cornelius Christiance sold his share to Derrick Vanderburgh in 1704, and the latter sold to Everett & Glows, land speculators, in 1714, for a little more than $500. In 1724, the land was purchased by Thomas DeKay and Benjamin Aske. Settlers now began to come and they were quick to take advantage of the superior water facilities. The land was intersected by Wawayanda Creek, and flowing into this stream were four rushing mountain streams, all capable of furnishing fine water power, the largest of which was the Doublekill, so named because it is the outlet of Double Pond, or Wawayanda Lake. But not until about the year 1770 were any mills operated, excepting a saw mill and the forge on Wawayanda Creek on the farm recently owned by the Edward L. Davis heirs. During the year 1780, we find among the settlers the DeKays, the Davises, the Demarests, the Lazears, and Wood. The first excise money was paid into the treasury from the New Milford tavern in 1790 by Cornelius Lazear. A grist mill was built that year on the west side of the Doublekill, on the farm known as the Kiernan farm, and much further up the stream than the present mill. This mill was operated many years.
In 1802 John Lazear built a grist mill on the site of the present mill. In connection with the mill he had a factory for manufacturing axe and shovel handles. Between the years 1805 and 1825 New Milford was an exceedingly busy place. The original and only town at the time was where the post-office is at present.
There were six mills on the Doublekill, and four on the stream covered by the arch bridge, near the post-office, known as Green Mine Brook. On the Doublekill there were the grist mill, or axe handle factory, and tannery owned by S. W. Clason, now owned by E. M. Bahrmann; further down the stream a feed mill, a saw mill and a fulling or wool-carding mill. Then on the Green Mine stream there were a clover seed mill, plaster mill, cider mill with distillery, and about where William T. Vandervort's barn is located there was a large saw mill run by David Demarest. A very good schoolhouse was situated just west of the present Methodist church. A post-office was established in 1815—the first postmaster was Merritt Coleman. The turnpike running between New York and Port Jervis left the main road near the present home of Darius Fancher, crossed the E. L. Davis farm, continued northward over a bridge which was east of the present site of Borden's creamery, and up the hill to the road which now passes west of the house known as Peachblow. This was the main road to the northwest. Mr. E. L. Davis built a fulling and carding mill near the bridge and operated that as well as a saw mill.
Further down on Wawayanda Creek there were a saw mill, cider mill and distillery owned by John Ryerson. The "covered bridge" was built about 1830. In 1835, a boarding school for young ladies was opened in the house now occupied by John Lines. The principal, Charles G. Winfield, was a man of profound learning. Here the best people of Warwick and vicinity sent their daughters to be educated. It was a classical school of the highest order. The Methodist church was opened in 1838. In 1861, When there was a call for volunteers. New Milford, with a population of only 150 persons, responded with twenty-eight men.
With the growth of the dairy business in Orange County, less attention was paid to milling interests. In 1866, a factory for condensing milk was built where the Kiernan fulling and carding mill stood. This was abandoned after the railroad was built in 1879. In 1898 a fire swept away the business portion of New Milford, and it has not been entirely rebuilt.
At present the town is regaining some of the business prosperity it enjoyed one hundred years ago. There are two grist mills and a saw mill, and one of the largest creameries for bottling and condensing milk in the county, owned by Borden's Milk Company, where 4,500 gallons of milk are received and shipped daily. There are several old cemeteries scattered throughout New Milford, where one may read the names of those who lived when the "years were young."
Pine Island.
Pine Island is a village lying two miles northwest of Amity at the terminus of the Goshen and Deckertown railroad, leased by the Erie. It has a public school, a hotel, a store and post-office.
Greenwood Lake and Sterling.
The Chesekook's patent, confirmed by letters patent of Queen Anne, which embraced this district, was granted March 25, 1707, by Manngomack and other Indians, whose names are unpronounceable, and who signed by their marks, representatives of the sub-tribes of the Minsis, whose totem was the wolf, a branch of the Lenni-Lenapes, whose totem was the turkey, a branch of the great Algonkin or Algonquin tribe, or nation, which held sway over them.
This deed was dated December 30, 1702, and recorded in the Orange County clerk's office, June 1, 1736. The original patent, bearing Queen Anne's seal, is in the possession of the Sterling Iron and Railway Company. Sterling and Greenwood Lake are now embraced in the sixth election district of the town of Warwick.
Charles Clinton surveyed this patent for the owners in common, beginning April 1, 1735, and ending December 13, 1749. He mentions in his field book, as early as 1745, that iron works were in operation at Sterling, but to what extent is not stated. The old furnace at Sterling, now in ruins, is said to have been built in 1751, and from it was drawn the iron from which the great chain was made to cross the Hudson River in Revolutionary days from West Point to Constitution Island. This chain was built by Abel Noble & Co., Peter Townsend signing the contract for said firm for its construction February 2, 1778, to be finished by April 1, 1778. This chain was drawn across the river April 30, 1778. A bronze tablet commemorating the building of Sterling furnace was unveiled at the foot of the furnace on June 23, 1906. Iron mining is still in active operation, a shaft extending diagonally under Sterling Lake a distance of over 2,000 feet, but the ore is all shipped to other furnaces. The iron industry created a need for charcoal, and from Revolutionary times until about 1865 cutting wood and burning charcoal was an industry extending all over this section, and through the mountains of Greenwood Lake and Sterling is a network of wood roads and many foundations where formerly stood the dwellings of collieries. Sterling Mountain rises about 600 feet above the surface of Greenwood Lake, which is about nine miles long and 700 feet elevation above sea level.
Frank A. Campbell
The map of this section made by Robert Erskine for General Washington gives it the name of Long pond. About midway on the west side and about 300 feet from the shore of Greenwood Lake stands an old furnace on the furnace brook, which was built about seventy-five years ago by William Noble of Bellvale. The furnace was a failure from the start, as the stream of water furnished insufficient power for the blast. About 1845 Wanaque Creek, at the outlet of Greenwood Lake, was crossed by a dam, which raised the lake about eight feet, resulting in the overflow of about a mile of low land at both the north and south ends of the lake, forming a reservoir for the use of the Morris and Essex Canal, nine miles long and a mile wide. The New York and Greenwood Lake railroad reached here in 1876. The terminal station at the line between New York and New Jersey on the east shore, called then "State Line" (now Sterling Forest), was accessible by boats only, there being no public road until 1889, when one was built by the town of Warwick, the contract being taken by Conrad Diehl of Goshen. The steamboatMontclair,capable of carrying 400 passengers or more, was built and launched in 1876, to accommodate travelers from the railroad. Smaller boats had been previously built, first thePioneer,a sail boat, then theSylph,then theMontclair,and later theAnita,and at present several small steamers and naphtha launches without number are in use.
Prior to the completion of the railroad visitors reached here by stage from Monks on the south or from Monroe on the north. Religious services were held in a log schoolhouse one mile north of Greenwood Lake prior to 1850, when under the pastorate of Rev. J. H. Haunhurst, the first Methodist church of Greenwood Lake was built, where services were regularly held until 1898, when the settlement concentrating about two miles farther south, it was deemed expedient to build a new Methodist Episcopal church on land donated for the purpose by M. V. Wilson, opposite the new schoolhouse, which for the same reason was built about two and one-quarter miles south of its former site, and now has an attendance of sixty-three pupils. The school at Sterling mines has about the same number of pupils, children of the miners, religious services being held in the schoolhouse under Methodist supervision.
The new Methodist Episcopal church of Greenwood Lake was built under the supervision of Pastor Cranston, and now in 1907 Rev. J. H. Calyer is pastor. For fifty-seven years the church has never been without a pastor in charge of regular services.
In about the year 1880 a summer school of Christian philosophy, under the supervision of William O. McDowell, was begun in a fine auditorium erected for the purpose at Warwick Woodlands on the west shore of the lake, and, for the accommodation of visitors, an encampment hotel in connection with the Greenwood Lake Association clubhouse was under the supervision of Lyndon Y. Jenness. Dr. Charles H. Deems, Dr. Lyman Abbott and many other speakers on religious, social and philosophical themes, spoke to the assembled multitudes. This club house for a time was Greenwood Lake's center of interest, but for lack of support financially it was finally abandoned to the uses and amusements of excursionists. In 1906 the dilapidated building was demolished.
About 1880 a movement took form to inaugurate a church on what was known as the lime rocks, and under the management of Rev. Mr. Bradford, of Montclair, assisted by local friends, a tent was erected here where services from time to time were held. Now a stone church occupying this most picturesque spot is under construction and the supervision of E. G. Lewis, of New York City, representing the Episcopal church.
Civilization's onward march is taking strong form here, and over the old Indian camping grounds, where numberless arrow heads, spear points, stone axes and beautifully ornamented fragments of pottery bear testimony to the race that has departed, leaving only here and there a name that claims relationship, stand to-day spacious hotels, towering churches, palatial homes, and the last society formed for their protection is the Pioneer Fire Company of Greenwood Lake, which was formed May 3, 1907.
Little York.
The hamlet of Little York is about a mile east from Pine Island, in the town of Warwick. The first settler, Conrad Luft, came from Russia and settled there in 1886. About five years later Henry Lust, another Russian, came and located. Then followed in 1897 Peter Miller, Conrad Schmick, and August Youngmann. The next year eight more families came from Russia, buying land and building homes. Their industry is onion raising, for which the black meadow land which they cultivate is admirably adapted. They are Russians, but speak the German language and are Lutherans in religion. They are very industrious and thrifty, and nearly all have their homes and the land all paid for. In 1907 there were twenty-four houses, and one church, the Evangelical Lutheran, of which Rev. Gerhard Rademacher is the rector. There are about 200 in population, 100 communicant members of said church, and thirty-three voters.
William Wisner House
A parochial school is maintained in connection with the church and has thirty-nine children in attendance. The church was built in 1898, finished in 1901, and incorporated in 1904. Rev. George Kaestner served the church until 1904. It was under his ministry that the church was begun and completed. He was followed by the present pastor, Rev. Gerhard Rademacher, during whose ministry the parsonage was built and the cemetery of three acres acquired.
Other Russians are expected the present year to come and settle here.
Amity.
Amity is the western portion of the town of Warwick, extending about three miles in radius from the Presbyterian church, the only house of worship in the village.
The church was organized by a committee of the Presbytery of Hudson on September 15, 1809, but the first building had been erected and dedicated thirteen years previous, August 1, 1796. The building stands on a lovely eminence 500 feet above sea level and commands a splendid view in every direction.
The two conical mountains, Adam and Eve, some four miles distant, stand to the northeast and are about 800 feet above the level of the sea. These granite mountains are rough and rocky, and are covered with impenetrable brush and bramble.
The chief occupation of the people is extensive farming. Peach growing, however, became a popular and profitable industry about 1885, and continued for twenty years, during which time all the principal farmers turned their best land into orchards, from which they shipped thousands of baskets of delicious fruit to New York City and other towns, where there was great demand and high prices.
It was not uncommon for a successful orchardist to realize from $5,000 to $10,000 for his crop in a single season. The land soon became exhausted, however, the San Jose scale attacked and killed the trees, and the business declined as rapidly as it had sprung up. About the present date (1907) a new find in the land is receiving much attention—limestone in unlimited quantity in most of the farms. Prospectors are finding zinc and other valuable minerals, which indicate wealth for those who still possess the soil.
Bellvale.
Bellvale village, known in Colonial times as Wawayanda, is situated on the lower rapids of Longhouse Creek, which here enters the meadows and flows a mile and one-half to Stone Bridge station, where it enters the Wawayanda, which has its source in Clark's Lake, and then loses its name when merged in the smaller stream. Longhouse Creek has its source in a swamp in New Jersey a short distance east from Wawayanda Lake. It has a large watershed at an elevation above tide water of about 1,100 feet, and in its descent of six or seven miles runs through several fine storage basins and down numerous rapids and falls. For a distance of 500 feet options were taken on some of the storage basins by the Ramapo Water Company during its active days, with a view to conducting the water into the headquarters of the Ramapo River.
This stream is well adapted for the generation of water power for electrical or manufacturing purposes, and we learn from colonial history, was utilized by Lawrence Scrauley in 1745 to operate a forge of tilt-hammer for a plating and slitting mill. This was the only mill of this kind in the State of New York, and in 1750 was not in operation. Under the Crown we were not allowed to advance the manufacturing stage of iron beyond the pig and bar iron stages. It seems Scrauley took his chances in this secluded portion of the valley to furnish more convenient sizes of iron to meet the wants of the blacksmiths and builders of that day, and thus avoid paying tribute to the manufacturers of the mother country. The ruins of the hearth where the ore was melted, the raceway, and the pit for the wheel that operated the tilt-hammer, are still visible, as well as the mudsill of the foundation of the dam.
During the War of 1812, a Mr. Peck had an establishment upon the stream, near the home of William M. Mann, where he manufactured bridle-bits, stirrups, buckles and saddle trees for our cavalry. As well as agricultural implements generally.