Interesting Notes on Old Warwick
By Hylah Hasbrouck
Warwick Advertiser March 23, 1950
Transcribed by S. Gardner for Warwick Valley History
February 2005
Reproduced with permission of the Advertiser
It is known that
Benjamin Aske and his yeoman, Lawrence Decker, were
among the first, if not the first, white men to come to this valley. No record has ever been found telling from
whence they came nor how they came so I must use my imagination in saying that
they came on horseback from the south because he settled in the southern part
of the Wawayanda Patent. They may have come up the Delaware
River, turned right at Delaware Water Gap and found the Wallkill
Creek. Coming north the scenery was
beautiful, the going easy, the Indians friendly. Turning right again, they came to the Wawayanda Creek. Can
you not imagine their pleasure as they rode across the lush Vernon
meadows? No wonder they stayed.
Benjamin Aske’s share of the patent of which he was one of the
signers, was a tract nearly in the form of a parallelogram, which extended from
Wickham Lake
on the north to the land now known as the Northrup
Farm on the South, about three thousand acres.
Aske is thought to have lived on this part of
his land (the Northrup farm) and to have been buried
in the little graveyard on the knoll opposite the entrance to Camp
Isida.
In 1719 Aske gave Lawrence Decker a deed for one hundred acres
where the Dude Ranch is now. Thomas Blaine was next taking the land that
was Fred Raynor’s and now Paul Miller’s. Thomas DeKay received
the third recorded deed. The name Warwick
was chosen by Aske since he was an Englishman,
probably from Warwickshire, England.
Another group of
pioneers came from the east. Being
English they had stopped in Stamford
and New Canaan, Conn.,
but were not satisfied to stay. The Pelton family put their belongings on a sloop and sailed on
Long Island and the Hudson,
then cross country in wagons to this valley.
Others came all the way by covered wagon and horseback. Let us stop and pay tribute to their courage
and perseverance.
Now we go by
auto over paved roads with grades so gradual they are hardly noticed. But think of those hills when the road was an
Indian trail. It took the New Paltz colony a hundred years to pluck up courage to go east
fifteen miles to the Hudson. Their comings and goings had been entirely up
and down the Wallkill to Kingston. So hats off to those first families of
Warwick who ventured, endured and finally reached the top of Mt.
Peter, we will say. I hope their first view of the valley was on
a clear day. The first settlement was on
the side of the mountains between the Ball farm and Brady’s. Mr. Townsend W. Sanford has a small mahogany
table that came with the first Sanfords
and was in that settlement. One wonders
how the slender legs and small drop leaves survived the jolting.
Families came
from Massachusetts, Long
Island and Manhattan Island. Col. Thomas DeKay
inherited the whole of Morning Side
Heights, 235 acres, which remained
in the hands of some of his descendants until 1600. He himself sold 60 acres around Canal
Street and bought 1,200 acres out of the Wawayanda Patent between Vernon
and Warwick, thinking the land was
better for farming than lower Manhattan. As a farmer he was right but his lack of
vision was deplorable.
Other names which are found among
the first families are Ackerman, Armstrong, Benedict, Bradner,
Burt, Demarest, Ketchum, Knapp, McCambly, Post, Roe, Sayer, Sanford,
Sly, Welling, Wheeler, Wisner, Wood and Van Duzer. Ben. Aske had no
family.
Before 1718 this
region was a tractless forest except for Indian
trails. An Indian village was on the
land now the Thomas Welling farm, Chuckahass was the
chief of the Mistucky tribe who made the agreement
with Aske and the others for the Wawayanda
Patent. Years later an Indian greave was
opened and Gen. Hathorne felt the bones found in it
might be those of the old chief. Trus soldier that he was, Gen. Hathorne
had them gathered together and properly interred. The names of Mistucky
Reservoir, Chuck’s Hill and Wawayanda are the only
remainders of Warwick’s first
inhabitants
The first
pioneers settled along the Black Water Creek as
its swift current was an attraction, and Bellvale for
many years was a prosperous village. The
advent of the railroad spelled its doom, and put Warwick
on the map. In 1763, Daniel Burt came
over the hill and built the Shingle House.
In 1766 Francis Baird built the stone house and used it as a tavern
having barns and farm buildings on the south side and rear. When the King’s Highway
was opened to the east to reach Chester
and the Hudson and a road was built
north to Florida and Goshen,
this intersection became the business center of the town. A tinsmith, blacksmith, cobbler and harness
maker had shops there. The John Cowdrey general store was just north of Baird’s Tavern Wawayanda Hotel was where Otto Gesell’s
shop now stands, the
United States Hotel where the Socony Gas Station is
now and Baird’s Tavern dispensed hospitality and refreshments.
Man of the
people who came to the new settlement were Baptists in faith, and they longed
for a pastor. James Benedict, a young
man who had a license to preach in Stamford, Conn.,
came over for a visit. He preached
nearly every day for three weeks and then returned home. So well had he been liked he was asked to
come back and stay as the pastor which he did.
Indeed, he was quite pleased to do so because he had had some difficulty
with the Stamford authorities and
as a reprimand he had lost the privilege of wearing his high beaver hat.
The first Baptist
Church was built at the
intersection of Galloway Road
and Forester Avenue, Hudson
Street as it was called then. It was
built of logs with the benches so narrow and the back so low one wonders how
human beings could site on them for an hour’s sermon. One of those benches can be seen in the
gallery of the present church.
In 1810 the
congregations had grown to such a size a new home was a necessity. The knoll just east of the King’s Highway
seemed an ideal location and it was. On
February 21, 1810, a deed was signed by John Foght,
Joel Wheeler and Jeffery Wisner, 4 trustees, buying about one acre of land from
Jeffery Wisner and his wife, Hannah. The
price was $230. The survey for the land
began at Sam Smith’s back door, went north so many chains and links, each so
many, south so many and west so many back to Sam’s door. The deed was recorded Feb. 22, 1810, before John Wheeler, Judge of
Court of Common Please. It is recorded
with the deed that “Hannah Wisner was interviewed by me privately and conceded
voluntarily and freely without coercion from her husband to the sale of the
land..” it is noted also, that Hannah
signed her name, most women of those days had to make their mark. Witnesses of the signing were James Wheeler, Ezariah Ketchum, and B. Barney.
The church was
built by John Foght at a cost of $7,000 and seats 500
people. Lebaus
Latrop preached the first sermon in its beautiful
high pulpit which is no longer there.
Mrs. Van Duzer recalls hearing her mother say
that she played in that pulpit as it laid discarded in the barn of the
parsonage. Even in those days folks had
the desire to modernize and do away with the old. The parsonage, now Dr. Bradner’s
home, was built in 1852 and cost $1,500.
Seven acres of land went with it.
The first parsonage was the little house on the corner of Forester
Avenue and High Street. It is a fire ruin now. The story is told that Jamima
Benedict, the elder’s daughter, was invited to a party at Daniel Burt’s just up
the hill. Her father refused his
permission for her to go. After the
family had retired, she jumped out of her window and went. Let us hope she danced all night because on her
return she heard the family stirring and had to hop into bed with her clothes
on. She later became Mrs. Newberry.
No houses
spoiled the setting for the church. Mrs.
Frank Holbert wishes once again the lawn could sweep
down to Main Street with eh
houses all removed. Those houses, two of
which have been sold recently, were built when Miss Julia Demarest was a young
woman, so they are not ancient. She
remembers when there was only one on that block. It stood where Louis Mattola
lives now and was so small it had no stairs.
The daughter of the family was in Miss Julia’s class, a beautiful and
very bright girl. She had to climb a
ladder to her room. Across the street
was another little old house which became a woodshed when the house where Miss
Nichols lived was built. Now both are
gone and Stidworthy’s garage is in their place. Not all the early settlers were
Baptists. On April 6, 1784, it is recorded that John Wheeler,
Francis Baird and John Dennison were trustees of the Presbyterian Church and
Congregation of Warwick, themselves being the first trustees, no minister,
elders or deacons existing. In 1770, two
acres of land which had been donated for burial purposes and the use of the
Presbyterian Church of Warwick. In 1792,
a plain frame building was put on this land about where the present edifice now
stands with a graveyard north of it. The
pastors came over from Florida
and their terms of office in the Warwick
church seem to have been short and checkered with difficulties. On February
23, 1803, negotiations began for an organized Reformed Church. It seems that Gilleum
Bertholf came on horseback from the Dutch Church in
Paramus riding along the ridge to minister to the Dutch Reformed Churches that
had been established as far west as Port Jervis. He, too, looked over the valley and found it
good. He took back glowing tales of its
possibilities and another group of people came from northern New
Jersey among them the Demarests
and Minturns.
Having lived on the flat land
of Long Island and Jersey,
they settled on the ridge end and the Demarest farms covered hundreds of upland
acres. East of the Isadore
Demarest farm is a stone house which is thought to be the oldest house
around. It is now in the field because
the road has been so changed. It was
built for Samuel Staats, a rich New York Dutchman,
and used by him as a summer home. He had
seven daughters who married the sons of the aristocracy of New
York. It was
those families who formed the real “Four Hundred” of New
York society.
The name Staats was lost because Samuel had no
sons.
With the advent
of the Demarests and others, the Reformed Dutch became
an established institution. The little building
was replaced by a colonial sanctuary with four pillars and a belfry holding one
of the sweetest toned bells in the community.
In 1890 this building, a symbol of colonial times under the spreading
maple trees, was moved down Main Street
to become the Village Hall at the corner of Main and
Wheeler Avenues. The cemetery stones and
what could be found of the interred were moved to the new cemetery. Many old times wept actually and figuratively
to see the change.
Must we sit back
and see another beautiful colonial church waste away before our eyes? The Old School Baptist steeple can not stand
much longer with no paint on its shingles and water slowly rotting away the
beams and supports. For 140 years that steeple has pointed heavenward
to be seen from every road leading into Warwick. Its gilded weather vane no longer slitters in
the sunshine but it still foretells the weather for this locality more
accurately than any radio announcer or weather map. There are those who watch its position for
three days at the time of the spring and fall equinox and the summer and winter
solstices. As it stands during those
three days so will the prevailing winds be for the following three months. A few months ago there was a rumor that the
church might be demolished and people cried out in protest. “It must not be,” they said. The congregation has invested funds for its
upkeep, but it stands to reason that money adequate for repairs fifty years ago
could not be enough today to build a scaffolding and hire a steeplejack. The desire of my heart is that the community
may take upon itself those repairs, that Warwick
may have again its white steeple against the blue hills.
I shall tell you
now of other removals. Having spoken of
the Reformed Church, I’ll begin at my end of town. There was no Edenville Road or a Grand
Street as it is now called. Access to the Demarest farm and the farm now
owned by William Hulse must have been by lanes. Miss Mary Burt’s house was the farm house for
the VanDuzer farm, her mother’s home. John J. Beattie has a photograph showing the
farm buildings where Miss Julia and Miss Anne Demarest live. A Small house stood in the south corner of the
hospital yard which was painted blue. It
was moved back of the VanDuzer house then Mr. Henry
Demarest bought it and moved it to Yankee
Lake where it stands today, a
sturdy summer cottage.
The village pound was the lot just
west of Will Hulse’s house. Stray cattle found along the pubic highway
were taken to this pound. To get them
out, the owner had to pay a fee. Mrs.
Tom Demarest was married in the parlor of the Hulse
home. Her father, Isaac Taylor, had
moved his family from the hillside Taylor
homestead which is now the Brady farm.
We know the house as it was when Thomas Burt owned it, build around the
little original house. Mr. Hulse says the old kitchen can be seen in the cellar and
where his bay windows is there was a big chimney with a Dutch oven. A Mr. Hoyt is thought to have built the first
house, the same man who built my house in 1809. The Waywayanda
Hotel made Otto Geselle’s house. One of the original stairways and the front doros are in it. The
United States Hotel became a two family tenant house owned by Mrs. Grinnell
Burt. She sold it to Miss Edna Sayer of Bellvale. She sold it to Mr. Zelokiwitz,
the shoe man and he sold it to Socony Oil Co. Both purchasers made several thousand dollars
on their deals. It was at the time of
the Florida land boom, and my
mother was so disgusted to have that money made right before her eyes.
Between the
hotels was a house owned by Mrs. Servin. After Mr. and Mrs. Joel H. Crissey moved to their attractive new home the backward of
that house was very objectionable. The
place was bought, Mr. Crissey paying the greater part
of the price, a few neighbors contributing, with the proviso that no building
be put there. Mr. Gesell
is bound by that clause. Mr. John Sullivan
bought the old house and used the timbers for his house on Poplar
Street. Mr.
Predmore bought the Burt apartment house and moved it
to Lake.
Band stands were
put in the intersection of Main and Colonial
Avenue. I
know of two that were there. The first
one Mr. J. C. Wilson (Jot Wilson) took down to his farm now owned by Earl
Ryerson. The last one was moved down Main
Street to become the garage for the Methodist
parsonage. Were not the neighbors happy
to see it go! It was not the band
concerts that they minded but the stand with high and not attractive to look
at, it caught all the debris of the street, tramps used it as a resting place
and children as a playhouse.
The Sanford
family wanted to set their memorial fountain there because Mr. George Sanford
had said it would be a fine place for a watering trough where he could water
his horse on his way home. The idea was
a good one but no one thought that in a few years there would be no horses on
the road. The gift proved to be a costly
one because a drain had to be provided for the overflow. A ditch was dug with manpower and pipes laid
to Forester Avenue and to
the creek.
The two little
houses belonging to Fred Cary were sold to the library committee. One of them was the third oldest in
town. In its cellar a huge fireplace and
over were found making folks think it had been the public bake shop. Mr. Richard Wood took of them paying $39 for
the material with which he built a house on Woodside
Drive. Mr.
Martin Schmick took the other paying $29.00.
The home of the
Veterans of Foreign Wars was one of Warwick’s
oldest mansions. Frank Forester on his
visit to the village in 1835 called it “a brick mansion, the pride of Warwick.” It was a Forshee
property and the daughter of the family, Sarah, married Mr. Servin,
a New York lawyer. The buildings which store the town road
machines were the barns for the farm. A
carriage house stood back of the library until the Professional
Building was erected. Mrs. Servin ran her
farm and specialized in black Dutch belted cattle. When city folks came to town on the train,
they saw these cows in the field and thought the farmer very considerate to put
sheets around their bodies to keep off the flies. Mrs. Servin spend a
fortune buying blooded stock and taking them to county fairs and cattle shows,
but her prizes made her happy. There was
no Forester Avenue and the Servin and Burt properties had no terraces. A hill was cut down when the street was put
through.
Where the Methodist
Church stands
was a curry shop and across from it a meat market run by a Pitts. Where the Savings Bank is now
there was a three story building with a bake shop in the basement and
apartments above. Next to this was a
little frame building, the first home of the Savings Bank. Later Miss Elizabeth Burt built the brick
block now owned by the Florida Hardware.
The Welling Hotel was on the corner where the Telephone building is now.
In Welling
Place the frame building which Mrs. Florence Cady
bought and remodeled was built for the Warwick Athletic Association about
1891. There were over one hundred
members and shares of stock were sold.
William (Billy) VanDuzer, the grandfather of
Vincent, was the builder and he did his work well. The basement floor was used for billiard
tables, the main floor as a gymnasiums and the upper floor had room for cards
and games. Mr. Townsend W. Sanford
thinks he and Mr. Howard G. Pierson are the only living members of that
original club. He says there were
running races, bicycles races, and performances given by trick riders and other
performers in the gym. The Athletic
Association died and the building housed various businesses until Mrs. Cady
bought it. She has made it a good
looking building again with attractive apartments upstairs.
A Cassidy family
lived in a little stone house by the creek and kept the toll gate
Across the creek was open farm land. The
Johnson farm was on the right which Mr. William H. Chardavoyne
bought when he came to Warwick from
Jersey to establish a dry goods store in partnership
with William T. Anderson also from Jersey. They built the handsome brick block now owned
by Mr. Todd and the firm was known as the W. T. Anderson Co.
Mr. Chardavoyne opened Orchard
Street and moved the little farm house to its
present site. It was te
home of the late Mrs. Sara Perry next to Mrs. Charles Sanford. Then he built the stately home which is the
Oakland Hotel. That house was the pride
and joy of Mrs. Chardavoyne. She and a maid were kept busy keeping the
rooms in perfect order and Billy, a little short Englishman, was busy outside
keeping the stables and lawn in perfect order.
One Sunday morning Mr. and Mrs. Chardavoyne
stopped to call on Mr. and Mrs. Lansing Furman who lived across the street on
their way home from the Episcopal Church.
She looked across at her home as he always did. “Indeed,” Mrs. Furman said, “Mrs. C. stopped
only to admire her own house.” But this
particular Sunday she gave one look and said she would have to go. Billy had let the shade in his third floor
room run up to the top and stay there.
It did not take the lady long to get to that window and pull the sash to
the sash where it belonged.
This house, like
the others along Oakland Avenue,
had a barn and a horse as kept for pleasure driving. I do not know who was the builder of the Chardavoyne house, but in a paper like this Elihu Taylor (called Eli) should be given credit for the
houses that he built. His father, Isaac,
having a lumber yard, it was a natural thing for the son to deal in real estate
and build on land that he bought. The
Willard Vandervoort, Howard Miller, and William H. Sayer homes are three of his well constructed houses. Several on South
Street were his also. He opened Linden
Place. Mr. Chardavoyne had built several of the houses on Orchard and Welling
Avenue.
William Smith
Benedict purchased a wide strip of land fronting Oakland
Avenue and extending west to what is now Welling
Avenue. (There was no street there in his
day.) In the center he built the mansion
later owned by Dr. Pitts and known to you as Sunset
Inn A
fire not too long ago burned the roof and cupola which destroyed its original
appearance. At the time Mr. Benedict was
building, Mr. Samuel Welling was building his home farther along the avenue,
later occupied by his daughter, Mrs. Samuel Van Saun
and still later by Mr. and Mrs. George Strong.
There was much rivalry between Smith Benedict and Samuel Welling as to
which would have the showier place. The
yard of the Benedict place was marred by an old cellar with its tumbled in
foundation, the remains of the old house that had been there. Mr. T.W. Sanford remembers as a little boy
seeing bigger boys run across the yard and fall into that hole. The hold was now filled to become part of the
lawn until Mr. Benjamin Frank Vail moved in the house.
When the house
was completed, Mr. and Mrs. Benedict had a house warming. Folks for miles around were invited, an
orchestra provided music for dancing and at midnight
a collation was served. It is well that
Smith Benedict and Mrs. Chardavoyne could not see the
future appearances of the homes as they are today, and that Billy could not see
his beautifully kept lawn.
The parties of
those days were affairs worthy of the name.
Homes being large, the number of guests could be close to a
hundred. Crash
was tacked over the carpet to make dancing easier. In country places planks were places on boxes
around the sides of the room and covered with blankets in lieu of funeral
chairs which were not easily borrowed.
At midnight real refreshment
was served by a corps of waiters in full dress.
My memory can name Ann Sayer who reigned supreme
in the kitchen. Albert Hicks, Sr.,
Thomas Nesbitt, Roland Braxton, Freeman Braxton were among those who
served. The plates which they carried to
the guests always had chicken salad (Ann Sayer was
noted for her chicken salad) or slices of cold chicken and oysters either
creamed or pickled. The pickled oysters
could be bought by the tub. Sandwiches
and slices of large raised biscuits, buttered, were passed on platters, as well
as bowls of clear lemon gelatin which was the new dish of the day. For dessert it was ice cream but one dessert
is remembered that had an orange partly cut with the points of the skin curled
under, a slice of banana and white grapes for each individual. The white grapes were new too. With this there was always three and four kinds
of layer cake which were three and four layers high.
When Lillian
Burt married Floyd Halstead, bowls of wine gelatin were made and set in the
cellar to keep cool. Refreshments were
served, the guests had departed when some one went down cellar and discovered
the wine jelly untouched. Neighbors,
friends and the sick of the town feasted on wine jelly.
I had expected
to end this rambling selection of memories with short stories of
yesteryear. I have heard scores of them
but how many could you tell if asked.
Others have had the urge to collect local anecdotes. Last week Mrs. VanDuzer,
as our historian, received a personal letter from Cyril F. Kilb
of New York, asking her for
authentic historical stories which are interesting yet amusing to be compiled into
a column. Time and your patience allow
me to tell one in closing. If will write
down stories as you hear them or remember them, I would suggest an evening for
Warwick Anecdotes.
Thomas Quackenbush kept a general store. One morning the ne’er do well of the
community came in and said he had had a dream the night before. The Lord had appeared to him and told him to
go to Thomas Quackenbush for a pair of shoes, which
he could get on credit. Mr. Quackenbush looked at him and said, “Go back home. Dream again and tell the Lord Thomas Quackenbush sells for cash.”