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Map of the Town of Amenia, 1797 Opp
from the sales of my estate both real and personal for her natural life in hew of her dower.
SEVENTH: I do hereby further give all the residue of my estate, real and personal, or the moneys of such part thereof as shall be sold, together with the estate given to my wife as aforesaid after her death to my two children, to be equally divided between them, their heirs and assigns forever.
LASTLY: I do hereby appoint my brother, MELANCTON SMITH, and my brother-in-law, ISAAC HASBROOK, and my friends PETER TAPPEN and JAMES KENT, executors of this my will, hereby revoking all former wills, if any there be.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and seal this thirtieth day of May, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-one.
ISRAEL SMITH. (L.S.)
Signed, sealed, published and declared by the said Testator as and for his Last Will and Testament in presence of us, John Thomas, Robert North, Peter Tappen. J. WILSON POUCHER, M. D.
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We are to witness the Pageant of Market Street, but not Market Street as we see it every day, a busy, crowded thoroughfare of Poughkeepsie, we must think of it rather as a part of the Albany Post Road, or as it was known until 1776 the King's Highway; and of the people who travelled the road or built their homes near it and helped it to develop from an Indian trail to a bridle path, then a wagon and coaching road and finally one of the main highways of the Empire State.
We must remember that Poughkeepsie has not had a, dramatic history, it was a Dutch settlement with all the slowness and deliberation which those words imply, but there is one spot which can show us many pictures; it has seen the Indian runners go by bearing mail and messages between New York and Albany; to it the first settlers came to worship and to transact their business; during the Revolution it echoed to the tread of soldiers and witnessed the daily coming and going of great men; it was the scene of at least one event of paramount importance in the history of the nation. You probably guess where that spot is: the corner of Main and Market Streets we will take as our stage and see what scenes and figures pass before us which are significant in the history of Poughkeepsie.
A day near the middle of June in the year 1680, no settlement, not even one cabin of a white man, no sound of human activity, just the songs of the birds in the trees along the trail; but three Indians appear travelling northward from their homes on the Wappingers Creek; we know all of them but will notice only one especially because his name of Speck is very familiar to us now; when we motor down the Post Road we pass near the site of his lodge, which stood on a little creek or kil close to the present red schoolhouse just this side of Oakwood, Speck zyn kil or as we say in a corrupted form, Speckenkill. If we ask these Indians why they are equipped for a journey, they will tell us that they are going to Albany where
*Paper read before Mahwenawasigh Chapter, D. A. R., at Poughkeepsie, January 18, 1926, and printed by permission.
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they will appear before a notary and place their marks on a deed presenting a portion of their land to Arnout Cornelise Viele. This is the first deed recorded for this section, and it Was a free-will offering from Indians in return for a kindness shown them.
Now Viele, being employed by the government as an Indian interpreter, was too busy to enjoy his land himself, but other white settlers drifted in slowly; in 1702 Baltus Barents Van Kleeck came and built his square stone house near the corner of the present Mill and Vassar Stretes. After the appointing of a few county officers and the sending of a representative from Dutchess to the Legislature we see a building, the first Dutchess County Court House, very unpretentious but occupying the same site as the present one, that is, the southwest corner of Main and Market Streets.
On a day in the summer of 1723 we will find a place on the steps of this Court House and watch the completion of a building directly opposite, that is on the southeast corner of Main and Market Streets. Jacobus Van den Bogart has given a plot of land 150 feet square for the erection of the first church in the district, to quote the words of the old deed "intended for the members of the body known as the Reformed Dutch Church in North America, for the proper and only use, benefitt and behoof of the Inhabitance and Naborhood of Pockepsie aforesaid to hold and meantaen a proper Mieting house to worship the one and Thriee onely God". Let us take a good look at this church; it was 40-50 feet long and 30 feet wide with 26 pews, "built of stone with a hipped roof and a moderate tower in front. The tower extended above the peak of the roof a short distance and there the bell was suspended and over the same was a small tapering spire and surmounting that was the rooster". The progress of the church has ben slow but interest has been kept up perhaps because the settlers have been asked to contribute not only their money but also day's work; so we shall doubtless find ourselves in a group of eager spectators on this day when the spire is completed and that rooster is firmly fixed on his perch.
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April 3, 1742—Poughkeepsie has now attained to the dignity of town meetings and regular elections for county officers; with at least two buildings, the church and the court house on our stage there is probably some stir of local activity. Again three men appear jogging sedately along on horseback for they are engaged on a serious errand: a boundary dispute has arisen bewteen Jacob Low and Henry Van der Burgh; two of our horsemen, Johannes Van Kleeck and Myndert Van den Bogaerdt, are elderly men, they are going now down the King's Highway to the Rust Plaets, where before their companion, Francis Filkin, a justice of the peace, they will swear that for fifty years they have known the Rust Plaets stone which is mentioned in deeds of the disputed lands. These men realized the importance of their business but did they realize the future historical significance of the spot on which they stood? This Rust Plaets which we can see now on the Van Benschoten farm was for years a resting place on the trail for the Indians, they called it "the reed-covered lodge by the little water place," uppuqui ipis ing , which has been corrupted to the present name, Poughkeepsie.
In the late summer of 1766 a prisoner is taken into the Court House, so peaceable and prosperuos looking that we ask who he is: it is William Prendergast, a farmer of eastern Dutchess who has been arrested for his share in the landlord and tenant disputes called the Anti-Rent War. During the trial we see his wife, Abigail, going in and out from the sessions and after her husband has been convicted of treason we see her start alone on horseback for New York to appeal to the governor; three days later, good travelling for that period, she returns successful with a reprieve. This scene interests us because its chief actor is a woman, the first one who has crossed our stage in a major role.
Coming to the period of the Revolution we find an increased activity the only indication on our stage of the stirring events elsewhere. There was no fighting in Dutchess County but the fortification and defence of the Highlands was a main feature of operation in this section, so Poughkeepsie, lying
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