Old Sycamore Trees Opp

other was the lease in fee. Under the latter arrangement parcels of undeveloped land were turned over by the actual owners to incoming settlers, who paid little or no purchasemoney but who developed the property and who held possession so long as they paid an annual quit-rent of a merely nominal amount. By this method the orignial patentees retained title to the soil but secured the clearing and planting of large areas of wilderness.

Colonel Henry Beekman followed the system of the lease in fee in connection with the Beekman Patent in the central part of Dutchess. He and his heirs leased much of the land of that patent for several generations and it was not until after the Revolution or even after 1800 that Colonel Beekman's descendants began to sell off their farms and to give deeds in fee simple to purchasers.

While deeds were, as a rule, recorded in the eighteenth century, leases seldom were placed on file with the county clerk and, because of the latter fact, the Year Book for 1927 reproduces an original lease that was given in 1739 by Henry Beekman. The plate shows the form of words used, typical printing of the period and the signature of Henry Beekman. On the reverse side of the sheet one of the grantees of the lease, George Elsworth, on January 5th, 1744, assigned his rights in land, house, barn and "bargh" to Henry Livingston of Poughkeepsie in consideration of £80. It should be noted, in the body of the lease, that the quit-rent on this property was due on "the Feast Day of the Annunciation or Lady Day being ye Twenty-fifth of March," a provision which was in accordance with an ancient custom in England, where rent is paid on Lady Day, Midsummer Day, Michaelmas and Christmas. The quit-rent charged in 1739 by Colonel Beekman on a farm of 205 acres amounted as called for in this lease to: "one Cupple of Live Fatt Hans," & one day's work yearly or, in lieu of the latter, twenty bushels of good merchantable wheat.

The original lease, here shown, is owned now by Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt, vice-president of the Dutchess County Historical Society for the Town of Hyde Park, and has

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been loaned by him to the society's collection in Vassar Institute, Poughkeepsie.

Old Sycamore Trees

One of the illustrations in this issue of the Year Book shows three sycamore trees of great size in front of number eighty-two, Market street, Poughkeepsie. Interest has centered upon these trees in 1927 because, in the near future, the street on which they stand is to be widened and the fate of the trees hangs in the balance. Will they, shortsightedly, be cut down and the act be called "progress"? Or will an enlightened public opinion say that new construction shall be built around their bases, even at the cost of a short bit of narrow sidewalk? Lovers of landmarks and of objects possessed of associations of long standing hope that the trees may be preserved to tell to later generations a story of the early days of Poughkeepsie.

The age of the three sycamores cannot be stated definitely but there can be no question that the trees have an ancient and honorable time-record as time-measures go in the Hudson valley. The illustration gives some idea of their height. At its greatest circumference the tree farthest north measures thirteen feet, six inches the tree in the middle, ten feet, five inches and the tree farthest south, fifteen feet ten inches each measurement at about three feet above the ground.

The soil in which the trees grow was a part of the homestead farm of Jacobus Van Den Bogaerdt, the man who gave the county a site for its court house and who also gave the Dutch Reformed congregation of Poughkeepsie a lot for a church-building. There is every chance that the trees date from his time. After Jacobus Van Den Bogaerdt's ownership the land passed to John Davis, a prominent resident of Poughkeepsie who was in possession of it in 1786. The little brown house that sits so confidingly and peacefully under the big trees is understood to have been built by John Davis,

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