Dutchess County Historical Society Yearbook Vol 013 1928

A Map and a Tree The land on which a large part of the city of Poughkeepsie is built was sold by the Indians in 1685 to two white men who were then residents of Albany. One of those two men, Robert Sanders, an Englishman, was widely known in the Province of ,New York as an interpreter between the natives and the settlers and he did not move down the river from Albany when he bought land in Dutchess County. His partner, Myndert Harmense Van Den Bogaerdt (that is: Myndert, son of Harmen of the Orchard), a Dutchman, did leave Albany and make a new home to the southward. He settled near the mouth of the Fallkill in 1691-1692, when all was a wilderness there, eventually building his dwelling (a small stone structure) about where the northeast corner of Mill and Bridge streets now is.

In 1709 Myndert Harmense( as he usually was called) sold to Bartholomeus Hoogeboom (in English: Bartholomew High-Tree) a tract of land fronting on the river. The tract began at its north end at a point not far from the foot of the present Church street and it ran south to, approximately, the foot of the present Pine street; eastward it extended from the river to, approximately, the present Jefferson street. This area in 1709 was wooded. Bartholomeus Hoogeboom cleared it, in part, for farming and held it until 1730, when he sold it to Jan DeGraeff. The deed for that conveyance contains a clause that reads: "al wais Leaven a sufficit Rode for Cattol too goo in the woods," and the cow-path thus suggested may have been the beginning of the present Union street.

The purchaser of the property in 1730, Jan DeGraeff, would seem from his name to have been a Dutchman but contemporary documentary evidence shows that actually he was Jean leComte, grandson of a Frenchman of the same name who was at Harlem (New York) in 1674. Dutch neighbors merely translated leComte into DeGraeff (the Count). Jan DeGraeff of Poughkeepsie had a house-lot on the north side of Mill street, west of Bridge, which he. bought in 1712. His purchase of the Hoogeboom farm was not made until about four years before his death. Under his will his real estate was divided between his widow and children in equal portions and, by some arrangement made between the members of his 64