Daguerreotypes and Photographs

In 1907 in Olde Ulster Mr. Brink gave the measurements of the figure on the stone at Esopus as being:

Inches Height 28 Across shoulders, to limit of arms 16 Legs 73/2 Diameter of head 73/2 Height of article in right hand 20 Width of end of article in right hand. . 3

In 1930 the rubbing—actual size—made by Mr. Suckley supplied the measurements of the figure on the stone in Dutchess as:

Inches Height, upper half of figure, 111 / 2 inches; was the full height approximately. . . . 23? Across one remaining shoulder from center of face to limit of arm, 8 inches; was the full width approximately 16? Diameter of head, across the eyes 5 Height of pipe in right hand 3Y2 THE EDITOR.

26

Brown. DeM. Margaret by Photograph Sackley Bowne Robert by Book Year this

THE RECORD BOOK OF THE NINE PARTNERS

In 1697 nine men, most of them residents of New York City, bought a tract of land in Dutchess County. The purchasers became known as the Nine Partners and their property as the Nine Partners Patent. Their land lay in the northern half of the county and an observer, looking at the tract on the map from south to north, can see in the general outline of it a shape which, for convenience, can be likened to a mitten for a left hand. The thumb of the mitten at the left or west formed a frontage on the Hudson, running from Crum Elbow Creek at the present village of Hyde Park southward almost to the Hudson River State Hospital, while the hand of the mitten covered an area now included in the towns of Clinton, Pleasant Valley, Stanford, Washington and Amenia.

This great tract was a wilderness in 1697 and as such it continued for a great many years. It was well forested and at first its potential value to the nine partners lay in the furs and timber that might be obtained from it. Until a much later date there were no roads by which the wild tract could be approached or crossed; sloops on the river furnished the transportation used by white men in the Hudson valley when the Nine Partners Patent was new; and so, in 1699, the nine owners divided their frontage on the river (in the thumb of the mitten) into nine equal portions, which became known as the water-lots and which provided for each partner specific and assigned access to the patent as a whole.

Soon after 1697 the original nine men began to speculate with their rights in this great tract in Dutchess and fractional claims in the nine one-ninth shares in which the patent was held were sold and resold until in September, 1730, the nine original rights were vested in twenty-eight persons. There had been an effort made in 1725 to obtain from the Assembly an Act, dividing the land, but the petition failed to go through and it was in February, 1729-1730, that David Jamison, one of the original nine, assembled the owners in New York City, organized them and laid plans for opening the patent for settlement.

27

At the time that David Jamison initiated the movement to organize the company for the transaction of business the general papers of the partners were in the hands of Jacob Goelet of New York City. Mr. Goelet was a son-in-law of Jacob Boelen, who in 1699 owned a one-fourth right in one-ninth of the patent and the papers were first for a long time held by Mr. Boelen, then by his widow and finally by Mr. Goelet. At a meeting of the partners, held in New York on September 12, 1730, Jacob Goelet was appointed treasurer and it was voted by the members that each one-ninth interest in the patent should pay £10 (fractional interests bearing proportionate charges), the money thus raised to be used to defray the cost of a survey of the land, preparatory to partitioning it, and for other expenses.

As a result of his appointment as treasurer, Jacob Goelet procured a book in which to keep his accounts and to record the proceedings at the meetings of the partners. In the first pages he set down a summary of the events that preceded his appointment to office and then, from the 6th of November, 1730, to the 31st of December, 1748, he made a succession of entries regarding the business matters that arose in those eighteen years. The book passed out of the possession of Jacob Goelet at an unknown date, and to an unknown recipient. In 1850 it was in the keeping of John Albert Stoutenburgh (born 1820, died 1887) of Hyde Park, Dutchess County, and tradition said it had come down to him from his great-greatgrandfather, Jacobus Stoutenburgh. The latter had had large holdings in the Nine Partners Patent and in the middle of the eighteenth century had established his residence on the site occupied by the present village of Hyde Park.

From John Albert Stoutenburgh the book was inherited by his daughter, Mrs. Walter Graeme Eliot (Maud Stoutenburgh) , and she in June, 1931, sold the volume to Harry Harkness Flagler of Millbrook, Dutchess County.

By his purchase of the "Record Book of the Nine Partners" Mr. Flagler has done a largely generous thing and has acquired for Dutchess County historical source material of the

28