A View of Tidewater Dutchess

A VIEW OF TIDEWATER DUTCHESS

Henry Noble MacCracken*

The story of the Hudson is a twice-told tale, though to others it is the latest sensation, the subject of debate in our houses of legislature, the tug of war between industry and landscape. My apology for bringing the subject up once more is that it was at your request that I set down the substance of my talk to you. Since then, I have had five months of pretty complete leisure, in which to consider what I should say; and you will forgive me, I am sure, if your memory of what I said so long ago does not quite agree with the words of this text.

I want to go a little deeper into the subject, deeper even than the circle of ancient rocks that rim our river basin, all the way from the Old Appalachian with its most ancient rocks, through the Ramapos and Shawangunks of the Younger Appalachian, on to the great Appalachian Plateau, of which our Catskills are the tassels of its fringe. I want to go beyond the shadows of an autumn afternoon a century ago that provided the scene for the Extraordinary Case by Henry James, for my journey is rather to the Hudson of the memory and of the mind.

You may notice that I have called this talk "A View of Tidewater Dutchess," and since I am going to be over on the philosophical side for a bit, I must clear the way in the matter of the word view, even though I should seem a little pedantic.

What indeed is a "view?" The dictionaries make it out to be a triple substance. It is something, in the first place, that a viewer does, an inspection; a considered and deliberate measure of something; not just a conceit, a vision or a look. It takes a little work. It culminates in a conviction.

It implies, of course, a viewer, and as no two viewers are the same, so no two views can be the same. The view itself may be either the physical observation, the outward glance, or it may be what I shall take it to be, the inward impression and the opinion, even the decision, to which that opinion may drive.

A superficial view, of course, would be one of quiet and ease, and I have no quarrel with that. Such a Hudson was viewed from the Dutchess shore by the painters of the Hudson River School, Paulding's novels, The Dutchman's Fireside or The Old Continental, perhaps even the transplanted legends from the Harz Mountains to the Catskills

* Dr. MaeCracken, President Emeritus of Vassar College, former president and presently a trustee of the Dutchess County Historical Society, has written out the substance of an address made before the society at its annual meeting,

May 22, 1965.

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by such skilled hands as Washington Irving's, or The Culprit Fay of Joseph Rodman Drake.

Tidewater Dutchess runs for some sixty miles, from the mouth of the Roeloff Jansen Kill to Verplanck's Point at the end of the Highlands. As we picture in our minds the three centuries of its history, we shall treat it surrealistically as an air pageant with its viewers seated in a vast movie theatre in the Boxes, the Reserved Seats or the General Admission. in the Boxes, then, we shall find the viewers of the eighteenth century, the patentees and the great landlords. In the Reserved Seats we shall find the viewers of the nineteenth century, the political and social leaders and the practitioners of the professions and the arts. In the General Admission we shall find the viewers of the twentieth century, among whom we must class ourselves, the Hudson of the great community.

The viewers of the eighteenth century were looking for the answer to the question, "What is going to become of this colony of ours?" Their view looked upon the great river, whose shores for much of that century comprised the entire colony. Only their determination preserved the larger view.

They saw the river as the artery of a great state to come. From its shores they resisted the encroachments of New England and Pennsylvania, of the Iroquois and the Canadians. They penetrated in their trade all the way to Michili-Mackinac, the prairie capital of the great fur trade. They brought their trade down the Hudson to the market wharves in New York City. With it they sent the wheat they grew in the valley fields, the lumber they cut from the hills. From New York they brought back the tools of industry and the instruments of government. Had their view been confined to the Hudson shore, our patentees and landlords would have been submerged and absorbed into the neighboring colonies. It was the view of the great river as their avenue of industry that saved them from such a fate, and that created an Empire State. That view was carried on by George Clinton of Clinton Point and DeWitt Clinton of New Windsor, with their creation of a great canal and waterway to the Far West. Incidentally, their passengers filled up the state to the full line claimed first in the treaties with the Indians.

The Reserved Seats took a broader view. They looked first of all to their own ingenuity to create their commerce and their capital; they added to the pleasures of the Tidewater view a new culture of the arts and sciences. Just beyond the northern end of the Dutchess shore

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lived Martin Van Buren. He organized our party system; he was the first to prove that it was the obligation of government to provide for the safety of its citizens' earnings. Our Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and our Federal Reserve Banks were in great part his work, and it was due to him that the Hudson shore viewed the coming of Astor and of Vanderbilt, of Rockefeller and of Harriman.

The fruits of wealth are the occupations of leisure. .Art and industry, and sometimes both, were the reoccupation of our capitalists. Thus the first commercial steamboat was designed here. The art of landscape gardening was developed in a preferred seat on the Beacon shore of Dutchess.1 The Great Alliance between Virginia and New York was the treaty that resulted from a conference of Chancellor Livingston and Governor Clinton with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in their historic journey up the North Road in 1791. Other products of the farseeing views that came to birth on the Hudson were the Missouri Compromise, in the motion by James Tal1madge2 in 1820 that hustled the great river first into legislation, then, at last, into arms.

The ladies and gentlemen of those hundred places on the Hudson River brought style to the rural county. Some will think this a doubtful benefit; it did not prove so. The people welcomed it. In taste, if not in politics, we Americans are still aristocratic; no people are so anxious to be "with it," as our young folks say.

The drive from .Poughkeepsie to Red Hook, "the costliest lane in the world," was proudly visited as the holiday hide-out of our millionaires.3 Astors and Vanderbilts drove their four-in-hands on the highroad. Yachts tacked to and fro on the river. Robert R. Livingston drove his white four-in-hand to church on a bright Sunday, a black four when it rained. Nobody was the worse for that.

But these aristocrats did not keep within their purchases. Living quietly, bringing up their children in the rural sports, they became interested in the country fairs4 and soon began to breed a better stock of cattle, sheep and horses. They went into local politics so successfully that "a purchase on the river" was thought to be a valuable political asset.

Their wives brought music, painting and architecture to the county. They loved and tended their gardens. They built churches, schools and hospitals.

And, now and then, a scion of this American aristocracy married into the county, so often, indeed, that of the best known families some forty branches have been county.

Thus, in rural America, our county kept abreast of fashion, taste

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and manners, and a metropolitan countryside evolved as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Thorne and Ryan have made our stock famous; Chanler, Aldrich, Morgan, Roosevelt have lived for the public welfare. Our river teems with it, from the Northern Dutchess Health Center to the Sharpe Reservation.

But this has been mostly the product of the twentieth century, the century of science and research, the century of sociology and universal education, the century of affluence and the philosophy of abundance.

The pace of our Hudson view, for every view has its own rhythm, has quickened with these new instruments of power and we know not whither they will lead us. They have created new problems almost as fast as they have solved the old ones. What would the farmer of the eighteenth century have said if he had been told that with one-tenth of the farmers we should produce on these old acres ten times as heavy crops, ten times as many cattle and other stock?

This has been our history, the result of the long view of Tidewater Hudson. We are still the center of great events. If I have led you too far, or claimed too much, I offer my apologies; I shall trouble you less frequently in time to come.

I shall add only my answer to a friend's question "could you put in a single word?" My word would be ease. It may seem strange but ease and its concomitant attribute, the easy life, seem to me after more than fifty years of dwelling among you to be the leading characteristics of this Tidewater shore. I do not refer to hours of idleness or life upon the level of triviality. I am thinking of the better meaning of this word. From overuse it has perhaps lost its value.

The first meaning of ease, (and I quote from the Oxford English Dictionary), is opportunity, means or ability to do something. The second meaning is convenience; to do a person ease is to give assistance to that person; to be advantageous. Ease is again defined as absence of pain, and painful effort. Its adjective easy is even more productive; it means first to be at liberty; second, quiet characterized by rest, freedom from pain and constraint; free from mental anxiety and hurry. Of persons, it means not difficult to get on with, or to do business with.

These I have found, taking it all in all, to be the characteristics of Tidewater Hudson. Dutchess County never had a duelling ground. Dutchess politicians find it difficult to discover issues of any consequence. Only occasionally does a popular tremor or a racial tension reach us.

The century of General Admission has done much, and will still do more, to give the river back to its people. There is first the private

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philanthropy which has given Norrie Park, the Mills and Vanderbilt estates which invite the public. State and nation have added to the gifts, giving the Palisades, the Catskill National Forest, and much more—marinas dot the shores and three thousand motorboats plow the waters. Vistas of surpassing beauty appear on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt shrine and elsewhere.

Now come the commissions, with comprehensive plans for a river drive. It is only to be hoped that too many cooks will not spoil the broth of all these good intentions.

Next to the parks come the colleges and hospitals, which are public in character; the convents, children's camps and aged people's homes. All these have audiences no less grateful for the River view.

Latest of all are the plans of urban renewal, which will bring the Hudson into our daily lives.

All these are the fruits of that early thought for general welfare, iivhich provided views that pierced far into the future.

Such, in brief, has been our experience on Tidewater Hudson in years of labor and leisure. Our studies of its history reveal no great divergence from the experience; yet with all its ease, it has been by no means lifeless. The calm and quiet Hudson, as we who live upon its shore all know, is capable of violent storms. Even the good-natured Dutch labeled the promontory which serves as the gate to the southern Highlands "The Tedious Hook." It took a good sailor to get through the gusty highlands and our history, in spite of all the good nature, has not been without its acerbity. But this is only to give a spice to the meat, for if there is no more favored spot, "Of a' the airts the wind can blaw." we have not heard of it. Nor, like Burns, would we change even if we had found it.

NOTES

1.j. E. Spingarn, "Henry Winthrop Sargent and the Early History of Landscape Gardening and Ornamental Horticulture in Dutchess County, New York," Year Book, Dutchess County Historical Society, XXII (1937), p. 26.

2john D. Gindele, "The Public Career of James Tallmadge," Chap. 4, Y ear Book, DCHS, XLV (1960), p. 69.

3Helen Wilkinson Reynolds, "Country-Seats on Hudson's River in Dutchess County," Year Book, DCHS XX (1935), p. 60.

4Reynolds, "Sheep-Raising in Dutchess County," Year Book, DCHS, XXVI (1941), p. 71; Amy Ver Nooy, "Dutchess County Cattle Show and Fair of 1820," Year Book, DCHS, XLVH (1962), p. 39.

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HAMMERTOWN

Charlotte Slingerland Tuttle Kester*

This roadway, on which we are standing, to the old house is the result of fill dumped into the old sluice, or ditch, which carried water from the Shekomeko Creek, on my left, to the water wheel, giving power to run the trip hammers in the old scythe factory which stood just about where the new bridge is located. The new highway construction eliminated the great, sturdy wall which was a part of the original building. The noise of the hammers gave the name to this little industrial settlement, similar to the many which sprang up in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Across the road stood the large four-story tannery of Peter Husted. The Harris family built and operated the scythe works and thus gave the name to the old house.

The Indians fished the creek for its abundant eels, numerous still in 1900, but gone now. They must also have hunted up the Mill Hill, densely wooded, on my right. The first white settlers here, and probably the builders of the house about 1760, were the Snyders, who came from the Palatine camp on the Hudson. Adam and William owned the land just upstream, the former selling the house and mill in 1783 to John Harris, the first of the Harris family here. He started the scythe works and was assisted by his cousin Seth and Seth's two sons, Silas and John. Their first shop was across the creek, back of our house (the Slingerland house).

The Harris family is a very interesting one, of Welsh descent. They brought with them an ability in mining and metal working. From Newton, to Cornwall, to Sharon, to Northeast (about 17401750), came this branch of the family. John and Seth had both pioneered and made homes in the wilderness, the former in upper New York State, the latter in Vermont, but returned here. They were all responsible citizens, leaders in industry, church, school and civic affairs.

The Husted family established ownership and industry here in Hammertown and they, likewise, became civic and cultural leaders in the emerging township. They were of Huguenot descent and came from Greenwich in the 1750's to Charlotte Precinct, then a part of Crum Elbow Precinct. Peter purchased land here in 1796 and started

* Mrs. C. Bryan Kester is the Assistant Secretary of the Connecticut League of

Historical Societies and is the librarian at Falls Village, Connecticut. She was born at Hammertown and lived there for some years and is a descendant of the

Harris and Husted families. She has written out the substance of a talk given on the occasion of a pilgrimage made by the Dutchess County Historical Society to the Pine Plains area as guests of The Little Nine Partners Historical Society on October 23, 1965.

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his tannery. This was as vital an industry as that of scythe making in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in that leather was essential for harness, for boots, for shoes, and even for some work clothing. In addition to long and arduous labor, tanning required great skill. Much of the business was carried on by barter; the animal hides were exchanged for the cured skins. And there were by-products, glue, tallow candles and plaster (made with the hair from the hides).

The road through Hammertown, now Route 199, was then the Salisbury Turnpike, a much-traveled route from western Connecticut, with its extensive iron industry, to the Hudson River. Produce and supplies were hauled for river transport, and even to centers of trade and social import across the river and on to Pennsylvania. The Harrises had scythe works in Salisbury and one of the Husteds, with Joshua Culver, had an interest in an iron furnace beyond Irondale. Spencertown was a social and civic center, necessitating much travel back and forth over Winchell Mountain.

The Joshua Culver family were residents and land owners in Hammertown for about thirty years; he was a worker and, for a time, part owner in the tannery. He enlarged the old Slingerland house, on the south side of the road across the road from the Silas Harris house, just as Peter Husted had enlarged his.

This Harris-Husted house, which is being restored and which had belonged to Philip Snyder, was occupied by John Harris (the younger), who married a neighbor to the east, Hannah Righter. It was later occupied by Jonas Knickerbocker, superintendent of the scythe factory. In the years since, many families have lived in it, but the only known owners have been Harris and Husted, or Husted descendants. All of the land in this little valley is still owned by descendants of the Husted family. Mrs. Betty Jordan Klare and her children descended from the Harris family and still live in the town. Mrs. Julia S. Jordan, a resident in the village of Pine Plains and an officer of the two historical societies gathered here today, is a descendant of both the Harris and the Husted families.

Members of these old families, along with the Joshua Culver family and others, who lived and worked together in this neighborhood, are still neighbors in the Evergreen Cemetery, as they were in Hammertown.

Hammertown was always a happy place. The Husteds and the Harrises never exploited their laborers,—proof being that neither family was wealthy nor did they leave large estates other than their land and some small investments.

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