Fishkill-1788 Willa Skinner Historian, Town of Fishkill
F
ishkill in 1788 was not the busy military town it had been five years earlier at the close of the Revolutionary War. Barracks and other military buildings on the Van Wyck property along the Post Road had been dismantled and given to the people of the town who used the beams and other material in construction of new barns and dwellings. Cornelius Van Wyck was about to start construction of his new house on his portion of the family land, using some of the wood from the dismantled barracks? His older brother, Isaac, remained at the family homestead which had been built by their grandfather, Cornelius. Isaac was elected to the state legislature and liked to ride in style in a yellow coach with a black footman in the rear and the family crest painted on the door. Near the banks of Sprout Creek, Gen. Jacobus Swartwout would soon build his new house, similar in style to the house of Cornelius Van Wyck. 1788 was a busy year for Gen. Swartwout; he was a delegate to the New York State ratifying convention of the Constitution at Poughkeepsie, siding with the Antffederalists. When the Swartwout family moved into the new house, the old dwelling was turned over to the Rev. Isaac Rysdyck and became the parsonage for the three Dutch Reformed congregations in the town, all under Rysdyck's charge—the church in Fishkilvillage, the New Hacksensack Reformed Church and the Hopewell Reformed Church. The Rev. Rysdyck conducted a classical school at the Dutchess Academy which stood on a hill a short distance west of the Rombout Presbyterian Church. After Rysdyck's death in 1790, the academy moved to Poughkeepsie? The post office kept by printer Samuel Loudon during the Revolution had been discontinued after Loudon packed up his press, closed shop and returned to New York City to continue publication of his weekly newspaper, the New York Packet, which he had printed in Fishkill all during the war. But now the Fishkill post office, once the most important in New York State and for a time the only one, had shut down and was not to re-open until 1793 when Cornelius Van Wyck was appointed postmaster. The boundaries of the newly incorporated town took in all of which had been the Rombout Precinct, encompassing the present towns of Wappinger, East Fishkill, half of LaGrange and the City of Beacon. The census of 1790 lists 885 households in the town, with a total population of 5,491 persons including 601 slaves. During the next ten years, the population grew to 6,159, and the number of slaves dropped slightly to 524. The census of 1800 does not list the number of households but states the number of males 26 years of age and up as 943, assuming these persons would be heads of households? The Post Road was an important thoroughfare where it met the road from New England to form crossroads in the village. From these roads farmers hauled their produce to the river landing five miles to the west of the village. A traveler passing through Fishkill along the Post Road enroute to Poughkeepsie would find his way past the Dutch Church, now torn apart in a state of disrepair and 50
