North East Helen Netter Former Historian, Town of North East
W
ith the passage by the New York State Legislature of the General Organization Act on March 7, 1788, providing for the division of the State into counties and townships, the Town of North East was established. It embraced that part of Dutchess which eventually, in the early 19th century became the present-day towns of Milan, Pine Plains and North East, an area which over the years had been known variously as the Little or Upper Nine Partners Patent, the North Division and the North East Precinct. The boundaries of this precinct were defined December 16, 1746 as on the south by the northern line of the Great, or Lower, Nine Partners tract, on the east by the Connecticut line, on the west by the easterly line of the Beekman patent and on the north by the lands of Livingston. By 1788 settlement of the region was well under way although it had been slow in coming. The land had been granted in 1706 by the British crown to nine proprietors or patentees but it lay vacant except for squatters until it was surveyed by Charles Clinton in 1742 and divided into sixty-three lots thus making occupancy or sale by the proprietors lawful. In actuality the share purchased by George Clarke from the other patentees, about 50,000 acres, was in litigation for over 150 years and was not entirely disposed of until 1894. Mohican Indians were scattered through the area with one village being called Shacameco, near the present-day hamlet of Bethel. It was to this Indian village that missionaries of the Moravian church came in 1740 and established what has been called the first successful mission to Indians in North America. The village has been described as being comprised of several dwellings, a mission house, a church, bake ovens, cellars, a barrack and stable. Suspicion, fear and greed on the part of white settlers in the area resulted in the disbanding of the mission and the village. Some of the Indians and missionaries moved east and formed a colony on the border of Indian Pond, but they were later driven from there as well. Geographical features of the precinct affected the pattern of settlement, particularly the hill known as Winchell's in the eastern part and the Stissing Mountain range farther west. Consequently we find New Englanders from Connecticut and Massachusetts moving into the area east of Winchell Mountain and more people of German or Dutch stock, especially Palatines, spreading over the west and north. With the break-up of "the Camp" on Robert Livingston's manor in Columbia County a goodly number of these immigrants settled in North East, as is attested to by the large proportion of German names associated with farms in the countryside. It would appear that not many of the original patentees or their descendants established homes in the North East Precinct. One colorful exception is the Graham family. Augustine Graham who was a descendant of James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose in Scotland, was a patentee in both the Little and Great Nine Partners patents. His son James became the proprietor of his father's interests. Both Augustine and James Graham resided in Westchester County and had only a landlord's relationship with North East. James had eight children, some of whom had homes in this area and who are considered the founders of what became the middle town of the precinct. 53
