Mona Vaith, Herbert Saltford

The Town of Poughkeepsie: 1788

Mona Vaeth

Historian, Town of Poughkeepsie

Herbert Saltford

Historian, City of Poughkeepsie

Halfway up the Hudson River with a view of the Catskill Mountains a small settlement developed into a hamlet and through the years into the community we know as Poughkeepsie. Initially settlers of the 1600's made their homes along the edges of the streams and the banks of the Hudson River.

In 1686 Robert Sanders and Mydert Harmense bought a patent of land from the Wapani Indians. The next year, Baltus Barents Van Kleeck and Jens Handrick Ostrom each leased 48 acres for ten years. This area on the Fallkill became the hamlet of Poughkeepsie. By 1720 a church had been built and a courthouse completed. In 1788 a statute of the New York Legislature designated the boundaries of the counties and towns of the State. Poughkeepsie was one of nine designated towns in Dutchess County. The designation included the hamlet.

Poughkeepsie was the smallest of the nine. It was bounded on the south and east by the Wappinger Creek, on the west by the Hudson River and the north by an eastwest line approximately 2.5 miles north of the present Mid-Hudson Bridge? The area was crossed by two transportation routes: the Post Road (the present Route 9) and the Filkintown Road (the present Route 44). The Post Road was the main thoroughfare between Albany and New York; Filkintown Road was the first road to eastern Dutchess County and Connecticut. (The Filkintown Road became Main Street about 1800 when it was extended to the river).

By 1788 the tiny hamlet of Poughkeepsie with its 1714 population of 445 persons including 29 slaves2 had grown to more than 2000 people. (According to the Census for 1790 the town population was 2,529 people including 199 slaves). It had become an active business and recreational center for both the Town and the County.3 A County courthouse had been built to replace an earlier one. There were shops, a tavern, a hotel and a local newspaper which was the ancestor of The Poughkeepsie Journal.

During the Revolutionary War Poughkeepsie became the seat of the government of New York State. Although the legislature was moved to New York when the war ended, the presence of the State offices had made Poughkeepsie the site for the debate on New York State's ratification of the Constitution. It was finally ratified in the County Court House in Poughkeepsie on July 26, 1788.

In retrospect it is surprising to realize that Poughkeepsie, at the time of the Ratification Convention in 1788, had not yet even become a village in political terms. It did not attain that status in which it had a village board of trustees and special village ordinances until March 27, 1799. The City of Poughkeepsie, with a government entirely distinct from the Town of Poughkeepsie, was not incorporated until March 27, 1854.

Meanwhile from July 31, 1792 to April 1, 1802, Nicholas Power, Editor of the Pough-

keepsie Journal, was the first Postmaster. The Post Office, where the Poughkeepsie Journal was edited at the time, was on the North side of Main Street "not far above Van Kleeck's hat store."4

The Filkintown Road became Main Street about 1800 when it was extended to the River, and many early Main Street residences became business places. Market Street also had shops, small hotels and taverns. The Poughkeepsie Hotel, on the north side of Main Street, where Main Street ended, was called Baldwin's Hotel in 1803. About 1777 Stephen Hendrickson's Tavern was on the site which is now 28-34 Market Street. The Forbus House was built at this place after 18155 and in 1875-76 was replaced by the Nelson House6 which itself closed in 1963.

In 1688 Governor Dongan, the provincial governor of New York, had given Francis Rombout and Gulian Verplanck a license to purchase 85,000 acres from the Wappinger Indians. Nine thousand acres were within the southern boundary of the Town of Poughkeepsie. Most of the remaining acreage in the Town was acquired by freeholders and squatters.

Industries and settlements grew up along the creeks and streams where water powered mills could turn out food and lumber products for export and local use. By 1788 many farms had become commercial enterprises, selling their products locally and exporting large numbers of cattle and horses and quantities of grain. The Hudson River provided access for transportation of these products.

While today the population of Poughkeepsie is composed of many different ethnic and cultural groups, in 1788 the people were of Dutch and English extraction. There were a few Indians, testified by the genealogy of some Poughkeepsie families, and, of course, African slaves and a few freed slaves. It should be noted that while the Constitution did not give the vote to freed slaves, it was in Poughkeepsie on February 22, 1788 that the first law for the manumission of slaves in New York was passed.

We look back 200 years to a flourishing community and are glad that Poughkeepsie is still flourishing, prosperous and a good place to live.

Endnotes

1. In 1788 the Town and the hamlet were one geographical area. 2. Edmund Platt, The Eagle's History of Poughkeepsie from the Earliest Settlements, 1683 to 1905 (Platt and Platt, Poughkeepsie, 1905), p. 19. 3. The Town of Poughkeepsie Census of 1790. 4. Platt, p. 56. 5. Platt. p. 88. 6. James H. Smith, A History of Duchess County, New York, 1683-1882 (Syracuse: D. Mason & Co., 1882), p. 437.