Issue 1
March 2017
Milan NY Histor Why There Is Much To Celebrate
~ Patents, Lots, Partitions ~ The Evolving Framework That Created Milan
Bicentennial Logo Milan resident and Bicentennial Committee member Bobbi Egan designed the Bicentennial Logo. It includes a depiction of the front door of Wilcox Memorial Town Hall, today’s location of town government, which opened in 1966. There is a depiction of Irene Kilmer Wilcox, a life-long resident, who generously gave the town its town hall and the property on which it stands. The sheep represents farming, which for most of the town’s history was the basis of its economy. The tree reflects the town’s continuing rural character. The Milan Town Board established the Bicentennial Committee to “Collect. Preserve. Share. Celebrate 200 Years of Milan History.” Members of the committee are Johanna Bard, Liz Burns, Jack Campisi, Reg Coon, Bobbi Egan, Wendy Foss-Jeffries, Cathie Gill, Bill Jeffway, Alan Kulick, Ingrid Kulick, Vicky LoBrutto, and Jackie Reynolds. We invite every resident to participate in some way and be part of Milan’s evolving history.
Visit Our Website www.milanNYhistory.org for our 2018 schedule of events The articles without attribution are the collaborative work of Bill Jeffway, Victoria LoBrutto and Jack Campisi.
The 1609 journey of Henry Hudson up what we now call the Hudson River on behalf of the Dutch led to a large regional claim called New Netherland. The 1664 take-over by the British (without a shot being fired) changed the regional name to New York. It also marked a more concerted effort to build settlements for those of European and African heritage for both economic and security reasons. Dutchess County was created in 1683 under the jurisdiction of Ulster County and remained so until 1714. It stretched from the Cortland Manor (Westchester County) to Livingston Manor (Columbia County). Between 1685 and 1706 the county was divided into 13 patents granted by the Colonial Governor to friends and political allies (see map). The last of these patents, the one that encompasses the future town of Milan, was the Little Nine Partners, formed in 1706. There appears to have been little or no effort made to sell off the land until 1744 when the Little Nine Partners patent was subdivided into 63 lots (see map), which were in turn assigned to the partners, one of whom was Robert Lurting, Mayor of New York. Lurting died in 1735, and by means not at all clear, one of his lots — Number 22 — came into the possession of Robert Livingston, Third Lord of the Manor, grandson of Robert Livingston, First Lord of the Manor. Besides being significant landowners, the Livingstons, like many of their contemporaries, were land speculators. Lot 22 offered an opportunity for profit, if buyers could be found. One group of potential buyers was made up of Palatine Germans and their descendants, who originally settled in what is today Germantown. By the second half of the 18th century many had moved, looking for land of their own. One such family was the Rowe family. In 1760, Johannes Rowe, Jr. bought Lot No. 22 from Robert Livingston. Originally, the German family name was Rau, which came to be spelled in English “Row” and eventually Continued on Page 2...
Patents, Lots, Partitions from Page1...
“Rowe.” The pronunciation of “Rowe” rhymes with now, not low, reflecting its German origins. Johannes, Jr. did not live long. He died in 1771 and is interred at the Rowe Cemetery. However, he left a lasting legacy. He built a stone house in 1766 that remained almost two centuries on what we now call Rowe Road (see photos). The fact that the house was a full two stories, and that brick was used in the gables is a sign of wealth. Johannes, Jr.’s children were active in the creation and support of the Methodist Church in the late 1700s, a congregation that survives to this day. The original Church building from the late 18th century no longer stands. It was replaced in 1838, along with a Parsonage, in the fashionable Greek Revival style of the time (visible today), through the generosity of the third generation of the Rowe family. Another large group of settlers in what was to become Milan were the Quakers, who came from New England and Long Island. Among them was Benjamin Thorn, who built both a sawmill and gristmill just within the bounds of Lot 22. The area we know today at the corner of Field Road and Salisbury Turnpike was then known as the hamlet of Thornville. Spilling over to the west into Lot 21, Thorn built his home and funded the construction of the Quakers’ “Little Nine Partners Meeting House” on what is today Morehouse Lane. His son Stephen was Milan’s first supervisor in 1818, and built his house about a quarter mile west of his father’s. In summary, the 1706 Little Nine Partners Patent and its 1744 subdivision into 63 lots created the framework. It was the specific purchase of Lot No. 22 by the Rowe family, and the Rowe family’s subsequent sale of important land containing streams that could support mills to the Thorns, that accelerated settlement. In addition to homes, the construction of Methodist and Quaker houses of worship in and adjacent to the lot, created an important agricultural, commercial and spiritual “center” of the town as it emerged in 1818. Records Ancient Records of the Dutchess County Clerk, Poughkeepsie. Archives of Rowe United Methodist Church. Archives of the Town of Milan. US Federal Census Records: 1790, 1800, 1810.
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Reference Books Bangs, Nathan. The Life of the Rev. Freeborn Garrettson, 1829. Hasbrouck, Frank. The History of Dutchess County, NY 1909. Huntting, Isaac. History of Little Nine Partners. 1897. Smith, P.H. General History of Duchess [sic] County, 1877. Wilkinson Reynolds, Helen. Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley Before 1766. 1928.
Special Thanks The Pastors and Parishioners of the Rowe Methodist Church. Geoff Benton, Historian and Curator of Collections, Clermont. Bobbie Thompson, former Milan Town Historian.
(1) Milan Town Hall, opened 1966. (2) Rowe Methodist Church, 1838. (3) Rowe Parsonage, 1838. (4) Rowe Cemetery, first burial 1765. (5) Rowe House, 1819. (6) Johannes Rowe House, 1760, no longer standing.
This house, built by Quaker Benjamin Thorn, no longer stands at the corner of Field Road and Salisbury Turnpike. Thorn also built a sawmill and gristmill at the “four corners.”
1818 Legislation and the Town’s Creation
Milan was formed out of the Town of Northeast by the New York State Legislature on March 6, 1818. The act was the result of a meeting of residents held the previous December, at which, in the words of Isaac Huntting, “Peter Snyder, Jacob Shook, John F. Bartlett and Henry W. Stewart were appointed a committee to give public notice that a petition. . .” to form a town would be sent to the state legislature. The petition had its desired effect, and in short order the petitioners received the legislation that defined the boundaries of the town, provided for the election of town officers on April 7, 1818, named the town Milan, reserved the remaining land in the Little Nine Partners Patent for the Town of Northeast, and provided for the division of taxes raised to support the poor, all in the space of three paragraphs.
Whites
Male 866
Slaves
8
10
21
28
915
869
Free Colored Persons Total
Female 831
=
1,784
Nearly half of the total population were children 15 years of age and younger. This left 458 males 16 years and older to do the bulk of the farm and manufacturing work and just 437 girls and women to maintain the households. The census tells us that there were 307 households (11 headed by women), 358 men engaged in farming, three in undefined commerce and 77 in manufacturing: blacksmiths, furniture makers, wagon makers, and the like, in the town.
As directed, the town voters met at the home of Stephen Thorn to elect the town’s officers. Thorn was elected supervisor and John F. Bartlett town clerk. In addition, the voters elected three assessors, three commissioners of highways, three school commissioners, five common school inspectors, two overseers of the poor and three fence viewers. Notable for its absence is any mention of a town board, but the titles do reflect the limited concerns the state delegated to towns: education, roads, the poor and settling property line disputes. Shortly after election, Thorn and the overseers of the poor met with their counterparts in Northeast and divided responsibilities for the poor, Milan taking 12, Northeast 10, and the two towns sharing the expense for three.
An 1824 publication, Spafford’s Gazetteer, sheds more light on the agricultural and manufacturing activities in the town. It reports that some 15,392 acres had been cleared, two-thirds of the total town’s acreage. On that land Milan farmers raised 1,834 cattle, 679 horses, 3,618 sheep, and households produced some 17,866 yards of cloth. There were seven gristmills, four sawmills, one fulling mill (fulling is the process of removing dirt and oils from raw wool), and, to top it off, one distillery. The town’s assessed value (for the purpose of taxation) was $370,794 (or 7.2 million in current dollars). Finally, the town had 11 schools and just 348 voters.
By 1818, Milan was no longer a forested expanse. The federal census of 1820 shows a population of 1,784 spread over its 36 square mile area. (As a point of reference, Milan’s population in 1990 was 1,895.) The census divides the town’s residents into three groups by gender: white, slaves and free colored persons.
Lest we become lulled into the belief that rural life was simple or easy, let us quote a brief description by historian William P. McDermott of the tasks required to maintain a farm in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. He points out that most farms required at least seasonal help because the work was so labor intensive. He writes: Aided by only a few primitive mechanized tools most farming was still a hands-on occupation in the mid-nineteenth century. Plowing, planting, spreading fertilizer, Continued on Page 4...
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1818 Legislation from Page3...
through late fall. But feeding and watering animals, milking, making butter, herding, fattening animals, butchering, shearing sheep and related other livestock chores were year round responsibilities. Clearing new land or maintaining unused land, logging, cutting firewood, mending fences, repairing farm building, cutting ice, carting farm products to market and related other activities were mainly non-growing season chores. To these were added husking and shelling corn, threshing and winnowing grains, making cider, orchard maintenance, and wool preparation. . . . Wives contributed time when they were not busy making butter, raising children, cooking, cleaning, mending and fueling the fire. Add to this the vagaries of weather and markets, the risks of injury and the periodic visitations of a host of pathogens, as the scattering of town cemeteries bare witness; one cannot but admire the tenacity of these early settlers. Further Reading: Fourth U.S. Census, 1820. Milan Enumeration. Hasbrouck, Frank, ed., The History of Dutchess County, New York. S.A. Mathieu: Poughkeepsie, 1909. Huntting, Isaac, History of Little Nine Partners of North East Precinct, and Pine Plains, New York, Dutchess County. A Palatine Reprint: Rhinebeck, N.Y. 1974. McDermott, William P. Dutchess County’s Plain Folk; Enduring uncertainty, inequality, and uneven prosperity, 1725-1875. Kerleen Press: Clinton Corners, N.Y. 2004. Spafford, Horatio Gates, ed., Gazetteer of the State of New York. B.D. Pachard and H.G. Spafford: Troy. 1824.
www.milanNYhistory.org Facebook.com/groups/milanNYhistory milanNYhistory@gmail.com -4-
Dutchess County Historical Society Year Book, Volume 24, 1939. Map of Dutchess County superimposed upon the townships of 1939. This map shows the patents for land that were issued in the 17th and 18th century.
The 911 acre “Lot 22� bought by Johannes Rowe in 1760 became home to the Rowe family for generations, supported the founding of the Methodist Church and the location of the Milan Town Hall. This map was created in 1744 to show which of the 63 lots had been assigned to which of the nine original owners or their heirs or assigns. The border of contemporary Milan is shown as dotted line. Lot 22 indicated.
Town of Milan Bicentennial Committee Wilcox Memorial Town Hall 20 Wilcox Circle Milan, NY 12571
www.milanNYhistory.org Facebook.com/groups/milanNYhistory milanNYhistory@gmail.com
CELEBRATE 200 YEARS OF MILAN HISTORY Showing an outline in red, future Town of Milan, south of Livingston Manor mid-way between Hudson River and Connecticut border.
Original deed for Lot 22 to Johannes Rowe, Jr.
Courtesy of Rowe Methodist Church