Recently I was sent the following photos of Halfway Brook in the fall of 2021, that I thought went along with the last post on Freshets and Floods.
Special Thanks and Credit: Laughing Water Photos.
Freshets were necessary to float the rafts of lumber to market, but they could cause much devastation.
May Flood 1832
“During the winter, large quantities of lumber from the Halfway Brook mills were drawn to Barryville, made into rafts, then taken to Handsome Eddy, two or three miles further down the river. There they waited for the spring freshets…
“In early spring 1832, at least 2,000,000 feet, and 20 to 25 double rafts of sawn lumber sat at Handsome Eddy, ready to float to market. The water level of the river remained low through the first week of May, which was unusual.
“Owners were anxious to get their rafts to market; the raftmen were uneasy about doing so in such low water. What to do?
“Starting May 8, 1832, it rained violently day and night for three days and nights. The Delaware River, a raging flood, was covered with the valuable lumber and rafts which had been anchored in Handsome Eddy…
“The May flood, was the highest known until the flood of 1869 and one in 1895, which was 16 inches higher.”—Johnston’s Reminiscences, p. 276.
Freshet Damage in 1846
In Phoebe Maria Eldred Austin’s 1846 letter to her sister Mary Ann Eldred, she mentioned the freshet damage done in Halfway Brook, that year.
Lumberland, July 13, 1846
Dear Sister,
I have delayed writing longer than I intended, but these lines will inform that we are well at present and I hope they will find you the same.
There’s been a freshet in the Halfway Brook. It has done much damage. There is not a bridge or dam left between here and Barryville. It has damaged us more than fifty dollars…From your affectionate sister, P. M. Austin
Daniel ingeniously lashed these logs (masts for boats), together, added a rudder, and floated the raft down the river—Timber Rafting it was called.
Leaving Cushetunk/Cochecton where he lived, Daniel and two others (one drowned) rafted about 200 miles down the Delaware River, past the settlements at Narrowsburgh, Ten Mile River, Shohola and the River, Pond Eddy, Mongaup, and Carpenter’s Point, and headed southeast to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Mr. Skinner was paid twenty-four pounds—four pounds per mast.
In 1800, Lumberland (then two years old), had a population of 733, most of whom had lumber-related jobs.
Saw-mills operated on various streams—see 1838 Map.
Enormous amounts of lumber were made into rafts and floated down one of the many rivers or brooks in the area that fed into the Delaware River.
The Delaware River flowed to Carpenter’s Point (Port Jervis) and on south to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the lumber could be sold.
The Largest Raft
A Mr. Barnes took a 85 feet wide, 215 feet long raft, loaded with 120,000 feet of lumber down the Delaware River.
Kill/e is Dutch for a creek as in Wallkill or Beaver Kill.
Callicoon Creek
Dutch hunters named the area Kollikoonkill because there were so many Kollikoon or wild turkeys.
Whortleberries
Around 1850 George W. Eldred wrote his cousin Stephen St. Gardener that he and a friend had gone to Hagan Pond (Highland Lake) to pick whortleberries.
I had not heard of whortleberries, but a Halfway Brook reader wrote that “those whortleberries are huckleberries, and they still grow in abundance. They taste just like blueberries, only they have a tiny pit inside.”
And as I think about it now, I remember my dad often talking about huckleberries. I’m sure he picked his share growing up.
Delaware River Named
In 1610, a Captain Samuel Argall named both the Lenape River, and the people living on its banks, the Delaware in honor of Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, his patron, a British nobleman and Virginia’s first colonial governor.
Eel Weir
“Fish and eel were plentiful in the Delaware River. The Van Tuyl, Middaugh, Hooker families and others kept a barrel of salted eels for winter meals. Each child’s dinner would be a boiled eel and four buckwheat pancakes.”—from Johnston, Reminiscences.
In the 1930s my mom lived in the Barryville Parsonage. Mom said there were eel racks in the Delaware River. At times their meal included eel cut in two-inch pieces and fried, which mom remembered as tasting good.
Eels are still trapped in eel weirs near Pond Eddy, on the Delaware.
The brooks and streams flowed into the Delaware River, which was the southwest border between New York and Pennsylvania.
The numerous mills built on the many streams are shown on the 1838 Lumberland map. Streams with such names as Ten Mile River, Mongaup, Beaver Brook, and of course Halfway Brook.
When I wrote The Mill on Halfway Brook, I had not seen the 1838 Lumberland map, courtesy of the Sullivan County Historical Society.
My research had indicated there were eight or nine sawmills on Halfway Brook. So I was surprised to see so many mills not only on Halfway Brook, but on the other brooks and rivers.
I also learned that where the Eldreds lived was called Eldredville. James Eldred, the Postmaster, had the Post Office in his home. Perhaps that explains the label of Eldredville.
Halfway Brook in the town of Highland, Sullivan County, New York, is a nine mile stream that flows into the Delaware River.
At the end of 1815 James Eldred (my great-great-grand-father) settled with his family in a cabin with a sawmill on land near the middle of Halfway Brook, in what was then Lumberland.
The northwest corner of that Eldred property was later called Halfway Brook Village.
Now called Eldred, it was the area that my father’s ancestors lived.
The Hickoks arrived around 1812 and settled two miles north of the Delaware River. Then the Eldreds in 1815.
By 1834 the Leavenworths lived west of the Eldreds.
In 1852 the Myers and Van Pelt relatives lived on the east side, near Hagan Pond, now Highland Lake.
There were a number of other families that settled on either side of Halfway Brook that were friends or neighbors of my relatives.
Through the years, many of the early settlers’ descendants remained in the area and became related to me through marriage. Meeting some of those descendants who shared their information was one of the many benefits of writing the Halfway Brook Series.
My new series: “Revisiting Halfway Brook,” looks back at Halfway Brook posts which started in fall 2009, the year my husband Gary created this site.
In September of 2009, as Gary completely remodeled our kitchen (at one point we had to walk outside from the living room, to the garage to get to the kitchen), I wrote my first post, welcoming friends and relatives to Halfway Brook to introduce them to my (then) upcoming book, The Mill on Halfway Brook, the first of three in my Memoirs from Eldred, New York, 1800–1950 Series.
In the years since 2009, my office has been in two rooms: first crowded into the “everything room”; next (and currently) in a large former bedroom.
I have gone through at least three computers: a G-5, a Hackentosh, and currently a Mac mini; a number of back up drives; and several monitors—thanks to Gary’s assistance.
The digital backup is one thing, but the paper records and information along with all the Smith and most of my parents’ photos and nostalgia—much of which is in binders seen in the current office photo—is overwhelming.
The original books, seen in the 2011 photo, and my research books were moved to a new bookcase, now in the corner of my office.
Revisiting Halfway Brook
I hope you will enjoy the next series of posts—a visit that starts in 2009 as I discovered so much I never knew about Eldred, New York, and met so many incredibly helpful friends and family. It was a grand time of meeting new friends (and relatives), sharing information, and packages packed with photos, documents, letters, etc. So many great memories!
Hello Halfway Brook Friends!
I hope your 2024 is off to a good start.
Gary and I have been enjoying building with logs made by Clydesdale Cabins, in Minnesota. Last night we added Gary’s old Lionel Train set.
Here are a few photos I thought you might enjoy. I hope to start a new series of posts in the near future.
Chester, Ida, and Clara lived on the 183-acre family farm that Chester inherited.
Chester had attended Delaware Literary Institute, of Franklin, New York and obtained a first-grade certificate. For twelve years Chester taught school in the winter, and worked on the farm in the summer.
We learned from Chester’s letters to Emma Austin that he taught one summer in Deposit. Lumberland seems to be the first school where Chester taught.
Chester kept a diary* in which he wrote about his and his family’s daily activities, the phone line going in, working on the highway, the Walton Fair, local fires, paying $5 for his hired hand’s teeth, selling his farm products in town, and paying $7.50 for a course in arithmetic. Also mentioned in the diary were people in Brooklyn, New York that he corresponded with.—Chester’s 1902 handwritten diary.
We also learned from Chester’s letters that he loved to fish and farm. Along with his horses and cattle, Chester raised vegetables and made “fine dairy butter and maple sugar.”
“Mr. Beers is a man of integrity and strong convictions, and is held in high consideration in the neighborhood where he has spent his life. He is a man of large physique and fine presence, being six feet four and one-half inches tall, and weighing two hundred and forty pounds…”—1895 Biography of Leading Citizens in Delaware County, NY.
Chester Beers** passed away on December 21, 1902, Walton, NY, several days after illness, one day before his sixtieth birthday.
* A year ago I found Chester’s 1902 Diary offered for sale. The dairy info referenced people Chester corresponded with in Brooklyn, New York, who I imagine were Emma Austin, Emma’s family, and others Chester had mentioned in his letters. Continue reading
Edith Emogene Austin (1851–1879
On the morning of November 13, 1879 Edith Emogene (Emma) Austin, 28, daughter of Henry and Mary Ann Austin, died from tuberculosis, at the home of her brothers in Solomon, Kansas.
Emma had been in poor health for more than a year. The last few months of her life she “suffered very much and was confined to her bed.” Emma was “greatly esteemed by all who knew her” and “left a large circle of mourning friends.” Rev. Mr. Pierson conducted the funeral service at the Presbyterian Church. Emma Austin was buried in a plot that Ell Austin had bought in Prairie Mound Cemetery.
2012 Visit to Prairie Mound Cemetery
In March 2012, on the way home from Iowa, Gary and I arrived before dark at the Prairie Mound Cemetery, near the delightful, small town of Solomon. It was about 41 degrees and windy, rather cold for a wimpy Arizonan so I bundled up. Emma (Edith Emogene) Austin was buried in a plot, near the Parmenters, that was owned by her brother Ell (James Eldred Austin), but there was no stone. About 20 years earlier there was a stone with the name Austin and another stone thought to be Emma’s, but the wind seems to have pelted away the name.
The Last Poem Emma Wrote: “I Am Tired”
Shall I fold my hands and rest from earth?
I am tired of the journey’s length,
I have wandered far, I am sick and faint,
I have prayed so long for strength. Continue reading
