The Halfway Brook (there is another one in New York) I write about, is in a most gorgeous area called the Upper Delaware River Region, in New York State. This Halfway Brook was the name of a nine-mile stream, before it became the name of the Village which is now Eldred.
Halfway Brook flowed through an ocean of large old magnificent trees in the town appropriately named Lumberland, in late 1815, when my great-great-grandfather James Eldred and his family settled in the area.
There were several nearby settlements in the area when the Eldred family arrived. At the mouth of Halfway Brook on the Delaware River was The River settlement, which became Barryville.
Northwest of The River, also on the Delaware River, was the Ten Mile River Settlement (later Tusten) on the Ten Mile River. And to the southeast of the River was/is Mongaup on the, guess the name—Mongaup River.
The mouth of Halfway Brook is halfway between the Ten Mile River and the Mongaup Settlements, hence the name. Or that is what I read.
I also read that what became the location of Halfway Brook Village was at one time midway on an ancient path that went from the Mongaup Settlement to the Ten Mile Settlement. Halfway Brook Village grew up about four miles north of “The River”, and slightly to the east, near the middle of Halfway Brook.
That is where James and Polly Eldred, their five children—Amelia, Sarah, Eliza, Abraham Mulford, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Eldred, and possibly Mary Hulse Eldred Forgeson (mother of James—hence my 3G-grandmother [no not an iphone]—settled a couple days before the end of the year 1815—according to the family story.
The Mill on Halfway Brook follows the lives of the Eldred family (Polly Eldred died, and James then marries Hannah Hickok, who was my 2G grandmother), their neighbors, and my relatives as they move into the Village, Town of Lumberland, which later became Eldred in the town of Highland.
