The old shingles were worn some, having been put on her house just 101 years ago.
Mrs. Mary Skinner, who lives in Wayne County, Pa., across the Delaware River from this Village [Cochecton], has been having her house shingled and repaired.
There would be nothing strange about this, but for the fact that this is the first time the house has been repaired or reshingled since 1796, when the dwelling was built. It is known in the Skinner family as the new house, because it took the place of the old house which was built in 1765 and was burned by the Indians in 1777. The old barn is still standing, though it was built in 1777, and needs no repairs.
The locality where these buildings stand was one of the first places where white people settled in the Delaware Valley, the Skinner family having gone thither in 1754.
Daniel Skinner the pioneer of the family, was an old sailor. The hills and valleys hereabouts were covered with a dense forest of pine. Daniel Skinner knew the value of the timber for ship spars and he thought he could find a profitable market for it at Philadelphia. But Philadelphia was 250 miles away, with no means of communication but a river, the character of whose channel was then unknown to any living white person.
Daniel Skinner made a raft of pine tree stems, and with a hired man started down the river with it in the spring of 1765. He started the raft on a raging flood and landed safely at Philadelphia in 48 hours.
He sold the timber for 4 pounds a stick. There were twenty of them in the raft. Such sticks would be cheap at $150 a piece today. that was the beginning of rafting on the Delaware.
Skinner and his companion made the journey from Philadelphia home on foot, more than 200 miles being through an unbroken wilderness. They were two weeks on the way. the Skinner estate has never been in possession of any one other than a descendant of the pioneer.—unknown newspaper, 1897.
Note: Some details vary in other accounts of Daniel Skinner’s raft trip.
