1832: Rev. Felix Kyte

by Louise Smith Posted on December 17, 2009

In 1832, the Congregational Church of Halfway Brook had been without a pastor for six years—since Rev. Stephen Sergeant had left and gone to the Presbyterian Church. The congregation was meeting in the small school house at Halfway Brook, known as The Village, and the membership had dropped to 50.

The deacons, including James Eldred and Sears Gardner, had taken over the pastor’s responsibilities, and thought the church needed a full time pastor. Sears Gardner, had seen Felix Kyte’s advertisement for a position as minister of a Congregational Church in the New York Observer, and encouraged James Eldred to respond to the ad.

Felix Kyte, a schoolteacher from Lydd, England, was living with his wife and two sons in New York City, where there had been many deaths due to the cholera epidemic. Left with fewer students to teach, Felix was considering leaving.
Continue reading →

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Congregational and Methodist Churches

by Louise Smith Posted on December 17, 2009

In 1799, Isaac Sergeant helped organize the Narrows Falls Congregational Church, which eventually became the Congregational Church of Eldred. In the early years, the church met in log cabins, barns and sawmills.

From 1816 Stephen Sergeant, son of Isaac and Mary Sergeant, held revival services in the barn of Asa Hickok. In 1818, Stephen was asked to be the pastor of the Lumberland (former Narrows Falls) Congregational Church.

Stephen and his wife, Anna Penney had five sons in 1818. The descendants of their son Ethel are part of this story, and some grew up or still live in the town of Eldred. In 1826, Stephen Sergeant left the Congregational Church for a Presbyterian Church.

The Congregational Church of Lumberland was still struggling without a preacher in 1830, when, circuit riding preachers from the Methodist Episcopal Church, traveling mostly on foot or horseback, began teaching in areas and villages on both sides of the Delaware River.

Mr. Grace and Mr. Street, came every two weeks to the town of Lumberland, preaching in homes or public places. Services were conducted every night and visitations made during the day time.

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1829: Doctor Perkins arrives in Lumberland

by Louise Smith Posted on December 8, 2009

There was still no good way to travel on land in 1828. Whether you walked or rode a horse, the roads were rough and through the wilderness.

Whether by foot, horseback, canal or all three, Doctor Perkins left Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1829, and managed to arrive in Lumberland, where he would be the only physician for over 300 square miles. Fortunately, the people were usually healthy.

Doc Perkins treated disease with one of five or six prescriptions—if he could find the description in his book. He did not like the homelike, superstitious ideas, and notions that prevailed at the time.

Doc Perkins first boarded at Robert Land’s house at Beaver Brook, four miles back from the river and canal. The fun loving, agreeable doctor, always wore a suit of heavy winter clothes, and traveled on horseback without a padded saddle or coated stirrups.

“Thus for 24 years, he traveled many thousands of miles over the rough highways, the narrow timber roads, the cow paths; over hills and through valleys, through dark, dense wildernesses and groves of lofty timber, during night and day, amid sunshine and storm, cold and heat…”

Doc Perkins charged twenty-five cents for a visit to the village or the area nearby, with the option to pay or not. A visit to Ten Mile River from Barryville (eleven miles through the woods), was seventy-five cents. One family of 5 children and a mother, he contracted for $5 a year. Some families never paid the doctor, though he had called on them for 18 years.

The good doctor married Comelia Dabron in 1832, and they moved into the old Hickok farmhouse, two miles from Barryville on the way to Halfway Brook Village.—Johnston, Reminiscences, pp. 340, 342, 343

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Book 2: Echo Hill and Mountain Grove, November 18, 2009

by Louise Smith Posted on November 18, 2009

Book 1, The Mill on Halfway Brook, starts off in the town of Lumberland, the main occupation of the people there relating to lumber.

Before 1880, when Book 2 starts, the work base has shifted to work on the canal, railroad, bluestone quarries and running boarding homes, though there are still some sawmills in the area.

The boarding homes will be a main feature of book 2 as my Leavenworth great grandparents ran Echo Hill Farm House and later my Austin relatives had a boarding home called, Mountain Grove.

Hence the name of Book 2: Echo Hill and Mountain Grove. It will cover years 1880 to 1935.

There were many other boarding homes in the area, many of which seem to be much larger than the Leavenworth and Austin homes. I am planning on including these homes also.

I have photos/postcards of some of the homes, thanks to my mom, Cousin C., Mrs. M., and Mr. & Mrs. R. But I can use more, and don’t have all of the homes.

If you have information, interesting stories, memorabilia, or postcards on any of these homes, that you would like to share, please contact me at this site, or email me: weezy at halfwaybrook.com or weezy at weezy.info

Does anyone know when Abel Sprague Myers’s boarding home (I think called Orchard Terrace), which became a school, was built, and if he built it?

Also, does anyone know anything about Gallaghers on the 1870 Beer Map.

Thank you.

Ever Your Cousin,
Louise

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Book 1 Update, November 18, 2009

by Louise Smith Posted on November 18, 2009

You may be wondering when/if Book I will be published this year. I know I am.

Book I is in Book Limbo at present. Gary has done some awesome maps that will be so helpful as you read the story. But then life took over, so the book is on hold.

By “life taking over,” I mean things like:

    • the continual remodeling of our home, of which the kitchen is now done except lighting, and currently the raising of the living room floor. There are a couple other possible projects, then hopefully the inside will be done.

    • the rebooting and/or formatting (or whatever it is called) of my computer which likes to crash—today for the third time.

    • most importantly, there has been paying work, and that is a plus as I (we) have a bad habit of liking to eat and to have a place to be shielded from the elements.

At this point, it would seem the earliest The Mill on Halfway Brook could realistically be available would be the end of December. Hopefully, at least by mid-January. This seems to be the book which is always two months away. Continue reading →

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Lord and Taylor 1826

by Louise Smith Posted on November 15, 2009

Lord & Taylor, based in New York City, New York, is the oldest upscale department store chain in the United States.

Lord and Taylor began in New York in 1826, as a small dry goods store owned by cousins Samuel Lord and George Washington Taylor, immigrants to New York. They located their store near the North River waterfront in New York’s Greenwich Village.

The store later moved to a place uptown on the Ladies’ Mile, which catered to the wealthier clientele of the “carriage trade.” The enterprise became a major fashion retailer, and the first major store on Fifth Avenue.

Note: George Washington Taylor was the half-brother of Elizabeth Lazerlier Van Pelt, my great-great-great-grandmother. George Washington Taylor Myers was the grandson of Elizabeth Lazerlier Van Pelt. It would seem his parents, Martin D. and Jane Ann Van Pelt Myers named him after his Grandmother Elizabeth’s younger half-brother.

Lord and Taylor History

Lord and Taylor History

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School 1825

by Louise Smith Posted on November 14, 2009

Sears Gardner was the Town of Lumberland’s supervisor in 1825, when a school was started for children in the area of Halfway Brook Village and Barryville. James Eldred, was the Town Clerk, Commissioner of Highways, and in July, Town Marshall.

The community felt a school was needed, and as was done in those times, a subscription paper was circulated to see if there was enough interest to start a school.

Francis Quick circulated the subscription document which stated that school would be for three months of the year at a time, and would be taught every week day, and on alternate Saturdays. People were to add their signatures and the number of children they were responsible for if they were committed to supporting the school.

Nine parents signed up twenty-eight students. The Francis Quick family, and the Van Tuyl family (Daniel and Rebecca), each had five children. The Calvin Crane family had four as did Jane Johnston, the widowed mother of John W. Johnston. The Levi Middaugh Family had three; so did James and Almira Hooker. Daniel Pool had two children. The Nicholas Morris Family and David Quick’s Family each had one. Continue reading →

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1805 to 1830 Where to buy food & dry goods

by Louise Smith Posted on November 10, 2009

Getting food and necessities for living was quite challenging in Lumberland’s early days. Needed items were purchased from the Village of Newburgh—about sixty miles from Lumberland. The round trip on the Newburgh-Cochecton Turnpike took a week.

Farm produce, cattle, and wood products were transported from Newburgh west on the Turnpike. Items the settlers wanted to sell were sent to Newburgh, and from there, transported by boat to New York City, another 65 miles away.

A bit later, but still early on, food and dry goods came from Carpenter’s Point (Port Jervis, roughly 20 miles away). At Carpenter’s Point, grain could also be ground into flour. In the winter, when the Delaware River was frozen, goods were hauled on the ice from Carpenter’s Point to Lumberland.

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Grandmother and the Bear

by Louise Smith Posted on November 3, 2009

Many wild animals still roamed the forest, in the 1820s, including bears. Years later, Jacob Stage’s wife, Martha Carmichael, told a story about her grandmother as a young mother.

The menfolk had gone some distance to hunt and left Grandmother alone with her children in a recently built house with only a curtain for a door.

When a bear appeared at the door wanting something to eat, Grandmother hid the children under the bed, and beat off the bear with anything she could grab.

From then on, Martha’s Grandmother refused to stay alone when the men were away. Do you blame her?

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1824: Shohola, Pennsylvania and Lumbering

by Louise Smith Posted on November 2, 2009

In late 1824, Garrett Wilson and three other men purchased Shohola Lumber property in Shohola, Pennsylvania, across from what was then called the River Settlement, now Barryville.

Mr. Wilson became the sole manager, and the company was
“…constantly engaged in cutting logs, drawing and placing them in the Shohola Brook where they lay until the water of the brook became sufficient to float them to the mill pond.

“That was the process by which all the timber of the large tract was made to reach the mill—logs cut and drawn by the teams to the nearest point of the brook and there deposited, either in the water or upon the immediate shore.

“…[Mr. Wilson] with 12 or 15 men, mechanics and laborers, removed the old saw mill, erected a new and larger mill with two saw gates, renewed and raised the dam increasing the water power…”—Johnston, Reminiscences p. 305, 7

“Lumbering was the only business of the section, cutting and drawing logs, sawing and hauling boards, rafting and running lumber down the stream…”
—Johnston, Reminiscences, p. 293

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