Halfway Brook

In 1830 circuit riding preachers from the Methodist Episcopal Church began teaching in areas and villages on both sides of the Delaware River. They traveled mostly on foot or horseback.

Every two weeks Mr. Grace and Mr. Street preached in homes or public places in the town of Lumberland.

Services were conducted every night and visitations made during the day time.

Barryville Methodist Church
In 1835 the Methodists had a permanent minister in Barryville.

Preacher Badgely had been a circuit rider on both sides of the Delaware River for two years, going as far as Port Jervis.

Minister Badgely preached in Lumberland until 1846.

Most of the preachers who followed him preached for one year.

The current Barryville Methodist Church was dedicated in 1902.

My mom grew up in the Barryville parsonage (no longer there) next to the Barryville Church.

Her father was the pastor for the Barryville, Eldred, and Pond Eddy Methodist Churches, from 1936 to 1945.

Halfway Brook/Eldred Methodist Church
In the 1850s, and perhaps before, the Halfway Brook, later called the Eldred Methodist Episcopal Church, met in a building across the brook and across the road from the current Church property.

On July 4, 1859, Rev. J.O. Wisner dedicated the current building. The congregation owned both the property and building.

Shortly after the church was built, a wagon shed was added for the use of the members who drove some distance to church.

The steeple was added around 1900.

In the early 1800s church was held in log cabins, barns, and sawmills. In 1799 Isaac Sergeant helped organize the Narrows Falls Congregational Church, which became the Lumberland Congregational Church and eventually the Congregational Church of Eldred.

In 1816 Stephen Sergeant, son of Isaac and Mary Sergeant, held revival services in the barn of Asa Hickok, near Halfway Brook, two miles north of the future Barryville. Stephen pastored that congregation—the Lumberland (former Narrows Falls) Congregational Church, until 1826.

In 1832 the membership of the Halfway Brook/Lumberland Congregational Church, which had dropped to fifty people, met at a small schoolhouse. They still did not have a pastor.

In New York City schoolteacher Felix Kyte, from Lydd, England, advertised in the New York Observer for a position in a Congregational Church, because he had fewer students due to the cholera epidemic.

The deacons of the Lumberland Congregational Church saw Felix Kyte’s advertisement and encouraged James Eldred to respond to the ad.

James Eldred’s first letter invited Felix Kyte to pay them a visit at the Village in Lumberland, at least 90 miles away. Felix wrote back, and asked some questions, which James answered in his second letter, on August 7, 1832:

You ask the probable amount we would raise per Sabbath. I think we could raise $5 dollars per Sabbath for a season amongst ourselves…

At the place in which we live there is a school house in which we hold our meetings on every Sabbath on Halfway Brook, four miles from the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Several miles west, there is a meeting house, but few of our members are there and no meeting kept up.—James Eldred.

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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.

In 1829 whether by foot, horseback, canal or all three, Doctor Perkins journeyed from Poughkeepsie (on the Hudson River), New York, 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

A freshet is a sudden rise in the level of a stream, or a flood, caused by heavy rains or the rapid melting of snow and ice.

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

Around 1764, the year after the French and Indian War, Daniel Skinner built a 15 foot by 80 foot raft from six felled pine trees.

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.

1800 Lumberland Sawmills
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.