Halfway Brook

In my mother’s wonderful eclectic collection of family treasures were letters from 1845 and 1848. The letters were folded into an envelope, and then addressed. The contents of the letters are typed out in Chapter 6 in The Mill on Halfway Brook.
The last letter in this post was written in 1845 to James and [...]

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Between Beaver Brook Mills and Halfway Brook Village, was Blind Pond, which had a brook of the same name. A mile or so southeast of Blind Pond was a sawmill powered by Blind Pond Brook.

Blind Pond Brook. Photo courtesy of my cousin Cynthia.

Stonewalls where the old mill used to stand. Photos courtesy of Cynthia.

The Posts [...]

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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. [...]

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The work of most people in the area was related in some way to lumbering. Each lumbering company had its small community of employees, most of whom lived in make-shift tenements, and some did not have a garden. But all received wages which left no surplus at the end of the year.
—John W. Johnston, Reminiscences.
Chapter [...]

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Sixty years ago in December just closed, Grandfather Eldred came to this neighborhood. At that time it was called Lumberland. Uncle C.C.P. Eldred was a little over seven years old. Came from Orange County, Wallkill Township to Halfway Brook on the old Cochecton Road.
Here they found a sawmill and log house. No other building [...]

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It was the beginning of December 1815. A lone log house and sawmill stood silently on almost two acres of cleared land near the middle of Halfway Brook, in the Town of Lumberland, New York. There were no other buildings around for a mile in any direction.
So starts Chapter One in The Mill on Halfway [...]

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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 [...]

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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.
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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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