POUGHKEEPSIE.
Poughkeepsie is the Apo-keep-sinck of the Indians, the "pleasant and safe harbor" where canoes were safe from wind and wave. The name is said to be spelled some forty-two different ways in the old town records. The "safe harbor" was made so by rocky bluffs projecting into the river; that on the south being known to the Dutch as Call Rock, though it did not sound like that in the vernacular. From this rock old Baltus Van Kleeck and his neighbors were wont to hail passing sloops for news or passage.
An Indian legend associated with the little cove here has the same comfortable and satisfying outcome as the old-fashioned romance, when it was not so necessary to be realistic as in the present day. A war party of the Delawares, after a successful raid on their neighbors, the Pequods, reached this spot on the return journey, laden with spoils and captives, among the latter a young chief who, after the manner of most Indian tribes, was offered the choice of joining the tribe of his foes or suffering death by torture. Being a Pequod Patrick Henry he chose the latter, and preparations were made for his demise, when a beautiful maiden interfered. She was also a captive from the same tribe, and much in love with her doomed tribesman. During the delay thus caused the party was unexpectedly attacked by a band of Hurons, and the maiden fell prize to the latter. The chief escaped, and disguising himself as a wizard, visited the Huron camp where, strange to say, the maiden promptly fell ill upon the arrival of the strange medicine man, who was employed to effect a cure. They fled under cover of the dark, appropriating a handy canoe for the purpose, and the Hurons followed in the next boat, but the Pequod, landing his beloved at the mouth of the Minnakee Creek, turned on his pursuers and, like the true hero of legend, drove them off single handed. The lovers returned home, married, and lived happily ever after.
Poughkeepsie, on account of its central position, was early chosen as the county seat, and became the scene of many stirring incidents during the stirring times of '76. But few mementoes of those days are left, however. The Van Kleeck house, at one time a tavern, used by the Dutchess County Committee as a meeting place in 1774 to elect delegates to the first Continental Congress, has disappeared. The Legislature in its migrations around the state met here in January, 1778, at the call of Governor Clinton. Clinton himself, during this time, occupied the Clear Everett House, which is still standing on Main Street, and is open to the public as a museum.
The great struggle which was to decide whether New York should join the newly formed National Government was fought out in Poughkeepsie. On June 17, 1788, the Convention of the People of the State met to deliberate on the new Constitution. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and Chancellor Livingston, a magnificent trio of pleaders, were the principal speakers in favor of the Union, while Governor George Clinton and others, whose names are not familiar except to students of history, headed the opposition. New York separated New England from the South, and was necessary to the Union, but there was a powerful party headed by Governor Clinton which opposed the plan. The Governor, in fact, had the majority with him, and when Hamilton and the others carried the convention by only one vote, it was a greater victory than the narrow margin would indicate. Poughkeepsie was a "safe harbor" in which to build ships, and it was here, in 1775-6, that the frigates Congress and Montgomery of the Continental navy were built under the supervision of Captains Lawrence and Tudor.
HYDE PARK.
Leaving Poughkeepsie the intervening six miles to Hyde Park are so park-like that the place seems to come naturally by its name. The road is of the best, the bordering fields are under a high state of cultivation, interspersed with groves of beautiful trees, through whose aisles are to be seen occasional glimpses of the Hudson and, on a clear day, the distant Catskills that, like low-lying clouds, top the nearer hills of the middle distance. The place is named for Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, Governor of the Province at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century. Jacobus Stoutenburg, the first settler, built a stone house which still stands on the east side of the road in the southern edge of the village. It has the reputation of having been a Washington headquarters, and is a fine example of a Colonial farm house. Only once during the Revolution was there anything approaching a battle in Dutchess County, and that occurred here during Vaughan's raid up the river, when he burned the landing and a shop or two. He was opposed by a small body of Americans whom he bombarded from the river with no serious results.
James K. Paulding, author, and Morgan Lewis, Revolutionary general and chief justice of the state, once lived in Hyde Park, as did Dr. Samuel Bard, Washington's physician, whose dwelling is placed in Christopher Colles's road book, previously mentioned, as situated on the east side of the Post Road, between the eighty-eighth and eighty-ninth mile-stones.
The next ten miles to Rhinebeck through Staatsburg covers a picturesque country, sometimes too rough for much cultivation, but all the more attractive to the eye on that very account.
STAATSBURG.