A History of Deerpark in Orange County, N. Y.

by Peter E. Gumaer

Some rulers of nations and great generals of ancient times have been highly honored for acts of murder and plunder to aggrandize themselves, who, instead of rendering benefits, were a nuisance in the world. Not so with our scientific men. They crave not the loud applause of the multitude, but their general welfare and their labors have created benefits far beyond what we can calculate, and all are more or less benefited from the results of their labors.

We have been spectators of the great changes mentioned and have seen the time when the red men were yet among us, and were often refreshed and cheered by their white neighbors with something to eat and a drink of cider; and the time, when they disappeared and a great revolution commenced, and the effects of the war it created, the restoration of peace and the times when the constitutions of the several States, and of the United States, were, from time to time, formed and become established, and the effects of the laws which have from time to time been passed under those constitutions, and the great benefits which have resulted therefrom; also the career of our first and greatest statesmen, who exerted their powers for the good of their country.

And here let us not forget that in the days of our boyhood we have seen the time in which the military forces of our country, under great sufferings and privations, nobly sustained their country's cause to obtain an independent government, and have been spectators of its achievement and the great results which have emanated therefrom; in respect to which I will here give a very faint view of what has transpired in relation to the improvements our countrymen have made during the time of our life's journey, to wit:

We have seen the time of the commencement of the printing of newspapers in this part of our country after the war ended, and the rapid increase and vast extent to which that important business has arrived, whereby every citizen with small means can now have information of the acts of our legislatures and more than he can read of what continually transpires both in our own and other countries.

We have seen the time when schools were in their infancy in this part of our country, their progress and the vast extent to which they became multiplied, even so that almost every citizen of this State, and generally of the other states, has the opportunity of having his children educated according to and even beyond his pecuniary means. We have seen the time when there was not a minister of the gospel, lawyer or physician, within 20 miles distance from our present town, and have seen the continual increase of those professional men until every town in our county had more or less of them, and the increase of education, so that it reached nearly all the citizens, few of whom do not acquire enough to read and write, and a very great proportion have reached the higher branches of learning, and become fitted for all the different business transactions of our country.

We have been spectators of the time when all transportation on the Hudson river was done in vessels, whose speed depended on the winds which impelled them, and of the time when the ingenuity of Fulton, with the help of Chancellor Livingston, produced a steamboat wherewith the Hudson river was navigated, and, when thereafter others from time to time were built, until all the navigable waters with such boats in our country were therewith navigated, and even the Atlantic Ocean crossed to and from England and other places, and the time when other machineries began to be impelled by steam power and their increase until thousands got into operation.

We have been travelers on the early rough and stony roads in Orange County and have seen the first construction of turnpikes in our county, and the great improvement of our highways, and at last have beheld the gigantic works of canals and railroads, on which the value of millions of property is annually transported to and from all parts of our country, and thousands of people are continually enjoying the easy and speedy travel thereby furnished.

We have been co-operators with our respective parents in producing all the articles of food and raiment for our own subsistence, and when we wanted a few articles we could not make, such as salt, iron, &c., we had to travel to the store of Nathaniel Owen, 22 miles distant or to the store of Cornelius Wynkoop, 40 miles distant, to procure the same. After this the ingenuity of some of our citizens produced machinery for manufacturing all the cloth we wanted for our use with much less cost and labor than what we could formerly manufacture the same; and these are now so abundantly transported into all parts of our country, that our little town of Deerpark now has more stores in it than the whole county of Orange had at the close of the Revolutionary War, and probably as many as there were in both the counties of Orange and Ulster. These goods, by an exchange of commodities for the same, can now be procured so much easier than formerly that our former apparatus for manufacturing flax, wool and cotton into cloth has become useless. And these stores now contain such a variety of articles, that as a certain man once said "Many necessaries unnecessary."

We have taken wheat, rye and corn to New Windsor and Newburgh when these were very small places and when Goshen was a very small village, and have passed through the time in which all the other villages in Orange County had their origin and growth and in which the whole country west of the valley in which we reside, has become numerously populated throughout its present settled parts, in which many handsome and magnificent villages and cities have been built and now adorn those parts which, in our early days, were a vast wilderness.

We have seen the time when news traveled from the printing presses to us on horseback, and when the same became conveyed in light one and two horse wagons, and in progressing, stage wagons and steam boats became the swiftest carrier of news, and after the meridian of our lives the swiftest traveler ever before known came into operation, in which news, passengers and different commodities were conveyed to and from distant parts of our country, and in the last part of our life's journey originated the wonderful discovery of giving instantaneous information of any matter or occurrence for any distance to which telegraph wires can be extended.