We have been farmers and inured to all the different kinds of labor thereunto appertaining. We have in early life ploughed with wooden ploughs, to which a wrought share and coulter were fastened, sowed all our grain by hand, harrowed the ground with square iron teeth harrows, cut all our grain with scythe and cradle, threshed all our grain with hand flails, mowed all our grass with scythes, and raked our hay together with hand rakes, and commenced tillage when the soil of our river lands was reduced to its lowest state of nutrition since the time their cultivation was first commenced. In progressing from the beginning of our business transactions, we became ploughers with patent ploughs, constructed of wood and iron castings, on which many improvements were, from time to time, made and have passed through the time of the introduction of different kinds of cultivators to cultivate ploughed ground, and of sowing machines, reaping machines, threshing machines of different kinds, and different kinds of horse power to impel the same, mowing machines to cut grass, and different kinds of horse rakes to gather hay, and different kinds of corn shellers, cutting benches, churning machines, &c., &c. We have observed a slow improvement of the lands in this town, which commenced about the year 1810, and progressed very slow at first, but increased in rapidity until the present time, 1858, and lands in this town now produce about double what they did in their lowest state of cultivation. We have seen the time when society here was in the lowest and most degraded state in which it has ever been in this valley, and have seen its rise and progress from that state to its present good and moral behavior.
Now all these works, which are of inestimable benefit, are only a small part of the discoveries and improvements made by our countrymen in our time of life. We do not claim to have stood alone as observers, not that other countries have been idlers in respect to inventions and improvements, but that all our contemporaries, both in our own and other countries, have passed through a period of time which has produced greater and more wonderful discoveries than that of any other like term of years.
Our travel on this great highway of research is yet rapidly advancing, and to what extent men will arrive is best known to the Great Architect who fills the universe with his works.
In consequence of the improvements mentioned and the great prosperity of our country, we also became spectators of their results in our manner of living, and although we have comparatively with others remained in humble walks of life, yet we have made great strides from our early habits, which, in the days of our youth, were governed by destitution and want of means to expand and gratify our desires. The greatest complaint, however, in those anterior times, was the burden of labor which all had to endure with greater or less perseverance, much of which has now been done away with by means of machinery.
Some years after the war ended the inhabitants of this town began to make money, and were enabled to live in a different style from that of their former habits, and articles of fancy were introduced. The acquisition of these progressed slow at first but increased as people advanced in property and became enabled to procure the objects of their desires, and the different luxuries thus introduced among us have continued to become more numerous until the present time.
By contrasting the manner of living of our parents with that of the present time, we behold the vast change made in a term of about half a century. When our manner of living became changed diseases began to afflict us, and these, as well as our habits of life, have continued to increase, which, together with the great addition of our population, now generates diseases which give employment to the physicians who reside among us.
[SCARCITY OF PHYSICIANS IN FORMER TIMES.]
The services of men of their profession rarely reached this valley in former times. At Goshen was one or more regular physicians in the time of the war, and in the State of New Jersey, about 20 miles distant from this neighborhood, was another. The latter sometimes attended Peter Gumaer, my grandfather, who was stricken with palsy near the time the war commenced, and he and Doctor Sweezy, from Goshen, attended to heal the wounds which Cornelius Swartwout received when the Indians invaded this neighborhood.
In the latter part of the war, and for some years after it ended, there lived an old man by the name of Bennet, on the east side of Shawangunk mountain in the present town of Mount Hope, who in his youth had studied medicine, but abandoned it before he became qualified to practice. He, however, was sometimes called on to attend the sick. He was poor and kept no drugs or medicines, but when called on would go and see what the ailment of the sick person was, and then go out and collect such roots and herbs as he judged best to cure the disease, which he used according to the dictates of his judgment. After people in our neighborhood began to be afflicted with diseases, and when it was considered necessary to have the attendance of a physician, this Doctor Bennet was employed; and he generally was quite successful in his practice. He several times cured a young man of colic, to which he was subject. This he performed by giving him an emetic, and after it had operated he gave him a physic.