Other pioneer settlers came into the Peenpack valley and also in Mamakating Hollow. Most of these old pioneers seem to have taken such lands as suited their fancy with very little regard to who the owner might be. Many of these came in from the famous Esopus region, and these were mostly of that thrifty Dutch stock which made that ancient region so famous and important in the formative period of the State and national history. Nearly all settled along the streams where the advantages of fertile soil and level land seemed most attractive and important.
In 1697 Arent Schuyler received his patent, which covered a large tract in the Minisink country called by the natives Sankheheneck, otherwise Mayhawaem, also another tract called "Warinsayskmeck, upon the river Mennessincks before an island called Menagnock, which was near the Maghaghkemek tract and contained 1,000 acres and no more." About the same time another grant of land containing 1200 acres was given to Jacob Codebeck, Thomas Swartwout, Anthony Swartwout, Bernardus Swartwout, Jan Tys, Peter Gimar and David Jamison.
Both these patents were in the Peenpack valley, and they were so imperfectly described in the titles that it was impossible to fix their precise location or boundaries. They were therefore regarded as "floating" patents or tracts, and the grantees were inclined to take possession of most any unappropriated lands in that valley and settle where they saw fit. This led to much difficulty in the succeeding years, and when it became necessary to divide this Minisink patent the commissioners found no end of trouble.
The patentees Codebeck and Gimar were French and came here after a brief sojourn in Maryland. They married into the Swartwout family, which was a sturdy, vigorous stock, well able to cope with the warlike natives and ferocious wild animals and dense forests as pioneers.
The seven joint owners of this patent are said to have come into this region in 1690, although there is no authentic record of any white people there until 1694. The land covered by this patent laid along the Neversink River and Basha's Kill. Mamakating Hollow was then the nearest settlement, some twenty-five or thirty miles north.
In those days the settlement of a new country was indeed a herculean task with the meager facilities then existing. And this was preeminently true of this town, which was still slumbering in a dense primeval forest. Plows and all other implements were of the crudest description. What little grain was grown by these ancient farmers had to be cut with a knife or rude sickle, and then the grain was separated from the straw by the tramp of horses upon the threshing floor. It was afterward winnowed from the chaff by hand-fans made of willow rods. This was the universal practice in this region down to 1760. The first fanning mill was brought in here just previous to this by Peter Gumaer. The wagons were made almost entirely of wood and the harness of flax and tow. During the long winter evenings while the men were making these things the women were spinning and reeling yarn. Not the yarn of the idle gossiper, as now, but the fiber and fabric of utility which went into their clothing.
The old Esopus region was some fifty or sixty miles north and the roads were left to the vagaries of Dame Nature. But these pioneers had to cart their corn and other produce there for sale. Wheat was the staple crop, and Jacob Codebeck of this town was the first to attempt grinding it in a small mill. One of these millstones, about two feet in diameter and three inches thick, is still in the Gumaer cellar near where the old mill stood. This was afterward followed by two other grist mills on the "Old Dam Brook." Then came the De Witt mill in 1770, on the Neversink River near Cuddebackville, and others in later years. These ancient mills had no devices for bolting the flour as now; thus after the grinding process, the whole had to be sifted by hand in order to secure the fine flour for bread-making and other culinary uses.
One of the earliest saw mills was erected in this town soon after 1760.
It should be said in this connection that there is some traditionary {_sic_} evidence of a still earlier settlement in this Minisink region which takes the date back even to 1650. Most of these claims, however, seem based upon certain letters written by Samuel Preston of Stockport, Penn., in 1828. In these letters he gave the recollections of John Lukens, Surveyor General of Pennsylvania, as to this very ancient settlement. His memory extended back to 1730. On this rather hazy authority it is claimed that the first settlement was prior to 1664, when the region was still in the possession of the Dutch, and that the settlement was abandoned at the English conquest. But there are no existing documents to substantiate any such claim, and the entire weight of evidence seems to clearly disprove it.
The records show that in 1714 the only freeholders in Maghaghkemek were Thomas Swartwout, Harmon Barentsen, Jacob Cuddeback, Peter Gumaer and Jacobus Swartwout. To these were added, fourteen years later, the names of John Van Vliet, Jr., Samuel Swartwout and Bernardus Swartwout, Jr. This would show a very small increase in 38 years, assuming that the settlement began in 1690.