The Indians who occupied the territory in these three towns were one of the three divisions of the Lenni-Lenapes. On the first map of the country made they were called Maquas, which was later corrected to Munseys and by the English to Minsies. The name of their headquarters, Minisink, has come down to us from all the various languages spoken by white settlers as Minisink. That corroborates it as an original Indian word. Every clan or sub-division of the tribes used an accent of their own, so that they were easily distinguished, but the difference was not so radical but that the whole Lenni-Lenape people could understand each other. Therefore the name Minisink was a name known over a vast region before the white people came here. Its meaning is a mystery which all linguists can guess at with some probability of nearness.
ORGANIZATION AND BOUNDARIES.
June 23rd, 1664, this region belonged to Holland, at least that country claimed it; but Charles, then King of England, deeded that day, to his brother, James, Duke of York, a tract "to the northward as far as the northernmost branch of the Delaware River in 41 degrees and 40 minutes north latitude, thence in a straight line to Hudson's River, to be called 'Nova Cesaria' or New Jersey." England sent over a fleet and captured the whole country in this vicinity a little later the same year, and that made the Duke's patent valid.
The region under consideration was then a dreary forest, but land speculators soon began to deal in tracts of it, and New York Province claimed that the line, 41.40 latitude north to the northernmost branch of the Delaware River, ran from its beginning on Hudson's River to the mouth of the Lehigh River (which they asserted was the branch of the Delaware referred to in the deed) where is now Easton, Pa.
On the other side the owners of New Jersey claimed that the branch referred to in the deed was a tributary of the Delaware River at what is now Cochecton, N. Y. It will be seen that this disputed territory was of great extent, the apex of the triangle on the Hudson River widening out to a base of near 50 miles from present Easton to present Cochecton. In this triangle was comprised nearly all of what we now call Sussex County, N. J., and, according to the New Jersey claim, taking in the present city of Port Jervis and about all of the present towns of Greenville and Minisink. The great dispute as to the ownership of this triangle lasted for a hundred years and its tales of warfare and contests in courts are of great interest, but not altogether pertinent to our subject. The start upon Hudson's River is thus mentioned in N. J. Archives, Vol. I, page 531, in 1685-6: "Gawen Lawrie of New Jersey, Governor Dongan of New York and others" fixed at a point nigh Colonel William Merrit's house (see mention in first census of Orange County) on the west side of the Hudson River and "marked with a penknife on a beech tree standing by a small run." How different surveyors could locate the degree of latitude from thence to such widely different points was explained in old documents to be the fault of the crude quadrants then used.
In 1704 Queen Anne of England granted 23 persons a patent (deed), for a tract of land which was named "Minisink," because it embraced the land in Minisink along the Delaware River down as far as Big Minisink island, and as far north as Peenpack (a nickname for the Gumaer settlement on the Neversink). March 20th, 1765, Alexander Colden, of New York, said of this patent, Vol. III, p. 988, Documentary History of New York: "It contains not less than 250,000 acres, under the very small Quit-rent of nine pounds current money of this Province."
The Wawayanda patent had been granted the previous year (1703) to 12 men and the Minisink patent lapped upon it, hence we may well conclude that the quarrel between the Provinces of New York, New Jersey, the owners of the Minisink patent and those of the Wawayanda patent made a very mixed question of title. There does not appear to have been any severe contests in the three towns of which we write between individual land owners, except those of the large patents. In 1767 the Provinces of New York and New Jersey appointed commissioners to run out a compromise line settled upon to run from the apex of the triangle on Hudson River to the present station at Tri-states, which was done and that line has since remained as the boundary between the two States. Titles derived from the Minisink patent south of that line were void, but the titles of landholders in the three towns were all derived from the New York patentees, hence there followed no confusion.
During the Revolution there were few changes in county matters, but March 7th, 1788, the legislature of the State enacted that subdivisions of counties should be called towns instead of precincts. By that act Orange County was divided into the towns of Haverstraw, Orangetown, Goshen, New Cornwall, Warwick and Minisink. The southern boundary of the latter was the State line of New York and New Jersey.
The town of Minisink under that formation was bounded on the east by the Wallkill River, northeast and north by the town of Wallkill and the Ulster County line around on the northwest to the Delaware River, and the State line.
In 1798 the town of Deer Park was created and it cut off from Minisink its over-mountain lands, which had belonged to old Minisink and thus cut off the base whence the name had been derived. Since then the town has held to the name, a reminder of its old associations and of being once the home of a part of the Minsi Indian tribe.