The first incorporated company to do business in the town was the Goshen and Westtown Turnpike Company, chartered June 1, 1812, consisting of Reuben Hopkins, Freegift Tuthill, Benjamin Strong, Stephen Jackson, James Carpenter, D. M. Westcott, "and such other persons as they shall associate with them." The purpose was to build a turnpike road from the State line to Rutger's Kill near the mill of Jones & Vancleft (at Gardnersville). Thence it ran to Pellet's round hill and the Goshen and Minisink turnpike.
The Middletown, Unionville & Watergap Railroad Company was incorporated and completed ready for business by June 10, 1868, from Unionville to Middletown. Later it was leased to the Oswego Midland Railway, and still later its 13.30 miles of track were leased by the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad Company, by which it is now operated, under Erie Railroad supervision.
MILITARY.
There appear to have been no conflicts with the Indian owners of the territory of the three towns under consideration, and its white settlers, previous to the Minisink war, or as some historians call it, "The French and Indian War" of 1754-1758. We call it the Minisink war, because the Minsi tribe, at the outset of the war between France and England, which led to the great struggle between Canada for France and the colonies of our country for England, got permission to take up the hatchet against the settlers in Pennsylvania Minisink from their (the Minsis') masters, the Six Nations, to avenge their wrongs in that region. The wrongs were alleged to be that the proprietors of Pennsylvania had cheated the Indian owners of the lands there, and there is now no doubt that the allegation was true. There was no redress to be had for an Indian wrong in those years. Teedyuscung and the leaders of the Indians issued imperative orders that the war should be confined to Pennsylvania and they were pretty generally obeyed. Occasional straggling parties of them, however, in small numbers, disobeyed orders in order to avenge some injury to some person or clan, and passed through east of Shawangunk Mountains on marauding expeditions. They were vagrant Indians who had no standing as warriors in their tribe and they perpetrated wanton murders without the knowledge or sanction of their leaders. Of this class no doubt were the ones who surprised a man named Owens at work in Dolsen's meadow, in what was then Dolsentown, now in Wawayanda, near Middletown, in 1756, and shot him. David Cooley, who is believed then to have had a settlement at what is now the Charles O. Carpenter farm near Pine Hill cemetery, about a mile south of where Dolsen was located, alarmed at the murder of Owens, moved his family to Goshen. The next spring he moved back. That summer a party of Indians, in passing by his place, shot a woman of his household who at the time was passing from the outdoor oven to the house.
A company of militia had been organized in 1738 in the county called the "Company of the Wallakill (Willinskill)"; but none of the 144 names of its members appear to belong to our territory, except it may be those of John Monell, Lieutenant William Borland, Benjamin Haines, James Monell, Johannis Crane and James Davis. John Bayard was its captain.
The murder of the widow Walling in 1758 was mentioned in the Philadelphia Gazette and in New York papers in that year and made a profound impression throughout the colonies.
In the Revolutionary War, Colonel Allison's Goshen regiment contained some names belonging to this territory. The officers of its Wawayanda company were: Captain, William Blair; lieutenants, Thomas Wisner and Thomas Sayre, Jr.; ensign, Richard Johnson; of the Drowned Lands company—captain, Samuel Jones; lieutenants, Peter Gale and Jacob Dunning; ensign, Samuel Webb; of the Pochuck company—captain, Ebenezer Owen; lieutenants, Increase Holley and John Bronson; ensign, David Rogers; of Minisink company—captain, Moses Courtright; lieutenants, John Van Tile and Johannes Decker; ensign, Ephraim Middaugh. The latter lived in the township of Wantage in 1764, where he was commissioned as an ensign of Captain Kirkendal's company by Governor William Franklin. The late S. M. Stoddard of that township had and exhibited to the writer the last named commission. Middaugh went with General Hathorn to the battle of Minisink, where he was killed.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The town of Minisink was bonded in 1869, for $75,000 to aid in extending the New York Midland Railroad from Unionville farther south. This has not been paid in full yet. The sum of $3,280 was ordered to be raised by tax on the town of Minisink by the board of supervisors on the 22nd of November, 1907, to pay principal and interest on those bonds.
The first town meeting after the town of Minisink was organized, took place at the house of John Van Tuyl, April 1, 1789. Its territory then covered the three towns, and that house supposed to be the old stone house now in Greenville, on the former Jonathan Van Tuyl farm, later the Hallock house, was a convenient place for the gathering.