The History of Orange County New York

by Unknown

TOWN OF TUXEDO.

This triangular township is in the southeast corner of Orange County. It is bounded on the north by the towns of Monroe and Woodbury, on the east and south by Rockland County and on the west by the town of Warwick. Its area as given in the latest supervisors' report is 27,839 acres, and the assessed valuation of real estate is placed at $2,510,500. The title to the soil is derived from the Chesekook patent.

The general topographical features are invested with peculiar charm. The towering mountain crags and scattered bits of valley, the wildwood and forests primeval, are dimpled with beautiful lakes and threaded with purling streams. The Ramapo, which is made up wholly by the surplus waters of these lakes, has its head in Round Island Pond and flows thence southerly, through the valley which bears its name, into Rockland County.

The name Tuxedo is, undoubtedly, the corruption of one or more Indian words. In the language of the Algonquins, who occupied this region, it is found that to or tough mean "a place." A frequent habit of the Indians was to name a place after the chief whose tribe occupied it, and there was a sachem named P'tauk-seet, "the bear," who, in the seventeenth century, ruled over a tract of country including the present town of Tuxedo. Uniting his name with tough, the Algonquin for place, we should infer the original spelling to have been P'tauk-seet-tough, and its meaning "Place of Bears." The earliest mention of the name occurs in Sargeant's survey of 1754 where reference is made to Tuxedo Pond. In Chesekook's patent of 1769 it is written Potuckett. Erskine, in his survey of 1778-1779, writes it Tuxedo and Toxedo. In Eager's and Ruttenber's histories written respectively in 1847 and 1875 the name is corrupted to Duck Cedar, with the explanation that its margin is over-thrown with cedars and that it is a favorite haunt of wild ducks.

The first description of this region is written by the Marquis de Chastellux, a French officer who came to America with Lafayette, and who, on December 19, 1780, following the Continental road through the gorge south of the lake, then called "The Clove," presently came in view of Tuxedo. He mentions that at Ringwood he stopped to ask his way, and that at Erskine's house they gave him full information about the roads and wood-paths, and also "a glass of Madeira, in accordance with a custom of the country, which will not allow you to leave a house without taking something." Having been thus refreshed, he says: "I got on horseback and penetrated afresh into the woods, mounting and descending precipitous hills until I found myself at the edge of a lake so secluded that it is hardly visible from the surrounding thicket. Its banks are so steep that if a deer made a false step on the top he would infallibly roll into the lake. This lake, which is not marked upon the charts, and is called Duck Sider, is about three miles long and two miles wide (sic!), and is in the wildest and most deserted country I have yet passed through. My poetic imagination was enjoying the solitude, when, at a distance, I perceived in an open spot, a quadruped, which a nearer observation showed to be not the elk or caribou, for which I at first mistook him, but a horse grazing peaceably in a field belonging to a new settlement."

SETTLEMENT.

Following the grant of the Chesekook patent in 1702 there was no settlement in this territory for many years. The families who came were mostly of English ancestry and moved from Long Island and the Eastern States. The Smiths are supposed to have explored this region as early as 1727. The first settlement in the vicinity of Tuxedo Lake was made at the northern extremity of this body of water. Prior to 1765, a woodcutter named Hasenclever enclosed a ten-acre tract lying equally on both sides of the outlet. On a survey made in 1778 is shown his enclosure and the dam built by him, and also the position of the house, situated fifty yards northeasterly from the dam, and built by a man named Howard, who was probably "the original settler." During the Revolution, when the iron works on the Ramapo were liable to interruption by the British, Hasenclever's dam was raised several feet, and the overflow turned southwest to supply the Ringwood furnaces in New Jersey. During this period, Tuxedo Lake was the resort of a band of cowboys who at times found shelter among some rocks which they named after their leader, "Claudius Smith's Cave." (See general history.)

Vicent Helms was chosen constable in 1775. Phineas and Brewster Helms are also mentioned in the records of the old Town of Cornwall of which this locality was then a part. The hamlet Helmsburgh indicates the place where the families of that name lived before the Revolution. Moses Cunningham was a member of the first board of assessors of the town of Monroe erected in 1709. He lived at Greenwood Iron Works. Richard Wilkes, school commissioner in 1709, also lived here. Adam Belcher, school commissioner in 1800, lived at Southfields.

The survey and construction of the Continental road was performed by the military engineers of the Continental Army in 1778. It entered the park at the present south gate and followed the east lake shore at a somewhat lower level than the present road. From the Hoffman corner it continued up to the east slope of the Alexander place to the top of Tower Hill, where it crossed to the Coster place, thence to the Griswold place, which it crossed to the end of what is now the Wee Wah Lake and left the park near the present north gate where it joined the main turnpike road of the Ramapo valley. There was also a wood road from the present east gate to the Continental road at the Hoffman corner.

CHANGING CONDITIONS.