WILLIAM J. SMITH, who is engaged in general farming and dairying on a historic tract of land in the town of Hamptonburgh, was born January 21, 1851, on the homestead farm about one mile from Neelytown. His father was Foster and his mother Sarah W. (Waite) Smith. He was married to Miss Lizzie Burns, of Newburgh, December 7, 1876. Two children were born by this union: Frank W., who married the daughter of John Maryhue, of Ulster County, N. Y., and Nellie, who resides at home. He is a consistent member of the Presbyterian Church of Montgomery. In politics he is a democrat. The home in which Mr. Smith resides is historic from the fact that Washington stopped here on one occasion in crossing from the Delaware River to his headquarters at Newburgh. Recently it was necessary to make repairs in the old chimney and a brick with the date 1777 was taken from the fireplace.
JACOB B. STANABACK—His birthplace was Sparta, Sussex County, N. J., where he began life November 10, 1861, and attended the district school. He worked awhile in a creamery in Stanford, Delaware County, N. Y., and then was a clerk in Sparta and Ogdensburgh. All this was before he was of age. When he was twenty-one he went to Newfoundland, Morris County, N. J., and was there clerk in a general store. His next move was to Florida, Orange County, where he worked for H. B. Seeley, and his next to Newark, N. J., where in 1888 he went into business for himself. In 1897 he went to New Milford, Orange County, and worked for his cousin, Benjamin Scott, until he was burned out on March 22, 1900. Then Mr. Stanaback erected a store on the location of the old store and renewed business.
He was appointed postmaster in 1900 and still holds the office. He is now erecting a brick building for store and residence to have steam heat and other latest improvements. In connection with his general mercantile business he sells the Osborn farm implements. He belongs to Wawayanda Lodge No. 34, I. O. O. F., at Warwick and Encampment of Mt. Olive Lodge No. 65, of Newburgh, N. Y.
JOSEPH F. STEVENS, the efficient postmaster of Highland Falls, N. Y., received this appointment in 1901. He was born in this village in 1864, and educated at schools in Pennsylvania and Manhattan College, N. Y. Previous to his present office he was engaged in the hotel business at Highland Falls, which was established by his father, George Stephens, who built the hotel in 1864. He has held the office of school trustee six years.
Mr. Stevens married Miss Lucetta Faurot, daughter of Captain Theodore Faurot, a descendant of one of the oldest families in the town of Highland.
L. S. STERRIT, son of Thomas and Jane Sterrit, was of Scotch-English extraction. His parents emigrated to this country shortly after their marriage and established a home beside the old Presbyterian Church at Coldenham, where the subject of this sketch was born February 17, 1852.
His general education was gained at the Newburgh Academy and the Collegiate Institute at Newton, N. J. He commenced his legal studies at Newburgh in the office of George H. Clark, leaving this office to enter that of Judge James W. Taylor, April 3, 1873. He was admitted to the bar in 1876, and continued to occupy the position of managing clerk for Judge Taylor, and upon the latter's death in 1883 succeeded to his practice. At the time of his death, which occurred April 4, 1907, he had occupied the same suite of offices in the Savings Bank Building for a period of thirty-five consecutive years.
Mr. Sterrit's practice was almost exclusively confined to equity and probate work, in which he was an acknowledged expert. He conducted some of the most important equity cases of recent years, and was employed in the settlement of many large estates. His practice of his profession was marked by untiring industry and strict integrity. He was an eloquent speaker and a graceful writer, the productions of his pen relating chiefly to local historical subjects, on which he was an acknowledged authority.
Mr. Sterrit was past master of Hudson River Lodge, F. & A. M., and delivered the oration at the celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary. For fifteen years he served as trustee and secretary of the Glebe, and was a trustee of the Woodlawn Cemetery Association for the same length of time. As a safe and trusted counselor he was honored by his fellow practitioners at the bar; as a generous, public spirited citizen he was held in high regard by those among whom he lived, but as a noble-hearted friend, void of selfishness and without guile, he was loved by those who knew him best. This, in his life, served to bring him his most cherished reward, and, in his death, will prove his most enduring monument.
DANIEL JACKSON STEWARD was the great-grandson of John Steward 1st, who settled in Goshen in 1744, and the son of John Steward 3rd, who, born in Goshen, subsequently moved to New York, where he was for forty years engaged in the business of a wholesale dry goods merchant, acquiring a fortune and distinguished by a reputation for unswerving integrity and uprightness of character.