This fixes the date of the encampment of these troops on the hill where the present new modern school-house is being erected, as being about the latter part of December, 1776, or January, 1777. The encampment probably consisted of part of the four regiments, under Colonels Allison, Hathorn, Woodhull and Clinton. An order was issued on January 4, 1777, dismissing part of these troops, leaving about 300 men in the above camp for the winter.
One of the first engagements in which our Chester patriots took part, occurred at Suffern, October 3, 1777, when Major Thomas Moffatt ordered Captain Wood and twenty men to cover the pass through the mountains at this point, where they intercepted a band of Tories, with the result of one robber killed and three wounded.
Our company was engaged under Colonel Allison later on at Forts Montgomery and Clinton. While these events were transpiring on the Hudson, the western frontier was harassed by the incursions of the Indians and Tories under the leadership of the educated half-breed Brant, together with Butler the Tory. Our troops becoming alarmed by the fugitives' accounts of the massacres and burnings taking place on the frontier, Colonel Hathorn, together with Lieutenant Colonel Tusten, of Colonel Allison's Goshen Regiment, and with such numbers of the commands as could be brought together in so brief a time, proceeded at once to Minisink, on July 22, 1779, to take part in that bloody battle on this date. Several of our Chester Company were among the brave troops.
SUBSEQUENT HISTORICAL INCIDENTS.
After the Revolutionary War and until 1845, the village of Chester was a part of the township of Goshen, and had become quite an important trading center, being at the junction of the two leading State roads. Up to the time of the building of the Warwick Valley road, in 1863, now the Lehigh and Hudson, the pig iron from Wawayanda Lake forge was carted to Chester for shipment on the Erie, the butter and other farm produce from the Vernon Valley, extending as far as Newton, N. J., was also brought to this point for shipment. It was but natural that the trial to decide the boundaries of the Chesekook and Wawayanda Indian patents should have been held at this place. In the year 1785, in the barn connected with the Yelverton Inn, erected in the year 1765, still standing, in good state of preservation, and owned by Joseph Durland, some of the older inhabitants and pioneers of Orange County met with the nation's most famous lawyers, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. The Wawayanda patentees were fortunate in securing these men during this trial, and many historical facts were brought out, through the witnesses sworn at this trial. In their testimony concerning what they knew about the early settlement of the country and the relations of the whites to the native Indians, the evidence was set forth. The burden of the testimony seemed to prove that Schunnemunk was not considered by the pioneers as the high hills of the Hudson. On this trial, Judge Elihu Marvin stated "that he was born in 1719 and moved in what is now known as the town of Chester in 1742. Whenever he visited Haverstraw and returned as far as the Ramapo River, it was always called beyond the High Hills of the Hudson."
Hugh Dobbin, aged seventy-six, stated "that he lived near Sugar Loaf Mountain since 1738."
Deliverance Conkling, who lived near Wickham's Pond, stated "that he was 71 years old, and has known personally Lancaster Symes, one of the Wawayanda patentees, and the pond at Goose Pond Mountain used to be called Cromeline Pond, and abounded in wild geese."
Samuel Gale was born in 1737, and testified "that the Chesekooks line had always been disputed."
William Thompson was born in 1723, was chain bearer for Colonel Clinton and usually stopped, when surveying the Chesekook patent, at Perry's near Wickham's Pond. He had talked with the Indians and remained at times in their wigwams.
Ebenezer Holly, born 1698, stated that he knew Captain Symes, Captain Aske, Christopher Denn and Daniel Cromeline. In dispute with the Indians, Governor Burnet had decided that the Indians must move off the land; among the Indians who still claimed land were Rondout, Hons and Romer. He stated that Cromeline made his first improvement at Greycourt.