The prime cause of this insurrection was the granting of the land in great areas at the beginning of the century to favored proprietors, so that the actual settlers could not become owners but only tenants. Fragments of such great estates remain in the hands of certain families till our time. The ownership of Hammersley Lake by the family of that name is an example. The exercise of authority by these monopolists of natural opportunities drove the actual tillers of the soil, who had given it its value, to desperation. I have shown that in 1740 no land owners were enrolled on Quaker Hill, and that the list of its most representative citizens in 1755 contained few landowners.[20] A further cause of this conflict may have been that, in the year of the settlement of the boundaries of the Oblong it was granted to one company by the British Crown, and to another by the Colony of New York. This brought the title of all the lands on the Oblong into dispute. Moreover, boundaries were carelessly indicated and loosely described, a pile of stones or a conspicuous tree serving for a landmark. All this worked great confusion, for the settlement of which in a crude community courts were ineffective.
Finally the popular discontent broke out to the north in armed refusal of settlers to pay the rents exacted. The movement spread from Dutchess to Columbia County. William Prendergast, who is said to have lived in a house standing on the ground now part of the golf links in Pawling, was the leader of the insurgents in this county. He assembled a band on Quaker Hill so formidable that the grenadiers at Poughkeepsie waited for reinforcements of two hundred troopers and two field pieces from New York before proceeding against him. The sight of the red coats was enough. Prendergast surrendered. But so great was the local excitement that, to forestall an attempt to rescue, he was taken a prisoner to New York. In July he was brought back for trial; and on the same boat with the King's counsel, judges, lawyers and prisoner came a company of soldiers to put down the continued disturbance in Columbia County.[21]
The trial occurred the first fortnight of August. Prendergast was assisted in his defense by his wife, who made a strong impression on the jury, proving that her husband, before the acts of which he was accused, was "esteemed a sober, honest and industrious farmer, much beloved by his neighbors, but stirred up to act as he did by one Munro, who is absconded." So ardent was this woman advocate that the State's attorney forgot himself and moved that she be excluded from the court room. The motion was denied, and the mover of it emphatically rebuked. But there was not lacking proof of the fact of treason, and Prendergast was convicted and sentenced to be hanged in six weeks. Then this valiant woman's energy and perseverance rose to their highest. She set off for an audience with the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, Bart., and returned about the first of September with a reprieve. Just in time she arrived, for a company of fifty mounted men had ridden the whole length of the county to rescue her husband from the jail. She convinced them of the folly of such action as they proposed, and sent them home, while she turned to the task of obtaining a pardon from the King. Here, too, she was successful; for, six months later, George III, who required six years to be subdued by a Washington, released her husband. They arrived home amid great popular rejoicings.
William Prendergast and Mehitabel Wing, whose descendants settled later about Chautauqua Lake, New York, were bound to the Quaker Community by ties of marriage and of trade. William was not, so far as I can learn, a member of the Meeting; but Mehitabel was a daughter of Jedidiah Wing, whose family was devoted to the Society from 1744 until the "laying down" of the Meeting in 1885. William Prendergast was, however, a member of the community. His name heads an account in the ledgers of the Merritt store, in 1771 and 1772, and his purchases indicate that he was a substantial farmer whose trading center was Quaker Hill.[22] Prendergast was an Irishman.
Before the Revolution he with his family and possessions, a caravan of seventeen vehicles and thirty horses, emigrated westward, going as far south as Kentucky, then north through Ohio and New York. A part of the family company proceeded to Canada. His son James settled, with other Prendergasts, on Chautauqua Lake, and became the founder of Jamestown, where his family, now extinct there, has given the city a library. When William Prendergast and Mehitabel Wing, his resolute wife, died, is not known. None of that name is later found on or near Quaker Hill.
The motive of their hegira appears to have been chagrin and a sense of humiliation at the sentence of death pronounced upon the head of the family. In the Prendergast Library at Jamestown is a book containing family histories, which came from the Prendergast private library. From this book two pages had been cleanly cut away. The Librarians set themselves to replace the lost material, and after patient efforts in many quarters, discovered another copy, and had typewritten pages made and pasted in. Upon the missing pages, thus replaced after the extinction of James Prendergast's family, was found the account of William Prendergast's sentence to be hanged. His descendants, had they lived longer, might have been more proud than ashamed of his rebellion against injustice.
The Quakers, because they would passively tolerate an intrusion, were forced to harbor another rendezvous of turbulent men. It is said that Enoch Crosby, the famous spy of the Revolution, who is believed to have been Cooper's model for the hero of the novel, "The Spy," came to Quaker Hill during the Revolution, in pursuance of a plan he was at that time following, and got together a band of Tory volunteers, who were planning to join the British army; and delivered them to the Continental authorities, as prisoners. In this he was assisted by Col. Moorehouse, who kept a tavern on a site in South Dover, opposite the brick house which now stands one-half mile south of the Methodist Church.
INTERIOR OF OBLONG MEETING HOUSE
On the "facing seats" are: Olive Hoag, Roby Osborn, Betsy Post, Richard Osborn, John L. Worden
I have spoken above of the sullen loyalty of the Quakers to the British Crown during the Revolution. It may have been in part owing to their loyalty that their neighborhood became more congenial for the Tories who during that period harried the country-side. The Quakers were Tories, and are so called in the letters of the period; but the word "Tories" remains in the speech of Quaker Hill as a name of opprobrium. It describes a species of guerrillas who infested parts of New York and Connecticut.