Quaker Hill / A Sociological Study

by Warren H. Wilson

CHAPTER I.

COMMUNICATION—THE ROADS.

The roads were originally bridle paths, and to this day many a stretch of road testifies in its steep grade to its use in the days of the pack saddle. No driver of a wheeled vehicle would have selected so abrupt a slope.

In the early days the roads had a north and south direction. In the Period of Transition, with the diversion of commerce to the railroad in Pawling, the roads of an east and west direction became the principal roads, though the one great Quaker Hill highway north and south is still the avenue of communication on the Hill.

As the years passed wagons were used; indeed, by the time of the Revolution, in the second generation, they were bearing all the transportation. The state of the roads is shown, however, by the fact that Daniel Merritt was accustomed to pay, in 1772, £1, or $5, for carting four barrels of beef to the river; that is, about 1,000 lbs. constituted a load. At the present state of the country roads, a Quaker Hill employer would expect 2,000 lbs. to make a load. The state of the roads before the turnpikes were made, that is, before 1800 to 1825, is described by a resident as follows: "The road was so full of stones, large and small, that people of to-day would consider impassable for an empty wagon, to say nothing of drawing a load over it. In the fall of the year it is said that toward evening one could hear the hammering of the wheels of the wagons on the stones of the road a distance of four or five miles."[30]

I cannot learn that Quaker Hill was during the Quaker Period on any main line of country travel. Marquis De Chastelleux records in his "Travels in North America," that he journeyed in 1789 to Moorehouse's Tavern (see Map I) along the Ten Mile River, two or three miles from the Housatonic to "several handsome houses forming part of the district known as The Oblong. The inn I was going to is in the Oblong, but two miles farther on. It is kept by Col. Moorehouse, for nothing is more common in America than to see an inn kept by a colonel ... the most esteemed and most creditable citizen." There was no inn on Quaker Hill and no colonel. The Quaker aversion to military titles was then as great as to the sale of rum. The houses referred to by the French traveller were probably the northern boundary of the Quaker community, at what is now Webatuck. I cannot find record of any post road coming nearer than this, until in the 19th century a stage was maintained between Poughkeepsie and New Milford, by way of Quaker Hill, making the journey every other day, and stopping at John Toffey's store at Site 53.

The building of turnpikes became, in the years following 1800, a popular form of public spirit. Says Miss Taber: "In fact, turnpikes seemed to be a fad in those days all over the state and probably a necessary one. The longest one I learn of in this part of the country was from Cold Spring on the Hudson River to New Milford in Connecticut. The turnpike in which the people of this neighborhood were most interested was the one incorporated April 3, 1818, and reads, 'That Albro Akin, John Merritt, Gideon Slocum, Job Crawford, Charles Hurd, William Taber, Joseph Arnold, Egbert Carey, Gabriel L. Vanderburgh, Newel Dodge, Jnrs., and such other persons as shall associate for the purpose of making a good and sufficient turnpike road in Dutchess Co.' It was named as the Pawlings and Beekman Turnpike, being a portion of what is known as the Poughkeepsie road passing over the West Mountain, but we do not find that anything was done until after the act was revived in 1824, when Joseph C. Seeley, Benoni Pearce, Samuel Allen, Benjamin Barr and George W. Slocum were associated with them."

The Pawlings and Beekman Turnpike maintained a tollgate till 1905, when it was burned down; and the company, which had long discussed its discontinuance, then abandoned its private rights in that excellent stretch of road. The turnpike which crossed Quaker Hill ended at the Jephtha Sabin residence, known to the present generation as "the Garry Ferris place," Site 74. The roads of the neighborhood were the same in 1778-80 as at the present day, as will be seen from a comparison of Map 1, made by Erskine for Washington, and Map 2, which is a copy of the U. S. Survey; except the road from Mizzen-Top Hotel to Hammersley Lake, made after the hotel was erected. The comparison of maps shows also, to one who knows the use of these roads, that they have changed from a north and south use to an east and west use; the highway on the northward slope of the Hill in Dover, and on the southward slope in Patterson, being but little used to-day. The road from the Meeting House and cemetery westward, which was once much favored, is now scarcely ever used, and being neglected by the authorities, is little more than a stony gutter.

The whole character of the neighborhood was changed by a revolution in transportation. Not turnpikes effected the change, but railroads. The early years of the nineteenth century were filled with expectation of new modes of travel. Robert Fulton was building his steamboat amid the derision of his contemporaries, and to their amazement steaming up the Hudson against the tide. At first canals seemed to country folk the solution of their problem. They occupied in the dawn of the 19th century the place which trolley cars occupy in the minds of promoters to-day. A canal was planned to run through the Harlem valley, where now Pawling stands, and Quaker Hill men were among the promoters of it, among them Daniel Akin and Johnathan Akin Taber.

Presently, however, came the promotion of railroads, and many of the same men who had favored the canals, entered heartily into the new projects. The foundation of Albert Akin's fortune was made when, about 1830, he began to borrow money of his neighbors and invest in the rapidly growing lines of steam-cars in New York State. There were those, however, who foresaw dire things from the new iron highway, and old residents tell of "one man who said that whosoever farm that locomotive passed through would have to give up fatting cattle, as it would be impossible to keep a steer on the place."