Colonel Henry Ludington: A Memoir

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

John Byington.

State Connecticut, County Fairfield, Ss. Redding the 15th day of September 1815 personally apperd John Byington the above deponent & made oath to the truth of the above deposition.

Lemuel Sanford, Justice Peace.

Both of the foregoing affidavits or depositions are taken from copies of the originals, made by Lewis Ludington, son of Henry Ludington, on September 19, 1815, and now in possession of Lewis Ludington’s son.

We have seen that Henry Ludington, at the age of twenty-one, escorted a company of invalided soldiers from Quebec to Boston in the winter of 1759-60, and thereafter returned to civil life. One of his first acts was to get married, his bride being his cousin, Abigail Ludington, daughter of his father’s younger brother, Elisha Ludington. As already noted, Elisha Ludington upon his marriage had removed from Connecticut to Dutchess County, New York, and had settled in what was known as the Phillipse Patent. The exact date of that migration is not recorded, but it was probably some years before the French and Indian war. As the Connecticut troops on their way to that war marched across Dutchess County, through Dover and Amenia, it is to be presumed that Henry Ludington on that momentous journey called at his uncle’s home, and saw his cousin, afterward to be his wife, who had been born on May 8, 1745, and was at that time consequently a child of about ten years. Whether they met again until his return from Quebec is not surely known, but we may easily imagine the boy soldier’s carrying with him into the northern wilderness an affectionate memory of his little cousin, perhaps the last of his kin to bid him good-by, and also her cherishing a romantic regard for the lad whom she had seen march away with his comrades. At any rate, their marriage followed close upon his return, taking place on May 1, 1760, when he was not yet quite twenty-one and she just under fifteen. Soon afterward the young couple, apparently accompanied by the rest of Henry Ludington’s immediate family, removed to Dutchess County, New York, to be thereafter identified with that historic region.

Old Phillipse Manor House at Carmel, N. Y.

(From sketch made in 1846 by Charles Henry Ludington)

Dutchess County was one of the twelve counties into which the Province of New York was divided on November 1, 1683, the others being Albany, Cornwall (now a part of the State of Maine), Duke’s (now a part of Massachusetts), King’s, New York, Orange, Queen’s, Richmond, Suffolk, Ulster, and Westchester. Dutchess then comprised what is now Putnam County, which was set off as a separate county in 1812 and was named for General Israel Putnam, who was in command of the forces there during much of the Revolutionary War. In 1719 Dutchess County was divided into three wards, known as Northern, Middle, and Southern, each extending from the Hudson River to the Connecticut line. Again, in 1737, these wards were subdivided into seven precincts, called Beekman, Charlotte, Crom Elbow, North, Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck, and Southeast; and at later dates other precincts, or towns, were formed, to wit: North East in 1746; Amenia in 1762; Pawlings in 1768; and Frederickstown in 1772. Fishkill and Rombout were also constituted in colonial times. Frederickstown, where the Ludingtons settled and with which we have most to do, was a part of the Phillipse Patent, in the Southern Ward of Dutchess County, now Putnam County. It derived its name from Frederick Phillipse, a kinsman of Adolphe Phillipse, the patentee of Phillipse Manor or Patent. It has now been divided and renamed, its old boundaries comprising the present towns of Kent, Carmel, and Patterson, and a part of Southeast, the present village of Patterson occupying the site of the former Fredericksburgh. The name of Kent was taken from the family of that name, of which James Kent, the illustrious jurist and chancellor of the State of New York, was a member. It may be of interest to recall at this point, also, that a certain strip of land at the eastern side of Dutchess County was in dispute between New York and Connecticut. This was known as The Oblong, or the Oblong Patent, from its configuration, and comprised 61,440 acres, in a strip about two miles wide, now forming parts of Dutchess, Putnam, and Westchester counties and including part of the Westchester town of Bedford, and also Quaker Hill, near Pawling, in Dutchess County, which was once suggested as the capital of the State, and which gets its name from having been first settled by Quakers. The dispute over the New York-Connecticut boundary and the consequent ownership of this land arose before 1650, when the Dutch were still owners of New York, or New Netherlands as the latter was then called, and it was continued between the two Colonies when they were both under British rule. The settlement was effected by confirming New York in possession of The Oblong, and granting to Connecticut in return a tract of land on Long Island Sound, eight miles by twelve in extent, which was long called the “Equivalent Land,” and which is now occupied by Greenwich, Stamford, and other towns. The final demarcation of the boundary was not, however, effected until as late as 1880.