CHAPTER XXIX.

TOWN OF WARWICK.

By Ferdinand V. Sanford.

The derivation of Warwick, according to Mr. Thomas Kemp, mayor of Warwick, England, who has written a "History of Warwick and Its People," is from the Saxon "Wara" which in that tongue signifies inhabitants, and "wic"--a town or castle, or hamlet, a bank or crook of a river. So that Warawic, or Warwick, signifies no more than the inhabitants of the town or castle upon the bank of the river. Other Saxon forms of the name found are Werhica, Wyrengewyk, Woerincwic, and Weringwic.

The history of our Warwick from the earliest times has been written by Eager and Ruttenber in their publications--that of the last-named writer coming down to the year 1880.

EARLY SETTLEMENT.

The present sketch is intended rather to supplement these earlier accounts than to re-write all of the past history, by recording principally the events which have occurred since 1880.

The town or township of Warwick was erected from the precinct of Goshen in 1788, and derived its name from the plantation of Benjamin Aske, one of the original grantees of the Wawayanda patent. Upon the sub-division of the patent among twelve patentees, Aske's share was a tract nearly in the form of a parallelogram, which extended from Wickham's or Clark's Lake, on the northeast, to the farm now owned by Townsend W. Sanford, on the southwest, with an average width of a mile, and containing 2,200 acres of land. Aske named this tract, "Warwick," from which fact it is supposed that he came from Warwickshire, England. The date of the Wawayanda patent is March 5, 1702-1703, which was the peculiar style of writing year date a couple of centuries ago. The document is signed by the twelve chiefs, all making their mark in the presence of witnesses, one of them Chuckhass, the chief who lived in this town and for whom Chuck's Hill is named. This patent embraced at that time practically all of Orange County as it existed in 1703.

By deed dated February 28, 1719, Aske sold to Lawrence Decker, yeoman, for 50 pounds, 100 acres, in the deed described as "being part of the 2,200 acres of land, called Warwick," showing that previous to that date Aske had bestowed the name of Warwick upon his tract. Later deeds to Thomas Blaine and Thomas DeKay contain similar recitals.

The pioneers of Warwick were principally English families who came hither from Long Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Among them we find the names of Armstrong, Baird, Benedict, Blaine, Bradner, Burt, DeKay, Decker, Demarest, Ketchum, Knapp, McCambley, Post, Roe, Sayer, Sly, Sanford, Welling, Wheeler, Wisner, Wood and Van Duzer. Most of these settlers have left descendants who still live in the town or village.

During the Revolution there were a few Tories near Warwick, but the majority of the people were loyal to the country of their adoption, and many of them enlisted for service.

John Hathorn, colonel of the Warwick and Florida regiment, Captains Charles Beardsley, John Minthorn, Henry Wisner, Jr., Abram Dolson, Jr., John Norman, Henry Townsend, Nathaniel Elmer, John Saver; Lieutenants Richard Welling, Samuel Lobdell, Nathaniel Ketchum, George Vance, Peter Bartholf, Matthew Dolson, John Hopper, John DeBow, Anthony Finn, John Popino, Jr., Richard Bailey, John Kennedy, John Wood, and many others rendered valuable services during the Revolution.

While New York City was in the hands of the British, the most traveled road between the Hudson River and the Delaware ran through Warwick. It is said that Washington passed through Warwick twice during the war, and was entertained by Colonel Hathorn at the Pierson E. Sanford stone house near the village, on one of these occasions, at least.

For some time after the Revolution there were not more than thirty houses in the village. In 1765 Daniel Burt built the shingle house, now owned by Mrs. Sallie A. F. Servin, the oldest house in the village. In 1766 Francis Baird built the stone house now owned by William B. Sayer, which was at one time used as a tavern, and in some of the old maps Warwick is called "Baird's Tavern."

DEVELOPMENT.

The town of Warwick is the largest in area of any of the towns of the county, containing 61,763 acres, or nearly double that of any of the others, and being a little more than one-eighth of the area of the whole county. Its assessed valuation of real and personal property in 1906, was $2,863,010. The taxes levied upon that valuation for last year were $22,745.12. Population according to State census of 1905 was 6,691.

Within the last generation the town has greatly improved its public highways and bridges. With the advent of the bicycle, automobile and other motor vehicles, the demand for better road facilities has been felt, and this demand has been and is now being supplied. Under the State law providing for the construction and improvement of the highways at the joint expense of the State and county, the sum of $15,387.40 has been expended by the county, and the additional sum of $1,602.60 by the State, up to the year 1905, for acquisition of rights of way, engineering and cost of construction of 4.67 miles of road from Florida to Warwick, known as Road No. 93, so that under the good roads law (Chap. 115, Laws 1898) we have nearly five miles of finished work done. Plans have also been approved by the county and its share of the cost appropriated for the building of 6.92 miles of road from Warwick to Greenwood Lake at a total estimated cost of $54,250, which will undoubtedly be built as soon as the Legislature makes appropriation for the State's share of the cost.

Since 1883 the town has constructed several new iron bridges, viz: on the east arm of Greenwood Lake, at Main, South, Lake, Elm and Bank streets in the village of Warwick; also at Florida, Kimball's Point, Garners' Island across the Pochuck Creek, one between the towns of Goshen and Warwick, and one between the towns of Minisink and Warwick; also at Bellvale and New Milford, these substantial structures replacing the old wooden bridges of the past. An elevated bridge across the tracks of the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway Company was constructed to avoid the grade crossing at Stone Bridge at the joint expense of the railway company and the town, costing nearly $8,000, of which the town's share was one-quarter of the whole cost, made a most desirable improvement in this part of the town.

The town constructed a new road along the east side of Greenwood Lake in 1889, the land being donated by Alexander Brandon, trustee, and others, to the town, and the latter building the same at a cost of over $7,000. This improvement opens up a large tract of land for building purposes, the road extending to State line of New York and New Jersey.

In 1902, by a vote of the taxpayers, a change was made in the manner of working the highways from the labor to the money system. Under the old system something over 5,000 days would be assessed for labor, but a considerable portion would never be worked and in consequence our highways would suffer. Under the present method the sum of $5,593 was expended by the town in 1906, in cash upon our highways, and the additional sum of $2,000 State aid, with uniformly better results everywhere.

The total mileage of public roads is nearly 200 in the town, and the sum of $25 per mile was expended upon every mile in that year and additional sums of $10 per mile upon those roads more frequently traveled.

This amount was for all the road districts outside of the incorporated village of Warwick, which is a separate road district maintained by the corporation. The valuation for 1907 was $1 of tax for every $300 of assessed value.

Town boards of health have been maintained since 1881 and consist of the supervisor, town clerk, justices of the peace, a citizen member and a physician, known as the health officer. Rules and regulations governing the proper observance of health are published each year by this official body, and prompt action taken in case of any outbreak of disease, and measures instituted to control and prevent the spread of the same. As a result of the labors of these organizations and those in the incorporated villages of our towns, the public health has been safeguarded, and no serious epidemics have been experienced.

The town has seventeen separate school districts, where the common school is maintained, and two union free schools at Florida and Warwick, under the supervision of the Regents of the University at Albany. In these latter schools our young people are graduated, prepared for the different walks of life, and many entering colleges to prosecute their studies further for the learned professions. Under the present State law education is compulsory, between the ages of eight and sixteen, and parents, guardians and employers detaining the child between those ages are liable to fine and imprisonment.

Under the compulsory education law our town appoints annually for each of the school districts an officer known as the truant officer, whose duty it is to look after the interests of those who will not look after their own, and compel all children within the school age to be in attendance upon the public school during the required period. The State apportionment of school funds for 1907 for the town was $4,300.

The town has six election or polling places, known as Districts Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. No. 1 includes the voters in the Amity and Pine Island district; No. 2, those in Florida and vicinity; Nos. 3, 4 and 5, the village of Warwick, Bellvale and New Milford; No. 6. Greenwood Lake and Sterling. The total vote polled for Governor in the town in 1900 was 1,218.

The principal farm products are dairying, onions, peaches, apples, hay and potatoes. Milk is condensed at several places in the town. The mineral products are iron, granite, mica, white and blue limestone. The white limestone is very valuable for fluxing purposes and in the manufacture of Portland cement. Large deposits of the same are found in the western part of the town, running from near Florida to the Vernon Valley. The blue limestone is valuable for building purposes and is found very generally in different parts of the town. Clay beds also exist at Florida and at Durland's, from which brick have been manufactured.

The present bonded debt of the town (1907) is $4,950, bearing 4 per cent. interest, which is very small considering the amounts expended in the construction of the new iron bridges in the town during the last thirty years--nearly twenty--and the cost of new road construction and for damages to the town roads and bridges caused by the great flood of 1903, when one bridge was completely destroyed, and nine were damaged, besides the damages to many of the public roads, and other small bridges.

VILLAGES AND HAMLETS.

_Warwick_

The village of Warwick was known as early as 1719, but was not settled until about 1764. It is the largest village in the town and the only one incorporated. Its area is 395 acres, and its population (1905) was 1,767. It was incorporated under a special act of the Legislature in 1867, and re-incorporated under the general village law in 1901. Built on rolling land in the valley west of the Warwick Mountains, it is an ideal spot for country homes. The land is well drained, the Wawayanda Creek flowing through the center of the town in a southeasterly direction. The mean elevation of the valley is 550 feet, and the nearby mountains rise to a height of 1,200 to 1,400 feet. The varied pastoral scenes of wood, stream and meadow, with here and there a lake, and the tall peaks of the Catskills in the distance greeting the eye from these heights, are said by travelers to equal, if not surpass, anything else of the kind in all the wide world.

Fine roads, affording delightful drives, extend from Warwick, in every direction, some among the neatly kept farms in the valley and others through winding ways among the hills. With such an unrivaled environment, Warwick has grown famous for its own peculiar beauties. One cannot say that our village is quaint or old-fashioned, with swinging gates, grassy lanes, and moss-covered roofs; rather, it has an air of smartness, blended with polished repose. It is a pretty park with velvety lawns, showing to vast advantage groups of flowering shrubs, unmarred by fences, and with the houses well apart, giving an air of freedom from cramped conditions.

Not only the fine mansions that have been built by prosperous country merchants, professional men and city folk, but also the modest homes of the village mechanics and artisans, all show the same individual public spirit, not to be outdone in keeping things spruced up and freshly painted. Here and there are old homesteads where son has succeeded father for generations, yet the old homes look well and becoming in their new and airy clothes. The advent of broad avenues and flag walks have forever effaced the winding trails, and with them much of the sweet Indian legendary has been obliterated. For all these rolling hills were once covered with chestnut, birch, maple and pine trees. There is something pathetic in the passing of the red man, the type of years gone by, as the impress of civilization unrelentingly, step by step, has crowded upon his tepee and forced him westward.

Yet the maples, as planted by our fathers, forming bowers over streets, are more beautiful than the pine tree. We have no "Unter den Linden," but we might claim an "Unter den Maples."

Warwick has been called the Queen Village, also a Village of Homes. If she is not truly the former, she is easily and far away a village of homes.

As early as 1830 Henry William Herbert, an English gentleman and writer, better known as Frank Forester, visited the village and stopped at the old inn, known as Tom Ward's, now and then called the Wawayanda House. Forester has celebrated us in his famous book of sporting tales and adventures called "Warwick Woodlands," in which he tells many a quaint tale of the doings of himself and mine host Ward, (whom he cleverly calls Draw by simply inverting the letters of the name), and of many other sportsmen of that early day.

No one has ever paid our vale and village a higher tribute than Forester, when he said:

"In all the river counties of New York there is none to my mind which presents such a combination of all natural beauties, pastoral, rural, sylvan and at times almost sublime, as old Orange, nor any part of it to me so picturesque, or so much endeared by early recollections, as the fair vale of Warwick. . . . Throughout its length and breadth, it is one of the most fertile and beautiful, and the most Arcadian regions of the United States; poverty in its lower and more squalid aspects, if not in any real or tangible shape, is unknown within its precincts; its farmers, the genuine old solid yeoman of the land, the backbone and bulwark of the country, rich as their teeming pastures, hospitable as their warm hearts and ever open doors, stanch and firm as the everlasting hills among which in truly pleasant places their lines have fallen, would be the pride of any nation, kingdom or republic; its women are among the fairest daughters of a country where beauty is the rule rather than the exception. . . . Sweet vale of Warwick, sweet Warwick, loveliest village of the vale, it may be I shall never see you more, for the silver cord is loosened, the golden bowl is broken, which most attached me to your quiet and sequestered shades. . . . May blessings be about you, beautiful Warwick; may your fields be as green, your waters as bright, the cattle upon your hundred hills as fruitful, as in the days of old."

In 1883 the village voted the sum of $600 to lay the sidewalks over the Main street bridge. In 1886 the sum of $4,200 was voted by the tax-payers to buy the lot and build the brick building occupied by Excelsior Hose Company. In 1889 an application was made to the trustees for the organization of the Goodwill Hook and Ladder Company. In 1891 a truck was bought for said ladder company at a cost of $600. The system for working the village streets was changed in this year to the money system. In 1895 a number of the citizens contributed the sum of $433.03 for the purchase of a sprinkling cart, a proposition previously submitted to the taxpayers for the purchase of the same having been defeated at a special election. In 1896, Raymond Hose Company No. 2, to look after the interests of the village in the west end, was organized by consent of the trustees.

In 1897, the sum of $500 was voted for the purpose of a fire alarm. In this year the first and only franchise ever granted by the village was given to Sharp & Chapman for a term of fifty years, for an electric light plant.

These parties having failed to carry out their agreement, the village the next year granted a franchise for the same purpose to the Warwick Valley Light and Power Company, of the same duration.

Since 1898 the village has been lighted with electric light at a cost of about $2,000 per year, the present plant consisting of ninety-seven incandescent electric lights and six 2,000 candle power arc lamps.

In 1900 the taxpayers voted the sum of $1,600 for the purchase of a lot and the building of a hose house for the Raymond Hose Company.

In 1901 a proposition to reincorporate the village under the general village law was carried. A special election held the same year to vote upon the proposition of paving our streets with Telford pavement and asking for the sum of $10,000 for that purpose, was defeated by only three votes.

In 1902 the heirs of the late George W. Sanford donated the sum of $1,250 to the village for the purpose of a drinking fountain, which has been erected and is placed at Fountain Square, corner of Main and East Main streets.

In July, 1906, Warwick, England, celebrated the two thousand years of her past history in a great historical pageant upon the grounds of Warwick Castle. Invitations were issued to all the Warwicks of the world--fourteen in all--to be present and participate in these festivities. Our board appointed its president, Ferdinand V. Sanford, as its representative, who attended the celebration, and delivered in person the following resolutions of greeting and congratulation:

Honorable Thomas Kemp,

Mayor of the Corporation of Warwick, England

Sir:

Accept congratulations and greetings from your daughter and namesake across the sea, on the occasion of your great historical pageant, wherein somewhat of your ancient and honorable past is reproduced, not merely in centuries, but in millenniums of time.

As Americans we are proud of our English ancestry, and of that mighty nation, on whose empire the sun never sets, whose history is the history of everything that makes for progress, a higher civilization and the enlightenment and uplifting of mankind.

May God continue to bless England and America, the leading Christian nations of the earth, whose history teaches the world of the transcendent value of the life, liberty and happiness of man.

Done at Warwick, New York, United States of America, on the twenty-sixth day of May in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and six.

The Village of Warwick.

By

(Seal.) Ferdinand V. Sanford, President, Charles Wutke, George H. Strong, Trustees F. C. Cary, Clerk of the Corporation.

To which the mayor replied officially as follows:

Borough of Warwick, to-wit:

At a meeting of the mayor, aldermen and councilors of the said borough in Council assembled, on the 13th day of July, 1906,

It was resolved: That the congratulatory address from the corporation of the village of Warwick, in the State of New York, United States of America, presented to the mayor on the occasion of the recent Historical Pageant, be entered on the minutes of the Council, and that a cordial vote of thanks for their sympathetic greetings be accorded to the sister municipality with an earnest hope for its continued prosperity.

And that a copy of the resolution be sealed and transmitted to the president of the corporation.

Thomas Kemp, Mayor,

Brabazon Campbell, Town Clerk. (Seal.)

During the present year (1907) the village has been the recipient of a fine town clock, presented by Mr. Pierson E. Sanford. The clock is stationed in the tower of the Methodist church on Main street.

At a special election held this year the sum of $4,200 was voted to purchase the building and lots formerly owned by John A. Dator and others, on Main street and Wheeler avenue. It is the purpose of the trustees to change the building, and adapt it for village purposes, such as a village hall, office for records, maps and files, and the rooms of Goodwill Hook and Ladder Company.

_New Milford._

The hamlet of New Milford lies southwest of Warwick, and forms a part of the boundary line between New York and New Jersey. It was formerly called Jockey Hollow. It comprises an area of a little more than 2,000 acres of the most fertile and well watered land in Warwick Valley. When the Wawayanda patent was deeded by the Indians to twelve white men in 1702, the twelfth part deed to Cornelius Christiance included what is now known as New Milford. Cornelius Christiance sold his share to Derrick Vanderburgh in 1704, and the latter sold to Everett & Glows, land speculators, in 1714, for a little more than $500. In 1724, the land was purchased by Thomas DeKay and Benjamin Aske. Settlers now began to come and they were quick to take advantage of the superior water facilities. The land was intersected by Wawayanda Creek, and flowing into this stream were four rushing mountain streams, all capable of furnishing fine water power, the largest of which was the Doublekill, so named because it is the outlet of Double Pond, or Wawayanda Lake. But not until about the year 1770 were any mills operated, excepting a saw mill and the forge on Wawayanda Creek on the farm recently owned by the Edward L. Davis heirs. During the year 1780, we find among the settlers the DeKays, the Davises, the Demarests, the Lazears, and Wood. The first excise money was paid into the treasury from the New Milford tavern in 1790 by Cornelius Lazear. A grist mill was built that year on the west side of the Doublekill, on the farm known as the Kiernan farm, and much further up the stream than the present mill. This mill was operated many years.

In 1802 John Lazear built a grist mill on the site of the present