[FN-2] _Claverack_--Dutch, _Claverrak_--literally, "Clover reach--a sailing course or reach, so called from three bare or open fields which appear on the land, a fancied resemblance to _trefoil_ or three-leaved clover," wrote Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter in their Journal in 1679-80. Presumably the places are specifically located in the patent to Jan Frans van Heusen, May, 1667, on which the city of Hudson now stands, which is described as "A tract of land which takes in three of the Clavers on the south." From the locative the reach extended some miles north and south and to lands which it bounded. It is still preserved as the name of a creek, a town and a village. Of record it dates back to De Laet's map of 1625-6, and is obviously much older. It is possible that the "three bare places" were fields of white clover, as has been claimed by one writer, but there is no record stating that fact. Dankers and Sluyter, who wrote only fifty-four years after the application of the name, no doubt gave correctly the account of its origin as it was related to them by living witnesses. If interpreted as were the names of other reaches, the reference would be to actual clover fields. [FN-3] "Major Abraham" was Major Abraham Staats, who located on a neck of land on the north side of "Major Staats' Creek," now Stockport Creek. (See Ciskhakainck.) "West of Taghkanick," probably refers to the mountains now so known. It means, literally, however, "The woods." (See Taghkanick.) There was a heated controversy between the patroon of Rensselaerswyck and Governor Stuyvesant in regard to the purchase of the tract. It was decided in 1652 in favor of the former, who had, in the meantime, granted several small leaseholds. (See Brodhead's Hist. N. Y., i.) The first settlement by the patroon was in 1705 at Claverack village.