In September, 1759, James DeLancey, Governor of the Colony of New York, issued a proclamation calling attention to the availability for settlers of "three Several Spotts of cleared Ground, two of them capable of containing half a dozen Families each and the other not less than twelve." These clearings were located on the site of the picket forts at Green's Bridge, where the Imperial Wall Paper Mill now stands, at the "Half-Way Brook," which was the largest one, and near the Half-Way House, French Mountain (site of old Fort Williams). In response to this invitation to settle in the northern wilderness, on May 20, 1762, the Patent of Queensbury was granted to Daniel Prindle and others, consisting of a township of twenty-three thousand acres of land lying on the Hudson River and taking in the three clearings heretofore mentioned. Part of this property was acquired by certain Quakers or Friends, living at the Oblong, in Dutchess County, New York. On August 28, 1762, Abraham Wing, the founder of the town of Queensbury, accompanied by a surveyor, Zaccheus Towner, made his first visit to the place which was thereafter to become the scene of his life work. He stopped at the "Half-Way Brook" post with Jeffrey Cowper. At this time "The Town Plot," in the center of which the memorial marker now stands, was surveyed and laid out. This consisted of a plot of forty-four ten acre lots, six lots deep from north to south, and eight lots deep from east to west, forming an oblong square, intersected by central highways and necessary roads. The center lots being reserved for public buildings. Here, the village was to have been located, but it had been ordained otherwise. The settlement was made at "The Falls," and nothing but the name in legal papers now survives to show that this was once intended to be the center of local population. In 1763 the first attempt was made towards the permanent settlement of the Town of Queensbury; later on the first religious structure in the town, the original Friends' church, was erected of logs on the lot standing on the southwesterly side of the "Half-Way Brook," on the Bay road, and here, also, was located the first burial place in Queensbury. Here the founders and earliest settlers of the town were laid to rest, their place of sepulture being to-day unmarked and unknown. During the Revolution the name of the "Half-Way Brook" appears in the lime-light of history but a few times, although the buildings still standing there were doubtless used by the troops passing to and fro between Lake George and Fort Edward, till the time of the Burgoyne Campaign. There, too, was located a ford for watering horses and cattle, which was in use up to the present century.