One of the first engagements in which our Chester patriots took part,
occurred at Suffern, October 3, 1777, when Major Thomas Moffatt
ordered Captain Wood and twenty men to cover the pass through the
mountains at this point, where they intercepted a band of Tories,
with the result of one robber killed and three wounded.
Our company was engaged under Colonel Allison later on at Forts
Montgomery and Clinton. While these events were transpiring on the
Hudson, the western frontier was harassed by the incursions of the
Indians and Tories under the leadership of the educated half-breed
Brant, together with Butler the Tory. Our troops becoming alarmed by
the fugitives' accounts of the massacres and burnings taking place on
the frontier, Colonel Hathorn, together with Lieutenant Colonel
Tusten, of Colonel Allison's Goshen Regiment, and with such numbers
of the commands as could be brought together in so brief a time,
proceeded at once to Minisink, on July 22, 1779, to take part in that
bloody battle on this date. Several of our Chester Company were
among the brave troops.
SUBSEQUENT HISTORICAL INCIDENTS.
After the Revolutionary War and until 1845, the village of Chester
was a part of the township of Goshen, and had become quite an
important trading center, being at the junction of the two leading
State roads. Up to the time of the building of the Warwick Valley
road, in 1863, now the Lehigh and Hudson, the pig iron from Wawayanda
Lake forge was carted to Chester for shipment on the Erie, the butter
and other farm produce from the Vernon Valley, extending as far as
Newton, N. J., was also brought to this point for shipment. It was
but natural that the trial to decide the boundaries of the Chesekook
and Wawayanda Indian patents should have been held at this place. In
the year 1785, in the barn connected with the Yelverton Inn, erected
in the year 1765, still standing, in good state of preservation, and
owned by Joseph Durland, some of the older inhabitants and pioneers
of Orange County met with the nation's most famous lawyers,
Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. The Wawayanda patentees were
fortunate in securing these men during this trial, and many
historical facts were brought out, through the witnesses sworn at
this trial. In their testimony concerning what they knew about the
early settlement of the country and the relations of the whites to
the native Indians, the evidence was set forth. The burden of the
testimony seemed to prove that Schunnemunk was not considered by the
pioneers as the high hills of the Hudson. On this trial, Judge Elihu
Marvin stated "that he was born in 1719 and moved in what is now
known as the town of Chester in 1742. Whenever he visited Haverstraw
and returned as far as the Ramapo River, it was always called beyond
the High Hills of the Hudson."
Hugh Dobbin, aged seventy-six, stated "that he lived near Sugar Loaf
Mountain since 1738."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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