In those days the settlement of a new country was indeed a herculean task with the meager facilities then existing. And this was preeminently true of this town, which was still slumbering in a dense primeval forest. Plows and all other implements were of the crudest description. What little grain was grown by these ancient farmers had to be cut with a knife or rude sickle, and then the grain was separated from the straw by the tramp of horses upon the threshing floor. It was afterward winnowed from the chaff by hand-fans made of willow rods. This was the universal practice in this region down to 1760. The first fanning mill was brought in here just previous to this by Peter Gumaer. The wagons were made almost entirely of wood and the harness of flax and tow. During the long winter evenings while the men were making these things the women were spinning and reeling yarn. Not the yarn of the idle gossiper, as now, but the fiber and fabric of utility which went into their clothing. The old Esopus region was some fifty or sixty miles north and the roads were left to the vagaries of Dame Nature. But these pioneers had to cart their corn and other produce there for sale. Wheat was the staple crop, and Jacob Codebeck of this town was the first to attempt grinding it in a small mill. One of these millstones, about two feet in diameter and three inches thick, is still in the Gumaer cellar near where the old mill stood. This was afterward followed by two other grist mills on the "Old Dam Brook." Then came the De Witt mill in 1770, on the Neversink River near Cuddebackville, and others in later years. These ancient mills had no devices for bolting the flour as now; thus after the grinding process, the whole had to be sifted by hand in order to secure the fine flour for bread-making and other culinary uses. One of the earliest saw mills was erected in this town soon after 1760. It should be said in this connection that there is some traditionary {_sic_}evidence of a still earlier settlement in this Minisink region which takes the date back even to 1650. Most of these claims, however, seem based upon certain letters written by Samuel Preston of Stockport, Penn., in 1828. In these letters he gave the recollections of John Lukens, Surveyor General of Pennsylvania, as to this very ancient settlement. His memory extended back to 1730. On this rather hazy authority it is claimed that the first settlement was prior to 1664, when the region was still in the possession of the Dutch, and that the settlement was abandoned at the English conquest. But there are no existing documents to substantiate any such claim, and the entire weight of evidence seems to clearly disprove it.