THE LOCALITY.
In the hill country, sixty-two miles north of New York, and twenty-eight
miles east of the Hudson River at Fishkill, lies Quaker Hill. It is the
eastern margin of the town of Pawling, and its eastern boundary is the
state line of Connecticut. On the north and south it is bounded by the
towns of Dover and Patterson respectively; on the west by a line which
roughly corresponds to the western line of the Oblong, that territory
which was for a century in dispute between the States of New York and
Connecticut. Its length is the north and south dimension of Pawling.
This area is six and a half miles long, north and south, and irregularly
two miles in width, east and west. Quaker Hill can scarcely be called a
hamlet, because instead of a cluster of houses, it is a long road
running from south to north by N. N. E. and intersected by four roads
running from east to west. The households located on this road for one
hundred and sixty years constituted a community of Quakers dwelling near
their Meeting House; and until the building of the Harlem Railroad in
the valley below in 1849, had their own stores and local industries.
Before the railroad came, Quaker Hill was obliged to go to Poughkeepsie
for access to the world, over the precipitous sides of West Mountain,
and all supplies had to be brought up from the river level to this
height. At present Quaker Hill, in its nearest group of houses at the
Mizzen-Top Hotel, is three miles and three-quarters from the railroad
station at Pawling. Other houses are five and seven miles from Pawling.
On the east the nearest station of the New York, New Haven and Hartford
Railroad, New Milford, is nine miles away. The "Central New England"
Branch of the N. Y. N. H. & H., running east and west, is at West
Patterson or West Pawling, seven and eight miles.
The natural obstacle which does more than miles to isolate Quaker Hill
is its elevation. The "Mizzen-Top Hill," as it is now called, is a
straightforward Quaker road, mounting the face of the Hill four hundred
feet in a half-mile. The ancient settler on horseback laid it out; and
the modern wayfarer in hotel stage, carriage or motor-car has to follow.
Quaker Hill is conservative of change.
The mean elevation is about 1,100 feet above the sea. The highest point
being Tip-Top, 1,310 feet, and the lowest point 620 feet. The Hill is
characterized by its immediate and abrupt rise above surrounding
localities, being from 500 to 830 feet above the village of Pawling, in
which the waters divide for the Hudson and Housatonic Rivers. On its
highest hill rises the brook which becomes the Croton River. From almost
the whole length of Quaker Hill road one looks off over intervening
hills to the east for twenty-five miles, and to the west for forty miles
to Minnewaska and Mohonk; and to the north fifty and sixty miles to the
Catskill Mountains.
One's first impressions are of the green of the foliage and herbage. The
grass is always fresh, and usually the great heaving fields are mellowed
with orange tints and the masses of trees are of a lighter shade of
green than elsewhere. The qualities of the soil which have made Quaker
Hill "a grass country" for cattle make it a delight to the eye. Well
watered always, when other sections may be in drought, its natural
advantages take forms of beauty which delight the artist and satisfy the
eye of the untrained observer.
The Hill is a conspicuous plateau, very narrow, extending north and
south. It is "the place that is all length and no breadth." Six miles
long upon the crest of the height runs the road which is its main
thoroughfare, and was in its first century the chief avenue of travel.
Crossing it at right angles are four roads, that now carry the wagon and
carriage traffic to the valleys on either side; which since railroad
days are the termini of all journeys. The elevation above the
surrounding hills and valleys is such that one must always climb to
attain the hill; and one moves upon its lofty ridge in constant sight of
the distant conspicuous heights, the Connecticut uplands east of the
Housatonic on one side, and on the other, the Shawangunk and Catskill
Mountains, west of the Hudson, all of them more than 25 miles away.
Unsheltered as it is, the locality is subject to severe weather. The
extreme of heat observed has been 105 degrees; and of cold--24 degrees.
Quaker Hill possesses natural advantages for agriculture only. No
minerals of commercial value are there; although iron ore is found in
Pawling and nearby towns. On the confines of the Hill, in Deuell Hollow,
a shaft was driven into the hillside for forty feet, by some lonely
prospector, and then abandoned; to be later on seized upon and made the
traditional location of a gold mine. The Quaker Hill imagination is more
fertile and varied than Quaker Hill land. No commercial advantages have
ever fallen upon the place, except those resultant from cultivation of
the fertile soil in the way of stores, now passed away; and the
opportunity to keep summer boarders in the heated season.
Interest which attaches to Quaker Hill is of a three-fold sort:
historical, scenic and climatic. The locality has a history of
peculiarly dramatic interest. It is beautiful with a rare and satisfying
dignity and loveliness of scene; and it is the choice central spot of a
region bathed in a salubrious atmosphere which has had much to do with
its social character in the past, and is to-day very effective in making
the place a summer settlement of New York people. The population is
increased one hundred per cent. in the summer months, the increase being
solely due to the healthful and refreshing nature of the place.
The history of the locality is associated with the quaint name, "The
Oblong." This was the name of a strip of land, lying along the eastern
boundary of New York State, now part of Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess
Counties, and narrowing to the northward, which was for a century in
dispute between New York and Connecticut.
There had been a half century in which this was all disputed land,
between the Dutch at New York and the English in New England. Then
followed a half century of dispute as to the boundary between sister
colonies, which are now New York and Connecticut. As soon as this was
settled in 1731 the immigration flowed in, and the history of Quaker
Hill, the first settlement in the Oblong, begins. It was granted to New
York; and in compensation the lands on which Stamford and Greenwich
stand were granted to Connecticut after a long and bitter dispute. The
end of the dispute and the first settlement of the Oblong came, for
obvious reasons, in the same year. The first considerable settlement of
pioneers was made at Quaker Hill in 1731, by Friends, who came from
Harrison's Purchase, now a part of Rye.[3]
The historical interest of the locality dwells in the contrast between
the simple annals of Quakerism, which was practiced there in the
eighteenth century, and the military traditions which have fallen to the
lot of peaceful Quaker Hill. The "Old Meeting House," known for years
officially as Oblong Meeting House, experienced in its past, full of
memories of men of peace, the violent seizures by men of war. That
storied scene, in the fall of 1778, when the Meeting House was seized
for the uses of the army as a hospital,[4] has lived in the thoughts of
all who have known the place, and has been cherished by none more
reverently than by the children of Quakers, whose peace the soldiers
invaded. Both the soldier and the Quaker laid their bones in the dust of
the Hill. Both had faith in liberty and equality. The history of Quaker
Hill in the eighteenth century is the story of these two schools of
idealists, who ignored each other, but were moved by the same passion,
obeyed the same spirit. It is said that a locality never loses the
impression made upon it by its earliest residents. Certain it is that
the roots of modern things are to be traced in that earliest period, and
through a continuous self-contained life until the present day.
In the eighteenth century Quaker Hill was the chosen asylum of men of
peace. Yet it became the rallying place of periodic outbursts of the
fighting spirit of that warlike age; and it was invaded during the
great struggle for national independence by the camps of Washington.
There is a dignity common to Washington battling for liberty, and the
Quaker pioneers serenely planning seven years before the Revolution for
the freedom of the slave. But he was a Revolutionist, they were loyal to
King George; he was a man of blood, brilliant in the garb of a warrior,
and they were men of peace, dreaming only of the kingdom of God. He was
fighting for a definite advance in liberty to be enjoyed at once; they
were set on an enfranchisement that involved one hundred years; and a
greater war at the end than his revolution. Their records contains no
mention of his presence here, though his soldiers seized and fortified
the Meeting House.[5] His letters never mention the Quakers, neither
their picturesque abode, their dreams of freedom for the slave, nor
their Tory loyalty.
Each cherished his ideal and staked his life and ease and happiness upon
it. Each, after the fashion of a narrow age, ignored the other's
adherence to that ideal. To us they are sublime figures in bold contrast
crossing that far-off stage: Washington, booted, with belted sword,
spurring his horse up the western slope of the Hill, to review the
soldiers of the Revolution in 1778; and Paul Osborn, Joseph Irish and
Abner Hoag, plain men, unarmed save with faith, riding their plough
horses down the eastern slope in 1775, to plead for the freedom of the
slave at the Yearly Meeting at Flushing.
What effect the beauty of the place had upon the pioneer settlers it is,
of course, impossible to say, for they have left no record of their
appreciation of its beauty. Probably their interest in the picturesque
was the same as that of a Quaker elder, of fine and choice culture after
the Quaker standards, who said to the author, with a quiet laugh:
"People all say that the views from my house are very beautiful, and I
suppose they are; but I have lived here all my life, and I have never
seen it." A Quakeress confessed to the same indifference to the beauty
of the Hill, until she had resided for a time in another state, and had
mingled with those who had a lively sense of beauty of scene; returning
thereafter to the Hill, it appeared beautiful to her ever afterward.
The land has been for several generations under a high state of
cultivation. The keeping of many cattle has enriched the broad pastures;
and the dairy industry has been carried on with constant fertilizing of
the lands; so that the great fields, heaping up one upon another, high
above the valley, and plunging down in steep slopes so suddenly that the
falling land is lost from view and the valley below seems to hang
unattached, are covered with a brilliancy of coloring and a variety of
those rich tints of green and orange which spell to the eye abundance,
and arouse a keen delight, like that of possessing and enjoying.
There is also a large dignity in the outlines of every scene, which
constantly expands the sensations and gives, on every hand, a sense of
exhilaration and a pleasurable excitement to the emotions, which seems
in experience to have something to do with the industry and application
characteristic of Quaker Hill.
With this the atmosphere has had much to do, no doubt, being dry and
soft. The first sensation of one alighting from a train in the town is
one of lightness and exhilaration. This sensation continues through the
first hours of one's stay on the Hill.[6] After the first day of
exhilaration come a day or more of drowsiness, with nights of profound
sleep. In some persons a heightened nervousness is experienced, but in
most cases the Hill has the effect upon those who reside there of a
steady nervous arousal, a pleasure in activity, and a keen interest in
life and work.
Whether the early settlers, in selecting the highest ground in this
region, had a sense of this excellence of the climatic effect we do not
know; but their descendants believe that such was their reason for
settling the highest arable land on the Hill before the valleys or the
lower slopes were cleared.
It is the common tradition that they settled on the Hill first, and on
its highest parts, in order to avoid the malaria of the lowlands; as
well as because they thought the hill lands to be more fertile.
The excellence of the climate is witnessed in the long lives of its
residents. There were living in 1903, in a population of four hundred,
five persons, each of whom was at least ninety years of age; and
fifteen, each of whom was more than seventy-five years of age.
[3] Mr. James Wood, in his Bicentennial Address in 1895, thus
described the Oblong:
The eastern side of the country had been settled by Presbyterians from
Connecticut, and the western side along the Hudson River by the Dutch.
The feeling between them was far from friendly. Their disputes had been
very bitter, and Rye and Bedford had revolted from New York's
jurisdiction. Their whipping-posts stood ready for the punishment of any
from the river settlements who committed even slight offenses within
their limits. As the two peoples naturally repelled each other they had
left a strip of land, comparatively unoccupied, between them. This
continued in nearly a north and south line, parallel with the river, and
a little more than midway between it and the Connecticut and
Massachusetts lines, as far as they extended. Into and through the strip
of land the Quaker stream flowed, like a liquid injected into a fissure
in the rocks. Each Quaker home as it settled became a resting place for
those who followed, for it was a cardinal principle of Quaker
hospitality to keep open house for all fellow members, under all
circumstances.
[4] "One First Day morning, in the mellow October days of that
year, the worshipping stillness of the Friends' Meeting was broken by
the tramp of horses, and the jangling of spurs, as a band of soldiers
rode up, dismounted and entered the building. They remained quiet and
reverent, till the handshaking of the elders closed the meeting; then
the commanding officer rose, and in the name of the Continental Congress
took possession of the building for a hospital for the troops, and as
such it was used all that winter. After this meetings were held in the
'great room' in the house of Paul Osborn, and were often frequented by
soldiers stationed in the place, who listened attentively to the
speaking, and left quietly at the close of the meeting."--Richard
Osborn--a Reminiscence, by Margaret B. Monahan, Quaker Hill Local
History Series, No. VIII.
[5] In the garret of the Meeting House rifle-ports, cut through
the original planks, were discovered by the present writer.
[6] "Bodily functions are facilitated by atmospheric conditions
which make evaporation from the skin and lungs rapid. That weak persons
whose variations of health furnish good tests, are worse when the air is
surcharged with water, and better when the weather is fine; and that
commonly such persons are enervated by residence in moist localities but
invigorated by residence in dry ones, are facts generally recognized.
And this relation of cause and effect, manifest in individuals,
doubtless holds in races."--Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology,
Vol. I, p. 21.