Being the children of the first pioneers, who settled in Peenpack at
a time when there was was no other production in this part of the
country for them to live on than the meat they could obtain of the
wild animals, fowls and fishes before they raised grain or other
productions for their diet, and we have reason to infer that after
raising grain they only pounded it fine to answer for meat soups and
such bread or cakes as they could make of it, to eat with those
meats, and that these were their chief or only eatables for some
years before they became enabled to have any other diet. They may,
in the first instance, have obtained some meal from Rochester or
vicinity, but after raising enough for their use it is probable they
would rather use it pounded than to take it to the nearest mill, at
that time, to get it ground, in which latter case the bran remained
in the meal and as they could obtain good pounding stones and blocks
from the Indians to pound their grain, and as the bran in grinding as
well as pounding would remain in the meal, and as the nearest mill
must have been about 25 or 30 miles from their neighborhood, we have
reason to believe that they pounded their grain for soups and bread
before mills were erected in this town; and that the greatest
difference between the diet of those families and that of the
Indians, was that the former ate a greater proportion of vegetable
productions than the latter. The men of this generation of
descendants were generally stronger than those who succeeded them,
from which it appears their eatables were healthful and that their
drink, which was the best of spring water, also promoted health, and
that all other circumstances which attended them were also of a
healthful character, to wit: a pure air of the atmosphere, not
impregnated with the exhalations from bad, stagnant waters; brooks
and small streams of clear water running down the mountains into the
Neversink, creating a river of clear water passing through this
valley; such log houses as would let the fresh air of the atmosphere
pass freely into them towards the large fire they kept up in cold
weather, and their continual exercises in their boyhood with the
Indian children in hunting, fishing, &c., and in all their sportive
exercises of running, wrestling, &c., all had a tendency to promote
health and strength and fit them for the labor they had to perform as
they advanced in growth and after arriving to manhood, in respect to
which however some parents were more indulgent than others, and those
of the most persevering business character compelled their children
to labor harder than those parents who were less persevering.
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