These sturdy young people, ambitious, enterprising, accustomed to and
delighting in the hardships of frontier life, found in this valley
and at this place an ideal spot for their purpose. They determined to
place themselves and their families beyond the realms of oppression
and persecution, to live as free as the air they breathed, at a point
relatively near, where their Huguenot countrymen had settled at
Esopus and New Paltz. Game was abundant. Fish were in the streams in
quantities. The soil was fertile, productive and easy of cultivation.
The native inhabitants were kindly disposed and peaceable. Could
anything be more alluring to these after their experience in their
native land? Tradition relates that they were happy and contented in
these new homes for many years. They were governed by a Christian
sentiment and duty. Honor for honest industry abounded. Every person
was comforted and ennobled by a "peaceful, pure and stimulating
atmosphere of personal and religious freedom."
The typical pioneer's home has been described as a log house on
sloping ground, on the brow of a hill, facing and overlooking the
level meadow land, from which a path led up to its front door, which
was about in the middle of the front of the house. Small high windows
are on either side of it. Directly opposite the front is the back
door, larger, wider and level with the ground. It opens against the
sloping ground so that wood may be carried or rolled in or that the
huge back log--the foundation for the fire--may be drawn in by a
horse for the great wide fireplace which fills up one end of the
single room--the "fire room"--the general living room. Across the
ends of the house, logs surround the great stone chimney and are
morticed in with the side logs. Between and around these clay and
earth fill in the crevices.
Before the days when leaded window glass was first imported from
England, thick oiled paper formed their semi-opaque windows.
Sun-dials and hour glasses marked the time.
The ceilings were low, the stairs were short and steep. Ladders led
to sleeping rooms above. The small cellars contained family supplies
to supplement the food furnished by hunting and fishing, in which the
Indian residents joined most willingly.
Indian trails widened to foot paths, as every one walked. Later
travel by horseback was the custom, and pack horses carried their
baggage, food and household effects--canoes and boats were of some
service. For light, a bundle of yellow pine knots was burned in a
corner of the large fireplace. This "candle wood" would be fastened
there between flat stones. Later oil obtained from different sources
was burned, as also tallow in betty lamps or brown bettys (shallow
pewter or metal dishes two or three inches in diameter with
projecting nose over which the wick hangs).
Phoebe lamps were similar but had a second shallow saucer to catch
the drip. Later candles were made by dipping, afterwards by moulds.
The pale brittle green bayberry candles from the taller shrub or
candleberry tree gave most fragrant odor, while later, the brighter
better light of the spermaceti candles was of service.
In the latter part of the 17th century, during the active lives of
the second and third generations, the lands of the patent were
allotted to individual ownership. The several owners then built
substantial stone houses at nearby points in the valley. The "Gumaer
stone house" of the present day was built. The "Cuddeback stone
house," now standing, near the log house by the highway, near a small
run of water just south of Port Clinton and about one mile due north
of pioneers knoll, was built by Jacob Caudebec and his sons.
This has been occupied by six generations of the Cuddeback family. It
is still firm and substantial and a comfortable home. The Swartwout's
possessed Seneyaghquan.
These stone houses, generally irregularly rectangular, were most
substantially built. Entrance was usually through a large double
door, horizontally divided, opening into a large "fire room" at one
end, while at the other end of the house was a smaller room, used as
a dining room or a "state bed room," where a "Slawbank" or a "half
headed bed" was ever ready for the visitor.
[Illustration: Cuddeback Stone House and Nearby Log House.]
The large heavy "lug pole" was replaced later by the light moveable
iron crane with its iron hooks, pots and kettles in the great broad
fireplace. Andirons and creepers were later added to the household
equipment. The ceilings showed great logs and rafters rough hewn and
supporting a board floor or roof with its heavy bark covering.
The attic, beside providing sleeping apartments, had near the
chimney, a room with an opening to chimney and place to smoke bacon,
ham and beef; also a room for grains, storage, etc.
The large deep cellars contained bins for potatoes, apples, turnips,
beets, etc., barrels for salted beef, pork, game and fish--tubs of
sausage, headcheese, etc., and firkins of butter, eggs--shelves
filled with fruit, etc., barrels for cider, vinegar, etc.
In the earlier years, the tables were of boards and the dishes,
platters, etc., were mostly of wood, so were the trenches, the
borols, the tankards, the spoons of laurel wood and the plates of
birch bark. Bottles and drinking cups and noggins of leather and
sometimes of the thin hard shell of the gourd of horn. Later pewter
dishes were substituted. Food was plentiful. Wild native fruits were
in abundance, as huckleberries, strawberries, blackberries, grapes
and cranberries. Wild turkey abounded in flocks. Wild geese and ducks
by the thousands, and pigeons in flocks to obscure the light, and
here were also pheasants, partridge, quail, snipe. These, with the
products of the soil made life worth living, and secured the settlers
comfort and prosperity.
The Indians, friendly and helpful, taught the planting and the
raising of Indian corn, their "gunney wheat" or "turkey wheat"--a
native American food--the grinding and the cooking of it and the
preparation of many kinds of most nutritious foods from it, samp
porridge, suppawn, new samp, succotash, using their handmade mills,
their stump and sapling mortar also. They had great fear however of
windmills. They were also most helpful in killing, securing and
preserving game and fish for winter use. In turn, they learned to
secure wild honey. With wonder they called the bees "English flies";
called the maples "sugar trees" as they boiled the sap and gathered
the sugar.
They joined in the winter sports and pastimes as fox hunting,
squirrel killing, bear bayting, and for a generation lived most
peaceably with the settlers.
For about sixty years, friendly and peaceable relations existed with
the Indians. The French and Indian war beginning about 1755 changed
this. The Indians under French influence withdrew from this region,
became hostile, made life perilous--property uncertain, and committed
many acts of treachery. Afterwards a few of them returned and
remained in the valley until the revolution, when the absence of many
of the men and the influence of the cunning Brandt turned them again
to be enemies of the whites and led to the invasion of 1777 and 1779.
In 1777 the Committee of Safety directed that three forts be built in
the "peenpack" neighborhood. The central one near the house of
Ezekiel Gumaer was near by the Pioneer's knoll. Surrounding the stone
house, on the open land a "picket fort" a stockade was built. Rows of
tree trunks, stakes, etc., were planted upright enclosing several
acres, an area sufficient to accommodate the nearby families. Around
this fort with Capt. Abram Cuddeback in command, many exciting
adventures occurred during the revolution. Gumaer states, "that the
fort sheltered eleven families, aggregating one hundred and thirteen
persons during the greater portion of the years 1778-9."
William Cuddeback, the father of Capt. Abram, was there with his
family. He was an old man and died soon after the revolution. His
son, Benjamin Cuddeback, was at Fort DeWitt, near the present
Neversink highway bridge, at the time of the raid and was in charge
of its defense. After the invasion, he returned to the "Cuddeback
Stone House," "Fort Cuddeback," with his family, where he died about
1782 presumably of typhoid fever.
The upper was the neighborhood of Meckheckemeck, while the lower
neighborhood embracing the valley from Huguenot, south to the
Delaware river was called "Little Minisink Neighborhood." Its forts
were--Westfall, Decker, near the Delaware and Van Auken, the latter
being east of the Neversink where the stone houses afforded the
protection.
After the revolution, more attention was paid to agriculture. The
small farms were again cultivated to a greater extent. Timbers were
rafted down the Neversink and Delaware to market. Saw mills and grist
mills were built in the valley. The cultivation of flax and hemp
constituted a large part of their labor. The manufacture of cloth and
clothing was a household occupation and year end employment for both
the men and the women of the families. The sowing, the cultivation,
the gathering of the flax which must be pulled, dried and ripped and
spread into a "stook" in the field. This was followed by the cleaning,
the drying and the tying in bundles. The new grown hemp must be
pounded, swingled, carded and dried, then swingled, pounded and
hetcheled until the fibers were assorted, spread and drawn ready for
spinning. The raising of sheep, the shearing, the assorting of
fleeces, the carding of the wool--the colorings of "golden rod
green"--the "pokeberry crimson"--the "sassafras orange yellow"--the
hickory-oak bark or indigo as fancy may decide. The skeins bleached,
washed, dyed and dried were wound on bobbins for the loom. Then came
the knitting, the weaving, and the making of the clothing,--broom
corn brooms supplanted birch splint brooms. Such constant employment
invariably leads to habits of economy, to adaptability and
resourcefulness which makes for independence and strength.
This mutual dependence and assistance resulting from their situation
made a "neighborhood" feeling whereby each shared in the profits, the
pleasures and the luxuries of the others. They joined together in
their work and in generous welcome to the kinsfolks. With such
environments, to a people, strong, vigorous, enterprising, voluntary
exiles for conscience's and their religious sake, these develop
strong characteristics in families, more marked in some individuals.
Gumaer notes this development in the earlier generation. He says,
"religious reading meetings were held in the peenpack neighborhood,"
also "the services of an officer were unnecessary in that
neighborhood during the first sixty or seventy years of the
settlement. They had the honesty and the prudence to adjust all
matters relating to their mutual dealings." When roused by fear and
danger they became sturdy energetic soldiers who knew only
independence and self-reliance. The extent of this is shown by the
military records. In the second regiment of Ulster County militia, in
the company of which Captain Abram Cuddeback commanded we find among
the enlisted men six of the name of Cuddeback--William, Peter, James,
Benjamin, Abraham, Sr., Abraham, Jr., five of the name of Swartwout
and several names of each of the families of the region. With such
inheritance, with such discipline, with such surroundings, with
nature as a firm, kind, unyielding teacher, impress of character was
early discernible with these people. These families developed traits
of character and physical stature which has been most noticeable in
members of succeeding generations.
"William Cuddeback, though uneducated, was versed in the scriptures,
was characterized as a wise man in his time." Each succeeding
generation developed its leaders in the religious, business and
social matters of their day, of sterling uprightness and integrity,
among a people gentle, modest, retiring, with strong religious
convictions, with sympathy and helpfulness toward each other and a
fidelity to duty.
Gumaer states, "I have sat many a long winter evening and many an
hour in the day time to hear the conversations and arguments of a few
of the individuals of the second generation. Many of these
communications and remarks were entertaining and instructive as to
what had transpired in this valley, and as to the lives of the
people." Gumaer also states from knowledge gained in this way he
considers "that Col. Peter Cuddeback had the general resemblance to
the early members of the family." His picture herewith presented may
be considered as indicative of the features and general physique of
the family.
[Illustration: Colonel Peter Cuddeback 1795-1892.]
The family life was the community life of the early generations.
Remnants of this have continued in some localities where the husking
bee, the quilting party or the apple cut afford opportunities for the
family to gather and to rehearse tales of the early trials, fortunes
and successes. This family visiting, when all of the family were
included, with its free hearty welcome, and its unreserved and
unstinted hospitality indicated the fellowship of the family as a
group and as the unit in the community and is in marked contrast to
the twentieth century methods where the individual is the unit.
After the revolution, the state lands of Central New York were opened
to settlers. Many of the younger men of the third generation
emigrated to that portion of the state and became pioneers on the
"Holland purchase" and the military lands of the state where their
families have continued to reside.
Later the descendants in the fourth generation, farmers and those of
allied pursuits, became owners of nearly all of the most fertile
bottom lands in the valley. They were jealous of their ownership of
these paternal farms, and guarded them from outside ownership and
intrusion. This spirit developed also in the members of those
families in western New York where they located. Near Skaneateles,
through one section, farm after farm for miles in extent was the
property of a Cuddeback, at Owasco, at Moravia. In Niles township,
at Twelve Corners, the same conditions existed. Farm after farm was
the property of a Van Etten, Westfall, Van Fleet or Cuddeback, or a
relative of one of them in the third or fourth generation, from
Deerpark ancestry.
Similar conditions to a limited extent existed in other sections as
in Wayne County, N. Y., Seneca County, N. Y., Niagara County, N. Y.,
Wayne and Bradford Counties, Pa., near Adrian, Mich., and in Iowa.
In 1745 Roelof Elting bequeathed to his daughter, Jacomyntje Codebec,
certain sums of money--to others lands, which if they sold, they must
first offer to their brothers and sisters at the same price a
stranger would pay.
In this development of families of succeeding generations in
different localities we see illustrated the migratory element of our
people.
These sturdy young emigrants of the middle of the seventeenth century
settled and established their homes near Kingston, N. Y., about 1650
and reared their families there. As their children reached maturity
and began life for themselves, some of them with others, later
emigrants, sought adjacent locations for their homes. The
Meckheckemeck settlement was formed just previous to 1700. Lands were
purchased and the Cuddeback patent was obtained. Here a new
generation grew to manhood. Youth again active, restless and alert
sought other locations. From 1730 to 1750 the lands along the
Delaware, both in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania were attractive. The
younger of the families of Cuddeback, Depuy, Shimer and Hornbeck
established homes there. Records show that some of the Swartwouts of
the third generation, natives of Meckheckemeck, then called
"Pin-peck," or "Peenpack," removed to this section.
As the next generation grew to manhood many of them seeking homes
crossed over into the valley of Susquehanna into the southern central
New York counties. This movement was quite extensive just after the
revolution, when influenced by the DeWitts, surveyors, quite a colony
from Peenpack established themselves in the "lake country" of central
New York.
Again in each succeeding generation similar developments occurred.
Soon after 1800 the active, restless young people from Central New
York emigrated to Michigan and to Ohio accompanied by relatives and
friends from the older settlements on the Delaware and Susquehanna.
These migrations have continued. The more alert or venturesome of
each generation have sought new locations to establish their homes.
They are now in every state of the Union some who are direct lineal
descendants of the emigrant Jacques Caudebec and in the older
locations the network of relationship is intricate and closely woven.
The lands in the valley continued to be most productive during the
first half of the nineteenth century. Substantial stately houses were
built. Large barns and out buildings were erected. The thrift and
prosperity of the farmers continued. The social life centered about
the church and the homes--a broad hospitality prevailed of which the
family was the unit.
During the lives of the fifth and sixth generations, conditions have
changed materially. The varied pursuits of the twentieth century
gives occupation as varied and diverse as their homes are distant
from one another and from the ancestral home of the family. The
exhaustion of the soil, the attraction of the productive western farm
lands, the migration to the cities, all have tended to diminish the
population and the representatives of the family throughout this
entire region of country. It is a fact, however, more than eighty per
cent, of the lands of the Caudebec patent remains today in the
possession of owners whose ancestry may be traced to a patentee.
The first attempt to build a grist mill in the valley was made by
Jacob Caudebec and his sons, near the Caudebec stone house. The small
run of water over the steep declivity just east of the house
furnished the power, the rough stone blocks, the mill stones, were
obtained from the Indians. Grains for both the settlers and the
Indians were ground there for many years, substituting this for hand
pounding with pestle in mortar and for the sapling and stump mortar.
Later other and better mill sites were located in the valley. One of
which was the mill site of Henry Decker on the old dam brook. "Ouwe
Dam Kill"--a dam across the spring brook about one mile northeast of
Port Jervis, overflowed a long, low marshy tract of land extending
toward Huguenot, stored water for power purposes for a mill located
at that point.
Remnants of this dam are visible today just west of the Huguenot
highway where it crosses the railroad as both cross the stream near
Port Jervis. Also foundation stone of the old log house, the mill
house are still visible about twenty-five feet east of the present
dwelling. This property became the property of Benjamin Cuddeback
about 1800. The present dwelling built by Benjamin Cuddeback about
1814 stands today typical of its time in shape, size and structure.
Later it was the home of Elting Cuddeback for eighty years and of his
son, the writer, during his youth.
Jacob Caudebec and Peter Gumaer were French Huguenot refugees.
Caudebec came from Caudebec-en-Caux--a thriving agricultural and
manufacturing town on the Seine in Normandy, France.
These refugees, Caudebec and Gumaer, fled in 1685 to England or
Holland, thence to Maryland, in America, later to New Amsterdam,
thence to Oesopus and Wylt Wyck (Kingston), N. Y.
Jacob Caudebec was born about 1666 in Normandy of a family of
prosperous merchants. In his flight he became separated from his
people. He was unable afterwards to find trace of his own family or
sisters or to recover any of their property. Although the following
story is found among the writings of Peter Gumaer: "Now I have
understood that it had been concluded on between Cuddeback and two of
his sisters that he and Gumaer would go to a certain place in England
or Holland (I am not certain which) and that after a certain time
these two sisters would embark for the same place and bring money to
enter into a mercantile business at the place of their destination;
and that Cuddeback and Gumaer after being landed at this place waited
for these two sisters till after the time for their arrival had
elapsed; and giving up all hopes of their coming embarked for America
and were landed in the State of Maryland; which passage exhausted the
last of their money. Cuddeback had information afterwards, that his
sisters after some length of time had arrived and entered into a
mercantile business; and he was chagrined in consequence of their
having all the money. It was said that after they had arrived
Cuddeback corresponded with them by letters and would often remind
them of their injustice in keeping to themselves all the property;
which I have understood they offered to share with him if he would
come and live with them or they would take and do well by one of his
children if he would send one of them." Ruttenber states that Peter
Gumaer and Jacob Caudebec were the younger members of the families of
Abraham Guimar and James Caudebec. He soon adapted himself to the
different conditions of life of the new world. He found employment
with Benjamin Provost, a trader of New York and Oesopus. He came to
this valley in 1690. On October 21st, 1695, he married in New York
City Margarette Provost, a daughter of his employer, Benjamin
Provost, and Elsje Aelberts who had been married in New York
Nov. 5th, 1671.
Jacob Caudebec is quoted as having said that "by leaving France he
had been deprived of many enjoyments but he had the satisfaction of
leaving his posterity in a country of good land, easily acquired." He
is characterized as of a penetrating mind, persuasive in business, of
speculative disposition, and most tender towards his family. He
retained his mental faculties and physical vigor almost until his
last hour. Three of his sons became farmers on the peenpack flats,
the lands of the patent. On February 15th, 1726, he deeded a
one-seventh interest in the patent to his three sons, Benjamin,
William and Jacob, who agreed to pay certain moneys equally to all
his children. One son and four sons-in-law became farmers near
Shepekunk, in northern New Jersey along the Delaware. In 1715 the
name of Jacob Koddeback appears as member of a foot company of Ulster
County militia, under the command of Col. Jacob Rutsen. On September
1st, 1689, J. Caudebec, a native of France, took oath of allegiance
to King William and Queen Mary.
[Illustration: Map--Division of Land.]