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Deerpark and Mount Hope

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Wheat and rye were cut by means of a knife or cutter about two feet long, fastened to a wooden handle, and similar to a hemp hook, and then gathered up into sheaves with a small hook fastened also to a wood handle. With these two instruments, one man at the same time cut down and gathered it up. This was the universal practice at this settlement, and it continued till about 1760, when scythes and cradles began to be used. Cattle were housed as well as horses, and all fed on grain and straw during the winter. Though threshing was done with the flail, much of it was trampled out by horses. The grain was cleaned by a large hand fan made of willow rods. The first fanning mill was brought into this part of the country by Peter Gumaer, about the year 1700 or 1760.

The first wagons used here were made principally of wood. The wheels were not hooped with iron, the fellows were thick and drove full of wood pins to make them durable.— Sleds were shod with wood. The harness was manufactured of flax and tow; the collars and neck straps wove of rope yarn, doubled and twisted, which the male members of the family manufactured during the long winter evenings to save time, and have some useful exercise to relieve the tedium of the night. The females in like manner were pleasantly employed around the large family hearth in spinning and reeling yarn; the whole fit up by the friendly chit-chat about the few incidents which from time to time transpired around them. Notwithstanding the many deprivations experienced by our ancestors there must have been many things of an honest and truthful character, which, by their native simplicity and good will, imparted great mirth and true enjoyment.

The first settlers carried their wheat to Esopus to sell—a distance of fifty or sixty miles—over a road, a great part of which must have been in very bad order, only about twenty miles of which were worked by the inhabitants of this settlement. Such was one of the disadvantages under which these early settlers labored; but by industriously working their productive lands, they surmounted them all, lived as well and grew as wealthy as the farmers of this day. The settlers on the Delaware were still less advantageously situated, for they were ninety or one hundred miles from market.

For the first half century the coarse grains were not cash articles, being used principally to feed cattle and fatten the hogs. Corn prepared in various ways was used with milk for the morning and evening meal, before tea and coffee came into general use, which was little before 1800 in this locality. Tea was first introduced here about 1760 or 1770—probably soon after the French war—for when the Revolution cut off the supply the inhabitants thought it very hard to be deprived of its use. Wheat was the great crop, and the first attempt to grind it was made by Jacob Codebeck with a very small mill. One of the stones with which the experiment was made—about two feet in diameter and three inches thick—is still to be seen in the cellar of Peter E. Gumaer of this town, near where the ancient mill stood. It was erected on a spring brook near his house, but how it answered the purpose is not now known. Though uninformed of the date of this erection, it must have been the first of the kind in this county. There were two other grist mills erected in this vicinity, on what was called “Old Dam Brook;” one at, and the other below, the outlet of a swamp and bog meadow—so long since, that no one of the last generation saw their remains, except the ground and stones which composed a part of the dam of one of them. One of them was at the Northwest side of the road, three-fourths of a mile Northeast of Port Jarvis; the other lower down on the brook. Jacob R. De Witt built a mill about the year 1770 on the Neversink River, near Cuddebackville, which continued to grind till sold to the Canal Company.

There was also an old mill erected by Solomon Davis— the site is now occupied by one owned by Mr. Thomas Van Etten; and another by Simon Westfall—the site of which is now occupied by Mr. Bennet’s mill. There was still another old mill—the site of which is now occupied by Samuel B. Farnum’s mill, near Butler’s Falls. The largest grist mill in this town is at Port Jarvis.

Judging from the sawed materials in old buildings, saw mills must have been in very early use in this neighborhood. One is known to have been erected about 1760 or 1770.

The first grist mills performed the operation of grinding only. The bolting was performed by hand sifting, before the flour was converted into bread. This process took out the coarse bran, and every family kept a sieve for the purpose.— This flour made the real healthy Graham brown bread, and infinitely to be preferred to that made of the finest Rochester flour of our day, if good taste and confirmed health are worth any thing. The men and women of that day were generally healthier and lived longer than those of this generation, but whether owing to the brown bread or other causes, we are not philosopher enough to say, though we think the bread was an efficient element.