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History of Orange County
Town of Montgomery
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On the journal of the Assembly for 1735, we find a bill for naturalizing the following named persons, among others:-- Matys Milsbagh, Hendrick Christ, Stephanes Christ, Larens Christ, Philip Milsbagh, Jacob Sinsebagh, Jacob Booch Staber and Johannis Jong Bloet.
In the first settlement of a new and extensive region, there is nothing connected with it more honorable than to strike the first blow that is to clear the soil for a comings race, or, to give birth to an individual that may be the father or mother to a line of numerous descendents. Those who succeed and come into the world, or begin its active duties under more ordinary and easy circumstances, attract but little attention, share the common fate of small notoriety, and, a thousand to one, will live, die and be forgotten; while the former, ever remembered and regarded with feelings of interest, respect and gratitude by a high minded and heroic people, will go down to future ages on the deathless page of the historian. This consideration endears their memory to posterity, stamps it with a certain value, which will increase in intensity and patriot-worth with the lapse of time. The wide-spread and ever-enduring fame of half the gods and demi-gods of antiquity which have come down to modern times in such bright and heroic colors, rests upon the same or like foundation. The ages which have passed, and now separate us from them, have cast an enchanting halo of glory around their names and memory, which, upon the principle we have stated, it would be little short of sacrilege to question or dissipate. In the case before us, the labor they performed, their early privations and bodily sufferings are the spices which embalm them in our memory.
The descendents of three early and hardy settlers are now numerous in this and the adjoining town of Crawford. The national characteristics of industry, piety and sobriety, which they brought with them from the land of their fathers, still cling and adhere to them as a national blessing. The civil pursuits of the German emigrants have been generally inclined to agriculture and kindred occupations, but with many respectable exceptions, of which Mr. Sinsabaugh, late Sheriff of the County, was one.
Wilemantown.—At this place there was an early settlement made by Henry Wileman, who owned a patent of 3,000 acres, granted in 1709. The location is on the east bank of the Walkill, a mile below the village of Walden, at the mouth of the Tinbrook. Wileman located the patent and settled on it in a few years after its date. It was divided in lots in 1712. In 1727, he was admitted to practice law in old Orange County, and his name is the first on record. In the history of St. Andrew’s Church in our paper, we find him a member of the congregation among the sparse population of the town as early as 1733. This church, we believe, was built on his land, was of logs, and was standing in 1776, as appears from the town record. There was a grave yard attached to it, and some of the grave stones are yet standing in a field ploughed over for half a century. This was the beginning of St. Andrew’s Church, now at Walden. It was a missionary station, and their third minister in 1744 was the Rev. Hezekiah Watkins, an ancestor of the writer on his mother’s side. The farm on which the church stood afterwards belonged to Peter Hill, Esq., and Samuel Monell, deceased, and now to Lucas E. Millspaugh. One of these grave stones has this inscription on it: "Here lies the body of Mary, wife of John Green, who died June 17, 1752, aged 57." From all we can gather of the history of early churches, this, we think, is the oldest in the town.
Mr. Wileman, as we have been informed, was an Irishman, a pretty free liver, noble and open hearted. He was Free Mason, a membership very common at that early day, when the institution was supposed to have and communicate many virtues, and shed a benign influence over the private and public walk and conversation of its members. Either to found a Lodge, or perpetuate one already formed, Wileman built a house on his farm for its accommodation, where they met during his life. After his death, the institution, having lost its principal patron, and the lands having passed into other hands, went down.
There is a tradition in this town relating to the death and interment of Henry Wileman, and, as it was of an unusual character, we will relate it. Wileman died, and there was an attempt to bury him with certain honors. It was customary at that day to furnish liquor to all who came to honor the dead, and perform the last sad office that could be performed to a fellow being. All things being ready, the bearers, bier-carriers, mourners and others in attendance, started with the corpse to inter it in the graveyard of the log church. Those, whose duty it was, by the programme of the occasion, to carry the dead to its final resting place, gave up after they had proceeded some two or three hundred yards from the residence of the deceased, and wholly failed to accomplish the solemn and interesting duty assigned them.— The bier ceased to move and the corpse was let down by the roadside, and abandoned by those in charge of it, who had as much difficulty in walking back to the place they started from, and from their home, as in bearing the dead body of Henry Wileman. Among these bearers of the dead there was one exception, but whether a clear case we cannot say, who, not content to leave the dead unburied and exposed to the then severe frosts and snows of winter, returned to the house, and having procured the necessary implements, dug a hole at the road side, and there deposited, with his single hand, these mortal remains, and covered up the free and noble-hearted Irishman, the Patentee of 3,000 acres. By an alteration in the road, this grave was thrown into an adjoining field; and, when Mr. Peter Neaffie, the present owner of the Wilemantown farm, some twelve or fifteen years since, excavated the cellar for the erection of his present dwelling, he came unexpectedly upon the coffin and bones of Wileman, and gave them a safe and respectable resting place. Facts are stranger than fictions, and wonderful are the mutations of human affairs.