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History of Orange County
Town of Montgomery
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This charter was among the earliest and most important granted in the State, and the directors appointed in the act were Robert Bowne, John De Wint, William Seymour, Levi Dodge, Johannes Miller, Hugh Walsh, George Clinton, jun., Jacob Powell, John McAuley, Charles Clinton, William W. Sacket, Samuel McCoun and George Gardner.
In these laudable enterprises he spent much time and money, and came out, of the concerns with an injured estate. The road was sixty miles long; a large portion through a new and mountainous district of country, and covered with a poor and sparse population. The people generally, throughout the whole extent of the road, were hostile, and would not consent to pay toil to travel a public highway.— The gates were evaded and pulled down at certain localities as fast and often as erected; in doing which the staid and sober-minded citizens of Ulster were very instrumental. For several years the company were continually at law with some one, the expenses of which ate up the small receipts of the road and no dividends were declared for many years.— The consequence was, the stock fell fifty per cent, the original holders sold out and the Institution passed into other hands. The road, however, was a blessing to all except the first stockholders. This is the usual fate of all first improvements.
We venture to remark that this road was injudiciously laid out by the commissioners who executed that important function. At that early day in the history of building turnpikes, one of their great advantages over the common roads of the country was supposed to be in this:—that they proceeded upon a straight line from place to place, whereby distance would be materially diminished. The consequence to the road in question was, the commissioners laid it out upon the true go-ahead principle, up hill and down dale, inclining it neither to the right or left. We should judge that they did not know that it was as far over as half round a hemisphere. A little curve now and then to the north or south would have evaded some of the highest elevations and sharpest ascents, and while it would have been but little longer, it would have been much more pleasant to the traveller, and far easier for the cattle that labor and trudge over its now too undulating surface.
Though himself not an educated man, this individual was a patron of learning as far as a liberal appropriation of means could accomplish it. His own wants and deficiencies may have induced and stimulated him to this course. Just notions upon the subject doubtless impelled him to supply others with that denied to himself. In 1791, with many others, he was instrumental in founding the Montgomery Academy, then but five in the State. Farmer’s Hall in Goshen was one of them, and chartered in 1790. It was no mean commendation to the citizens of the county, that out of five academies in the State, Orange should have founded and nourished two of them. Mr. Miller was the leading and efficient man in this enterprise, so valuable and honorable to his native town.
Our ancestors were not literary men, and had as much as they could well attend to for the first half century after settlement, to clear the land, build roads and fences, erect their dwellings and support themselves; and when schools of a higher order were needed, the citizens at large, not fully appreciating their value to the living generation, gave them a cold and unheeded reception. They could not understand, as many cannot at this day, how education was necessary to till the earth; and they were content to believe that pigs and cattle would grow and thrive as well in winter and summer, and the grass grow as high and as green without an academy as with one. Go into any locality of the land, in town or country, and you will find the same opinion of a high standard of education extensively to prevail, and especially that farmers do not need it. It is high time the fallacy was exposed and put under foot, as it is fast being done. In matters of education, as in all things else, we do find men occasionally start up far in advance of the times, who see an enlarged benefit in the adoption of certain measures, while those around them are blind, and perceive nothing in them that is desirable or of good report. We hold up to public view as patriots of the land and benefactors of the country, all who improve their fellow men by direct or indirect means in mind, body or estate, or meliorate the condition of society in any way; and the citizen who builds and maintains a common school equally with him who founds a college—all who are perfecting the endless powers of the human mind, and furthering the temporal interests of a diversified humanity.
Mr. Miller was not a man of impulses in anything, and did not encourage and give aid to a measure to-day, and when the fit was off, permit it by neglect to go down to-morrow, to be finished at a future period, and that because some new project had seized his mind. What he did was executed with all his might, sparing neither time nor money, till his object was satisfactorily accomplished; then he adopted it as his own, called it his, and took care of it as if it were his own child. Something of this kind seemed essential to his well being, and be appeared to be uneasy unless riding a hobby.