Goshen, New York

“ Christofer Denn's share of 2,000 acres in the Wawayanda patent having been set apart, he visited the location and made friends with the Indians living there. The claim was surveyed by Peter Berian and lay touching the northeasterly bounds of the town lots of the village of Goshen. Its bounds run thus: "Beginning at a stake and stones about east of and ten chains from the dwelling-house of General Abraham Vail in East Division; thence northwesterly along the northeasterly bounds of the Goshen town lots, and until it meets with a line supposed to divide the old counties of Ulster and Orange ”

“ David R. Arnell of Goshen, a monument was erected in the village to the memory of the men who fell at Minisink. It was set up over the bones of the patriots which had been gathered from the battlefield forty-three years after the massacre. On July 22, 1862. a more pretentious monument was dedicated and unveiled, provision for the cost of the same having been made in the will of Dr. Merritt H. Cash, of Minisink.
Goshen village was originally laid out in four lots of eighty acres each. ”

“ He married Miss Francis E., daughter of William S. and Sarah T. (Wood) Conkling. He removed from the farm to the village of Goshen in 1901, and lived a retired life until his death. For years he was a director and superintendent of grounds of the Orange County Agricultural Society, and was one of the first members of the Goshen Grange. He was agent in New York and Jersey City for the Orange County Farmers' Milk Company, a director of the Milk Exchange, and a partner in the firm of Wells & Stage, milk commission merchants, with offices in New York. ”

“ There are Mennonite colonies in Holland, France, Russia and Germany, as well as in the U.S. The American Mennonites have been largely emigrants from Holland and Prussia. The principal American colony is at Germantown, Pa. (first settled 1683) .
There is a Carnegie library, a city hospital and a fine high school building in the town. Goshen is an important agricultural and lumber market. Its manufactures include flour, lumber goods, ladders, iron, wagons, steel tanks, underwear, machinery, furniture and farm implements. ”

“ DRAKE, FRANK M.—The present editor of the Goshen Independent Republican is Frank Drake, who became connected therewith as part owner January 1, 1883, and sole owner in March, 1892. Mr. Drake is a practical printer, an able writer, and is a "worthy son of a worthy sire." His father was Victor M. Drake, one of the Nestors of Orange County journalism, and the son is giving in the semi-weekly issues of his Independent Republican evidence that the "journalistic instincts" of the father have descended to the son. He is a Democrat of the conservative type ”

“ They were brought up by a man, appointed their guardian. He treated them harshly and as soon as grown they left him and came to try their fortune in a new land. John first acquired some property in Boston, which he left in his will to his son Nathan, but soon came to Goshen and settled there, buying in 1744 eighty acres of land, "and the houses thereon" from William Jayne. ”

“ Samuel Wickham, born January 4, 1892, and Elizabeth Stivers, born August 29, 1893.
GEORGE HENRY MILLSPAUGH was born in Goshen, Orange County, October 9, 1872. He received his education at the public school at Goshen, where he has since resided. He engaged in the laundry business in 1897 and now has the only steam laundry in Goshen, it being fully equipped with every modern convenience. In politics he is a republican. He is a member of Goshen Lodge No. 365, F. & A. M.; Goshen Social and Athletic Association, Cataract Hose Company and the Knights of Pythias. Mr. ”

“ Gazlay merged the Times with his Goshen paper, and evolved therefrom, at Newburgh the Political Index, the interests of the Republican party were apparently consolidated. It supported Jefferson and Madison, and the War of 1812. Jonathan Fisk wrote the editorials for the Index, and with the inspiration of this able man's articles, the Index cared little for its only contemporary, the Orange County Patriot, a Federalist paper, and the latter retired to Goshen, whence it came, to become the Goshen Democrat. He sold his Index to Charles M. Cushman, in 1829. Mr. ”

“ The Otterkill circles through the town adding picturesqueness to the fields it waters, while high ridges and fertile valleys vary the scene. The Goshen and Montgomery State road runs northeast through the western part of the town and the Little Britain State road joins it at Clark's Crossing. Mr. Clark's farm, once the Denniston Bull farm, is now in the hands of the New York and New Jersey Railroad, and the road is being constructed. ”

“ Easterly, in Chester, is Sugar Loaf Mountain, and west of this is Mount Lookout, the principal elevation of Goshen. With the further mention of Mount William and Point Peter, looking down upon Port Jervis, let us clip the long list of Orange County elevations.
Valleys connect mountains and hills. That of the Delaware River, along the border of Deer Park, is narrow and irregular, being much broken by tributaries and mountains. ”

“ In politics Mr. Kniffin is a democrat, and has served the town of Goshen as collector one term.
CHARLES T. KNIGHT, a prominent citizen of Monroe, was born here in 1847. He is a son of Chauncey B. and Mary (Thompson) Knight; the latter a daughter of Rev. J. J. Thompson, died in 1908. As a young man Mr. Knight engaged with his father in the feed, coal and lumber business, and was a member of the firm of C. B. Knight & Co., organized in 1868, continuing until 1877, when he was associated for two years with the provision house of James A. Townsend at Newburgh. ”

“ From the accessible records it seems that the "art preservative" entered Orange County by way of Goshen in 1788. It appeared next in Newburgh in 1895, {sic} at New Windsor in 1799, at Montgomery in 1806, New Vernon in 1833, Slate Hill in 1834, Middletown, in 1840, Port Jervis in 1850, Warwick in 1845, Pine Bush in 1868, Walden in 1869, Cornwall 1871, Monroe 1882, Cornwall-on-Hudson in 1888, Chester 1888, Highland Falls 1891, Washingtonville 1899. ”

“ Israel Horton and Sarah Lee, born in the township of Goshen, N. Y., in the year 1770. He was a master builder in the city of New York, when quite a young man. He was said to possess a mind peculiarly adapted to mechanical pursuits, and he engaged in them before his majority. When about 23 years of age, he took the small-pox, in New York, went home to his father's, in Orange County, where he died in a few days. ”

“ President, John Caldwell, Blooming Grove; Vice-presidents, Captain Henry Robinson, Newburgh; John R. Caldwell, New Windsor; William Sayer, Cornwall; Jeffrey Wisner, Warwick; Lewis H. Roe, Monroe; Hulet Clark, Minisink; James D. Bull, Hamptonburgh; Richard Sears, Goshen; Gideon Pelton, Montgomery; David C. Bull, Crawford; William Hurtin, Wallkill; William S. Little, Mount Hope; Thomas Van Etten, Deer Park. Recording secretary, John Wilson, Goshen. Corresponding secretary, Joseph W. Gott, Goshen. Treasurer, Charles Monell, Goshen. ”

“ But thou cans't not leave thy labor;—when thy thread is duly spun,
Thou shalt flee on flashing pinions, at the setting of the sun.
The times have been hard, reader, our friend, yet all merriment has not entirely died out, and there is still the sweet voice of music to be heard in the land. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and many minor cities, the Benedictine Ullmann hath been ubiquitously about, operating most vigorously, while the philosophic and courteous Gosche hath not been far distant. ”

“ And in New York the wonder of the bridges made up for heartburnings and disappointments. The gossamer span to Brooklyn affected him like a long note on a hunting-horn. At times human weaknesses would boil within him, as when he thought with rage that other boys and men must be uplifted by the prizes and scholarships they won, feeling the pride of combat and of victory, but to him they meant only the wherewithal to live for himself and his mother and sisters. ”

“ Are we going to Central Park?"
"Unless you wish to promenade up and down Fifth Avenue." [Pg 438]
"No, I did say the Park, and we will go there. But let us walk near the edge, not too far away from this marvellous city. Never was there a city like New York for life. I'm sure of that. It's as if every living creature had quicksilver in his veins—or her veins. For I never saw such vital women as one sees here anywhere else! Oh, Claude! When you conquer these wonderful women!"
Her vivacity and excitement were almost unnatural.
"New York intoxicates me to-day!" ”

“ It's the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this; New York has very little to do with it. Now if it were a play, it would be different. New York does make or break a play; but it doesn't make or break a book; it doesn't make or break a magazine. The great mass of the readers are outside of New York, and the rural districts are what we have got to go for. They don't read much in New York; they write, and talk about what they've written. Don't you worry." ”

“ The little town itself is a grassy street, with a meeting-house and a hotel, which has a desolate air of mistaken enterprise declining into disappointment, with long anticipation of a crowd of summer pilgrims, who might well turn their steps hither, but who have never come. Beyond the village street upon the same plateau is the great Goshen reservoir, which lies hushed in grim repose over the town of Williamsburg, a few miles below, the town which was overwhelmed some years ago by the bursting of the Mill River dam. ”

“ The services of men of their profession rarely reached this valley in former times. At Goshen was one or more regular physicians in the time of the war, and in the State of New Jersey, about 20 miles distant from this neighborhood, was another. The latter sometimes attended Peter Gumaer, my grandfather, who was stricken with palsy near the time the war commenced, and he and Doctor Sweezy, from Goshen, attended to heal the wounds which Cornelius Swartwout received when the Indians invaded this neighborhood. ”

“ In the neighborhood of these churches there must not be overlooked, in this part of Fifth Avenue, the residence of Helen Gould, a square-built house with an elaborate portico, at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street. This was originally the home of one of the most extraordinary men ever developed in New 54 York—Jay Gould. He was an orphan boy in Northeastern Pennsylvania, who became a clerk in a country store, a surveyor and map-maker, and finally was employed in a tannery, and to sell its leather first took him to New York. ”

“ That first breathless impression of New York! How she had feared it, that first dusky evening, when, shrinking in a doorway before the onrush of driven multitudes, she had felt the very air dragged from her nostrils, obliterating her individuality, routing her courage, stunning her senses. She had stood a long time, clinging to her meager sheltering, disheartened at the fury at her feet, awed by the flaming ladders to the impending stars—no inanimate stones, but living rocks, endlessly climbing, which must end by toppling over on her in an obliterating crash. ”

“ Fancy a part of New York City—Gotham, the cold, the selfish, the unneighbourly, the indifferent—in which [Pg 281] everyone knows everyone else and takes a personal interest in them too; where distances are slight and pleasant, where young men in loose shirts with rolled-up sleeves, or girls hatless and in working smocks stroll across Sixth Avenue from one square to another with as little self-consciousness as though they were meandering down Main Street to a game of tennis or the village store! ”

“ I said. “The New York people themselves suffer in exactly the same way. There isn’t a street in their city that they’ve finished or ever will finish. If anything begins to look like completion they smash it up at once and start afresh. It must be something in the air, a restlessness, a desire of the perfection which can never be realised.”
Mrs. Ascher very carefully unwrapped a succession of damp rags from one of the largest of her lumps which was standing on a table by itself. ”

“ But if it were willing to confront all these inconveniences, it is intimately, it is osseously, convinced that a house is not cheaper than a flat. As a matter of fact, neither a house nor a flat is cheap enough in New York to bear me out in my theory that New York is no more expensive than those Old World cities. ”

“ Almond lived much farther up town, in an embryonic street with a high number—a region where the extension of the city began to assume a theoretic air, where poplars grew beside the pavement (when there was one) , and mingled their shade with the steep roofs of desultory Dutch houses, and where pigs and chickens disported themselves in the gutter. These elements of rural picturesqueness have now wholly departed from New York street scenery; but they were to be found within the memory of middle-aged persons, in quarters which now would blush to be reminded of them. ”

“ He terminated another extended romance, The Golden Bowl, and in August set sail for New York, ostensibly for the purpose of writing a book of American impressions. The volume called The American Scene, published in 1906, gives his account of the adventure, or rather of certain parts of it. He lived through the first autumn with his family in the mountains of New Hampshire, and, after a sojourn in Cambridge, spent Christmas in New York. ”