Читать книгу History of Westchester County, New York, Volume 3 - Группа авторов - Страница 8

Mr. Jacob Read, a representative of the Yonkers people who were engaged in farming during 1825 and 1855 and intervening years, is still (1896) a resident of the town, which for fifteen years he served as supervisor. In 1895 he said, in substance:

I came to Yonkers in February, 1829, when a boy in my eleventh year. I recall distinctly the prominent farmers of Yonkers from 1829 to 1855, and their mode of life. I also recall the kind of crops they raised, and how they marketed their produce. Through the '20s and '30s and up to the '40s, the principal crops were pats, rye, wheat, corn, hay, potatoes and pickles. The potatoes were of the "blue nose " and " kidney " variety. Afterward came the "Early Rose." We did not have, as farmers do now, a number of varieties, all dug out of the same hill. The fruits were apples, peaches, pears and cherries. The apples were " Pound Sweets," " Catheads," and " Fall Pippins." The peaches of Yonkers in the latter part of the '30s and the first of the '40s were very fine. The cherries were of the Dyckman variety, a sour cherry and excellent. We used to call tomatoes "love apples;" but nobody ate them. I never ate tomatoes until 1847. We had good walnuts and chestnuts. The garden truck the farmers raised was for their own use only. None was sent to market until 1835. All the cabbage for market, for example, was raised on Bergen Point and Long Island. Nor did the Yonkers farmers send any milk to New York. It was kept in milk-rooms, for there were no ice-houses. The milk-rooms had stone bottoms, and were cool. Tables in those days were supplied with plenty of fresh meat. I remember that Mr. David Horton, with whom I lived, would kill a sheep in summer, or a lamb or a pig in the fall, so as to have fresh meat, and would send a quarter over to Mr. Vermilye Fowler's, or Mr. Nattie Valentine's, or Mr. David Oakley's; and when they killed, they returned the favor. The poultry in the farm-yards also supplied the tables. Barrels of salted meats and hogsheads of cider, as also butter, lard, turnips and potatoes stocked the cellar. Blacksmiths, wheelwrights and carpenters made many agricultural instruments which they are not expected to make to-day.

Beef and ham were smoked in the farmers' smoke-houses. Up to 1845 sheep were kept. The lambs were sold in New York. A man came up from Manhattan island during a period of years and bought lambs of the farmers. Pork and poultry were also sent to New York. Large droves of cattle and sheep from the north passed through Yonkers down the Albany post-road. Perhaps as many as two hundred or two hundred and fifty cows and from three hundred to five hundred sheep would be in a single drove. Two or three men or two men and a boy could manage a drove, as the line fences were all up and the gates were closed. The drovers " put up " at old Uncle Post Dyckman's, on the other side of Kingsbridge.

Hay was sold in New York. Marketing was done by land as well as by river. A team would be sent to New York with a load on Sunday night in order to be there for the Monday morning market. The team was returned the next day and again sent down on Wednesday back Thursday, and down again on Friday. Butter sold at from ten cents to a shilling a pound! Loose sugar, that is, brown sugar for every-day use, was purchased in quantities of seven pounds. White sugar was purchased by the " loaf." A " loaf " of white sugar weighed about ten or twelve pounds. It was more expensive than brown sugar. We didn't see any of that white sugar around except when there was company. Then it was cut off the loaf and placed on the table. We used to count money by pounds, shillings, and pence up to about 1841. " One and three pence" was fifteen cents; "one and ninepence," twenty-two cents; "two and tupence," twenty-seven cents. In these early days we used " dips," that is, tallow candles. The candles were made by hanging wicks over alder rods (from which the bark had been peeled) and dipping them into the mixed mutton and beef tallow; the beef tallow hardened the candles. The alder rods were selected because they were light and easily handled. After the candles were made the rods were carefully stored away for the next year's use. In later years sperm oil and kerosene oil were used. Coal was not in use in Yonkers until about 1839 or 1840. Then Mr. Ebenezer Baldwin, who kept a lumber yard, brought in twenty tons; but its sale was slow. Nobody at first had a coal-stove. Everybody used open fireplaces or " Franklin " stoves. The " Franklin'' was used in parlors. It was open in front like a fire-place. On one side stood the tongs and on the other the shovel, their brass tops polished bright.

I recall distinctly the routine work of each year on the Yonkers farms. January and February were the months in which wood was cut for summer use. Enough wood was cut in the winter to last all summer. Fire-wood was drawn from the woods by ox teams. When the snow was deep we could put a chain around the tree we had chopped down, and, with our oxen, would drag the tree to the wood-shed, breaking a road through the snow, which in those winters fell plentifully. I have seen it three feet deep, and of course there were often heavy drifts. We used to pile the woodshed full of fire-wood and then pile it up outside. Loads of chips were brought to the yard from the woods. Chips made a quick fire for boiling the tea-kettle. Besides the wood we cut for home use we cut a good deal of cordwood to be taken to New York by our teams. We had no buck-saws, but used axes and sometimes cross-cut saws. Besides getting in our wood, we threshed oats, rye and wheat in January and February, calculating to get through before the first of March, which was the month for repairing stone walls and rail fences, and for cutting brushes and briars and heaping them up in piles to burn. In April the farmers were generally digging out stone and building stone walls. They were also at that time getting ready to plow their corn ground and also to plow their oats, which were sown in April. In May we planted our corn ground and also planted potatoes and plowed our pickle ground. Every farmer had his pickle patch, some reserving four acres and some five or six for that crop. In June the pickles were planted. That was a very important crop. Not one-quarter of the pickles were taken to the Yonkers pickle factories. The fact of the business is, that Yonkers, Fordham, West Farms, Eastchester and Greenburgh were the principal pickle producers for the New York market. It was a former Yonkers man who established the pickle industry in one of the western states. In June we also put our cheese peppers in beds to be afterward transplanted. A good many of them were raised. June was also the month for plowing and hoeing corn and potatoes. In the latter part of the month we plowed for buckwheat and turned over our turnip ground. Turnips were raised to feed the cattle, not for market. June was the month in which the sheep were sheared and in which cherries were picked and taken to market. I have taken down to the city as many as sixteen hundredweight of cherries. In July we were plowing and hilling corn, which we tried to finish before the beginning of haying and harvesting, which was our July and August work. In July we also plowed and hoed our pickle crop. Apples were taken to market in August and pickles were picked in the last part of the month. That was the principal work. We also at that time dug potatoes and took them and our apples to market. This work extended into September. Forty-five bushels of apples were a load for a team. September might have been called our marketing month, for then we were gathering our crops and taking them to market. We also were topping our corn at that time, but we did not husk it until October, which was also the month for picking some variety of apples, digging some kinds of potatoes and for making cider. In November we were yet busy husking corn and digging potatoes. We were also, during this and other winter months, threshing grain, killing hogs and poultry, cutting wood, etc.

The crops in Yonkers were fine. In the '40s over here in the valley (Tibbett's Brook), at the Horton farmhouse, near the present Dunwoodie railroad station, and a little south of the road to Eastchester (Yonkers avenue), we would get up the oxen and take the cart, which held forty-five bushels, out to the potato patch, in November, and there dig potatoes and fill the cart and have them in the wagon-house or cellar by noon. We would get another cart-load in the afternoon. We calculated that six hills of the variety, which was very large, would fill a bushel basket. They did fill it. Some of those potatoes were from six to eight inches long, and they were good, too! I remember that sometimes after supper we went to the barn to sort apples and potatoes. We made two candlesticks by cutting holes in two large turnips. We put a dip in each. One dip would be burning at one end of the heap of potatoes or apples, and the other at the other end of the heap. We sat there in the barn and worked. Just before stopping work, one of the men would go into the house and put some of those potatoes in the hot ashes of the open fire-place. When we all came in from the barn the potatoes were nicely backed, and there we sat, before going to bed, and enjoyed those mealy and white baked potatoes.

As to the price of farm land, the Horton farm of two hundred acres at what is now called Dunwoodie, was bought in 1833, or 1834, for six thousand dollars. A little more than a score of years afterward, when the village was incorporated (1855), the average price of a lot on Warburtom avenue was about one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars. Opposite Manor Hall the price was two hundred dollars. Judge Woodruff owned the property at that time. As to the upper end of what is now Warburton avenue, they would almost give you a lot in that locality if you would go up there. In 1872, when the city was incorporated, those lots opposite Manor Hall were worth five and six hundred dollars each. When Dr. Gates bought of Levi P. Rose two or three acres on the hill, opposite the present First Reformed church, he paid for it three thousand and nine hundred dollars. In 1893, a part of that property was offered to the city, for a city hall property, for one hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

I recall one event which created great excitement in Yonkers in 1842 or 1843. A dam above Ashford (a place subsequently called Ardsley by Mr. Cyrus W. Field), about five miles north of Yonkers, gave way, by reason of a sudden and heavy fall of rain, owing to a cloud-burst Oliver Rhead, whose farm was in Sawmill river valley, a little north of St. John's cemetery, saw the river rising rapidly, and, mounting his horse, rode swiftly down to Yonkers to alarm the village. The Wells and Paddock dam, north of the present Elm street bridge, was then comparatively new, but for some time it resisted the pressure of the flood. In those days there were no factories or other buildings near the dam to be damaged. At last the water broke through and with irresistible force rushed through the little village. It gullied out Mechanic (now New Main) street about seven feet. It also gullied out Mill (now Main) street, west of Getty Square, At that time the " Tony Archer " bridge, a wooden structure near the present cemetery(Oakland), spanned the Sawmill river. It had upright side-posts surmounted with railing. The water overflowed that bridge and the bridge over the Sawmill river just north of the present Getty Square. The Sawmill river road was covered. The water ran up over the stone wall, and as far as the old parsonage, in what are now Oakland cemetery grounds. It also overflowed, " Gully Guion's lane." I was on my way to a political meeting to be held at Bashford's tavern, which stood on the north bank of the Nepperhan, west of Manor Hall. When I reached the Tony Archer bridge, near the parsonage lot, I attempted to ford the water, which was runnings over the bridge. The current swept me and my horse downstream, and, after regaining solid ground, I rode down to the Post-road bridge and forded it without accident. I recall the deep gully in Mechanic street near the site of the present Getty House. A few days after the flood a young horse belonging to Anson Baldwin was taken to be shod at Archibald's (afterward Peter Nodine's) blacksmith shop. The horse was restless and succeeded in breaking away from the tie-post. He ran around into Mechanic street, fell into the deep gully and was killed. The gully was full of boulders.

Jacob Read was born at Southeast, Putnam county, New York, on September 30, 1818. His father, Rooney Read, was a soldier in the war of 1812, and his grandfather, Jacob Read, was a soldier in the Revolution. Mr. Read came to Yonkers at the age of eleven, and is one of the oldest and best known citizens. He has held many positions of trust; for fifteen years was supervisor, and at present is a member of the board of water commissioners, acting as treasurer. He is a member of the Odd Fellows and Masonic orders. On November 23, 1845, he married Miss Catherine L. Mann, who died on December 26, 1891. Five of his children are living, — George, Leander and David H., all residents of Yonkers; Mrs. Amanda Gibson, of White Plains; and Helen L. , wife of Wilbur B. Ketcham, of this city.