Article
Number 21 - The Loveridge Patent No. 2 - Eldert Geiberten Cruyff and William
Loveridge
Originally published in the Catskill Examiner by Henry Brace between the years
1876 and 1879. Article 21 was published on January 19,1878. Extracted from the microfilm copies of the Catskill Examiner
located at the Vedder
Research Library. Transcribed by Barbara Bartley.
Local Sketches--No. 21.An Outline of theHistory of the
Town of Catskill,To The Year 1783.By Henry Brace.
In 1660, a single house stood on the right or south bank of the Catskill, about
thirty paces from the water and near the spot at which the second bridge of the
Canajoharie railway was afterwards erected. Except, possibly, the rude cabin of
Claes Teunisse, nicknamed Uylenspiegel, which stood, as my readers will
remember, on the south eastern slope of the Hopenose, this house was the first
dwelling built by a white man in the southern portion of the township. The owner
was Eldert Gerbertsen Cruyff, but the house itself was probably built in 1651,
by Van Bronswyk, and had probably been occupied by Jan Andriessen, the Irishman.
It was a structure of timber and roughly hewn planks, was one story high, was
thatched with straw or with rushes, and had foundations and a great chimney of
stone. At the west,--the exact location is along the Catskill, just above the embankment
of the railway,--was an orchard of young apple trees. At the east were maize or
wheat fields, the produce of which the Indians in the neighborhood sometimes
aided Cruyff in harvesting. In 1815 a few of the apple trees were standing, and
one of them has been described to me as having a trunk as large around as a
hogshead. At this time, also, the foundations of the house were visible.
Cruyff is spoken of in ancient deeds as a sawyer. His saw-mill was at Bethlehem,
on the Normankill, near Albany. He also owned a brewery and a distillery. His
beer, known as “strong Albany Ale,” and his whiskey were sold by the
tapsters from the Esopus to Schenectady. At one time a part of his possessions
consisted of a bull and fourteen cows, heifers and oxen, and he thus became
known, like the patriarch Job, as “as man of great substance.” In 1663, when
the Esopus war broke out, he rendered the civil authorities good service by
keeping the Catskill Indians quiet and by various messages of timely
information. In later days, he was always spoken of at Catskill as Elder de
Gooijer, that is, Eldert, the Thrower. The tradition still exists among us that
he could cast a stone from the southern edge of the plain, afterwards known as
Jefferson Flats, over the Van Vechten House into the Catskill, a distance, I
should judge, of about a thousand yards.
About the year 1671 Cruyff fell into debt. He conveyed his interest in the farm
on the south bank of the Catskill to his associate, Gansevoort, who in turn, in
April 1678, sold the land to John Conel, and the growing wheat upon the land to
Helme Janse. Two years afterwards, on the 27th day of July, 1680, Conel conveyed
the premises to William Loveridge, hatter, of Beverwyk.
I infer, from a recital in an ancient record, that, for some time before his
purchase, Loveridge had taken possession of a tract of arable land on the
Catskill, had built upon it, and had begun to clear it. This tract, which he
called De Kampe, that is, The Field, lies between the main Street through West
Catskill and the ridge of clay and rock near the house of Richard Martin. But
the possession of this farm and of the farm between the Devil’s Aspect and the
hill at the mill-dam of the Van Vechtens did not satisfy his desire of
ownership. On the 19th day of July, 1682, he made an addition to his estate of
more than six thousand acres. The deed of purchase is in Dutch, and is recorded
in the third volume of deeds in the office of the clerk of the county of Albany.
The sellers are described as Esopus Indians, and were, men and women, eight in
number. Mahak-Niminaw, sachem of Catskill, was not present when the deed was
signed, but it was stipulated that, when he should come home, he should receive
two pieces of duffels and six cans of rum. The price paid was chiefly in
clothing, guns and tools, the whole worth not more than a hundred dollars. The
description of the land, translated into English, I transcribe from the record:
“A certain parcel of woodland, lying at Katskil, extending from the mouth of
the kil, where his, Loveridge’s house and barn stand, southwards along the
North alias Hudson’s river to the middle of the great bend where the
trees are marked WL, and runs from the river up westwards to where it comes to a
fall on the Katerskil named Quatawichnack, and so along the east side of the
Katerskil to where the same empties into the Katskil, and so along the Katskil
to the house and barn of William Loveridge aforesaid, and so to the great river,
excepting the arable land which said Loveridge bought of Jan Conell, whereof a
patent has been already granted.”
A few words of explanation and comment may not be superfluous:
1. The house of William Loveridge was the second, or perhaps the third, house
built in the southern portion of the town of Catskill. It stood a few feet north
of and in a line with the cottage which Benjamin Dubois built about the year
1740, and in which Benjamin P. Dubois now lives. Its foundations, about fifty
years ago, were discovered by a chance digging.
2. In the Dutch of the original deed, the great bend is written d’groote
Imbocht. If, however, I am rightly informed, the proper spelling of the word
is Inbogt. The place designated, as my readers know, is the broad and shallow
bay, which opens out of the Hudson below Green Point, the residence of one of
the sons of the late Henry Van Orden.
3. The work Katerskil appears in this deed for the first time in any record.
While kat is in Dutch the generic name for cat, kater is the specific name for
he-cat.
4. The spot where the trees were “marked WL” was called by the Indians
Pes-qua-nach-qua, by the Dutch, Maquaas Hoek, and by the English, Stony Point,
and also De Witt’s Point.
5. The water-fall, Quat-a-wich-nach, lies below the bridge which crosses the
Katerskil on the road to High Falls, at the place where, according to an old
record, “the water runs into a hole in a dry season.” The Indian names of
places in the township are in a very corrupt condition; this name should
probably be Ket-itchuan-ock, that is to say, the “place of the greatest water
flow.”
The older Loveridge died, perhaps, at Perth Amboy, in New Jersey, between the
19th day of July, 1682, and the 6th day of January, 1684. In February, 1686, a
patent for the tract of land of which I have copied the description was granted
to his son William, who lived on his estate in Catskill until he died. His will
bears date of February, 1702, by which the testator devises his lands to his
wife for life, with remainder to his five children, William, Waldron, Hannah,
who became the wife of Gdysbert Lane, Margaret, who became the wife of Alexander
McDowall, and Temperance, who became the wife of William Van Orden.
Benjamin P. Dubois once told me, that while digging on the lawn a few feet south
of his house, he dug up two skeletons, or the fragments of two skeletons.
These may have been the remains of the Loveridges, or of members of their
family. It was evident from the mode of burial, that the bones were not the
bones of Indians.
In October, 1718, the land within the Loveridge Patent was surveyed and was
divided, by lot, into five portions. The first portion fell to Alexander
McDowall, the husband of Margaret Loveridge, the second to Hannah, the wife of
Gdysbert Lane, the third and fifth to Michiel the brother of Dirk Teunisse Van
Vechten, as a purchaser from William and Waldron Loveridge, and the fourth to
Temperance, who became the wife of William Van Orden.
The colonists and first inhabitants of Catskill seem to have been little better
than boors. The younger Loveridge was imprisoned in Fort Orange, for setting up
a scandalous tree before a neighbor’s door, a heinous offence [sic]
apparently, but to me of unknown nature. Cruyff was twice criminally prosecuted,
once for calling old Kettlehuyn a thief, and again for aspersing the good name
of Ulderivck Kluyn’s wife. Andriessen was accused of selling spirits to the
Indians, Hans Vos, for a like offence,[sic] was put into prison, Jan Van Bremen,
though employed to read a homily, on the Lord’s day, to his neighbors, was
complained of for swearing, Jacob Lockerman was fined three hundred guilders for
splitting open, with a heavy knife, the face of one Hoogenboom, from the
forehead to the upper lip. The successors of these men, the Salisburys, the Van
Vechtens, the Duboises and the Van Ordens, were of a different and higher
character.