New York State History

To one who comes into Athens from the north there are offered three ways of departing therefrom. First by the Schoharie Turnpike, by which the traveller may reach Limestreet, thence moving south towards Leeds by the Valley or Coxsackie Road, or that road which keeps in touch with the Hans Vosen Kill. Another way is. by the Athens Turnpike direct to Leeds, and still another is the River Road to Catskill.

One of the interesting features of Limestreet is the disappearing Hans Vosen Kill. The turnpike takes advantage of the natural bridge offered to make a crossing without any expense to the county Beyond the flats by the kill, and on the east side of the road, stood until recent years, and possiblystands still, "a birch tree standing on a rock", which in 1767 is mentioned in the survey of the Catskill Patent as one of the boundary marks.

Everywhere are family burial grounds; some fenced from the cattle and kept in good order, others allowed to run wild. The early gravestones were seldom more than rough pieces of rock without inscriptions, and in some cases even these have been removed and the ground ploughed over. One farmer used the family markers to build him a wall and then planted potatoes among his forefathers, of so little account were dead men in his eyes.

Homesteads from which many a well-known name of today has sprung are frequently to be met with; houses, generally of stone, from one to two hundred years old, with great beams eighteen inches square, each representing a monarch of the forest, and now and then window panes iridescent with age. We pass them by with a glance and hardly a thought of what has befallen under the aged roof, but if the walls could only cry out, what tales would be told of the struggles of the early pioneer, of Indian raids and husking bees, of the rude log cabin, which was allowed to disintegrate when the second generation moved into the new house, of the owner of to-day, a rich banker or merchant maybe in the great city to the south, but still of the old name and the old blood, who occasionally visits the place in his touring car for the sake of auld-lang-syne.

"Old Catskill", now known as Leeds, lies on a beautiful plain surrounded by beautiful hills and backed by the glorious Katzbergs. It was an important centre when the present Catskill village was merely "Het Strand", the Landing. On these fertile bottoms the Mohican Indian held sway, raising by proxy so to speak his Winter's supply of maize and beans; the squaw did the work in those days while the man wore the feathers. The native agriculturist laid out no money on farm machinery-a hoe made from the shoulder blade of a deer, or a clam shell fastened to a handle being the principal tool.

Shortly before Hudson sailed up the river the all-conquering Iroquois, or the Mohawk branch of the confederation, had descended on this mountain region. It appears to have been a case of brains against numbers, and the brains won the day, the result being so disastrous that the local Indians never again ranked as a power though they continued to inhabit the region, paying tribute to the victors. When the white men came with their death-dealing thunder and lightning the river Indians were disposed to welcome them with open arms as allies against the powerful enemy in the North, and it may be for this reason that the Indians so readily surrendered the rich lands along the river.

Sylvester Salisbury, an ensign in the British army, took part in the conquest of New Netherland, and in July, 1670, was placed in command of Fort Albany. Three years later the British power in the Hudson Valley was temporarily overthrown, and Salisbury was sent a prisoner to Spain, but at the close of the war he returned to New York and was again put in charge of his old post. In those days a landed estate was the only riches worth having, and it was natural that Salisbury should look about him with that end in view. In 1677 he, with Marten Gerritse Van Bergen, whose son Peter's house still stands in West Coxsackie, purchased an estate at Catskill.

Sylvester Salisbury died before the patent was obtained, but his son Francis took possession in his father's stead, and in 1705 built a stone mansion that still stands on the northeast side of the Windham Turnpike, a half mile beyond Catskill Creek; it is still the finest building of the region. On the front are the initials of the builder and his wife, "F. S. M. S.", attached to the iron spikes which are driven into the second floor beams, while those holding the beams of the attic floor are ornamented with the date 1705. Within there is little change. One of the rooms has been ceiled and plastered but the other still shows the great square beams that were popular before the days of sawmills, while its little window-panes are discolored with age. This room is a storehouse of old furniture that would break the heart of an antiquary: sofas spacious enough to shelter the entire family, straight-backed chairs that a few generations ago were stored away in the attic, but have now been returned to their original state; an old flintlock and powder horn hang over the door. The most remarkable treasure the house contains is a desk that four hundred years ago was the pride of one of the Doges of Venice. It is an exquisite piece of inlaid work, and contains mechanism which pulls back the stiff roll-top as the writing shelf is drawn forward.

One of the peculiar features of the house is the loopholes, not that loopholes in themselves were peculiar in houses of that day and generation, but here they were only placed on the back of the house, the slaves' quarters. They are placed at both the first and second floors, and the theory of the present owner of the building is that they were intended, not to ward off the attacks of Indians or hostiles, but to protect the female slaves from the colored brother.

Back of the house is the barn. Almost immediately after the patent was granted Andries and Hendrick Witbeck settled on this place as tenants, and it is believed that this barn was built by them between 1682 and 1692. An old pear tree, which is little more than skin and bones to-day, stands in front of the house. It was full grown 150 years ago and is pointed to as contemporaneous with the barn.

The present owner and tenant of the Salisbury acres is Dr. Claudius Van Dusen, whose family has been in possession many years, a typical, old-style country doctor, with all the best that the word implies; a finely educated man who, now that his days of active practice are over, keeps in touch with current events as well as the history and legend of the region in which he lives. A country doctor, if so inclined, has the best of opportunities to gather a store of interesting anecdote and history of the neighborhood during his daily rounds through the miles he must travel, and Dr. Van Dusen has made large use of his opportunities.

The doctor has many treasures, and among them a curious glass bead that was dug up on the place when he was a boy, say sixty or more years ago, and had always been looked on as an Indian relic until recent years. It is about an inch and a half high, and an inch in diameter, some three-quarters of an inch of the sides are corrugated; above and below the corrugation is a red similar to the red of pottery, then the central portion is covered with a thin layer of opaque white, and on this is a much thicker layer of dense blue, the result being that only two narrow lines of white show, the corrugation making this a white zig-zag or star separating the blue from the red.

A Rev. Mr. Ford from New York or Brooklyn, when calling at the place, saw the bead and stated that it was of Phoenician origin and prehistoric, and said or gave the impression that it was a silent evidence that the Phoenicians were here in prehistoric times. The reverend gentleman, who appears to be something of an Egyptologist, told the doctor that he had searched Europe to find and study such a bead, and had at last found one or more specimens in the Berlin museum. He further said that the decoration around the hole at either end, which is a simple zig-zag, was the symbol of the Egyptian kings, and also that, to his knowledge, but one other of these beads had been found in this country, and that near the shores of Lake Erie.

Some time later the doctor received from a friend in Washington, who had seen the bead, a newspaper clipping concerning a bead which the friend said was identical, having seen and examined both. The clipping stated that a curious bead had been found on the bank of the Roanoke River in Virginia, that it had been sent to Professor Virchow in Germany, and to an equally eminent archaeologist in England, and that they both agreed that it was of Phoenician origin, and that there was only one other known specimen in existence, that being in the Louvre in Paris.

Mr. S. S. Haldeman in the Smithsonian report for 1877 has an article "On a Polychrome Bead from Florida", the illustration and description of which seems to tally exactly with that of the Leeds bead. He mentions examples which have been found in Pennsylvania, Canada and New York, as well as various points in Europe and Egypt. He says: "Mr. Morlot's paper is intended to show that the Northmen received these beads from the Phoenicians and carried them to America, a view which is opposed by Mr. A. W. Franks, F. S. A., of the British Museum, who thinks that the Beverly specimen figured by Schoolcraft is Venetian of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, a view which is probably correct for all the North American examples.

"And yet the manufacture of the star pattern and other kinds of beads in glass and enamel, with varicolored spots and circles, is of great antiquity.

"Charles C. Jones, in 'Antiquities of the Southern Indians', mentions that De Soto found European beads in possession of the natives as early as 1540."

The general opinion of the unlearned but practical New Yorker seems to be that this bead was probably part of the stock of some Indian trader, as beads have always been legal tender with the natives. At the Museum of Natural History in New York this theory holds; it also agrees with the views of Mr. Jack Frost, a noted trader in beads for Indian consumption, who refused to become excited over the subject, which is still a fair field for speculation.

There is a legend connecting one of the early Salisburys with a tragedy that is interesting as showing how much can be made of little when the neighbors really take hold and help. One version has it that the lord of the manor was so persistent in his wooing that the girl ran away to be rid of his unwelcome attentions. Another that, being of a violent temperament, he so abused a servant that she departed in fear of her life. Any way, it was a girl, and she ran away. He, following on horseback, soon caught her, and tying her with his halter, fastened the other end to the saddle and started his horse on a run, soon dashing the poor girl to death, whereupon he was arrested, tried and convicted, but because of his money and position, was condemned to be hanged when ninety-nine years old, and to always wear a halter around his neck. Many are the ghost stories based on this legend. On moonlight nights the horse dashes silently down the road, sometimes with the girl on his back, sometimes dragging her at his heels, but always is she clothed in a shroud; on stormy nights the good folk hear her shriek and the horse thunders by as though the storm had broken loose afresh.

Dr. Van Dusen, whose long life has been spent in this venerable house, gave a correct version of the story in the Catskill Recorder for September 14, 1883. The tale had shortly before that been revived in a magazine article, and it was to forever lay the ghost that the doctor took up his pen. The facts are that the girl in question was one whose services had been purchased from her parents by William, son of Francis Salisbury, the William for whom the Potuck (1728) farm house was built. This girl may have been somewhat headstrong, and becoming tired of her position ran away, and proving fractious when caught was tied, as the legend tells, as the only practical way of leading her back to the paths of industry. After William was again in the saddle the horse became frightened, possibly at the violence of the maid, and ran away, the rider was thrown and, with his foot caught in the stirrup, would have himself been dragged to death had the strap not parted. The girl of course was killed, but it was so evidently the result of an accident that there was no arrest nor trial. The halter which the man is said to have kept around his neck to the day of his death was in all probability a string which in those days was frequently worn to keep off some evil rheumatic, or other spirit, it being quite as efficacious as the more modern method of carrying a horse chestnut in the pocket.

While the ghost does not walk in these benighted days of education as frequently as of yore, we still are not entirely without our share of faith in such matters, for Leeds has had its "Woman in Black" even so lately as December, 1906. The Catskill Examiner tells how this woman in black nightly parades the Green Lake Road, taking particular pains to scare the pretty young girls who ventured abroad during the early hours of dark-a ghostess of taste, evidently. The school-teacher, as became a man of learning, having never seen the apparition, started out one fateful night to lay it, but when the black skirted figure jumped suddenly at him from the heavy shadow of a pine tree our brave pedagogue is said to have
taken a five-foot picket fence as neatly as the best jumper at the horse show; in other words, he stood not on the order of his going, but went at once. At last accounts the "Woman in Black" had the field to herself. When daylight arrives and the heroes of the countryside again come forth there are those mean enough to hint that "she" is no lady, claiming to judge by her stride and such like tokens, but as accounts generally indicate that those who have seen her ladyship are apt to be headed down the road at a right smart clip, with the ghost a close second, the opportunity for studying said stride, etc., does not appear to have been taken full advantage of.