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Colonial Times |
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The Lenni
Lenepi
Tribe
"Original
People" |
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Colonial Times |
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The Lenni Lenape
Dutch Settlers
The Lockhart
Patent
Snedens Landing
Road
Closter Publick
Road
Harington Town-
ship
Colonial Historic
Sites |
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Prior to 1680,
what is now Rockleigh was part of the wilderness known as "The
Kings Woods." The western slope of the Palisades was a succession
of rolling terraces. The soil was good, abundantly watered and well
timbered. So beautiful was the green side of the mountain that the
Indians believed the Great Spirit raised the Palisades to protect his
favorite abode for man. The woods, abundant with wildlife and clear
streams, provided amply for both man and beast.
The territory had long
been inhabited by the Lenni Lenape Tribe or "original people."
A part of the Delaware Nation, they probably numbered two or three
thousand when the Dutch first arrived in the area. By the middle of the
eighteenth century only a few remained, and by the end of the
nineteenth century they had disappeared. Their influence is still with
us in the familiar names of Hackensack, Raritan, and Matawan - and in
such words as hickory, chipmunk and wigwam. Lacking even the wheel, they
engaged in a primitive agriculture and cultivated corn, beans, squash
and tobacco.
Although they remained apart, resisting both enslavement
and assimilation, they taught the early settlers much about the land.
Through observation the colonists learned the characteristics of
unfamiliar plants and animals and methods for hunting, fishing, and
cultivating crops. It was from these Indians that the Dutch acquired
their lands...
[50th
Anniversary - Borough of Rockleigh, NJ - 1923-1973]
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The
First Dutch
Settlers |

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Dutch
farmers and indentured slaves worked together in the fields |
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With some understanding of the land and the people they found here, we
can appreciate the vision and opportunity that lay before these Dutch
who strove to establish themselves on the west side of the Hudson.
Jan Pietersen Haring
(1633-1683) is thought to have been born in Hoorn Holland and came to
Nieu Amsterdam in 1660.
He and Margrietje Cosyns were married in 1662 in the
Bowery and settled on a farm in that neighborhood. On 17 March 1681, under the leadership of Jan Pietersen Haring, a number of
Bowery residents, including "Huybert Blauvelt and Ariaen
Smith," obtained a deed from the Tappan Indians
of the Lenni Lenape Tribe for a large tract of land on the west side of
the Hudson River. Together with nine other families Jan Pietersen
Harring proposed establishment of a
settlement at Tappan and received a patent (Tappan
Patent) first from Governor Carteret of the Province of New Jersey and
subsequently from Governor Dongan of the
Province of New
York on March 24, 1687. The Tappan Patent shareholders included the
Haring family (3 shares), Blauvelt family (2 shares), Smith family
(2 shares), De Vries (2 shares), Clas Manuel from the Bowery (2 shares),
and five others (1 share each) for a total of 16 shares.
The Tappan Patent included the current New York towns of Tappan, Orangeburg, Blauvelt, Piermont, Sparkill, Grand View on
Hudson, and part of South Nyack as well as the current New Jersey Boroughs of
Old Tappan, Northvale, Norwood, West Norwood, and Harrington Park.
Jan Pietersen Haring did not live to settle on
the Tappan land, but his wife and family—four
boys and three girls—took up his shares and
founded the prolific family that would follow. Margrietje married Daniel
DeClark who became the new head of the group of Tappan settlers. Several of the
Haring brothers settled in the
southern and western portions of the Tappan patent, so of which would revert to
New Jersey nearly a century later. [The
Haring Family]
Rockleigh
- Rockland, as it was then called - lay in an adjacent
earlier patent granted by the Province of New
Jersey to Dr George Lockhart, a London physician, on February 7, 1685 when "the proprietors of the province of the East
New Jersey conveyed to Dr Lockhart some thirty-eight hundred acres on the
west side of the Hudson River in the County of Bergen." Its northern
boundary was the Tappan Creek which had been the agreed upon provincial
boundary of east New Jersey and New York. It extended three miles west
and two miles south along the Hudson. [Map
of Lockhart Patent] The
neighboring Province of New York, however, assumed control of the land
in the following year and Lockhart received a confirmatory patent from that government on June
27, 1687, but without mentioning the provincial boundary. The colonial history of Rockleigh became the history of the
Province of New
York until 1769 when the boundary line with the Province of New Jersey was
in the process of being settled after
bitter dispute. Even today there are conflicting stone markers in the vicinity
of the border along Closter Road and Horne Tooke Road in
neighboring Palisades, NY. [Map of
Provincial Boundaries]
Dutch rule in New Amsterdam and the environs gave way to
the English Crown, but the valley of the Hackensack remained more Dutch
than New Amsterdam. By the 1690's a few dwellings had been built
at a landing along the western river bank where an old Indian track
wound up to a col in the Palisades ridge then lead westward through wilderness called "Kings
Woods" before reaching the Hackensack River valley. A ferry to
this riverside settlement had been started circa 1698 by John Dobbs who
lived on the east bank of the Hudson River in Westchester. By 1740, Robert Sneden
had married Mary Dobbs' (John's daughter), built a house at the western
landing, and was conducting with Jeremiah Dobbs, John's son, a ferry business
between Sneden's Landing and Dobb's Ferry.
[50th
Anniversary - Borough of Rockleigh, NJ - 1923-1973]
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The
Lockhart
Patent |

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Snedens Landing Road/Closter Road wind through the Lockhart Patent in this
1745 map |
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George
Lockhart never settled the
Patent that bore his name on the western shore of the Hudson.
Title passed to his half-brother, Col. William Mettitt, whose heirs sold
it in 1703 to John Corbett, an English sea Captain, who at his death in
1717
devised the land to his only child, Mary (b.1705, m.1725), wife of Henry Ludlow
(1701-1783), a Manhattan
Merchant. Henry & Mary Ludlow conveyed portions of the former Lockhart tract (some 200 acres of then Tappan lands)
to
William Ferdon, John Ferdon, Hendrick Gesner, Matthew Conklin and Abraham A. Haring (1709-1791),
the latter a grandson of the Tappan Patentee
Jan Pietersen Haring
of the Bowery, New Amsterdam.* The Haring farmlands were separated by Closter Publick
Road (south Piermont Road) and Snedens Landing Road (Rockleigh Road). Ludlow
subdivided some of the lands along Snedens Landing Road to the east of
the Haring holdings into 12-15 acre lots. As the settlements expanded, land was
cleared and the Jersey Dutch settlers laid the foundations for their stone
farmhouses. Gradually the countryside became dotted with
homesteads, mills and inns.
*Winthrop S. Gillman: Story of the Ferry. Palisades Free Library,
Palisades, NY
Three distinct hamlets
evolved within
this region originally known as "Rockland" within the Lockhart
Patent: Snedens Landing on the Hudson River, Palisades on
the high flatland of the palisades plateau, and the valley farming hamlet
called the Rockland area of post Revolutionary War Harrington Township that extended west along Snedens
Landing Road, then south along Closter Publick Road. Snedens Landing was the center of riparian activity for the two
centuries that began in the late 1600's. Palisades became the commercial and spiritual hub of the area.
Rockland was the western farm area that comprises
present day Rockleigh Borough. [Map
of Lockhart Patent]
Frugal
Dutch farmers, with the aid of indentured servants and a few slaves, built their
fortunes and left their
large land holdings to their descendants. So it was with non-Dutch families who settled this fertile
western side of the Palisades generally knows as "Rockland" or
"The Closters".
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In 1744 John
Ryken of Dutch descent and a farmer from Newtown, NY, settled
in "the Closters" - actually was the first settler in the "Rocklands" - building the Ryker-Mabie-Conklin-Sneden
House on the east side of Snedens Landing Road on land purchased
from Henry Ludlow.
About
1746,
Abraham A. Haring, Sr., acquired from Henry Ludlow 200
acres of Lockhart Patent in "Closter" (now Rockleigh) for future family
needs.
In 1748 Jacob
Conklin (Sr) of English descent acquired from Henry Ludlow a tract of
"upland and fresh
meadow" on
both sides of Sneden Landing Road in the area known as Rocklands (at that time
considered to be in the Tappan Town, Province of New York). circa
1740 the Conklin-Sneden House
with his bride and established both farm and family on the west side of Sneden
Landing Road.
In
1749, John
Henry Gesner of Swiss-German descent purchased property from Henry Ludlow
settled on the west side of Sneden Landing Road just
north of Jacob Conklin. Only a cellar depression remains of the Gesner
homestead.
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Abraham
A. A. Haring (Jr)
of Dutch descent built in 1758 a fine manor house on land purchased
about 1746 by Abraham Abramse Haring, his father, at the bend where Snedens Landing Road became Closter Public Road. Strong of purpose and endeavor, he produced a
variety of crops for family and market. He would not survive
the roll of the British drums that echoed in his valley. His house
stands as the Capt. Abraham A. A. Haring
House, but his lands were divided and
passed on to his heirs.
John
A. Haring, son of Abraham Abramse, built the sandstone John
A. Haring House (recently called the Heslin House) and
Dutch barn in 1805.
Abraham
David Haring, a grandson of Abraham A.A. Haring and son of David A.
Haring, appears to have built in 1828 the sandstone and Flemish brick Abraham D. Haring
House (known until recently as Rose Haven). The much
older south wing is likely the structure that appears on a 1780 map drawn by George
Washington's mapmaker, Robert Erskine.
These lovely old houses still stand on Piermont Road and Rockleigh
Road. [The
Haring Family]
[50th
Anniversary - Borough of Rockleigh, NJ - 1923-1973] |
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Snedens
Landing
Road |
(Rockleigh
Road) |
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Snedens
Landing Road and Conklin-Sneden House |
Early
20th Century Rockleigh Road |
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The settlement patterns of the Dutch culture in Colonial America
contrasted from their English counterparts in that the Dutch and their
progenitors tended to be farmers and reluctant to settle in clusters
forming villages and towns. The persistence of the agricultural Dutch
along Snedens Landings Road (Rockleigh Road) has preserved this rural
atmosphere which is reminiscent of the tradition of 18th and 19th
century farm regions. [Map of Lockhart
Patent]
Today this old artery still winds
through Rockleigh, NJ, and Palisades, NY, to Snedens Landing on the
Hudson. From 1780 to the conclusion of hostilities
in 1783, Washington's Blockhouse was garrisoned by a company of
Continental soldiers. It was down this same old road that Martha
Washington was driven in the dead of night to be with her husband.
[50th
Anniversary - Borough of Rockleigh, NJ - 1923-1973]
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Closter
Publick
Road
(Piermont
Road
- South) |
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Late
19th Century Piermont Road at Bridge over Roaring Brook
Looking North with Abraham A. Haring House in the left distance
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This
colonial roadway connected the farms in the area of the Northern Valley known as
"The Closters", subsequently Tappan, then Rockland, then "Old Closter"
with the Hudson River and markets for their produce in growing New York City.
Today this old artery still connects Rockleigh to Closter which is has
grown beyond Tappan and Snedens Landing to become the center
of activity in the Northern Valley. [Map
of Harington Township]
The Rockleigh Historic District represents a way
of life which appears to have disappeared from the New Jersey culture—an
area settled by a small handful of families, enlarged by family
intermarriages and occasional additional settlers and stabilized by the
mind-19th century. Rockleigh Borough presents a portal into a former
way of life which no longer exists in 20th century New Jersey.
[50th
Anniversary - Borough of Rockleigh, NJ - 1923-1973] |
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Rockland,
Harrington
Township,
New Jersey |

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In
1769 the
bitter boundary dispute between the Provinces of New Jersey and
New York was in the process of being settled. The Province of New York claimed the lands as far south as Closter
Village and
extending to the northwest; the Province of New Jersey initially claimed lands as far
north as Haverstraw, but later only as far north as the mouth of the
Sparkill that included Tappan and extended northwest. The compromise
settlement resulted in a boundary line that placed Snedens Landing and Tappan
Village in the Province of
New York while the Rockland Neighborhood with former Tappan lands and
the Closters in
the Province of New Jersey. [Map
of Provincial Boundaries*]
"History
of the Reformed Church of Tappan", David D. Cole (New York,
1894), p 134. Budke, Vol. 70, p. 110
"Papers relating to the New York and New Jersey Boundary
Controversy" Budke, Vol. 29, p. 72.
"Two Haring Houses at Rockleigh, N.J." Reginald
McMahon, mms Bergen County Historical Society, River Edge, NJ
*"How
Things Began...in Rockland County and Places Nearby". Wilfred
Blanch Talman,
Rockland County Historical Society, 1977.
With
the stroke of a pen, a
vast gore of unincorporated territory, extending from the Hudson
westward to include the Hackensack Valley and the Pascack Valley, suddenly
lay with in the Province of New Jersey. Because this area had been part of Tappan, the residents did not have a
formal government. An assembled list of "Possessions in
Lockharts Patent" included fourteen families within the New Jersey gore: John Gissnar
[Gesner], Jacob Concklin Jr., Geradus Ryker, John
Ryker, Abraham Ryker, and Abraham
Abm. Haring Jr., in what is now Rockleigh as well as Johannes Nagel, Tunis Van Houten, Johannis
Huybert Blauvelt, Wilhelmus Fordon [Ferdon], John Fordon [Ferdon], Michael
Gravenstine, Johannis Martenhagen, and Jacob Valentijn in what is now
Norwood and Closter. In 1774
these and other residents of the area petitioned
the Province of New Jersey for a new township; in 1775 Harrington Township
became a reality. The small farming community tucked under the eastern
portion of the Province boundary line was then referred to as the
"Old Closter" or "Rockland
area of Harrington Township."
Soon
after settlement of the provincial boundary dispute, a far more serious
and deadly dispute loomed on the horizon - a dispute that would tear the
fabric of families and neighbors in the Rockland Neighborhood of
Harrington Township and out of which a new nation would emerge.
[50th
Anniversary - Borough of Rockleigh, NJ - 1923-1973] |
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Colonial
Era
Historic
Sites |
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c. 1725 |
Snedens
Landing Road
(Rockleigh Road) |
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c.
1725 |
Closter
Publick Road
(Piermont Road - south) |
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c.
1750 |
"The
Rockland Neighborhood"
26 Rockleigh Road |
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c. 1749 |
Abraham "D" Haring House
(Manor House of the Northern Valley)
3
Rockleigh Road |
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c.
1752 |
Roaring
Brook Farm
(Ryker-Mabie-Concklin-Sneden
House)
Rockleigh Road |
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c.
1750-1760 |
John
A. Haring House ("Stone Kitchen")
5 (South) Piermont Road |
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c.
1758 |
Capt.
Abraham
A. A. Haring House
9 (South) Piermont Road |
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Compiled by E. W.
April, 2002 |
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Background Music:
"Oh, Kom Er Eens Kijken" [Traditional Dutch folk tune]
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