My mother's grandparents, Richard KERR (CARR) and his wife Lucinda SHUFELDT, settled up on Peekamoose. Some members of the family said they came form Greene County, New York. Others said they came from Albany-way. Richard KERR was said to have been born in Ireland, and Lucinda SHUFELDT in Columbia County, NY. Jennie KERR, the grand-daughter of Richard, said that the proper spelling of the name was KERR.Richard was first married to Elvira RICHARDSON, but she died at the birth of their first child. Shortly before Richard KERR's death, a lawyer from somewhere came to Shokan in search of a Richard KERR and wife Elvira. The person he inquired of, not knowing that Richard had been married twice, told the lawyer he could save him a trip up the mountain, since he knew that Richard KERR's wife was named Lucinda. The lawyer was supposed to have had money for Richard, and when he was told of it, he said he had all he needed in this world and didn't want the money. He was penniless, not even owning the farm he lived on. In his will, he asked that the children care for their mother and that they place a suitable marker on his grave - and then to think that the engraver made an error in carving his name and spelled it CURR.
About 1850, Richard and Lucinda KERR settled on Breath Hill - the Pencil Ridge Road it was called. He went there with Dominie HAMMOND. I think they had contracts to lumber off the land, but both settled there. Jennie KERR said there was a family named "Bigheads". She really didn't know if that was a real name or a nickname. My mother used to talk also of a BARNES family who lived up near her grandparents. (This property is now private land - have been told only the foundations of the settlement remain. "Bighead" was apparently both a family name and an area named after them - see information below. - R. Triebel)
Gr-grandpa used to raise turkeys and, when ready for market, would drive them down the mountain to the West Shokan railroad station, where they were shipped to NYCity markets.
Great-grandpa built a huge barn and had the lumber cut and sawed for their house, but it lay and rotted down and they never got the house built. They did partition off a section of the barn, and folks tell that they had a very comfortable home there. One side of the room they used for a living room - it was partitioned off with muslin curtains from ceiling to floor. Great-grandma Lucinda starched the muslin very stiff.
Behind that curtain was a pantry with barrels of sugar, flour, crackers etc. Great-grandpa made two trips a year down the mountain with his oxen and wagon. He would leave them at a livery station at Shokan and take a train to Kingston, where he purchased his supplies from a KERR relative who had a store. The supplies were shipped up on the train, then put on his wagon and hauled up the mountain by oxen. Great-grandma Lucinda never went along. In fact, she was off the mountain only once until her children were grown and married. That time she was sick, and Gr-grandpa took her to the doctor. The doctor said she needed a change, preferably a trip across water -- so she and Gr-grandpa went across the Hudson River to Dutchess County and back -- quite a trip in those days.
In all the years on the mountain, they had a doctor but twice - once when Gr-grandma Lucinda broke her arm and again when the twin girls were born. It was a long, rugged climb up the mountain, even for the oxen. Grandpa used to tell that he knew when a young man was serious in his intentions with any of his daughters. They never made a second trip up the mountain if they weren't, and usually married the girl by the 4th or 5th trip.
My mother (Bertha BARRINGER VAN KLEECK), used to tell of making the trip up the mountain with Gr-grandpa Richard and his oxen once. It got dark long before they reached the farm, and a panther was screeching along the trail behind them. Anyone who has ever heard a panther screech can understand that mother, as a young girl, was terrified. Her grandpa tried to comfort her by telling her that unless the panther was very hungry, he wouldn't bother them - and, if he did, he would attack the oxen first and so give them time to get away.
His only son, Eugene Kerr, was a famous hunter of the Catskill Mountains. He is mentioned in Longstrethe's book "The Catskill Mountains". When he was on the trail of a bear, he would follow for a week, or as long as it took to catch it. On his barn he had one side covered with skeletons of animal heads and he had huge bear traps.
Lucinda was blind in her last years, but she was very clever with a pair of scissors. She used to cut out of cardboard or paper, for my brothers, perfect little teams of oxen and yokes - horses, and etc. She died at our house.
One time Lucinda went, in the late afternoon, to visit a neighbor down the mountain. Darkness came on before she realized it. Walking alone up the mountain trail, she heard a panther scream behind her. Very frightened, but realizing the only thing she could do was to keep walking fast as she could. The screaming was very close when, about a mile from home, she saw a lantern gleam coming toward her. Gr-Grandpa had heard the panther too and was on his way to keep her company, and rescue her if need be.
Lucinda KERR was considered quite well educated for those days. She helped establish and taught a Sunday School up on the mountain (called Breath Hill) - way up in Watson Hollow. She was very clever at cutting out paper toys for the children. My older brothers and sisters were lucky enough to have her do this for them. I saw the remains of a few when I was small. She used to cut out oxen and ox-yokes, horses etc. of cardboard for the boys. Lucinda was blind in her last years. She died at our house in Kingston, NY, in 1904 (before I was born).
Told by Jennie KERR (1891 - 1984, daughter of Eugene KERR and grand-daughter of Richard and Lucinda SHUFELDT KERR)
Richard KERR settled at the head of Rondout in 1872. He owned property and worked for Dominie HAMMOND, who lived on a hill back of John HILL's mill.Richard bought his property from Abraham BROADHEAD and wife Rachel. did not know when John BUSH settled there, but he came before KERRs and was the grandfather of Flora GREEN. Did not know of any school, but did have a Chapel and Sunday School, located by the house of Richard KERR. The church on the rocks was a Catholic Church. Wentworth and Ward later bought the property. There was a Tannery located up there. After it closed, Richard KERR cleared land for a farm.Dominie HAMMOND came to Watson Hollow from Shokan, where he preached in the Reformed Church. Before Richard moved up the mountain, he worked for Lewis BELL and lived in one of his tenant houses. Before that, Richard KERR lived in Greene County, New York, near Tannersville. Dominie HAMMOND asked Richard to go with him up the Pencil Ridge or Rock Road to locate land to be cleared. They found these lots and bought them, and Richard cleared both properties.
Besides raising a family of seven children, Richard KERR raised turkeys and pigs. The pigs ate beechnuts in the forest. Then he drove them like cattle to Shokan, where they were shipped to market on the train. Some of the old settlers on the mountain were BIGHEADS - BUSH - WINCHELL.
Along one stream called Pickett Brook were at least six mills powered by water.
John BARNES, father of Mrs. Ezra GREEN, had a large farm. They all sold out to Wentworth and J. Q. U. A. Ward, who lived in the stone house on the stream and later built a lake. (This must be the house by the lake at the bottom of the mountain by the road - beautiful area. "J. Q. U. A. Ward" is evidently the famous sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward - see the account and photo of his fishing lodge below. - R. Triebel)
There is a lot of HISTORY in those mountains and HOW I LOVE THEM!!! - - - Jennie Kerr
... The population of this town is quite small, not much over 1,000. The wild, rocky soil prohibits farming to any extent, except in the more favored spots, as along the Rondout Creek and sections of the West Branch. The making of barrel hoops and shingles, with some little lumber business, constitutes the main and only industry of the town. (For those not familiar with states that use townships as an administrative area, "town" in this case refers to the Township, not any individual community or village within it. The whole area referred to as the "Township of Denning" is so rough and mountainous that only about 1000 people lived back up in there at the time. -- R. Triebel)Our way to the little settlement of Peakamoose leads from Shokan in Olive (its nearest railroad station) (now under the Ashokan Reservoir -- R. Triebel), through Watson Hollow some five miles, and then up the steep mountain at the end of the hollow some three or four miles more, the line between the two townships crossing the mountain road about a mile from its base. This mountain road is generally spoken of as the "Gulf," and was not built for the pleasure or use of nervous people, the grade being very steep and the roadbed, formed of the loose slabs and pieces of rock that have fallen from the overhanging cliffs above, extremely narrow and winding with no protection on the outer side. Fortunately, this very bad part of the trip is soon passed and we come to a more level way as regards the grade, but if anything a rougher one. On our way up our nerves were subjected to a severe strain, and our bodies to innumerable jolts and jerks. Now we enter on what might be called the tempestuous section, and experience a new sensation as it leads us over roots and stumps of trees interspersed with miniature boulders. We catch our first glimpse of the lake at Peakamoose as we emerge from the way of torment. ... (My mother remembers the road still being very much like this when she was a child in the 1940s and 50s. She remembers her father taking the family on an outing up this road - the road was so rough even at that later date that either the fuel tank or the oil pan was holed. Mom remembers watching out the back window with her brother all the way home to Kingston to see if any fluids from the car were leaking into the road. The road is paved now, but still narrow and winds around enough that it's best to go carefully. -- R. Triebel)
... Far up towards the source of the Rondout, at what is now called Bighead, John McColough, in 1838, built his saw-mill and house, and cleared and cultivated quite a tract of land. There he lived for many years. He was a man of great personal strength, impulsive and erratic, but devoted to his wife, whose buried remains his son came, long years afterwards, to remove from the scenes of the early struggle for subsistence.
Further down the stream Joseph Hill settled, and was followed by the genial John Hill, the dreamy Rip Van Winkle of this part of the Catskills, who built his house and mill, and worked and rested at intervals until the lumber was scarce, when the trout fishermen bought his property for the sake of the creek.
Outside of the small clearings made by the wood sawyers, but little was done in cultivating the lands adjacent to the mountain until the year 1837. John Bush was the pioneer, followed a year later by Lemuel Winchell, and in 1852 by the Rev. John W. Hammond, who settled upon what is now known as the Ennist Farm. John D. Ennist married a daughter of Dominie Hammond and settled on this farm in 1873. In 1861 Charles J. Johnson and Eugene Kerr made their clearings. (I don't yet know who this Eugene Kerr was or how/if he was related. -- R. Triebel) John S. Barnes succeeded Johnson in 1872 and yet lives on this mountain farm. Eugene Kerr lived on his place until he died, in the year 1890. These farmers at great labor cleared considerable tracts of land and raised the crops from the productive soil.
In 1880 the Peakamoose Fishing Club purchased eighty acres of land including a small lake or pond and built a cabin near the Gulf road. This club has since gone out of existence. In 1884 J. W. Wentworth bought a large tract of land and built, near the Peakmoose Gorge, his summer home, the "Wigwam" as it is named, and the chapel perched on the cliff nearby.
J. Q. A. Ward, who has had since 1880 extensive interests in this region, is now converting his keeper's house into a picturesque fishing lodge. This building has generally been known as the Stone House, and for many years was the only dwelling located in this particularly favored locality. Each year Mr. Ward adds to and improves the place, building new roads, embankments, bridges, and such other matters, as will make the beauties of the Peakamoose more accessible without intjury to their wildness. ...
(Picket Brook) ... was thought hardly worthy of a name until in 1857 when George Picket built his log shanty close by its side. The stories of his life in the forest, his sickness and death during a severe winter, the devotion of his wife, and her rescue from the snow, are part of the mountain traditions and have often be recounted by the side of comfortable wood fires, when the wind, rain or snow revived recollections of the early days and their hardships. Picket's grave, near the spot where once stood his shanty, may yet be seen, marked by a simple stone, recently placed by one who would keep alive the old traditions. ...
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© 1987 by Dorothy E. Smith and 2004 by Roxy Triebel or the original contributor.
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