The Town of Poughkeepsie: 1788 Mona Vaeth Historian, Town of Poughkeepsie
Herbert Saltford Historian, City of Poughkeepsie
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alfway up the Hudson River with a view of the Catskill Mountains a small settlement developed into a hamlet and through the years into the community we know as Poughkeepsie. Initially settlers of the 1600's made their homes along the edges of the streams and the banks of the Hudson River. In 1686 Robert Sanders and Mydert Harmense bought a patent of land from the Wapani Indians. The next year, Baltus Barents Van Kleeck and Jens Handrick Ostrom each leased 48 acres for ten years. This area on the Fallkill became the hamlet of Poughkeepsie. By 1720 a church had been built and a courthouse completed. In 1788 a statute of the New York Legislature designated the boundaries of the counties and towns of the State. Poughkeepsie was one of nine designated towns in Dutchess County. The designation included the hamlet. Poughkeepsie was the smallest of the nine. It was bounded on the south and east by the Wappinger Creek, on the west by the Hudson River and the north by an eastwest line approximately 2.5 miles north of the present Mid-Hudson Bridge? The area was crossed by two transportation routes: the Post Road (the present Route 9) and the Filkintown Road (the present Route 44). The Post Road was the main thoroughfare between Albany and New York; Filkintown Road was the first road to eastern Dutchess County and Connecticut. (The Filkintown Road became Main Street about 1800 when it was extended to the river). By 1788 the tiny hamlet of Poughkeepsie with its 1714 population of 445 persons including 29 slaves2 had grown to more than 2000 people. (According to the Census for 1790 the town population was 2,529 people including 199 slaves). It had become an active business and recreational center for both the Town and the County.3 A County courthouse had been built to replace an earlier one. There were shops, a tavern, a hotel and a local newspaper which was the ancestor of The Poughkeepsie Journal. During the Revolutionary War Poughkeepsie became the seat of the government of New York State. Although the legislature was moved to New York when the war ended, the presence of the State offices had made Poughkeepsie the site for the debate on New York State's ratification of the Constitution. It was finally ratified in the County Court House in Poughkeepsie on July 26, 1788. In retrospect it is surprising to realize that Poughkeepsie, at the time of the Ratification Convention in 1788, had not yet even become a village in political terms. It did not attain that status in which it had a village board of trustees and special village ordinances until March 27, 1799. The City of Poughkeepsie, with a government entirely distinct from the Town of Poughkeepsie, was not incorporated until March 27, 1854. Meanwhile from July 31, 1792 to April 1, 1802, Nicholas Power, Editor of the Pough61
