great acclamation from the citizens of New York City. The High Bridge was not completed until 1848. Notes 1. Charles King, A Memoir of the Construction, Cost, and Capacity of the Croton Aqueduct (New York, 1843), p.220. 2. See selected bibliography on tlie construction of the Croton Aqueduct, p.57 of this book. 3. John Robison, A System of Mechanical Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1804). 4. John B. Jervis, "Memoir presented October 18, 1876,' Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, voi.6, p.55. 5. John B. Jervis, Description of the Croton Aqueduct from the Dam to the Distributing Reservoir (New York, 1842), p.lO. 6. Ibid., p.7. Temperament, temperance and Tolerance An Appraisal of Conflicts Over Land Values and Laborers Along the Line of the Croton Aqueduct figure 30: An Improved Map of the Hudson River, with the Post Roads between N. Yorl< and Albany, published by Harper & Bros., drawn & engraved especially for the tourist. 1836. from unknown guidebook Courtesy Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society. Photo: J. Kennedy i' V «» M K During the controversial years when the Croton Aqueduct was purchased plots from the Commissioners of Forfeiture in 1785, fol- debated, planned, and actually built, the land required for the line lowing the American Revolution and the break-up of the manors, was just beginning to be divided and valued — but was, as yet, hard- Odell, Hyatt, Wildey, Acker, Beekman, Van Cortlandt — the names of ly "developed." The new public work would bring pure and abundant these Westchester landholders of the first quarter of the 19th cen- water to the City. Though it was intended to serve New York City, tury are familiar to us today from street names and neighborhoods the project would disrupt local lives and land, stirring distrust of in the towns of Greenburgh, Mount Pleasant, and Cortlandt. both City motives and the strangers — immigrant laborers — who Tenant farming families were not the only landowners along what would be hired to carry out the plan. Local suspicion translated into was to become the Croton Aqueduct Trailway. Following the War of open opposition which shaped and, at times, even disrupted the 1812, land speculators ransacked the county to exploit its valuable progress of work along the line of the Old Croton Aqueduct. lands. Led by merchants and entrepreneurs from the City, this Rural Westchester, invested with the richness of natural movement rumbled toward the impending development of the resources, was a fertile avenue along which to convey pure water to Hudson Valley — especially Westchester's river towns (figure 32). New York City. Surveyor George W. Cartwrlght staked the area to Before 1850, however, profit in real estate speculation from the bound the Croton Reservoir in 1835: sale and re-sale of large parcels was much more important than Beginning at a peeled ash sapling in the leest boundary of Ricket's farm, the development of the property.^ For example, Verplanck's Point thence staked... in buckwheat near a large walnut... near a shell hark (Croton), in the town of Cortlandt, had been owned jointly by Philip H^kory in the field, [thmtj^]Tonipkin's potato field ... in Widow Webber's and William Verplanck. In 1836 Philip sold his portion on the river orchard, on the east side of the turnpike near Flewelling's farm ... on the west end of the point to a ten-man syndicate from New York City for side of Hog Hill Road [and] obliquely up the valley,... staked in Hyatt's $450,000.^ garden, ... hence at a blazed apple tree on east side of turnpike near Ferris; .. . Still, in the years before the Aqueduct, large landowners had staked behind Taylor's shop on the comer of a woodhouse near the well .. . to amassed substantial estates across the county and had begun to a blazed post on a grape frame . . . and thence along the turnpike fence to sta- parcel out smaller plots to an incipient village middle class. Thus, in tion No. 6, north west comer of Purdy's House^ (figure 31). 1835, lots were advertised for sale in Beekmantown (today North But the land along the Croton and Hudson Rivers was occupied, Tarrytown). David B. Douglass, the Aqueduct's first chief engineer, and at first largely owned, by the tenant farming families who had appeared as a landowner along the line of the Aqueduct, near Indian Brook in Mount Pleasant (today Ossining); Oscar Irving and his uncle Washington Irving had their neighbor George Harvey re-model Sunnyside in Greenburgh during this year; at the same time Alexander Hamilton's son. Colonel James Hamilton III, established columned Nevis, slightly to the south (still visible today from the Aqueduct Trailway in Irvington). The Gothic-style site we know as Lyndhurst in Tarrytown was built in 1838 for former New York City Mayor William Paulding (figure 33). In 1832 Van Brugh