century Westchester swallowed whole, as it were, this pre-digested image of the Irish laborer. Occasionally, some day laborers who were bare- ly paid a subsistence wage, in fact fueled the farmers' stereotype- driven intolerance. Gabriel Purdy and Robert Tompkins, for exam- ple, complained of damage and petty theft by Aqueduct workers to farm lands along the line of the Aqueduct: One of them had a few rails, and some small wood ... taken; another a small quantity of green corn and another, a quantity of apples; but whether these articles were taken by the laborers or not they cannot state. They all agree ... that they have never lost any potatoes or grain of any kind out of their fields, since the aqueduct has been building.^'^ The xenophobia and anti-Catholic biases of such influential Hudson Valley writers (and landowners) as Washington Irving and Samuel F.B. Morse did far more to excite popular prejudice. Morse, who published an anti-Catholic treatise on "Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States" in the New York Observer of 1834, linked Catholic enterphse with propaganda for monarchy.^^ ^■f/;. A/ J,,.,,. 38 Local farmers reading their words feared for their lands, animals, and what little goods they had accumulated. Washington Irving also reflected and legitimized this popular anti-Irish prejudice. As he wrote to an acquaintance: We have nothing new in these parts except that there has been the devil to pay of late in Sleepy Hollow; a circumstance by the bye, with which you of New York have some concern, as it is connected with your Croton Aqueduct. This work traverses a thick wood about the lower part of the Hollow, not far from the old Dutch haunted Church, and in the heart of the wood an immense culvert or stone arch is thrown across the wizard stream of the Pocantico [at Mill River Culvert] to support the Aqueduct. As the arch is unfinished, a colony of Patlanders have been encamped about this place all winter, forming a kind of Patsylvania in the midst of a 'wiltherness' (figure 38). A waggon [sic] road cut through the woods and leading from their encampment past the haunted church and so one to certain whisky establishments, has been especially beset by foul fiends, and the wor- thy patlanders on their way home at night have beheld misshapen monsters whisking about their paths, sometimes resembling men, sometimes hogs, sometimes horses, but invariably without heads; which shows that they must be lineal descendants from the old goblin of the Hollow .... The whole wood had become such a scene of spuk- ing [sic] and diablerie, that the paddys will not any longer venture out of their shantys at night and a whisky shop in a neighboring vil- lage, where they used to hold their evening gatherings, has been oblig- ed to shut up for want of custom .... The Corporation of your city should look to it, for if this harrying continues, I should not be sur- prised if the Paddies, tired of being cut off from their whisky, should entirely abandon the goblin regions of Sleepy Hollow, and the com- pletion of the Croton Water Works be seriously retarded.^^ Irving's account reflected contemporary Protestant demands for temperance, which tended to stigmatize the Irish and seek to disci- pline their behavior.2^ In a disciplinary, temperant spirit. New York's Water Commissioners had forbidden the operation of whiskey shops within a mile of the line. The contractors promise ... that they will not ... give or sell any ardent spirits to their workmen, or any person at or near the line of the aqueduct . . . and will do all in their power to discountenance its use in the vicinity of the work ....^'^ "As yet," said the Commissioners in June 1837, "no complaints have been made and the Commissioners entertain the hope, that the evils anticipated by some worthy citizens of Westchester, will not be realized." But, not surprisingly, grog found its way into neigh- boring farm houses anyway, and the inevitable disorder followed. During a drunken brawl In April 1838, a fight occurred among the laborers in which one man was killed and several were injured. Displaying typical anti-Irish bias. West Point-trained resident engi- neer Edmund French wrote to Jervis from Sing Sing, April 25, 1838, figure 37: Irish RIbbonmen, wood engraving in Harper's Weekly, January 1, 1859 Courtesy The Historical Society of the Tarrytowns. Photo: J. Kennedy "The affair that resulted in the death of one of the overseers on Section 10 appears to have been nothing more than one of the usual Irish fighting frolics. "^^ But if temperance and nativism colored the views of West- chester landowners, and the engineers and contractors were ruled by economic consciences, then the day-to-day realities of poor pay and shanty