Ithaca’s Reputed First Settlers Were Peter Hinepaugh and Isaac Dumond, Settling Here in 1788
Some five years ago certain errors were made in giving a
sketch of the beginnings of Ithacan history and though they did not materially
affect the values in the subsequent series of events still they warrant correction. These errors were largely due at the time to
the disparity in the narrative then available.
Recently much more material has come to hand so that the story as give
here, as amended, is as nearly correct as it is possible to make it after this
lapse of events of nearly a century and a half.
By DR. LUZERNE COVILLE
Briefly stated, it was in the spring of 1788, for the nights
were still uncomfortably cool, that Robert McDowell and seven others started
from Kingston, Pennsylvania, on a tour of the wild lands that lay in the lake
country about the heads of Seneca and Cayuga lakes. The exploring company was made up in the main
of officers and soldiers of the Revolutionary War. Four were in horses and four afoot. They started out along the old Sullivan trail
from Chemung and spent their first night at Kathrene’s Town (Montour) and
pushed on past the head of Seneca Lake to Peach Orchard (Hector). They there turned east and picked up the head
waters of the Halsey Creek (Taughannock) followed to its mouth at Goodwin’s
(Taughannock) Point. Camping there upon
Cayuga Lake for the night, they started south the next day, keeping well to the
high ground and thereby avoiding the deep cross ravines and gullies. They emerged from the forest trail at last, upon
a shoulder high up above the lake corner.
There below, spread out in the morning sunshine, lay the great
flats extending for miles, covered with grass and nearly treeless, filling the
whole valley’s bottom and framed by the darker green if the oaks and pines of
the sturdy forest growth. Across to the
east was the “great falls”, pouring its flood of water into the creek below
Midway the valley ran the inlet, and about a mile up, where a branch from the
each joined it, they found a fording place.
Camped at Buttermilk
They explored the lands and streams on the east and south sides
of the valley and finally make their camp for the night under a tree at the falls
three miles south (Buttermilk) “to avoid as far as possible the multitude of
gnats that infested the place”. They spent
three more days here, mainly investigating the reaches above the flats. They then left for home via Cayuth Lake and
Kathrene’s, having met only the two men at Peach Orchard and the two at
Kathrene’s. They were absent about 10
days.
In the late June or early July of the same year, 1788,
McDowell returned here with five companions, equipped with flour from Wyoming
and corn-meal from Tioga Mill, with ropes and implements, horses and two cows,
and proceeded to cut and cure hay. The
wild grass was lush and they were able in about six weeks to “sweep” and stack
upon the high ground from both sides of the inlet some 60 or more tons of hay,
railed against depredation and stacked for us in winter feeding of the cattle
that they proposed to drive in that fall.
While at the haying they were joined by two men, Peter Hinepaugh and
Isaac Dumond, part of a scouting party of 11 men who had come from Kingston,
N.Y. with two Delaware Indians as guides.
Returned to Chemung
These people all returned to the Esopus after a month’s
absence without making any choice of land.
The McDowell party went back to Chemung in August but sent back three of
their number in October with 70 head of horses and cattle for wintering
here. They built a long cabin and
shelters for the cattle on the high ground at the head of the flats, some three
miles up the valley. Of their number two
returned to Chemung in February in two feet of snow on snowshoes made for them by
Peter Hinepaugh. On the way they broke
their compass and were lost in a blizzard and freeze near Cayuta Lake for five
days, without food, but were finally able to find they way downstreak to
Shepard’s and out. After an absence of
six weeks these two returned from their home visit to spend the rest of the
winter here at the log cabin (near to Puff’s tavern).
The Delaware people, Dumond and Hinepaugh, returned here in
December or January presumably determined to make their homes upon these Cayuga
flats, and erected two or three cabins, that of Hinepaugh being upon the high
land at the Mill Creek (Cascadilla), that of the Yaples’ upon the foot of the
hill just south of the creek, and the Dumonds’ still farther south near
Six-Mile Creek. They later in the spring
planted their corn and their crops of wheat, rye, barley and peas on their
share of the old Indiana (corn) fields, lon since abandoned. And then leaving behind them ma young brother,
John Yaple, an unmarried man, to guard their property they returned for their
families at Cook House and Pakatakan on the Pepacton.
Brought Daughter Here
In the spring of 1789 Richard McDowell. In later years spoken of and addressed as
Squire McDowell, came here in company with his daughter, Jane, aged eight,
together with a white lad of 12 years and a Negro boy. Putting up temporarily a bark cabin, Indian0fashioned,
he planted on the old Indiana fields his corn and sowed his spring wheat and
built a log cabin (traditionally upon the property that is now 114 West Buffalo
Street) thereby establishing his plantations on the site of or near the old
court house. Later in the season he
removed here his family from Chemung, comprising his wife, Margaret, three daughters
and two sons. He erected the further farm
buildings needed and that fall gathered his first crop.
Peter Dumond of Hurley, (IV), son of Igenas (III), sonof Jan
Baptiste (II), son of Wallerand (Wolron) Dumond (I), was born in or about
1730. The earliest of the Dumond
ancestry here was a certain Wallerand DuMond, a Huguenot, who at Wildtwick
(Kingston, N.Y.) in 1664, married (Margaret) Hendricks, the widow of Jans
Arentsen from Wie, near Zwolle, in Swtzerland [sic]. The wife of Jan Baptiste DuMond was Neeltje
Van Veghten, whose grandfather came here in 1636 with his wife, children and 12
servants. The wife of Igenas DuMond was
Catharine Schuyler, whose ancestry runs back two generations to David Schuyler
of colonial Albany, and to the aristocratic Ver Plancks of New Amsterdam.
Peter DuMond (IV) together with his brother Harmonus DuMond
and two other men, Johannes Van Wagenen and ______ Hendricks, formed an
exploring party up the Delaware valley in the fall of 1762 and spring of 1763
and located in the Indian settlement of Paghatakan (Arkville) where they each
purchased farms. These four pioneer
families were the first permanent colony on the east branch of the Delaware
River.
Married in 1572
Peter DeMond married in September, 1752, Maria Can Wagenen
of Kingston, by whom he had six children born at Hurley and baptized at
Kingston. Four of these children
comprise “the early Dutch settlers of Ithaca”.
In that year of 1789, Catharine, the oldest daughter, married to Peter
Hinepaugh, was 35 years of age and had five children, the oldest of whom was 12
years of age. Isaac DuMond, aged 31
yearss [sic], had married in 1784 Sallie Barrows (Berro) of Hurley and had
three children. Mond, aged 31 years, had
married Jacob Yaple and had three children.
John, 26, married in July, 1789, Jane Barrows (Berro just before leaving
Paghatakan. There remained on the farm
the sons, Igenas, aged 36, and Jacobus, aged 28, twhere their descendants still
remain.
Hinepaw was an older half brother of the Yaples. The name of the mother was Susannah Cisco and
it is recorded that she was born in Holland. Her early home in America may have
been near Kingston as the name is not uncommon there. She married about 1758 Henry Yaple and they
had at least three sons, all born in what is now Lebanon County, Pa. It is also a curious thing that in 1795
Hinepaugh is signing his name to documents in good clear German-English script
as Pieder Heimbach.
This is the first of two articles on the subject of the Dumond
Families. The second will appear
Monday.
Source: The Ithaca Journal, March 2, 1935, Page 3. via Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-ithaca-journal-dumond-family-per-ith/9822835/ : accessed October 25, 2023), clip page for DuMond Family per Ithaca Journal, March 02, 1935 by user kcnm4davis
