BeekmanSettlers.com
Title
Settlers of the Beekman Patent - Dutchess County, New York
Description
In 1971 my wife and I purchased the Buck farm in the Town of LaGrange, Dutchess County and I wanted to find out what I could about the history of the property.
We bought the house and farm from John L. Buck, the first husband of Pearl Buck, the writer, and knew that it was originally built in the 18th century. John L. Buck had remarried and the house had been redecorated; and our aim was to restore it and in doing so we studied other, similar, homes in our area. Some of the information we located was the impetus for my work.
I found that the area where we purchased was part of an original land grant (Patent) given to Col. Henry Beekman in 1697 by the English Crown and was the 2nd largest Patent in present Dutchess County. Henry Beekman and his heirs, two of them Livingstons, were landlords and only rented the land, and the lack of deeds and mortgages had resulted in almost no information about the land in the Patent and the people who settled there. I was able to locate rent ledgers for most of the Patent, some dating as early as 1710, maps, tax lists, volumes of previously unpublished and (some) unknown Revolutionary War information, and started to put it all together.
