Pendleton
Town of Newcomb, Essex County, New York
Marker Inscription
Nathaniel Pendleton, Revolution War veteran & Dutchess County Judge. Purchased 5000 acres in 1808. Built mills here on Rich Lake and sold lots to farmers. (William C Pomeroy Foundation 2020)
The Story
In the early 1800s the rugged Adirondack interior around Rich Lake was still raw frontier, its dense forests and cold, thin soils daunting to would-be settlers. Nathaniel Pendleton, a veteran of the Revolution who had gone on to serve as a judge down in Dutchess County, gambled on this wilderness in 1808, buying 5,000 acres and raising water-powered mills along the lake. His mills gave the first farming families a place to grind grain and saw timber, and by selling off lots he seeded the small community that would become Newcomb.
Why it matters
It marks one of the many private land ventures that pushed American settlement into New York's forbidding northern mountains, where a single entrepreneur's mills and land sales could turn trackless wilderness into a working community.
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Related people
- · Nathaniel Pendleton
Themes & tags
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