| The following article appeared in a special local history supplement of The River Reporter on January 1, 1998. |
By Bert Feldman
The River Reporter
Thursday, January 1, 1998
Sullivan County has had its share of great people in all walks of life. Many of these people are scarcely known to most local residents today. They came from all walks of life -- soldiers, scientists, writers, and other professions.
Who was Gonsalus?
The oldest known non-Indian grave in the county is located at the entrance to the Wurtsboro airport.
Badly neglected, you can still read the brief inscription on the reddish stone: “Manuel -- Gonsalus -- is -- Gestorvan -- DE 18 April -- Anno 1752.” Who lies in this solitary grave, buried 25 years and a day before the start of the American Revolution?
James Quinlan, writer of “The History of Sullivan County” in 1872, says that Gonsalus was “a Spanish Don.” Come now, Mr. Q! By 1492, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust of its day, had either killed, burned at the stake, or driven out the Islamic Moors, Jews, and other “heretics” from the unhappy country and from neighboring Portugal. Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation did not start for another 25 years, and no Protestant was ever allowed into Spain; none was certainly given the title of “Don!”
The Jews, expelled in 1492, fled to more hospitable lands, especially Holland. They came to Nieuw Amsterdam in 1654 and built a synagogue near Wall St., the second oldest religious body in that Dutch Colony. (The Dutch Reformed Church was the first.)
The records of that synagogue, Congregation Shearith Israel, are still in existence but at a different location. They show that many of that group ventured up the Hudson Valley to trade with the Lenapes.
Luis Moses Gomez was among the first settlers of Newburgh; his home and mill are still standing and open as a museum north of that city. There were numerous Emanuel Gonsauluses (the Portuguese variation of Gonzalez) in the Kingston area, along with other congregates such as Fonseca and Rossa.
Another Gonsaulus, Samuel, fleeing hostile Mohawks, escaped by leaping off a cliff into a treetop below.
That spot, near Ellenville, is still called Sam’s Point.
Graeme meets his end As the American Revolution progressed, incursions of British troops, Loyalists and Mohawks, ravaged the Delaware and Hudson valleys. One of the key points was Minisink Ford near Barryville, one of the few places where it is possible to ford the Delaware into Pennsylvania. A far-ranging scouting party from the garrison at the ford made its way to the northeastern corner of the Mamakating Precinct at Chestnut Kill.
The scouts’ commander, Lt. John Graeme, who obviously had not read the Biblical story of Joshua, put his face down to drink from the Chestnut Kill and was tomahawked to death by a Mohawk. Graeme’s name, changed to an easier spelling, was given to the nearby settlement of Grahamsville.
The Continental Congress in 1778 sent Gen. Casimir Pulaksi’s Cavalry Legion to patrol the area near the ford. They remained until February 1779. Among Pulaski’s troopers was a 19-year-old friend of the Marquis de Lafayette. Both boys had come over together from France. Cavalry Major Benjamin Nones (rhymes with “bonus”) was also Jewish. His great-great-granddaughter lives in Sullivan County. I know her; in fact I married her.
Later in that year, July 22, 1779, was the Battle of Minisink Ford, where a militia body from Goshen, led by a physician-cum-colonel, Benjamin Tusten, was annihilated by Joseph Brant’s Mohawk/Loyalist troops. That battleground is, today, a county park.
Early in this century, a Japanese scientist, Jokichi Takamine (1854-1922) synthesized adrenaline and discovered several vitamins at his laboratory in Merriewold, just south of Monticello. His home, a former summer palace of the Mikado, Emperor of Japan, is still standing.
Did you now that Sullivan County had a native son, John Raleigh Mott, born in Livingston Manor, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945?
Also resident in Merriewold was one of America’s greatest dance directors, Agnes DeMille, who, among other things, created the famed “Rodeo Ballet,” in the play and movie “Oklahoma.”
Another resident of Sullivan County, Irving Berlin of Lew Beach, wrote much of his great music here, including “God Bless America.”
Sullivan County has produced three head justices on the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, including the current chief justice, Judith Kaye, who grew up in Monticello, and retired chief justice Lawrence Cooke.
One of America’s greatest books, “The Red Badge of Courage,” was written by Stephen Crane in his cabin in Forestburg. Crane also wrote “Sullivan Sketches” about this area. This list could go on and on, if the space allowed it. Great deeds do not need urban surroundings to grow.
Audaces forutna juvat -- Fortune favors the bold.
