A few more firsts in Orange

To the Editor: A few more items for your Orange County historical contributions list: • The local Black Dirt Region (Chester, Florida, Pine Island, Warwick) has among the richest soils in the world — roughly 80 percent organic. Typical upland farm soil is roughly 4 percent organic. (Orange County Soil and Water Conservation District) • Lima beans and alfalfa were introduced to American agriculture by Hector St. John (Michel St.Jean DeCrevecoeur), author of “Letters from an American Farmer,” on his Pine Hill farm, which spans the present Blooming Grove-Chester border. About 1770. • We might still be subjects of the British Crown if it wasn’t for the strength of the third chain deployed across Hudson River during the Revolutionary War! That chain came from the Townsend Iron Works in Sterling Forest, assembled with floats at New Windsor, and floated into possession to stop the British Fleet from controlling the full length of the Hudson River. Cutting the colonies in two, thus isolating New England, could have won the war for the British. • The first government procurement contract with performance and quality control provisions, the basis for most modern contracts, was negotiated by Secretary of War, Mr. Pickering, and Mr. Peter Townsend at Townsend’s home in Chester, where a contract was signed on Feb. 2, 1778. Before that, the quartermaster method of procurement was rife with corruption, abuse and no recourse. • The first documented murder-for-hire in New York State occurred in 1818, in the vicinity of Calamity Corners near Sugar Loaf. Of the five convicted in the February murder of Richard Jennings, the two who were hung in June of that year were buried outside the fence of the Holbert Cemetery in Sugar Loaf with wooden stakes driven through their bodies. • The liquid milk dairy industry originated in Chester, 1841. The idea of offering milk fresh from country dairies for general sale in New York was conceived in Chester by a railroad contractor named Sellock. He was the father of the business of shipping milk to market by rail, and the first milk that ever went to market in that way was shipped from Chester. (“An Idea Worth Millions,” by Mott, Edward Harold, b. 1845, New York Sun, Nov. 21, 1897.) • Neufchatel cheese first manufactured in Chester. Commercialized by William A. Lawrence in his creamery business when he entered the cream cheese business in 1872. Now the site of Gary Greenwald’s Law offices. (See illustrations, above.) I’m sure there are more contributions, but these of the first ones that I thought of. Clifton Patrick Town of Chester Historian