these exceptions and an occasional word or two, the history is published as originally written.

The committee close this statement with a brief sketch of the author:

Peter E. Gumaer was born in the town of Deerpark, at or near Fort Gumaer, May 28, 1771, and died December 18, 1869, at the age of 98 years, 6 months and 20 days. His parents were Ezekiel Gumaer and Naomi Low. He was a descendant of the French Huguenots, who fled from France at the time of their persecution. His father, being a farmer, he inherited the business and also learned the art of surveying, which he followed for more than fifty years. He surveyed most of the lands in the town of Deerpark, and also of adjoining towns. He was plain and unassuming in manner and deportment, much attached to his home and family, and, during his whole lifetime, lived in the town of Deerpark, having never visited the city of New York. In his principles he was regarded as a man of great integrity, always manifesting a conscientious regard for right, and nothing but strict and exact justice would satisfy him. His habits of living were extremely temperate, using but little animal food and no stimulants, except tea. He was a man of great industry, never idle and never seeking pleasure or enjoyment outside of business or study. He was of a literary turn of mind, and devoted as much of his time to reading and study as his pursuits would allow. He took great delight in the study of astronomy and philosophy. He was especially interested in Sir Isaac Newton's theory of the motions of the heavenly bodies, and said if it was correct, perpetual motion was possible and sought for a long time to demonstrate it practically. In 1851 he published a small volume upon astronomy. During his life he held many positions of public trust, which were filled with credit to himself and to the satisfaction of his constituents. It is said that among the many instruments of writing drawn by him not one was ever broken in a court of law, nor were any of his surveys of land found to be incorrect.

He held in high esteem his ancestry, whose remains are buried in the Gumaer Cemetery, and a few years previous to his death, as a token of regard for them, he erected monuments to their memory with appropriate inscriptions.

In his early life it was customary for the ministers in the Reformed Dutch Church, which he attended, to preach in the Holland (Dutch) and English languages on alternate Sabbaths, and so familiar was he with the former that upon returning home he was at a loss to say, when asked, in which language the services had been held. A bit of romance has been related concerning his marriage. It is said that when he was a young man he visited the house of his future mother-in-law, and that she had a little child in the cradle which she was rocking, and that she said to him: "Peter, I want you to rock the cradle, and when this child growls up to be a young woman you may have her for a wife." It so proved that he married this same child that he had thus rocked in the cradle.

The names and ages of Mr. Gumaer's children are as follows:

Morgan, born January 27th, 1815, and died July 5th, 1855.

Ezekiel P., born May 10th, 1817, and died June 25th, 1877.

Jacob C. E., born October 18th, 1820, living at Ovid, Mich.

Peter L., born January 29th, 1827, living at Guymard, N. Y.

Naomi, born January 20th, 1830, and died May 2d, 1862.

Andrew J., born November 4th, 1833, living at Guymard, N. Y.

Esther Harriet, born August 30th, 1835, living at Brooklyn, N. Y., widow of Isaac Mulock.

HISTORY OF DEERPARK.

GEOGRAPHICAL FORMATION OF THE VALLEY.

Before entering into a detail relative to the settlement of this town by Europeans, the causes of their emigration from the fatherland, their manner of life in this then wilderness part of our country, &c., &c., I will give my views of what I consider to have been anteriorly the geographical face of this district of territory, its productions and its native inhabitants.

The present form of the surface of the earth teaches us that there has been a time when it was in many places very different from what it is at this day. This appears to be the case wherever there are rivers and streams of water; and we have reason to think that many lakes and ponds have been drained by the action of streams of water issuing therefrom. It must be the case that there was a time when the surface of the ground in the valley along the Neversink and Delaware rivers in this town, together with that part of it which extends southwest to the gap of the mountain, where the Delaware passes through it, and northeast to the North river, &c., laid below the bottom of a lake of water. This opinion has been formed previous to my contemplations respecting it. Eager gives some account of this in his "History of Orange County," pages 407 and 408, and sufficiently establishes the fact from Indian tradition, &c.

Not only does the gap of the mountain, where the river passes through it, exhibit strong reasons of a passage being worn through it by the action of the water of a lake in this valley, but the knolls and low hills in this valley show that they have undergone much washing of water; and, what appears somewhat mysterious, hills thirty and forty feet higher than the surface of the river flats are all composed of ground, gravel, sand and such smooth stones as are in the bottoms of rivers, from which it appears that not only the surface of those hills, but that all the materials of which they are composed, have for some length of time been water-washed. We find in them some places of clear sand, not mixed with the other materials mentioned, such as is in river sand banks; from which we have reason to conjecture that after the water received a passage through the mountain it created a current in the lake towards it, and as that passage enlarged and wore down, the water in the lake drew off and the current of its stream increased and washed the highest parts of its bottom down into the hollows, where the water was deep, and thereby run down gradually large bodies of water-washed stones, gravel, sand and ground from the highest elevations of the bottom surface into its lowest parts, many of which have remained where they have been carried by the waters, and the adjoining ground, which first was highest, has run down the stream and continued to be moved down until a gradual descent of the rivers was formed, on a bottom of smooth water-washed stones, gravel and sand, which now lie at different depths below the surface of the river flats, viz.: from about four to seven and eight feet below that of the lands along the Neversink river, and at greater depths along the surface of the Delaware river flats.

After a river bottom was formed where the flats now are, the stream creating meandering channels through those river bottom flats would contain the water of the rivers when low, but in freshets, overflow the flat bottoms, whereby in every freshet a part of the ground which the water carried down in such times, lodged on the surface of those flats, which, continuing to accumulate in this way for a great length of time, raised the surface so high that the freshets did not overflow it, unless partially in uncommon high water; and as the waters became more and more confined in stationary channels, the bottoms of these wore down by the action and weight of the water. In this manner undoubtedly was formed the soil of our river lands. In the vicinity of the gap of the Shawangunk mountain, through which the New York & Erie Railroad passes, are indications in some places on the east side of the mountain of the surface of the ground having in a very remote period of time been under water, when I contemplate it ran through this gap into the valley west of the mountain into a lake which has been mentioned.

All rivers and