Prendergast's Rent War today -2

Marker in Quaker Hill Cemetery.

Today, my sister Bette and I visited the stomping ground of our 5x great grandparents William Prendergast and Mehitable Wing from the 1740s until the end of the American Revolution in 1783.

The family then moved north to a settlement called The Lick on the Hoosick River northeast of Albany. Originally, I had assumed the Prendergasts moved north because they were loyalists. Many loyalists weren't treated well during and especially after the war.

Akin Free Library, Quaker Hill, NY.
Matthew Prendergast, oldest son of
William & Mehitable, married into
the Akin family (Abigail) and had
three children. Abigail died before
1806 and Matthew married again,
this time into the Hunt family as
did two of Matthew's brothers.

But today I learned from Jim Mandracchia of the Akin Free Library atop Quaker Hill, that some of the Prendergasts' neighbors and friends were unhappy with how populated Dutchess County was becoming. The neighbors were moving to north of Albany, especially the Glen's Falls area. Bette and I will head there tomorrow.



Merritt store ledger, 1769, showing
purchases that my 5x great grand-
father William Prendergast made.
Courtesy Akin Free Library.

Today we were in Pawling and Quaker Hill where Jim at the Akin Free Library showed us a store ledger from 1769 (the store was owned by the Merritt family; William & Mehitable's granddaughter Catherine Rodman Prendergast married the Honorable William Hamilton Merritt who was a member of Canadian parliament at St. Catharines, Ontario and born to the wealthy Thomas Merritt of Bedford, NY. The Merritt store ledger showed that William Prendergast purchased various food and supplies on credit. He paid for them in 1770.

The Akin Free Library has a tremendous amount of information; I wished that I could have spent more time there. Ironically, the Prendergast family married into the Akin family, as William & Mehitable's oldest son Matthew (who served as a lieutenant in the British forces during the Revolutionary War) married Abigail Akin in Dutchess County in the 1780s and had three children. She died before 1806 and was laid to rest at Quaker Hill. Matthew remarried, this time to the Hunt family of Chautauqua County as did two of his brothers, Martin and Thomas. The latter is my 4x great-grandfather.

We visited Deborah DeWinter at the Pawling House Bed & Breakfast, part of which built before the Revolutionary War and the rest in the 1860s. Deborah named the rooms after local women who played important roles in history. We were happy to see Mehitable Wing be recognized.

Mehitable Wing Prendergast room
at the Pawling House B&B, part of
which was built before the Revolu-
tionary War.

Deborah also gave us directions to an historical marker for Mehitable, placed at the Quaker Hill Cemetery. Even though she is not buried here (she was laid to rest at the Prendergast-Hunt Cemetery west of Jamestown, NY), it gave us solemn pride to see here memorialized here as "The Heroine of Quaker Hill." See the marker at the top of this blog entry.

Our next stop wasn't far away: the Oblong Friends Meeting House. This 1764-built structure was where the Wings, who were orthodox Quakers, worshipped and discussed important events of the day. William reportedly joined the Quakers to marry Mehitable. Except for the addition of a 19th-century stove, the meeting house doesn't appear to have changed much in 250 years.

Oblong Friends Meeting House, Quaker Hill, NY, built in 1764.
This is where my 5x great grandparents worshipped and where
part of Prendergast's army reportedly hid from British troops
during their hunt for William Prendergast in 1766.

The interior of the Oblong Friends Meeting House appears little
changed over the last 250 years of its service.

Finally, we visited the John Kane house on Main Street, just east of Pawling. This 1740-built house was bought by Protestant Irishman Kane (originally O'Kane) in 1752.

John Kane house, Pawling, NY. It was General Washington's
headquarters of his winter encampment in 1778. And it was
right across the road from my ancestor's farm.

John Kane was arrested for being a loyalist and his wife and children fled to British North America (Canada). His house was seized by the Continentals for use as Gen. George Washington's winter 1778 headquarters.

That was shortly after William Prendergast, also a Protestant, came here from Wexford, Ireland. William built his farmhouse across Main Street from Kane's where the Dutcher Golf Course is today.

Prendergast, living right across the street with thousands of colonial soldiers encamped all around his farm, was also was a loyalist. His oldest son Matthew was a lieutenant in the British army stationed on Long Island.

Site of the 250-acre farm that William Prendergast rented from
manor lord Frederick Phillipse III. He lived here from the 1750s
to 1783. Today it's the site of the Dutcher Golf Course.

Yet, Prendergast remained on his land until after the war. Perhaps his exploits in the rent war, including the first shooting between British regulars and a colonial rebellion, won him some brownie points with the Continentals?

Perhaps his loyalty to the British crown was dismissed as merely being the result of King George III granting him a pardon of treason for his leading the rent rebellion of 1766? If only the Continentals knew of the Prendergasts' centuries of history of supporting British royalty.

The safer move was to head north to less populated areas where Native Americans were either friendly or had been displaced by the Continentals. So the Prendergasts' 35 years of building a family and making history in Pawling-Quaker Hill had come to an end.


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