Amenia Historical Society

By John Quinn

Richard Sackett, who rightfully can be called the founder of Amenia, was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1674.

          After working in the woodlands of the northeast learning how to extract tar from pine trees, he moved to New York City where he became the proprietor of a brewery.    However, it was probably through his dealings in timbers and tar for His Majesty’s Navy that he was introduced to this area; in 1699 he married Margery Sleade of Dover and two years later their first child, Richard, was born in Dover. As a result of his familiarity with this region he petitioned the British provincial government in 1703 for a license to purchase from the Pequot Indians “ a tract of land in Dutchess County, east of Hudson’s River, called Washiack.”    The county had been formed only 20 years earlier by the New York Assembly and was still sparsely settled, particularly east of the Hudson Valley.

            His request for the land grant was approved on November 2, 1704, giving him title to some 7,500 acres.

          For a while the Sackett family were the only residents of the area.   In 1711 the British named Sackett commissioner for settlement of the Palatines, German refugees who had been brought to East Camp or Germantown.    It was from this association with the Palatine refugees that other settlers moved into the Wassaic valley.    The first to join the Sacketts was the Garrett Winegar family from East Camp.    Gradually more Germans came to Amenia – Henry Nase in 1725, and later the Knickerbocker and Van Deusen families.

          Not all of the first settlers were German.    One of the early families was Captain Isaac Delamater, a Huguenot whose Protestant grandfather had been forced to flee France.     This Amenia pioneer came from Kingston.

          In 1746, Richard Sackett died at his farm in Wassaic leaving many court disputes over the initial land grant as well as the title to extensive tracts of land he believed he had purchased of Meloxan, the great chief of all the Indian tribes in the border land of New York and Connecticut.

©2007 Amenia Historical Society