History and guide to Newburgh and Washington's headquarters

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Excerpt from History and Guide to Newburgh and Washington's Headquarters: And a Catalogue of Manuscripts and Relics in Washington's Headquarters
With such surroundings it is not remarkable that Newburgh is rapidly becoming the abode of wealth and enterprise.
Newburgh, or so much of it as could be seen from the deck of the "Half Moon," is simply described by Hudson, in connection with the adjoining plateau which sweeps in semi-circle from the Dans-Kammer to the Highlands, as "a very pleasant place to build a town on." On the right of his vision Butter Hill lifted its rugged sides in sparse and withered verdure in the autumn sunlight; from thence were forests broken here and there by clearings, which the Indians had made in which to cultivate the corn and beans that so.largely supplied them with food, or marked by the path of streams and hills with cedar-crowned summits as were unmarred by the reclaiming process of civilization; in the Centre, a bluff of rolling sand, with gnarled trees and dwarfed shrubbery, rising abruptly from the water's edge, perchance the watch-tower of the untutored Indian guarding the approaches to the altar of Bachtamo, on which the sacrificial fires of his people had burned for ages - Newburgh, untouched by the
"Keen ax, that wondrous instrument,
That like a fabled talisman transforms
Deserts to fields and cities."
The stages of its reclamation and development are revealed in the records. The first settlement at Newburgh was made by a company of German Lutherans, driven from their homes in the Palatinate of the Rhine, who came to England in the spring of 1708. and petitioned to be sent out to the Plantations; which petition being granted, they were sent to New York and from thence to Quassaick Creek in the winter of 1708-9, and here settling, a patent was issued to them for 2190 acres of land, when was formed the Palatine Parish by Quassaick. Of their history here but little is known; occasional mention of them is made in the Colonial Records, and in 1751 we find a petition presented to the Governor and Council by others who had settled near them, praying for the issue of a new patent for the Glebe lands, a portion that had been granted the Germans for the use and maintenance of a Lutheran Church and minister, which was now desired for the use of the Church of England and the support of a schoolmaster. The Palatines were not freed from religious persecution even in the wilderness, for the petition was granted, and a new patent issued, depriving the Germans of their rights, and changing the name of the settlement to the Parish of Newburgh.
Following the issue of the German patent were numerous others adjacent to it, and soon the place began to assume importance as a commercial and trading post.
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