DuMond - Founders of Arkville

A 8-39                        DuMond – Founders of Arkville

4/9/2014 ver. 0

There are several variations of this story to be found which I have condensed into this one account.

Harmanus DuMond and Petrus DuMond were brothers.  Separately their descendants became Green ancestors.  (8-39 Harmamus DuMond – 7-20 Catherine DuMond Van Benschoten, and 8-57 Peter DuMond – 7-29 Igneas – 6-15 Cornelius – 5-8 Mary DuMond Palmatier). 

In 1762 they set out with 2 other men from Ulster County, Johannes VanWaggenen, and Peter Hendricks, to seek suitable farm lands in the Delaware valley. {See: History - The Dutch West India Company. Which explains how they came to be here. Not yet posted}.  The name applied to the settlement made by them was "Pakataghkan," now written "Pakatakan."  Further down the East Branch of the Delaware, from Shavertown to near Downsville, other families settled prior to 1778. Their settlement was designated "Papacunck,"now called "Pepacton."

Four families made the experiment and bought four farms at 20 shillings per acre. In 1763 Harmanus DuMond, was furnished with a surveyed deed to seventy-five acres opposite Margaretville.  The little Dutch colony continued to grow and in eight years numbered nine families.  The settlers thus far had maintained friendly relations with the Indians, but soon trouble arose.  During the winter of 1777-8, the Indians began a series of depredations upon the property of the settlers along the river as far as Pepacton. A body of Indians and hostile whites laid a plan to burn the homes of the white settlers at Pepacton and Pakatakan. By the warning of a kindly Indian, most of the settlers hastily gathered a few belongings that they could carry and retreated over the mountain eastward to the Great Shandaken with a guard who had come from the Great Shandaken to help them escape.

Harmanus DuMond was one who would not leave with the guard and remained behind to secure certain property. The guard with his convoy had scarcely reached the Great Shandaken, when news came that Harmanus DuMond was shot in a raid by the Tories at Pakatakan. He died a few days later on August 29th and was buried at Pakatakan. 

A variation of this story states he was ‘mistaken’ for a Tory and shot by militia. 

The Von Waggoner tavern/hotel is said to have been the first in Middletown, and was the place where the town’s first and perhaps only Revolutionary War casualty occurred. A company of militia was sent in the summer of 1778 from Schoharie to scour the upper valleys of the Delaware, to arrest or drive out Tories (British sympathizers), and to destroy supportive Indian villages. The militia came upon settlers John Burrow and Harmonus Dumond, and “seeing them armed and refusing to halt,” they fired. Dumond was mortally wounded, and died in Von Wagoner’s hotel three days later, on August 29.

It was not until the end of the Revolutionary War hostilities that the settlers returned to the area.

In 1784, the first settler in the valley where the village of Margaretville now stands was "Ingnos" or "Egganaus DuMond" as he signed himself on the town records. He was son of Petrus and a nephew of Harmanus DuMond.