ISAAC NICOLL: DEFENDER OF LIBERTY (1741-1804) By Marvin Rasnick

In public and private life Isaac Nicoll of Plum Point, Orange County, was a staunch defender of liberty. He was a colonel in the county militia, led a regi­ ment of , served as sheriff of Orange County and after moving across the New York- border, was a prominent member of the New Jersey General Assembly. From Goshen in mid-January of 1779, Nicoll wrote to New York’s Governor George Clinton to ask for mercy and clemency for prisoners Amy Auger, Mat­ thew Dolson and John Ryan. He wished no leniency for Claudius Smith and James Gorden and wrote, “...I shall take pleasure in seeing them executed.” Captain Ebenezer Woodhull of Bloomingrove, Nicoll’s brother-in-law, had been among Claudius’ victims. Woodhull was fortunate in escaping with his life when his home, near present-day Washingtonville, was ransacked by Claudius and his gang. Woodhull’s brothers were zealous patriots in the War of Independence: Jesse was the colonel who organized the first regiment of men in Cornwall Precinct and Nathaniel was a brigadier-general of militia for Suffolk and Queen’s Counties. A sister, Deborah, had married Colonel Isaac Nicoll in 1763, the year George Clinton’s older brother James inherited property in the Town of New Windsor from his father Colonel Charles Clinton. The Clintons and the Nicolls were neighbors on their lands in and about New Windsor. Colonel Charles Clinton and his little group of settlers occupied the area on the outskirts of New Windsor Town in the vicinity of Bull Road at Little Britain. Isaac Nicoll’s grandfather, John Nicoll the First, a founder and benefactor of the First Presbyterian Church of , owned property along the Moodna (Murderers Creek) on lands that had belonged to Colonel Patrick McGregorie. McGregorie and his brother-in-law, David Toshack, were the first white settlers within the present boundaries of Orange County, where they built a log cabin at Plum Point on the New Windsor-Cornwall town line in 1685. Prominent settlers of the New Windsor area included Joseph Horton, who made his home nearly opposite the Nicoll homestead on the west bank of the Moodna. During the struggle with the mother country, Horton’s home quartered officers of the . To the east, Colonel Thomas Ellison erected his dwelling and was honored when General chose it for his headquarters during the summer of 1779, time of the Battle of Stony Point. The Nicoll property was strategically located for defense. In 1778 Captain Thomas Machin, who helped construct the Great Chain between Constitution Island and West Point, installed a series of batteries and chevaux-de-frise between Plum Point and Pollpel Island (later Bannerman’s Island). Two years later, Dr. John Cochran, Director-General of the Medical Department of the Continental Army, was billeted at the Nicoll home. Isaac Nicoll’s father, John the Second, had married Frances Little, daughter of the Reverend Mr. John Little of nearby Salisbury Mills. A rather amusing note in Mr. Little’s account book shows him to be somewhat impatient with his son-in-law, for there is record of Nicoll “...taking horses out of the stable and riding them through the country without leave or liberty...”

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