FEATURED RAMAPO ROOM BOOK:
Suffern’s Contribution to the Founding of Rockland County
Author: Saxby Vouler Penfold
Publication date: 1948
Publisher: Suffern Historical Society, Suffern, NY
EXCERPT – pages 16-17:
The most influential man in Rockland County at the time that it was set off from Old Orange County in 1978, was John Suffern. He was born near Antrim, in the North of Ireland, on the 23rd. of November, 1741. His father’s name was William, and his mother was Margaret Templeton. His ancestors came originally from the Republic of Lucca to Provence, in France, in the 14th century, where many of them occupied prominent positions. Several of them were officers of the French navy, among whom was Pierre Andre de Suffern, a celebrated Admiral during the 18th. century.
One branch of the family passed from France to the North of Ireland, and from this branch John Suffern is descended. The family in Ireland are mostly residents of Belfast and its vicinity, where many of them have held high and honorable positions.
John Suffern was a Presbyterian. The first Presbyterian meeting house was erected at Antrim, in 1614. In 1688, the Antrim Association was organized. It consisted of a number of Protestants of the County of Antrim, who had determined to opposed the arbitrary measures of King James II. The year 1704 is memorable in the history of Irish Presbyterianism as that in which the iniquitous Test Act was introduced into Ireland. By this law it was decided that all persons holding any public appointment whatever must take three months after their appointment, or lose their office.
Froude says: “The Protestant settlers in Ireland at the beginning of the seventeenth century were of the same metal with those who afterward sailed in the Mayflower—Presbyterians, Puritans, Independents—in search of a wider breathing-space than those allowed them at home. . . . Vexed with suits in the ecclesiastical courts, forbidden to educate their children in their own faith, treated as dangerous to a State which but for them would have had no existence, and deprived of their civil rights . . . if they intended to live as freemen, speaking no lies and professing openly the creed of the Reformation, they must seek a country where the long arm of prelacy was still too short to reach them.”
Alexander C. Flick, New York State Historian, says:
“A number of Irish Republicans found their way to New York, where some of them distinguished themselves in business, the ministry, teaching and other professions. Indeed their influence was larger than their numbers might indicate. . . . James Orr, nephew of the more famous Orr who was hanged to frighten the Presbyterians of Antrim, shipped out of Belfast and landed in New York in 1799. . . . Thomas Sufferan (Suffern) did not appear until 1808, built a competence as a tobacco broker.”
John Suffern emigrated to America in 1763, landing at Philadelphia with his brother James, on August 6th., just as the ill-fated expedition of General Braddock was starting at Fort Duquesne. Both brothers enlisted, but John was taken ill with ship fever and was forced to remain in a hospital at Philadelphia, while his brother accompanied the expedition, and was supposed to have been killed, as no tidings were received of him. During the Civil War, however, it was discovered that he had gone south, settled in North Carolina, where he reared a family whose descendants are still there.
When John Suffern had recovered from his sickness, he worked his way northward. On January 1st., 1766, he married Mary Myers, the daughter of Andrew and Frances Myers of Burlington, N.J., by whom he had ten children: Margaret, Andrew, Elizabeth, John, Maria, James, William, George, John (the first John died in infancy), and Edward.
After some years he entered Orange County, New York. He taught at Tappan for a time, and then settled at Haverstraw, from whence he moved, in September, 1773, to that section of the Ramapo Valley known as “Point of the Mountains.” After purchasing this section, here renamed it “New Antrim,” after his birthplace in the North of Ireland.
He first secured an acre on the south side of the present Nyack Turnpike. Soon afterwards he removed and built his first home upon the site diagonally opposite. It was a large house, in the old King’s Highway, leading from King’s Ferry at Stony Point to the present village of Suffern, and on to Morristown and the South. Travellers and visitors to this area frequently put up at the Suffern home.
The house had scarcely been built when the War of American Independence broke out. John Suffern was a staunch Whig and devoted to the war aims of America, and as Suffern was a strategical point of great importance throughout the war, his house became the center of military events in the vicinity. George Washington often stopped at the Suffern home on his way to Stony Point or King’s Ferry, and when the American army was encamped in the Ramapo Valley in 1777, he occupied the Suffern home as his headquarters. There are several references to Suffern’s Tavern in Washington’s Diaries. General George Clinton’s headquarters were for a time at the Suffern home. Aaron Burr, who was in command of the American troops stationed at Ramapo in 1777, also made his headquarters at the Suffern house.
The Village of Suffern was the door of communication between Washington’s army and New England, between Boston and Philadelphia, between the colonies north and the colonies south. Here is the historic Ramapo Pass. The present road through the Pass was an old Indian trail, and the settlers found it the nearest and best road between the northern colonies and the southern, when the Hudson river was blocked. Hence, during the Revolutionary War it was early watched and fortified. The center of military operations was about a mile within the gorge. American troops were stationed here all through the war to guard the Pass and to stop intruders.
TO READ MORE, STOP BY THE RAMAPO ROOM AND LOOK FOR CALL NUMBER 974.728 PEN
