Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/126

This page needs to be proofread.

102 HISTORY OF SOUTH SIDE. James Morher, Isaac Ward, Jonathan Haskill, Abram Williams, John Carpenter, David Barney, Baltus Ninpos, Gamaliel Bailey, Moses Thomas, Eleazer Owens, Adam Embler, Samuel Little, Benjamin Dunning, Daniel Reid. EAST SIDE. Erected by the Inhabitants of Orange County, July 22d, 1822. Sacred to the memory of forty-four of their Fellow-citizens, who fell at The Battle of Minisink, July 22d, 1Y79. The battle of the Delaware was unquestionably one of the hardest fought conflicts during the Revolutionary war; and Brant afterward informed Squire Whitaker^* that when the Americans gave the order to retreat, he had just resolved to give the same order ; and had the soldiers retained their posi- tion a few moments longer^ they would have been left in pos- sion of the field. Some slight idea of the fruit of this fight may be gathered from the following statement of Benjamin Whitaker, an aged pioneer of this county, who still lives in the valley of the Dela- ware, two miles below Deposit. I had two uncles in the battle of the Delaware, at Cedar

  • Squire Whitaker was one of the earliest settlers in the western part

of the county. He had lost all of his property at the massacre of Wyoming, and barely escaped with his family to Orange County, where he remained until the declaration of peace, when he removed to Dela- ware County, in 1785.