NOTES ON MILESTONES
By Hopper Striker Mott
On Sept. 6, 1769, the Common Council ordered paid a bill of £8 : 11 : 2 for 16 stones supplied by George Lindsay (Mins. C. C. Vol. VII.: 178); Chap. XXI, Laws 14th George III, passed March 9, 1774, provided a penalty of £3 for defacing any milestone, hand, pointer or any other monument erected for the direction of travellers along the public roads, or in default, imprisonment in the common gaol for the space of two months. If the defacement be committed by a slave and the fine remain unpaid, imprisonment with 39 lashes on the bare back is prescribed if said forfeiture be not paid within 6 days after conviction.
The date of placing the stones on the Albany Post Road was 1769, as confirmed by the carving of this date on the ninth milestone, which formerly stood at the corner of Harlem Lane (now St. Nicholas Avenue) at 149th Street.
During Franklin's occupation of the Postmaster Generalship, and, in accordance with the terms of his appointment, a line of posts was laid out. As he was in office but a year (1775–6) and the route to be measured extended from Massachusetts to Georgia, it is impossible that he marked and set out the entire distance.
Christopher Colles, an engineer of note, surveyed the Post Road in 1789 from Federal Hall, in Wall Street, and noted thereon the position of the stones. He mapped the road from New York to Kingsbridge, and on other pages that to Albany. The survey locates the ist and 2d miles on the Bowery Lane, and then follows the bed of the Post Road over New York Lane and Madison Square. The site of the 3d stone is placed about opposite 24th Street, near the juncture of the Bloomingdale Road.
On May 10, 1813, the Common Council authorized the erection of a new set of stones, with the present City Hall as a starting point. These guides marked the passing miles on the Boston Road, No. 1 being at Rivington Street and the Bowery.
MILESTONES IN BLOOMINGDALE
That there was a series running up the Bloomingdale Road is proved by the following evidence. The 3d stone, as Colles has shown, was near 24th Street, at the junction of the Post Road.
This advertisement from the Columbian of June 6, 1815, has been found;
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