Posts tagged as:

nagle

The Old Nagle Cemetery

Inwood Cemetery, NYC

In mid-17th century Jan Nagle and Jan Dyckman traveled to the New World and settled in northern Manhattan. For more than two centuries the families farmed the land, raised cattle, planted orchards, built bridges and homes and even intermarried. And while Dyckman is a familiar Inwood name, largely thanks to the preservation of the post-Revolutionary [...]

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Where Cobwebs Thrive on Manhattan Isle

Libby Castle

When New York Tribune reporter Eleanor Booth Simmons explored the hills of Inwood and Washington Heights in 1921 she discovered a quaint country community rapidly being swallowed by the big city. In this article she gives us a guided tour of the still standing homes of once rich and powerful families including Nathan Straus, James [...]

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17th Century Dyckman Goose Feud

Dutch period thumb

In “Ballads of  Old New York,” published in 1920 by Arthur Guiterman, there is a description of a brief but bitter feud between early Inwood settlers Jan Dyckman and Jan Nagle. Settlers who, by all accounts, were the best of friends until one fateful day in the 1680′s. The story, which is referenced in other [...]

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Late 19th Century Inwood- Part III

William Calver

Much of what we know today about the history and pre-history of  Inwood and Washington Heights is due largely to the turn of the century work of amateur historians, self taught archaeologists and close friends William Calver  and Reginald Bolton. Starting in the 1880′s Bolton and Calver began exploring northern Manhattan with picks and shovels, [...]

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Inwood Street Names

Broadway Street sign in Inwood, New York.

Academy Street Named aptly for the first school in Inwood. Dedicated in 1858, Ward School 52 was also known as “MacKean’s Folly” for the school commissioner who ordered the three story structure built in the then sparsely populated area.

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Forgotten Cemeteries of Inwood

Old Cemetary in Inwood, New York. The old Dyckman and Nagle graveyard.

It’s hard to imagine an Inwood with mansions on the hill, a dirt road below, and just east of that cemeteries….yep….Cemeteries. Hundreds of years of even sparse population generated numerous graves. In some lay the long forgotten members of once famous families. In other plots were the remains of slaves, the fallen dead of the [...]

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