Samuel Kimble

GEDCOM Note

Very Early Honesdale by Ann OHara

On the first census of the United States, in 1790, the area that is now Honesdale was labeled "Swamp." Horatio Allen, who drove the Stourbridge Lion in 1829, called it a "dense laurel swamp surrounded with beech forest." If it hadn't been for the decision to terminate the Delaware & Hudson Canal and Gravity Railroad at the "Forks of the Dyber-ry," chances are good there would never have been a Honesdale. The two pieces of property on which Honesdale sits were de-fined before the town existed. In the years after the Revolution the commonwealth had millions of acres of frontier land to dis-tribute, and most of it went to speculators, who hoped to make their fortunes by reselling the land. The Indian Orchard Tract was owned in 1823 by Samuel Kimble, who built a small cabin on the present day site of Van Gorders' Furniture. The second tract had been occupied for many years by a man named William Schoonover, whose title, like so many others, was not strictly legal. In return for sur-veying the Schoonover Tract and making it legal, surveyor Jason Torrey received 50% of the tract plus forty acres - the extra acreage because he was getting the swampy portion. By 1825 both Torrey and Kimble were aware that the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company was building a canal and gravity railroad, but the company's plan at that point was that the two would meet near Keen's Pond, Canaan Township. Kimble was convinced by his friends to sell his land to Maurice Wurts for $1,000. Wurts, one of the founders of the D&H project, promptly sold the land to the canal company for $4,000. Torrey, on the other hand, saw the advent of the D&H as an opportunity to make mon-ey in real estate and commerce. As news of the monumental enterprise spread, the settlement at the forks of the Dyberry became a magnet for enterpris-ing young men. Most of them are unfa-miliar to us, but they were the "movers and shakers" who formed a community during the first years of its existence. The name change, incidentally, seems to have come about with no fanfare. We have a ledger, perhaps from Jason Torrey's store, in which the page heading changes from "Dyberry Forks" to "Honesdale" overnight. The 1830 census, the first after Honesdale's founding, shows a total population of 433. Of the 433 individuals, 176 are males and 86 females. Even more startling than the gender breakdown - 60% of the total were between the ages of 15 and 40! There were 131 children under 15 (30% of the whole), and only 10% of the population was over 40, with only two people over 60!