ts and tenants.

The present population of the Hill is of a composition which is
explainable by migration, and by the effect of the topography of the
Hill upon that population. There is every evidence that before the
coming of the railroad in 1849 the population was unified, and the
community freer of neighborhood groupings. The lists of customers who
traded at Daniel Merritt's store, given in Appendix B of this volume,
indicates the centering on the Hill of a wide economic life. Every
record and tradition of a religious sort indicates that the Oblong
Meeting House was also the center of a religious community as
wide-spread as the business of the stores. The Hill was one neighborhood
until 1828, when the Division of the Meeting occurred; and 1849, when
the railroad came to Pawling. It is not now one neighborhood. Three
groupings of households may be discerned, roughly designated "The North
End," "Quaker Hill Proper," and "Wing's Corners." The second of these,
being the territory most under scrutiny in Part III, might again be
divided into the territory "up by the Meeting House," and that "down by
Mizzen-Top." The difficulty one experiences in naming these groupings
of houses is a token of the indefiniteness of these divisions. They are
accentuated by events occurring in the more recent history of the Hill.
The older history which shapes the consciousness of the community does
not know these neighborhood divisions. Yet the change of the emphasis of
travel to the roads running east and west, from those north and south,
has separated these neighborhoods from one another. "The North End,"
therefore, is composed of those households between Sites 1 and 15, who
go to the village of Pawling for "trading" and "to take the cars," along
the road which passes Sites 16 to 18. They include Hammersley Lake and
Hurd's Corners in their interests.

The "Middle Distance," or as I would call it "The Meeting House
Neighborhood," is composed of those households from Sites 21 to 41; "the
Hotel Neighborhood," of those from Site 42 to 95; and these all, whether
regarded as one or as two sections, go habitually to the village by the
"Mizzen-Top road," past Sites 99 and 113.

"Wing's Corner" is properly the name of Site 100, but it may serve for a
title of the southern neighborhood from Site 122 to 104. From this
neighborhood all travel to the valley by the road westward from the
"Corners."

The "North End" and "Wing's Corners" are settled al