ociated with the quaint name, "The
Oblong." This was the name of a strip of land, lying along the eastern
boundary of New York State, now part of Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess
Counties, and narrowing to the northward, which was for a century in
dispute between New York and Connecticut.

There had been a half century in which this was all disputed land,
between the Dutch at New York and the English in New England. Then
followed a half century of dispute as to the boundary between sister
colonies, which are now New York and Connecticut. As soon as this was
settled in 1731 the immigration flowed in, and the history of Quaker
Hill, the first settlement in the Oblong, begins. It was granted to New
York; and in compensation the lands on which Stamford and Greenwich
stand were granted to Connecticut after a long and bitter dispute. The
end of the dispute and the first settlement of the Oblong came, for
obvious reasons, in the same year. The first considerable settlement of
pioneers was made at Quaker Hill in 1731, by Friends, who came from
Harrison's Purchase, now a part of Rye.[3]

The historical interest of the locality dwells in the contrast between
the simple annals of Quakerism, which was practiced there in the
eighteenth century, and the military traditions which have fallen to the
lot of peaceful Quaker Hill. The "Old Meeting House," known for years
officially as Oblong Meeting House, experienced in its past, full of
memories of men of peace, the violent seizures by men of war. That
storied scene, in the fall of 1778, when the Meeting House was seized
for the uses of the army as a hospital,[4] has lived in the thoughts of
all who have known the place, and has been cherished by none more
reverently than by the children of Quakers, whose peace the soldiers
invaded. Both the soldier and the Quaker laid their bones in the dust of
the Hill. Both had faith in liberty and equality. The history of Quaker
Hill in the eighteenth century is the story of these two schools of
idealists, who ignored each other, but were moved by the same passion,
obeyed the same spirit. It is said that a locality never loses the
impression made upon it by its earliest residents. Certain it is that
the roots of modern things are to be traced in that earliest period, and
through a continuous self-contained life until the present day.

In the eighteenth century Quaker Hill was the chosen asylum of men of
peace. Yet it became the rallying place of p