and Fishkill Landing, the latter of which lay closer to the
west. The first settlement in the township was made in 1690. During the
Revolutionary War it was an important military base for the Northern
Continental Army. At Fishkill Landing on May 13, 1783, Gen. Knox
organized the Society of the Cincinnati.

The Society of the Cincinnati was an organization of U.S.
officers who had served in the Revolutionary War. Besides the
general society of which Washington was president, another was
organized for each state. (The name is in reference to
Cincinnati, the Roman patriot who left the plough to serve his
country.) Membership was limited to officers, native or foreign,
of the Continental army who had either served with honour for
three years or had been honorably discharged for disability, and
to their descendants.

Because it included several European nobles, such as Lafayette
and Steuben, and because it was founded on the principle of
heredity the new society was denounced as the beginning of an
aristocracy and therefore a menace, by such Revolutionary leaders
as Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, who were ineligible for
membership because they had not been in the army. There was
perhaps a real fear that it might become a military hierarchy
which would appropriate the important offices of the new
republic. At any rate, several states adopted resolutions against
it and so great was the antagonism at the first general meeting
in 1784 Washington persuaded the members to abolish the
hereditary feature. In spite of this condition, the excitement
did not die, and in 1789 the Tammany Society was founded in
N.Y.C. in opposition to the Cincinnati, and as a wherein "true
equality" should govern. This was the origin of Tammany Hall,
which became conspicuous in N.Y. politics.

Alexander Hamilton succeeded Washington as president, but by 1824
most of the state branches of the Cincinnati and the general
society itself were dead or dying. For a long time little was
left but a traditional dinner held each year in N.Y.C. In 1893
the general society made an effort to revive the state
organizations, with some little success. The hereditary feature
has been restored and the living members number about 980. The
motto is "Omnia relinquit servare rem publicam." (He abandons
everything to serve the republic.)