THE STORY OF CROTON By Alvin McCaslin Higgins

Editor's Note: The following paper was prepared by the late Mr. Higgins for the Ossining Historical Society in 1938.

Nearly three hundred and thirty years ago, upon an October evening, a fantastic little ship floated with the tide into the deep bay that lay south of what is now Croton Point. A few- sailors who spoke Holland Dutch slipped the little anchor overboard and let it grapple with the gravel bottom. The ship was only fifty-eight feet long. It was built like a gravy-boat, higher at the ends than in the middle, with small cannon poking their muzzles out of the few port holes. The English ship-master, wearing the Dutch garb of the time, leaned over the rail watching the Indian wigwams that dotted the neck of Croton Point about where the Harmon station of the New York Central Railroad is today. On her way up the great river in 1609, the tiny Half Moon had cast anchor for the night off shore of the deep bay that, in these later years, is filled with reeds and rushes, meadow and railroad yards. As far as we know, Henry Hudson and his crew were the first white men to behold the spot where the Village of Croton-on-Hudson now lies. Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river the next morning, believing he had found the great strait of water which would bring him to China and the Asia of that day. Little did he realize that within a hundred years from the night he gazed up Croton's River, a kingdom would be created there producing more wealth and power than he would ever know. The point of land which sheltered the Half Moon was known to the Indians as Senasqua. The rushing river, emptying its fresh waters into the salty Hudson below Senasqua was named after the chief of the Kitchawan tribe of Indians.