Bill
A Brief History of the
PathMasterTM
During the period extending from Revolutionary times until the
1890's, many towns and villages appointed Path Masters to care for
their roads. The Path Master was responsible for making sure that
the community's roads "are being constructed and ready access
afforded to the mills, to the villages and to the River [Hudson]
and the Sound [Long Island]. The old thorofares are being improved
and new lengths of road take the place of impracticable old
ones..." stated the Reverend Wm S. Coffey writing about the period
1783 - 1860 in J. Thomas Scharf's History of Westchester County
(1886).
Frances R. Duncombe, Historical Committee, Katonah Improvement
Society, described the Path Master's role thus, in Katonah, the
History of a New York Village and its People (1961):
Commissioners of roads had charge of new construction and
major repairs of roads and bridges...Current maintenance
was carried out without funds under supervision of
pathmasters. There was one appointed to each stretch of
road, and it was his job to get the neighbors living
along it to put in so many days of work a year, which
they were assessed in lieu of money.
"Pathmaster" appears to have been an honorary position
and the honor was shifted frequently from one landowner
to another, probably with a sigh of relief each time.
The highways were rough dirt roads, mud bogs in spring
and deep snow in winter.
19th Century Westchester roads are described this way by Jay Harris
in God's Country: A history of Pound Ridge (1971):
[Roads] begin with existing cartways or "the traveled
track" and proceed between various properties with
landmarks of stones, specific trees, stumps, fences or
staddles (frameworks for haystacks). Some simply
connected neighboring farms, others connected existing
roads.
"Bandwidth" was "four rods wide" which meant that trees and brush
were cleared to that width (about 66 feet of right of way) although
the working surface was only wide enough for two wagons to pass
each other.
Today, Westchester PathMasterTM continues the traditional role of
pathmaster, laying out the way for the County's non-profit
organizations to access the information superhighway, maintaining
the site on a voluntary basis, and keeping the way free and clear
for all who would travel it.
Bill Langham, Westchester Alliance for Telecommunications & Public
Access, who's Internet signature box includes Wendell Berry's
phrase, "The path I follow, I can hardly see."
Special thanks to Elizabeth Fuller at the Westchester Historical
Society, Joan Hawley Bristol, formerly North Salem's Historian, and
the Armonk Reference Librarian who went out of her way to track
down the Harris book.
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Bill Langham Hemaskus Information Management
Rye, NY Services
blangham@westnet.com
The path I follow I can hardly see. In Rain, Wendell Berry
I tooted my horn for th' passing lane. Maybelline, Chuck Berry