Samuel Preston settled in Stockport, Wayne County PA in 1788. His account of a supposed periodic cycle of flooding of the upper Delaware River is priceless for its detailed observations on farming in the valley. Fellow farmers and informants he references are: John Hilborn, on the Susquehanna, Nicholas Depui, Esq. of Minesink [Monroe Co PA], Joseph Ross of Cosheckton [Cochecton NY] and Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin. The work first appeared in
Memoirs of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture: Containing Communications on Various Subjects in Husbandry & Rural Affairs, Volume 4, 1818.
Additionally:
John Linchlaen's 1791
journal entry of his visit to Samuel Preston's farm in Stockport.
Samuel Preston.
On clearing land, New England Farmer, 9 January 1829, midway 2nd column.
Samuel Preston,
Gardening of the Germans in Pennsylvania, The Farmer's Cabinet, 1836, p 52.
Note the term
cheat in this letter may refer to to the weed Cheat (
Bromus secalinus) or perhaps, weeds in general.
