Plumbing in Dobbs Ferry, NY

Multiple groups of Native Americans lived around what is now known as Dobbs Ferry since at least 4500 BC. The most recent tribe who claimed territory of the area are the Wecquaesgeek, maintaining villages until the 1600s. Numerous artifacts from the tribe continue to be found along Wicker’s Creek in oyster middens.

Dobbs Ferry was named for the ferry service started in the early 1700s by John Dobbs or his son William. It was not a licensed service, so there are no official records to pin down exactly which Dobbs family member started the service or when. John was English, son of Walter Dobbs who can be found in the historical record getting a liquor license in Manhattan in 1680, leasing land on the East River to harvest salt marsh hay soon after, and serving as a constable in the Bowery Ward. John grew up in Manhattan, the nephew of the wealthy and politically prominent William Merritt, a mariner and businessman. Merritt was mayor of New York from 1695 to 1698 and co-founded Trinity Church (Anglican, now Episcopalian).

John leased the waterfront and adjoining acreage at present-day Dobbs Ferry from Frederick Phillips in 1698, when he was about 23 and single. Simultaneously his uncle William Merritt moved to a large parcel he co-owned on the opposite bank, at what was later called Snedens Landing (now Palisades, NY). It was a natural place for a ferry since it was the first spot going north from the city where the west bank was not blocked by the sheer rock cliff known as The Palisades. Merritt needed to get out of the city, because he had been an anti-Leislerite, allied with those who engineered Jacob Leisler’s trial and hanging in 1691 and therefore faced a perilous future in the city when a pro-Leislerite royal governor was sent over in 1698. (An anti-Leislerite ally who stayed in the city was arrested, charged with treason and sentenced to death by the re-ascendant Leislerites, though the sentence was not carried out.)