From the files of Kevin Wright:
“
FIRE AT CLOSTER. — A house belonging to Mrs. Miles, and occupied by a German family named Weaver, was burned on the afternoon of the 4th [of July, 1870]. The fire is supposed to have been caused by fire crackers. This house stood a half mile east of the station and was built (of stone) in the year 1760. During the Revolution it was the scene of a tragedy which attached to it some historical interest. The following inscription upon a tombstone in a small neglected grave yard near by, mentions some of the circumstances of the tragedy:
Here lie
the Remains of
DOUWE TALEMA,
who died on the 11th Day of May, 1779,
in his ninetieth Year.
This aged Man, at his Residence near this Place, was willfully and barbarously murdered by a Party of Tories, Traitors to their Country, who had taken Refuge with the Troops of Britain then in New York, and came thence to murder, burn and plunder.
To pay a Tribute of Respect to his Memory, and to commemorate the Manner of his Death, several of his Relatives have erected this Stone.”
The Miles house is clearly shown on Hopkin’s 1860 map of
Bergen and Passaic Counties, New Jersey, standing close to the Walter Parsells Homestead (identified in 1860 as Mrs. Vanderbeck’s Lone Star Tavern). The close proximity of these two houses is also shown on the 1840 Coastal Survey. Ambrose Thersander Secor, an amateur poet who contributed to local newspapers and who began to record local family history about the time of the Civil War, also recalled this burned stone dwelling as the Douwe Talema house, adding that it was once the home of Matthew Bogert and his wife Polly Demarest, a sister to his grandfather, Rev. James D. Demarest. Writing in 1907, Mary Naugle, a Closter antiquarian, recalled that “the house where [Douwe Tallman] lived, long since gone, stood on the old Closter Road near the Alpine Road, about in the spot where the new house of George Vervalen now stands.”
A forgotten version of the events surrounding the Closter Raid was told in 1858 by a descendant of John I. Westervelt, of Tenafly, who with his father, Jacob Westervelt, was taken prisoner by a gang of Refugees and Tories during the Revolution. Relying upon his mother’s recollections and eyewitness testimony, the anonymous narrator compiled the story of Tallman’s murder in a letter to the
Paterson Guardian:
“The band of Refugees and Tories infested the North River mountain from Paulus Hook to Tappan, from which they would rush down into the valley below, and burn houses and barns and murder the farmers. On one of their excursions from the mountain, they killed a Mr. Demarest and one of his sons, fired upon another named Peter, (who told me the story on the spot where it took place); then they burned the house and grist mill. Most of the dwelling houses and barns were burned in Closter. These last outrages were done on a Sabbath morning, just before church time.”
“An aged farmer, over eighty years, by the name of Tallman, living in this valley, was also murdered at this time. The band entered his dwelling, when he drew from under his bed a small trunk in which he kept his valuable papers. He said to them “I am an old man — I cannot injure you — you will not hurt me.” The reply was “no,” and instantly they knocked him down on his trunk and ran a bayonet through his body. Then they took him by the feet and dragged him out of the door, and down the stone steps, (his head striking every step as they went down,) and threw his body into the yard before the house; then they set fire to both house and barn; the militia were away at this time on duty elsewhere.”
J.
