Van Saun Tract
Albert Zabriskie received a patent for 424 acres on April 24, 1682, but when surveys were finally drawn, only 224 acres of this amount could be found. On October 29, 1695, Albert Sobrisco (Zabriskie) of Hackinsack sold 224 acres on the west side of the Hackensack River to Jacob Vansan of New York. The survey for this tract began at the north corner of the tract of land that David Ackerman purchased from Cornelius Matheus or his son Matheus Corneliuson and ran from thence thirteen chains (858') along the Hackensack River and thence turned inland, running two and a quarter miles northwest to a branch of the Saddle River (now called Sprout Brook). It was bounded north by land patented to Gawen Lawrie in right of Peter Sonmans and south by land of David Ackerman. Jacob Vansan of New York City, boatman, received his deed for the same on November 29, 1695. This tract extended south from Howland Avenue to just south of Reservoir Avenue; to the west, the original line runs along the south side of Lexington Drive.
The Trouw Boeck for the City of New York records the marriage of Jacob Van Zanen, an immigrant from Ransdorp, to Jannetje Lucas, a native of New York, on August 18, 1678. Jacob, the son of Jacob Van Sanen and Jannetie Lúcas, was baptized in New York on April 7, 1684. Jacob Van Saen, born in New York, married Rachel Bongaert at the Hackensack Church on August 25, 1705; it was this son who first settled on the west bank of the Hackensack River.
Exactly when one of the Van Sauns built a stone dam in the hollow below the conjunction of several spring brooks and erected a gristmill is unrecorded but on May 1, 1750, neighbor Jan Banta, devised “all the rest of my land lying on the west side of a run of water called the Muelekel [Mill Creek]” to his son Cornelius Banta. By the time of the Revolution, the road to Sluckup (now Howland Avenue) ran upon the division line between Jacob Van Saun’s farm to the south and son-in-law Christian Dederer’s farm to the north, heading west from Kinderkamack Road over the crest of Brower’s Hill, then descending into the dell where it crossed Van Saun Mill-Pond on a crude wooden bridge over the mill dam.
Tax Ratables for New Barbadoes Precinct identify Cornelius Van Saun as owner of a gristmill from September 1779 through at least 1797. He is not listed as owner in September 1802, having died in that year; a deed then referred to “the mill lot belonging to Luke Van Saun.” It was sold to Nicholas Romine before 1815.
