History of Hickory Lane Farmhouse

No Property in the Upper Delaware Valley has a richer, more colorful history than Tammany Flats.

It was an important base for activity in Colonial times, the spot where Joseph Skinner, the first head of the Delaware Company (first white settlers in the valley), established his holdings in the 1750s. As early as September 4, 1755, there is documentation that the Skinners were residing at this site. Skinner adopted the Lenape Indian name for the site: Ackhake, the place of the wolf.

About the year 1759, Joseph Skinner was mysteriously killed, and his family dispersed, some returning to Connecticut. Meanwhile, his son, Daniel, had purchased 25 acres from his father for 5 pounds sterling. Daniel renamed it Tammany Flats in honor of Lenape Chief Tammany, who according to local Indian tradition had camped at this site in his youth. Having sailed into Philadelphia harbor and noticed the ship building there, Daniel launched the first Upper Delaware timber rafts, signaling the beginning of an industry that would dominate the Upper Delaware economy for nearly 150 years.

The original Daniel Skinner house was about 80 yards from the present house. In one of the more entertaining and meticulously recorded incidents of local property contention, Mrs. Skinner fought off neck wringing, hair pulling efforts by three neighboring women who tried to evict her from her home.

The "double eddy" in the river at this site soon proved to be an important rafting place. Here, Rueben Skinner, Daniel's oldest son, built a tavern in 1794. A portion of this tavern is incorporated in the present structure. Rueben and his wife died in 1812. Their daughter Anna married George Bush, who succeeded to ownership in 1818. He was a popular innkeeper, and the eddy in the river soon came to be known as "Bush's Eddy." The Bush's ran a temperance hotel, where no alcohol was served. With the coming of the Erie Railroad (1849) and the attendant alcohol serving hotels at nearby Callicoon, Bush lost customers and the hotel eventually went out of business.