A WOMAN, OF COURSE!
-----
To a woman, it may be said, should the credit be given of being the cause of the earliest efforts by whites to settle in Monmouth. Penelope Stout, whose remarkable history is too well known to repeat here [coming in a future post], during her captivity among the Indians, had made friends with them, and after she had reached New Amsterdam and had married Richard Stout, she induced her husband occasionally to sail across the bay to visit her preserver and other Indian friends, and it is reasonable to presume that on these trips they were sometimes accompanied by white friends. These visits so well satisfied Richard Stout and his Dutch friends that "this was a good land to fall in with," that about 1648, himself and four or five other heads of families settled where Middletown now is. But they remained here only a few years, as they were compelled to leave on account of a war breaking out between the Dutch and Indians. In 1663 some Gravesend men attempted to make arrangements with the Indians of Monmouth for settling, but they were warned off by the Dutch, but the year after, the English took possession of New York and the Gravesend men renewed the attempt.