The Town of Dover upon Staten Island! 
This important paper was published in the Quarterly Journal of the New 
York State Historical Association July 1921; a brief abstract, giving the 
principal conditions only, is therefore printed here. 
GeorGE W. Tuttle 
(WITH MAP) 
(Abstract by C. W. Lene) 
Some of the English maps of Staten Island prior to 1730 show 
a town or village by the name of Dover located on the south shore 
some distance west of the Narrows. On maps of 1676, 1677, and 
1690 it is the only settlement shown; and in some of the earliest 
Rnglish court records, viz.: 1671, 1672, 1673, 1676, it is treated 
as the political center of Staten Island. It has been suggested 
that the name was given from some fancied resemblance between 
the hills at the Narrows and the cliffs of Dover, England. Its 
original location was identical with that of Old Town. This is 
shown by an inventory of the estate of Walraven Luten, one of the 
original Huguenots of Old Town, dated at “Dover on Staten 
Island”; by other court records involving Stilwell, Martino, Mar- 
lett, Billeau, Brittain, all early settlers at Old Town, but related in 
these records to Dover. 
While the identity of Old Town, the Dover of the early court 
records and the earliest English maps, is established, there remains 
to be considered the Dover of some later maps, viz.: 1684, 1690, 
1708, 1764, located at the head of the Great Kill and a little west 
of the present New Dorp. It is known from Danckaerts’ 1679 
three days’ journey through Staten Island that of seven houses 
remaining at Oude Dorp only three were inhabited; the scanty 
population had spread westward. The political center probably 
moved westerly with the population to a more central location, near 
New Dorp, known as Stony Brook. Dr. James Sullivan, state 
1 Read at a meeting of the Section of Historical Research January 12, 
1918. 
37 
