Mysteriously, at a January 1930 meeting of the Ardsley Village Board, Mayor Dr. C.A.H. Smith [1] read a letter written in 1900 by Elizabeth Hopkins Odell, who had died nearly three decades earlier. Hopkins Odell (the wife of former Ardsley resident Isaac Odell, a prominent businessman and bank president who passed away in 1886), was the mother of William I. Odell, the second President of the Village of Ardsley. [2] As reported in a newspaper article appearing in the January 9, 1930, edition of the Yonkers Statesman entitled “Village Name Explained In Old Letter Given Mayor,” the letter discussed how in the 1880s, the then-rural hamlet of Ashford, where the Odells had a residence, desired a post office. However, as another Ashford existed in Cattaraugus County in upstate New York, the postal authorities in Washington refused the request.

From the early days of the American republic, the post office served as both a hub for communication and commerce and a symbol of national connectedness before the invention of the telegram, the telephone, the radio, television, email, texting, and all the smartphone applications enabling individuals to reach anyone on the globe instantly. They also provided opportunities for employment and political patronage. A crossroads for local affairs, perhaps the pre-pandemic Starbucks of its day, every community wanted one.

According to local lore, in the mid-19th century, the area of present-day Ardsley changed its informal name from “Saw Mill River Corners” to Ashford in honor of the birthplace in Ashford, Kent County, England, of pickle farmer and leading citizen, Capt. John King, for which King Street (off Ashford Avenue) in Ardsley is named. [3] But Ashford would have a short shelf life.

Cyrus West Field (1819-1892), the financier behind laying a 1,250-mile telegraph cable along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean (which, by 1866, following the end of the Civil War, successfully linked America to Europe), owned 780 acres in the Town of Greenburgh extending from the Hudson River to the Saw Mill River Valley (covering four school districts), which encompassed portions of today’s incorporated villages of Dobbs Ferry [4], Ardsley [5] and Irvington. Field, who had made his initial fortune in the wholesale paper business, named his vast estate “Ardsley” after his family’s ancestral home in Yorkshire, England, as shown in the below extract from the Field family tree for Zachariah Field (who was born about 1596) which reads: Born of Ardsley, at York[shire], England. Came to NE [New England] 1629.. Although somewhat blurry as the image was taken on a cell phone, as explained by Field family member and genealogist Diane Gravlee, the Field family escutcheon (or shield), which is the primary element in heraldic symbols, contains three wheat sheaves (separated by a chevron, or an upside-down “V”) which allude to a product of a field. Ironically, Cyrus Field would later lose much of his fortune due to losses from speculating in wheat futures. Nevertheless, his initial success in the paper business he was able to retire in 1852 with a net worth of $250,000.00 After his cable venture proved successful, he began purhchasing the acreage that became his “Ardsley” manor.

Odell’s letter was not addressed to the Village but instead to Amzi Lorenzo Barber (1843-1909). Barber was one of the founders in 1895 with J. Pierpont Morgan, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and John D. and William Rockefeller of the Ardsley Casino, a luxurious country club for Gilded Age “Robber Barons” and old New York society. “The casino had its origins in the 1892 purchase of a 400-acre tract of Cyrus West Field’s 780-acre estate “Ardsley” and the mansion “Ardsley Towers” that was built for Field’s son Edward Morse Field. Under financial duress, Edward. sold the property to Barber, the so-called “asphalt king” of New York, who had made a fortune paving streets and developing real estate.”[6]

Odell’s letter began as follows:

I understand you are ignorant of how the Village of Ardsley came to bear that name: It came through my family.

I suggested the name of Ardsley, and my son, Mr. Arthur Livingston Odell, now deceased, went to see Mr. Cyrus W. Field in his office, presenting the case and asking for permission to use the name Ardsley. Mr. Field said he would be delighted to have the name used as his lately acquired property extended directly to the Northern Railroad (Now the Putnam Division). 

According to Mrs. Odell:

He [Field] thereupon signed the petition to be sent to Washington, asking to have a post office granted by the name of Ardsley. It was some time after that the railroad changed the name of the station from Ashford to Ardsley.[7] Since then Ardsley has been incorporated as a village of which my son . . . is president. [8]

Consequently, Ardsley may be the only place name in the United States to trace its origin to two ancestral homes in England.  Parenthetically, it should not go unnoticed that Field’s support of a post office for Ardsley was consistent with his entrepreneurial efforts to expand the transmission of information as the “Father of the Transatlantic Cable.” Nevertheless, as will be demonstrated later, Field’s efforts on behalf of the residents of Ashford were not entirely altruistic.

Odell’s letter ends with the following:

If you still doubt the right of Ardsley to its name, four members of my family can make affidavit to the fact of seeing the Cyrus W. Field signature heading the petition which undoubtedly can be found at Washington. [9]

Curiously, the Statesman’s newspaper article concludes::

Mayor Smith did not reveal how the letter had come into his possession. 

Odell’s letter further asserted she had sold her Ardsley summer home two years earlier to Yonkers Mayor Peene. Mrs. Odell’s Ardsley property appears to have been called Washington Hill Farm (so named for the Ardsley headquarters of General George Washington during the 1781 Philipsburgh encampment, the longest of the American Revolutionary War).  19th century maps of Ashford/Ardsley confirm the statements made by Hopkins Odell in her letter to Barber.

The below portion of F.W. Beers’s 1867 map of the Town of Greenburgh shows the Isaac Odell property, nearby Washington Hill (in the general vicinity of Ardsley High School), and King’s Pickle Factory in Ashford. The A.D. Nelson property would, in 1950, become part of female broadcast pioneer Irene Beasley’s 50-acre estate in Ardsley, which she later developed into Mockingbird Hill, the present site of Windsong Road and Agnes Circle. The house depicted on the map at the end of an unpaved road on the A.D. Nelson property (now 133 Heatherdell and known as the Capt. Honeywell House) is Ardsley’s oldest, having been built around 1750.

The below 1893 map of Ardsley shows the extent of Field's property in Ardsley - from Woodlands Lake (serviced by the Woodlands train station on the Putnam Division rail line) then easterly along Secor Road,  then southerly to present-day Heatherdell Road (shown as Harts Corners) and continuing across the road almost reaching Ashford Avenue.The parcel on the map labeled “Ardsley Land Company” was part of the portion of Field’s immense Greenburgh estate in what would later become part of the Village of Ardsley and is believed to be Ardsley’s first subdivision, as can be seen by the layout of prospective streets such as Baldwin and Merwin. Although the 1893 map shows Field as the owner of this property, due to financial setbacks, Field had sold it in late 1890 to Charles Butler, a lawyer in the firm of Holt & Butler, who was part of the syndicate that owned the Ardsley Land Company (ALC) which as shown below on the ALC’s map from an article entitled “A Visit to Ardsley” in the September 13, 1890 edition of Real Estate Record and Building Guide, consisted of 670 acres extending along both sides of the New York & Northern Railroad (mentioned in Odell’s letter) from the Ardsley rail station (at Ashford Avenue) past the Woodlands rail station to Aqueduct Station. However, the ALC was unsuccessful in developing its property, and by 1893 its mortgage (held by J.P. Morgan) on 600 acres of land in Ardsley was foreclosed.. A likely cause of ALC’s failure was a combination of overspeculation in suburban land by syndicators like Butler and the severe national economic crisis known as the Panic of 1893. when unemployment in New York State alone hit 35%.

By 1900, the date of the letter, as shown on the below map, the Isaac Odell property was now wholly owned by Peene (who had previously named his initial Ardsley property “Heather Dell Farm” as shown on the 1893 map above), and J.P. Morgan had now succeeded to the Ardsley property previously owned by by both Field and the ALC.

In an email exchange with Irvington’s Chet Kerr regarding Odell’s year 1900 letter to Barber, Kerr explained that:

“Barber and his company the Lorena Company, after purchasing parts of the Field Estate and combining it with other nearby properties, was planning to create a new development known as "Ardsley Park," which was centered around the Ardsley Casino and golf course (later renamed the Ardsley Country Club) which opened in 1896.   Thus, as of 1900, the entire area along the border of Irvington and Dobbs Ferry (and just west of what is today the Village of Ardsley) was being aggressively marketed as a new, upscale neighborhood known as Ardsley-on-Hudson, which was associated with the new Ardsley Country Club.” 

Kerr’s analysis would account for Barber’s desire for the Village of Ardsley to rename itself to avoid confusion with his Ardsley Park development. Kerr also raised an intriguing issue  - did Barber ever obtain permission from Field’s heirs to use the name Ardsley for either his club or his real estate venture? Kerr further noted that perhaps Odell’s letter was an effort to remind Barber that Ardsley received Field’s permission to use the Ardsley name, thus trumping any objection or claim by Barber. Of course, as intimated in Odell’s letter, and as will be argued below, Field himself likely favored putting Ardsley officially on the map and welcomed the opportunity to use his influence to establish an Ardsley post office to advance his real estate development plans for property he had recently acquired north of the “Ashford” rail depot as without one, the real estate adage that when it comes to real estate, only three things matter, “Location, location, location” would not matter if there was no location.

Field’s presence in Ardsley is more than bestowing its name. A short entry contained in the “Vicinity Notes” section of the November 21, 1884, Eastern State Journal (a White Plains-based paper) related that: “Mr. Cyrus W. Field has broken ground for three cottages on his property, fronting the New York City and Northern Railroad, north of Ardsley Station, to cost about $5000.” Notably, this was one year after the Ashford train station became the Ardsley station. Two of these three buildings are still standing in Ardsley: 990 Saw Mill River Road (shown below in its original condition) and 1030 Saw Mill River Road. Both are located on the western side of Saw Mill River Road on land between Saw Mill River Road and the New York State Thruway (opposite the Atria Woodlands Senior Living facility and Sylvia Avenue in Ardsley).  Early 20th century renaissance man and Westchester County parkways engineer James Owen (1877-1932), who discovered the location of General George Washington’s Continental Army headquarters during the 1781 encampment in Ardsley [10], lived in the 1030 building (shown below in its current condition), the northernmost property in the Village of Ardsley.

The below 1890 subdivision map in Ardsley shows both the 990 and 1030 on Nepperhan Avenue with 990 described as the Mill Cottage and 1030 (which can be readily identified on the subdivision map because of its large front porch and location opposite Sylvia Lane), as the Lakeview Cottage due to its proximity to Woodlands Lake. The property cards maintained by the Town of Greenburgh’s assessor for these nearly 140-year-old structures merely say “no info on these bldgs - very old.” Both properties are now owned by Westchester County, which purchased Woodlands Lake and the adjacent land in 1923 from the heirs of J.P. Morgan. [11]

If Odell’s letter was related to the effort by Barber to usurp the name of Ardsley for his real estate plans after Field’s death in 1892, the effort failed as, in 2021, Ardsley will be celebrating its quasquicentennial. [12] Of course, 125 years later, confusion still exists between the Village of Ardsley and the “Ardsley-on-Hudson'' train station across the street from Barber’s original country club.  Along these lines, the Wikipedia entry for Ardsley-on Hudson (which is in Irvington-on-Hudson) contains the following: 

A common misconception is that the Ardsley-on-Hudson station serves the similarly named Village of Ardsley, which is located about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) east, and was once served by the discontinued Putnam Division line, which ceased passenger service in 1958.

Seven decades after Odell wrote her letter about how Ardsley got its name, in 1973, Ardsley train commuters would be involved in an epic legal battle with Irvington over the right to park at the “Ardsley-on Hudson” train station about which reporter Linda Greenhouse recounted in The New York Times. [13] Greenhouse (who later covered the US Supreme Court for the Times) previously wrote a story for the Times concerning an earlier lawsuit brought in 1970 by four Ardsley High School students against Ardsley’s Board of Education seeking to vindicate their rights under the First Amendment, which is now the subject of a four-part series in The Beacon, the Ardsley Historical Society’s bi-annual journal (available on the Ardsley Historical Society’s website).

For the approximately seventy-five years when Ardsley had a train station on the Putnam Division of the New York Central Railroad (affectionately referred to as the “Old Put”), the village was semi-formally known as “Ardsley-on-Putnam.” [14] During the “Old Put” steam train era, Ardsley was served by three rail stations, Ardsley (shown below), Woodlands, and Chauncey. According to Arone’s picture book on Ardsley history, the area adjacent to Chauncey was previously known as Odell’s.  While the Yonkers Statesman article offers no reason why in 1930 Dr. Smith read Odell’s letter from 1900r, subsequent reports in the local papers beginning in the 1930s may provide an answer, to wit, with the onset of the Depression, the old idea of creating a City of Greenburgh (initially to stop the effort by New York City to annex parts of the Town), to reduce the number of governing (and taxing) entities in the Town of Greenburgh had been quietly revived.

Part of the plan was to combine the incorporated villages of Ardsley, Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, and Irvington into a Borough of either Hastings or Dobbs Ferry. Similarly, the unincorporated areas of Edgemont and Hartsdale would be merged into a Borough of Hartsdale. At the same time, the Borough of Tarrytown would include Tarrytown, North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow), Pocantico Hills, and Elmsford. While The “City of Greenburgh” concept would be proposed again in the 1940s and repeated efforts would be made over the ensuing eight decades to consolidate or eliminate local governments, Westchester’s suburban residents have adamantly rejected relinquishing local control over municipal matters. Instead, they continue to favor a “Coxley’s Army” of government layers where a taxpayer in the Ardsley School District might not only have a postal address in either Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Hastings, White Plains, Irvington, Hartsdale, or Scarsdale, but such fierce allegiance to neighborhood sovereignty commands princely payments of property taxes for the numerous overlapping fire, village, county, town, school, and special districts. Still, the “City of Greenburgh” proposal remains fast asleep like Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.”

* * * *

While Odell’s letter establishes how Ardsley got its name, this leads to a further inquiry: what is the origin of the word “Ardsley”? 

The 11th century Domesday Book contains the first official record of Ardsley. According to the United Kingdom’s National Archives, Domesday is “Britain’s earliest public record and contains the results of a huge survey of land and landholding commissioned by William I, in 1085.” [15]

Below is the Domesday Book (from 1086) entry for “Ardsley,” which is spelled “Erdeslauue” and appears in the “hundred of Morley,” a town in Yorkshire, which is south of the ancient Celtic city of Leeds: [16]

Subsequent entries in public records (listed below) demonstrate how the spelling of  Erdeslauue changed (as Old English (hereafter, O.E.), gave way to Middle and Modern English) over the centuries, with the current spelling of Ardsley coming into use around half a millennium ago: 

Ardeslawe, Erdeslawe, Erdeslowe, Herdelaw  [1285-1316] 

Erdeslawe [1194-1237]

Erdesleye, [1269] 

Ardesley  [1535] 

Not surprisingly, in Yorkshire, England (as in Westchester), there are two Ardsleys as explained in Cambridge University’s “Place Names of South-West Yorkshire:” 

Etymologically, the first element of the Ardsley name comes from the Old English personal name Eard, a nickname form of longer names like Eardwulf (“Eard’s wolf”), in the genitive form (i.e., a form of grammar showing possession) (e.g., 'Eard's'). As for the second element, the older forms of Ardsley show that the original ending was not -ley (O.E. léah= clearing, lea), but -lawe  (O.E. hléw =a mound). Hence, the place name Ardsley in its original form meant Eard’s mound or perhaps his burial place. The change of the name’s prefix from “Erd” to “Ard” is consistent with the normal development of Middle English. 

While Cyrus Field’s English ancestors (such as  Zachariah Field) were born in  the Ardsley (Wakefield) location [17], the Village of Ardsley [Barnsley] (roughly 20 miles apart from the Ardsley where the Field family originated)  maintains a website [18] that provides the following as to the meaning and modern spelling of Ardsley:

Its name derives from the Saxon word “leah,” meaning a forest clearing [a clearing is an open space in a forest, especially one cleared for cultivation] or meadow, together with the personal name Eored. Therefore Ardsley means “Eored’s forest clearing.”  

Whichever Old English pedigree one may adopt for Ardsley, for over a millennium, Ardsley has always been a place that inspires a strong personal connection as well as possessing a mellifluous sound when pronounced. [19] Hence, it should not be unexpected that in 1905, a Yonkers-based car company called its vehicle “Ardsley.” 

* * * *

Throughout the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century, Ardsley was known for its farms and gardens, activities consistent with its namesake as a clearing for cultivation. The Holscher family’s truck farm operated at the site of the current Ardsley Middle School. Nearby was Joseph Lingg’s aquatic garden..[20] Ardsley horticulturist and gardener John Canning (on behalf of Adolph Lewisohn) grew world-class prize-winning chrysanthemums that were so large the doors of the horticultural exhibition halls in New York City had to be removed to permit their entry.  

Following the death of avid American bookplate collector Reverend William Augustus Brewer (1863-1931), in 1933, his wife bequeathed his compendium of 12,870 bookplates primarily from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, many of which were from the libraries of famous individuals or produced by significant artists, to the University of Delaware Library. [21] Bookplates are considered miniature works of art worthy of collecting. Included in Brewer’s notable collection is this bookplate for Rodlee Farms:

The provenance of the Rodlee Farms bookplate (created in 1900) classifies it as a rebus. The key to understanding the puzzle is knowing that Appledore comes from the Old English word 'apuldor,' which means “apple-tree.” In fact, “Appledore” (spelled “Apeldres”), like Ardsley,  is listed in the Domesday Book: [22]

Rodlee  (albeit scrambled) is buried inside the letters of the word Appledore appearing at the top of the bookplate. As indicated by the initials WMS appearing above the year 1900 in the Rodlee Farms bookplate, it was created by Wilbur Macy Stone, a well-known bookplate designer, an authority on bookplates, and a celebrated collector of posters and children’s books. [23] So why did Rodlee Farms have a bookplate?  The answer is found in “Book Collectors and Their Hobbies'' (published in 1913 by the Rare Book Shop in Washington, D.C) [24], which identified Henry Paret, the proprietor of Rodlee Farms, as a book collector of “Specially Illustrated Fairy Stories” (see the below entry from the 1913 catalog of book collectors). The Rodlee Farms bookplate also pays tribute to the long connection between bookplates and heraldic imagery such as shields. Stone’s use of an acorn-shaped shield is yet another aspect of his cleverness as the etymology of the word “acorn” reveals its close relation to the Gothic word, akran, or fruit.

In 2009, the idea of using bookplates was revived with a twist when Ardsley Middle School student Jamie Stein launched a project — Books To Soldiers — to provide donated books to soldiers serving at home and abroad and recuperating in veterans' hospitals.  Ultimately, Stein collected nearly 50,000 books which were transported to Ft. Dix in New Jersey, Ft. Drum in Watertown, NY (which is 30 miles from the Canadian border and five hours by car from Ardsley), and the VA hospital in Montrose by Stein and her parents, Abbe and Fred Stein, using the family car. Later, they were delivered to soldiers around the world using C-130 military aircraft.  Each book has a bookplate designed by Stein and her father, saying, "Thank you for your service." [25]

As reported in a 2012 Daily News story about Stein’s multi-year project:

“There is room for donors to write their names on the stamped note. Says Stein, ``It's pretty cool that people can personalize a book that is given to a soldier."

In 2013, Business Insider selected Stein, the captain of Ardsley’s varsity tennis and ski team (the latter of which she started) and a member of the men’s golf team as there was no women’s team, as one of the 25 most impressive high school graduates in the United States. [26] Deservedly, her name adorns Ardsley High School’s Hall of Fame, which is located on the same grounds not only where the battle plan to win the American Revolutionary War was devised, but where the grand estates of American titans of innovation, commerce, and philanthropy such as Cyrus Field, J.P. Morgan, and Adolph Lewisohn graced Ardsley.

* * * *

The author wishes to thank Robert Pellegrino (Ardsley Village Historian and Director, Ardsley Historical Society),  Chet Kerr (Trustee, Irvington Historical Society), Abbe and Fred Stein, Diane Gravlee (great great granddaughter of Cyrus W. Field), and of course, Eard (Yorkshire), for their valuable assistance in preparing this Timepiece.

Endnotes:

[1] Dr. Clifton Smith was a dentist with a home office at Ashford and Fairmont Avenues in Ardsley.

[2] The title of President of a village was changed to Mayor in 1927.

[3] http://stopthejefferson.blogspot.com/2016_01_24_archive.html Ashford Avenue along with Heatherdell and Saw Mill River Road are the main thoroughfares in Ardsley. When the Putnam Railroad arrived in this part of the Saw Mill River Valley in 1881, the train station was called Ashford.

[4] Dobbs Ferry was first incorporated as the Village of Greenburgh in 1873. It was later renamed in 1882 for ferryman Jeremiah Dobbs who was of Dutch and Swedish ancestry.

[5] Cyrus Field’s Ardsley estate included both the current V. Everit Macy Park in Ardsley on Saw Mill River Road and Concord Road Elementary School on Alexander Hamilton Avenue and extended from Secor Road in Hartsdale almost to Ashford Avenue in Ardsley according to Arthur Silliman’s three-volume A Short, Informal History of Ardsley, N.Y. Silliman’s History of Ardsley can be read online at the Internet Archive by clicking the link in the Digital Archives section of the Ardsley Historical Society’s website. 

[6] Ardsley Casino In April 2021, Chet Kerr of the Irvington Historical Society presented a webinar entitled “Stories of Cyrus W. Field, Amzi L. Barber, and the Creation of Ardsley Park,” which can be viewed on the Irvington Historical Society’s website or YouTube.

[7] Reported to have occurred in 1883.

[8] The Village of Ardsley was incorporated in 1896. 

[9]  The offer to provide affidavits hints at potential litigation over the use of the Ardsley name. The papers of Cyrus W. Field and the Odell family are held by the New York Public Library in the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room for Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Stephan A. Schwarzman Building, 476 Fifth Avenue, in Manhattan. They will be reviewed in the future to determine if they illuminate the reason behind Odell’s letter to Barber. Additionally, a request has been made to the USPS in Washington under the Freedom of Information Act for the Petition to establish a post office for Ardsley, NY. which is pending.

[10] See 1932 article by Owen https://www.ardsleyhistoricalsociety.org/maps 

[11] A history of Woodlands Lake/V.E. Macy Park can be found here: https://www.ardsleyhistoricalsociety.org/the-timepiece/ardsley-history-in-the-courts According to Fred and Patricia’s Arone’s self-published “Pictures of the Past: Ardsley, (1986)” members of the Quimby family that owned the Ardsley Ice Company which leased Woodlands Lake recall paying rent to Morgan. Nepperhan derives from a mispronunciation of a Native American place name and means either “our people's field by the water,'' or ''cold running water,'' or ''the place of fish traps.'' The author has sought to have the Village of Ardsley consider naming a future road with a Native American word to honor the once significant presence of the American Indians in present-day Ardsley. https://www.ardsleyhistoricalsociety.org/wr-blackie-collection-american-indians-in-ardsley

[12] Elizabeth Hopkins Odell (b. 1828) died at 73 from “the grip” (an old medical term for influenza) in 1901, the year after she wrote her letter to Barber. She is buried in White Plains Rural Cemetery. The October 2021 edition of Westchester Magazine reported that due to the lethality of Covid-19, the 165-year old cemetery (which in 2020 experienced a 111% increase in burials) has fewer than 100 plots available. In 1905, following his death, Peene’s land in Ardsley (a dairy farm containing 220 acres) was sold to Adolph Lewisohn, who subsequently purchased several hundred acres to create a nearly 400-acre estate spanning from Heatherdell Road to Secor Road, where he built a 40-room mansion with extensive greenhouses.

[13] https://www.nytimes.com/1973/02/05/archives/nonresident-autoists-seek-equal-parking-privileges-nonresidents-are.html 

[14] A tribute to the “Old Put” can be found on the Ardsley Historical Society website. A portrait of the Ardsley station in its final days by Ardsleyan Don Moss, the foremost sports illustrator of the 20th century whose work appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated for three decades, hangs in Ardsley Village Hall. Although the station was known as Ardsley and primarily served the Ardsley community, it was located in Dobbs Ferry. In the late 19th century, Dobbs Ferry had expanded its borders to capture the tax revenue from the railroad’s coming. To prevent this in the future, Ardsley became an incorporated village. Dobbs Ferry has its own train station along the Hudson River. The “Ardsley-on-Putnam” moniker may have come into use to differentiate it from the “Ardsley-on-Hudson” depot in Irvington.  

[15] https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/  Due to the Norman Conquest in 1066, England's rulers spoke French rather than English at the time when the Domesday Book was written. Latin was the language used for government documents. It was also the language of the Church. Since the scribe for the Domesday Book was a churchman and was made for the King's government, it was written in Latin.  “English” means ‘pertaining to the Angles,’ one of the Germanic tribes that conquered parts of Britain in the 5th century. William I is generally known as “William the Conqueror.” His victory over the powerful English earl Harold Godwinson (William’s cousin once removed who British King Edward the Confessor, at this deathbed, named successor thus bringing on the Norman invasion as William believed he was entitled to the throne), took place at the Battle of Hastings, the namesake of Ardsley’s neighbor, Hastings-on-Hudson. 

[16] The Ardsley entry in Domesday translates to: “In Erdeslauue, Alric and Gerneber have five carucates and three bovates of land for geld, where three ploughs may be. Now Suuen has {it] of Ilbert. He [has] there one plough. Wood, pasturable, one league in length and one in breadth. T.R.E., it was worth thirty shillings; now, ten shillings.” Carcucates and bovates are measures of land which can be taxed (“geld”). Plough refers to the taxable amount of land that a team of eight oxen can plough. ”Wood, pasturable” likely means a forest (useful for building, fences, or burning). The letters T.R.E. translate to tempore regis Edwardi, ‘at the time of King Edward’ - that is, before William conquered England in 1066.

[17] Ardsley (Wakefield) has been known as East Ardsley since 1459 in the forms Est Ardeslaw and East Ardeslawe. East Ardsley (now a village in the city of Leeds) is located in the West Riding administrative division of Yorkshire; Riding derives from a Norse word meaning “third part” as there were formerly three administrative divisions of Yorkshire - East Riding, North Riding, and West Riding. In 1970, on the heels of their breakthrough rock opera “Tommy” (and following their acclaimed performance six months earlier in August 1969 at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival in Bethel, New York), the English rock band The Who embarked on a tour to record a live performance to capture their explosive stage sound during what was arguably their peak artistic period. Booked into the University Refectory, a 2,100 capacity music venue at the University of Leeds in February 1970 (Who Plaque at Leeds Refectory ), their subsequent release “Live at Leeds'' has been heralded by numerous critics as “the best live rock album ever made.” https://www.allmusic.com/album/live-at-leeds-mw0000014217 Leeds (as well as Ashford) can also be found in Domesday.

[18] https://www.ardsleyresidents.com/history-of-ardsley.html Barnsley was the site of the massive Oaks Colliery explosion, England’s worst mining disaster, two weeks before Christmas in December 1866 and claimed the lives of 361 men and boys. A memorial to the dead is situated on the grounds of Christ Church in Ardsley.  In 2017, 150 years after the disaster, world-famous Barnsley native sculptor Graham Ibbeson created a striking memorial sculpture to the tragedy. http://www.oaks1866.com 

[19] https://forvo.com/word/ardsley/

[20] The Daily Argus (July 6, 1937) The milk from Peene’s Heather Dell dairy farm was renowned for its quality.

[21] William Augustus Brewer bookplate collection, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware. Curiously,  Brewer was an alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley.

[22] The first few lines of the Appledore entry in Domesday translate as follows:  “In Blackbourne hundred The Archbishop himself holds Appledore. It was assessed at 2 sulungs (a unit of land found only in Kent), and now at one. There is land for eight ploughs.” A hundred is a subdivision of the shire (or county) used for administrative purposes.

[23] In his “Some Children’s Book-Plates: An Essay in Little,” Stone writes: To the Philistine a book-plate is a piece of superfluous foolishness, but to the lover of dainty detail it is full of charm. It is a real literary tonic to the proud owner: the little boy or girl who has one of these marks of ownership, bestows especial care upon a volume containing the cherished bit, and takes the more pleasure in the reading…” (Journal of the Ex Libris Society Volume XII (London 1903)), p 15. (Ex Libris is Latin for “from the library of”).

[24] Book Collectors and Their Hobbies

[25] https://patch.com/new-york/rivertowns/ardsley-sophomore-gives-back-big-time

[26] https://www.businessinsider.com/most-impressive-high-school-graduates-2013-6#jamie-stein-collects-donates-and-delivers-books-to-us-troops-stationed-all-around-the-world-19