Because of inaccurate land surveying and allocating of land, the exact border between New York and Connecticut, had been under dispute until the early part of the 18th century. Connecticut received the panhandle in the southwest corner of the state, and New York received "The Oblong", an equivalent area measuring 2 miles by 60 miles along its eastern edge. The Oblong was not part of any patent and true title to the land could be purchased by anyone. Quakers settled this land between 1730 and 1750 and formed the Oblong Meeting House in 1742.
In 1767 the Quakers of the Oblong Friends Meeting abolished slavery, almost 100 years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. They reasoned that, since God is in every person, they could not enslave God. They used a similar logic when they chose not to fight on either side during the American Revolution. This did not stop the war from coming to Pawling. Their meetinghouse was commandeered as a hospital that mostly cared for soldiers accidentally injured at the encampment at Purgatory Hill. In the fall of 1778, George Washington spent two months in Pawling with his headquarters at the John Kane house.
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