About the Wiltwyck Chapter, NSDAR

Wiltwyck Chapter, NSDAR, Kingston, New York, ​was organized on November 2, 1892, and named for the early Dutch settlement which was called “Wiltwyck”.  Wiltwyck means “the wild place or village” in Dutch. In 1658, the Director-General Peter Stuyvesant came from New Amsterdam, in the colony of New Netherland, to Wiltwyck and suggested that the village move to a tract of land that could be enclosed by a stockade for protection from the Indians living in the area. In the past, skirmishes had occurred between the settlers and the Esopus Indians.

The Wiltwyck Chapter, NSDAR, was started with 26 members, and Mary Isabella Forsyth was appointed the organizing regent. The chapter bought their stone house in 1907. It had survived the burning of Kingston by the British troops in 1777, and for over 350 years it has been a home, a store, a post office and even a print shop. This historic chapter house still stands there today, where it was first built, within the protective stockade wall area near four other historic original stone buildings that also have been occupied and in use since before the Revolutionary War.