Text: J. T. Lee and Thomas Ollive Mabbott, “Exploring Mount Tom,” New York Herald (New York, NY), vol. LXXXVI, no. 314, July 10, 1922, p. 6, col. 5

TO THE NEW YORK HERALD: Perhaps it will throw light on Appleton Morgan's questions as to Poe and Mount Tom to say that all the land from what is now Central Park West to the North River and from Fifty-eighth street to Eighty-third street was the Harsen farm, which was purchased by Eduardas Harsen in 1667. Until the date of his descendant Jacob Harsen, who died in 1855, It was called Harsenville, but by a trust deed — see Moor vs. Lyons, 25 Wandell 118 — was divided into several ownerships, and so lost the name.

As to Mount Tom: that evidently was a name given to this remarkable elevation — in joke or colloquially — upon the discovery of it at the clearing away of the forest bordering the river. For the name — or the hill, for that matter — does not appear upon any map of New York city. In “The New York of Yesterday,” by Hopper S. Mott, New York, Putnams, 1908, at page 134, is a picture of the Harsen mansion, which stood on this tract, but singularly enough Mr. Mott does not see fit to tell us where or at what street, except that it was “westerly of Tenth avenue.” On page 136, however, he does give this random quotation from Mrs. Greatorex:

“The lane leading to it [the Harsen mansion] from the Bloomingdale road, now the boulevard, is rougher and has a larger growth of weeds than it had. But the place is kept neatly and the tenant for forty-five years, Mme. Canaix, comes to the door with the same glad welcome. From its windows we look at the Hudson and the opposite shores of Guttenberg. We beg to sit with her in her kitchen, so cool and bien propre, where we find shade from the intolerable heat and glare.”

From which one seems to make out that the house stood with its rear to the river, and that there were thickly wooded spaces between it and the river bank.

J. T. LEE.

NEW YORK, July 8.

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General O’Beirne Told the Story.

TO THE NEW YORK HERALD: Appleton Morgan will find recorded the tradition that Poe liked to go to Mount Tom in Professor Harrison's Biography of Poe — in his edition of Poe's works, volume I., page 225 — on the authority of General James R. O’Beirne. It is not likely that such a rock as Mount Tom has been wooded in the last century. I have a notion it bears glacial marks, as do similar rocks in Central Park.

THOMAS O. MABBOTT.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, July 8.