164 HISTORY OF to get their grain ground. The river was for many years the only highway, and people and produce were conveyed up and down the same on Durham hoats,'^ or batteaux. Passing in chronological order, from year to year, we note that in 1790, Martin Hulse came from Groshen, Orange county, and settled at Deposit. He was the grandson of the brave General Herkimer, whose lamented death is recorded by Campbell, in his narrative of the battle of Oriskany. The place upon which he settled is at present occupied by his grandson. Marshal R. Hulse, Esq., near Deposit village, which place was then and for many years afterward, known as the Cook House.* His brother Joseph came in the same year,
- Cook House is the corruption of the Indian appellation of Coke-
ooze^ signifying or imitating the hooting of owls. Its pronounciation is like the English coo-coo, the emphasis being placed upon the last syllable. In the early settlement of the country there were two places thus appellated, the other being about three miles below, on the Pennsylvania side, and which was distinguished from the former, as Cohe-ooze-Sapoze^^^ or "Little Owl's Nest." The name doubtless originated from the mountain south of the Laurel Hill Seminary, which is wooded with thick hemlock, giving it a dark and dismal appearance, and from which at frequent intervals, is emitted the hal- looings of the hoot-owl. The place did not take the name Deposit until 1814, when the village was laid out and incorporated. It had for many years been a point to which the neighboring mills drew their lumber and deposited it for rafting, and hence the latter name. Simms, in his History of Schoharie, thus refers to the orthography of the Cook House : " I make the following extract," says the author, " from a letter from the Hon. Erastus Root, of the New York Senate, in answer to several inquiries, dated Albany, April 11th, 1843. ' You ask whence originated the name of Cook House ? Various derivations have been given, but the one most probable is this: That on the large flat bearing the name — being on the way from Cochecton, by the Susquehanna and Chemung to Niagara — there was a hut erected, where • some cooking utensils were found. It had probably been erected by some traveller who had made it his stopping place, and
