This article originally appeared on the Brewster High School Newspaper website.
For many years, there has been a great debate regarding the origins of the name of Lake Tonetta in the Town of Southeast in Putnam County, New York. During this time, Lake Tonetta, also known as Tone’s Pond or Waring’s Pond, has been associated with a great deal of folklore without confirmation of the historical landmark’s namesake. It was often suggested that the lake was named after Tone, an enslaved Black man who was promised his freedom by Southeast resident John Waring in exchange for his service in the Revolutionary War. However, the only information recorded in local histories is that sometime after the Revolutionary War, Tone and his wife Etta, who was said to be “half Indian, half Negro,” settled at the lake, running a fisherman’s tavern and leaving behind a quite “numerous and respectable number of descendants.” Read more...
