What Is It Named After? John Harrison's Walking Purchase

HUDSON VALLEY, NY — The Harrison hamlet which encompasses one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country earned its less-than-glamorous name from a land deal with an indigenous tribe.

In 1695, John Harrison, an Englishman from Queens, along with four partners, bought a stretch of landlocked territory from the Siwanoy Indians, according to a New York Times real estate report.

The land parcel, which corresponds to the present-day town of Harrison, was at the time known as Harrison’s Purchase. Purchase Street, which forms Rye's main street, was originally a section of a footpath connecting Rye Lake to the Long Island Sound, according to the NYT.

Much like the famed and dubious 1737 walking purchase that helped set the current borders of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the terms of Harrison's purchase are rumored to have involved the granting of as much land as he could ride in one day.

Purchase unsuccessfully tried to secede from Harrison in the sixties and as recently as the seventies. Both attempts failed, ensuring that Harrison's purchase would not be divorced from the town he founded.

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