On September 8th, 1660, Jaques Cortelyou was
ordered to survey Gemoenepa and lay it out into village lots. The village site fronted on the Bay, was
two hundred feet deep and extended from what is now
Communipaw Avenue on the north to the Bay Shore
House on the south. The Council ordered that the village should be stockaded, but there seems to have been
numerous delays, for in June, 1663, Gerrit Gerritsen,
Harman Smeeman and Dirck Claussen were appointed
commissioners to fortify Gemoenepa. May 9th, 1661,
Egbert Sandersen and Jan Theunissen, inhabitants of
Midwout and Amersfoort, L.I., petitioned for leave to
erect a saw-mill on a stream at Gemoenepa and move
their families there and for a lot of land for each. The
request was granted and probably they erected a mill
below the Point of Rocks on the stream formerly called
the Creek of the Woods and "Creek of the High
Woodlands." In papers of 1671, the mill is mentioned
as the " Mill of Hossemus;" probably from this mill
the creek received its name of Mill Creek. Later
Priors Mill was built upon this site and remained until
removed and the creek filled in when the cut was made
for the Pennsylvania railroad in 1837. In October,
1661, Sandersen asked permission to erect a saw-mill
on Showhank Brook; this creek had its rise in an
Indian spring in West Hoboken; it ran south until it
reached the point where New York Avenue crosses
Palisade Avenue; thence it turned down the hill
