Kent was part of the
Highland Patent of 1697 today known as the
Philipse Patent), when it was still populated by the
Wappinger tribe.
Daniel Nimham (1724–1778) was the last chief of the Wappingers and was the most prominent
Native American of his time in the
Hudson Valley. Upon the 1751 death of
Frederick Philipse II, second Lord of
Philipsburg Manor and owner of the "Highland Patent", the Manor went to his son
Frederick Philipse III and the Patent was divided among his four remaining offspring. Following the death of daughter
Margaret in 1752, who died intestate, the Patent was then redivided among the three surviving heirs, son
Philip, and daughters
Susannah (wife of
Beverley Robinson) and
Mary (future wife of
Col. Roger Morris). The tract was geographically split in 1754 into nine Lots: three on the river, three in the interior, and three on the eastern border abutting
The Oblong. Each of the three heirs inherited a lot in each division; most of Kent fell into Mary's interior lot. The town was first settled by Europeans in the mid-18th century by Zachariah Merritt and others, from
New England,
Westchester County, or the
Fishkill area. Elisha Cole and his wife Hannah Smalley built
Coles Mills in 1748, having moved to that location the previous year from
Cape Cod. Around this same time the northeastern part of the county was settled by the Kent, Townsend, and
Ludington families, among others. The father of Hannah Smalley and his family moved to Kent about two years before Elisha Cole and his family. Kent was a part of the Frederickstown Precinct which was chartered in 1772, the rest of Frederickstown consisting of the future town of
Carmel and the western parts of the future towns of
Patterson and
Southeast. Other early family names were Townsend, Smalley, Kent, Dykeman, Barrett, Cole, Boyd, Wixon, Farrington, Burton, and Carter. The present-day intersection of
Interstate 84 and Ludingtonville Road was the home of Col.
Henry Ludington and his daughter
Sybil, who was said to have ridden one night in 1777 to call up her father's militia during the
American Revolutionary War. A statue of her stands on the shores of
Lake Gleneida in the
hamlet of Carmel across from the Putnam County Courthouse. When the towns of Carmel and Patterson were split from Frederickstown in 1795, the remnant, constituting the current Kent, was established as the "Town of Frederick". As with its adjacent towns, it was part of
Dutchess County until
Putnam County was established in 1812. The town's name was changed to "Kent" in 1817. A small portion of the town of
Philipstown geographically more accessible via Kent than it was transferred to Kent in 1877. The major population center of the township is
Lake Carmel, a settlement around an artificial lake of the same name developed in the 1920s and expanded dramatically in the last quarter of the 20th and first quarter of the 21st centuries. Historically the population centers had been Farmer's Mills and Luddingtonville, little of which remain, and Cole's Mills, hobbled when its mills' water supply became inadequate due to the early 1870s upstream construction of
Boyds Corner Reservoir for the
New York City water supply system, and shuttered in 1888 due to construction of
West Branch reservoir (a tip of which lying in Kent submerged it completely by 1895). Much of early Kent's economy was based on
dairy farming for the New York City market, but with flooding associated with reservoir creation many farms were submerged, the dairy industry disturbed, and both farming and dairying were all but abandoned by the 1920s. At that point increased mobility thanks to the advent of the automobile started to attract new residents from the city, initially as weekend and summer visitors, then over time permanent dwellers. The town is served by the Carmel Central School District and, for the majority of residents, by the Carmel Post Office(the portion served by that post office (ZIP code 10512) is allowed the optional postal designation
Kent Lakes in addresses). Kent is home to the Nimham Mountain Fire Tower, located in the Taconic Hills. Built by the State of New York and the
CCC in 1940, it is the tallest remaining
fire tower in New York state and appears on the
National Historic Lookout Register. The
Chuang Yen Monastery which is home to the largest indoor statue of Buddha in the Western Hemisphere, is also located in Kent. ==Geography==