Every generation of Hastings residents has its history buffs. One such was civil engineer John Percival Davies. Being a mapmaker, Davies came up with the idea of a map that would visually encapsulate the entire history of Westchester County – or at least the period from the arrival of Henry Hudson in 1609 to the completion of the railroad lines in the 19th century.
Davies was born in South Wales in the UK, but lived much of his life in Hastings. He built his own house at 169 Edgars Lane, and had Margaret Sanger and Lewis W. Hine as neighbors. Hastings oldtimers remember Davies as the first captain of Hastings’ World War I Home Guard, from which he resigned to enter the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1918.
Captain John P. Davies of the Hastings Home Guard in 1917. (Click the photograph to see the entire Home Guard group.)The final product was printed on buff paper and hand colored in pale washes of blue and red, giving it all the romance of an antique. Among the wealth of details are tiny drawings of Patriots and Redcoats, trains and horses, and the proud coats of arms of Westchester’s earliest European settlers.
