Names like Peck, Clark, Appleton, Grooms and Spoonnoggle hark back to some of the most important figures in town history.

The church and cemetery sit in the center of town: Clifton Park Center -- the hamlet, not the mall.

The church was founded in the geographical center of town in 1794. The current church was built in 1837 at the top of a hill, the highest point in town.

Elizabeth Peck, 91, lives in a small house next to the cemetery where her great-great-great grandfather, the church's first pastor, Abjiah Peck, is buried.

Her current home, once a store that served the hamlet, was built in 1858. When she bought it in the 1940s, she converted it to a residence.

''I've lived in the house at the bottom of the hill and then one on the other side of the hill and then at the top of the hill,'' she said.

She was born in the hamlet, and attended its one-room school house at the corner of Vischer Ferry and Clifton Park Center Road. The town office complex replaced the schoolhouse at that corner in 1957.

''I lived here when this was a dirt road,'' she said, remembering when she used to toboggan down the hill, not stopping until she reached Vischer Ferry Road.

After graduating from Burnt Hills High School, Peck left for 10 years to attend medical school in Philadelphia, then returned to serve the community where she grew up.

Peck was Shenendehowa's school doctor for 30 years. Her general practice was at her home on top of the hill for 50 years.

''It was a beautiful country,'' she said. ''I took a lot of pictures.''

The land she grew up in has changed, she said. Starting with Clifton Knolls, subdivisions grew up around the quaint church and farmhouse she grew up in.

Clifton Park Center began as a farming hamlet, a presence that was preserved even after the arrival of the Northway because of its western location in town.

''Only until recently has development threatened that hamlet,'' Scherer said.

Currently before the Planning Board is a plan to build a subdivision in the center of the hamlet.

Peck is vehemently opposed to a project, set to put 55 homes behind the farmhouse her parents once owned. She said it would be dangerous to increase traffic on Clifton Park Center Road and development will destroy the picturesque view from her hill.

''They should not be putting any buildings anywhere near that section of the hill,'' Peck said.

Peck said she'd like to see the town purchase the land and save it as open space.

The Northway, Route 9 and an easy commute to Albany have indelibly changed the land, she said. ''The traffic by here is just a crime, and well, all over,'' she said. ''I don't like Clifton Park as it is today.''

The hamlet's name is not immune from development, either.

In 2000, the town agreed to allow Clifton Country Mall to rename itself Clifton Park Center.

The town's decision to allow the new name irked town board meeting regulars -- and longtime residents -- Norm Goldman and Edgar Shopmeyer.

''Clifton Park Center was already designated as the place just east of the Clifton Park Center Church,'' Shopmeyer said Tuesday, three years after the mall was renamed. ''It was just not right.''

He said the mall, on the eastern edge of town, is not even in the hamlet and he doesn't understand why it didn't stay Clifton Country Mall.

''It was a perfectly good name,'' he said.

This is the seventh and final article in a series profiling the hamlets of Clifton Park. Copies of the Community News featuring this series will be available at our table in the exhibitors tent at this Saturday's Family Fest