USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 10
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In the picture which we may conjure up of the naval battle in Northwest bay, Oct. 13, 1776, the most con- spicuous object is the Inflexible, catching the light on her cloud of canvass as she makes long tacks between the shores, attempting to bring her cannon to bear on Arnold's boats, but constantly baffled by a breeze from the south. She was ship-rigged, with three masts, the largest vessel then afloat ou inland waters, carrying a battery of eighteen twelve-pounders, and quite able to blow Arnold's rude little flotilla out of the water with two broadsides, if she could but come within range. Then there was the Carleton, a schooner with two masts carrying twelve sis-pounders, and now showing in hull and rigging many marks of thecannonading of two days before. The Maria, (named after the wife of Gen. Carle- ton, was somewhat larger, with an armament of fourteen six-pounders, and upon her forward deck stood Captain Pringle, commanding the fleet under the observation of Gen. Sir Guy Carleton himself, with Baron Riedesel au interested observer of the engagement.
Opposed to these three vessels see Arnold in the Congress, simply a large open boat, with rowers ranged around the sides, plying heavy oars, since the one square sail was of no use with the wind ahead. In the bow were mounted two cannon, an eighteen pounder and a twelve pounder, in the stero two pines and ou the sides
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six sixes. The Congress was built to carry eighty meu, and one-fourth of her crew were killed. The four gon- dolas were smaller than the Congress, each built to carry forty-five men, with one twelve-pounder and two sixes.
The clitl's of the Narrows and of North Shore echoed the roar of cannon, and the whole lake knew that the end of the battle drew near. Perhaps there were men from Raymond's Mills fighting in Arnold's flotilla, and perhaps there were women loft at home who crept out to the end of the point to watch, or boys too young to fight who stole out in a skiff upon the water in sight of the ships. The end came when Arnold, about two o'clock in the afternoon, seeing that the attempt to reach Crown Point was hopeless, ran his five boats ashore in the little shallow bay opposite Barber's Point, his rowers pulling to windward out of reach of the enemy's guns. Then the boats were set on fire, with every flag flying, and Arnold's meu stood on the clay bank, keeping off the small boats from the fleet with musketry fire until the Congress and the four gondolas were burned past all capture." Then they retreated to
*The flags were like the one first raised by Washington at Cambridge in Janu- ary of the same year, bearing the thirteen red and white stripes for the thirteen. colonies, with the union of England, a red cross over a white one on a ' field of blue, instead of the stars which we now use. I have not been able to determine exactly the names of the four gondolas whose charred timbers now lie on the bot- tom of Arnold's bay, but they were four out of these six: The New York, Capt. Reed, the Providence, Capt. Simonds, the New Haven, Capt. Mansfield, the Spit - fire, Capt. Ulmer, the Boston, Capt. Sumner, and the Connecticut, Capt. Grant. It is one of our local legends that one of Arnold's boats hid in Partridge Harbor after his fight with Carleton. If there is any truth in this, it must have been the row galley Ise, Capt. Davis. It is said in Gen. Riedesei's Memoirs that this gal.
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Crown Point through the woods, followed by Indians who had been sent by land up the lake, and signaled for boats to take them over to the fort. Crown Point was at once abandoned, the Continentals falling back to Ti, and the next day Carleton's fleet came sailing up and occupied Crown Point.+
And how fared Edward Raymond in all this stirring business ? We know that he left his settlement in this same year, and the local legend says that he was driven away by Indians, escaping to the opposite shore in a small boat with his wife and child, while his house was burning. Thus it would seem almost certain that the savages attached to Carletou's army descended upon Raymond's Mills and desolated the place. If this be true, Raymond suffered for the patriot cause, and his fortunes fell with the defeat of Arnold. Since Crown Point had just been occupied by the British, he could not flee to the protection of the fort, and his only ave- nue of escape lay by way of the eastern shore. Per- haps his neighbor Ferris took him in that night, if Ferris had had the hardihood to remain in his house, and the good fortune to escape destruction.
ley "was found a few days later in a bay, abandoned by the crew." The men might have made their way through the woods to Ti, eluding the Indians who had been sent up both sides of the lake by Carleton.
+The most exhaustive and complete account of the battle between Carleton and Arnold is given in an article by Captain A. T. Mahan, U. S. N., in Scribner's Magazine for February, 189S This article is finely illustrated, and a set of the illustrations has been framed in wood taken from the wrecks of Arnold's boats. The frames were made for Miss Anna Lee by Mr. J. N. Barton, who had secured at different times several pieces of wood from the wrecks. The remains of the vessels still show plainly at low water, though little is left, of course, but some 01 the keel timbers sunk in the mud.
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An officer in Carleton's army, Lieut. Digby, kept a diary, in which he entered his impressions of the cam- pain and the country. "Crown Point," he says, "is a re- markable fine plain, an uncommon sight to us after be- ing so long buried in such boundless woods, where our camp formed a grand appearance." He speaks of flocks of pigeons, "thick enough to darken the air, also large eagles," and of "herds of deer all along the shore side, which were seldom disturbed, the country being but little altered since its first state of nature, except now and then a wandering party of savages coming there to hunt for their sustenance." He mentions sev- eral families living near the fort who still remained loyal to the king, and who had suffered much in consequence from the Continental soldiers. When Carleton and his fleet returned to Canada, before the first of November, leaving the lake to the colonials for the winter, these families chose to go too, leaving the western shore more utterly deserted than it had been since the first settle- ments of the French.
The next June Sir John Burgoyne came up the lake with his splendid fleet, carrying over seven thousand men, the largest army which ever passed Westport land, and by far the most brilliant and imposing sight ever visible from these shores. Burgoyne arrived at his camp at the mouth of the Boquet river June 21, 1777, his advance guard being already there, and for a week. afterward the fair fields of Willsboro were overspread with the white tents of his soldiery. Here be held! a great council of war with the Indian allies of Great
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Britain, and here he first issued the proclamation which was called "the Boquet order," addressed to the rebel- jous colonists, offering peace and pardon to all who would return to their allegiance to the king, and threat- euing all others with every terror of Indian warfare. This proclamation passed unheeded over the deserted hamlet of Raymond's Mills, where the wind swept the ashes over the cold hearthstones, and the squirrels laped and chattered through the silent mills. Gilli- laud's settlement was also deserted at this time, and I suppose there was not a single rebellious colonist ou this western shore north of Crown Point.
An eye-witness on board one of the ships, Thomas Anburey, describes the advance of the fleet, on a day "remarkably fine and clear, not a breeze stirring," as "the most complete and splendid regatta you can pos- sibly conceive. In the front the Indians went with their birch canoes, containing twenty or thirty each ; then the advance corps (Frazer's) in regular line with the gunboats; then followed the Royal George and the Inflexible, towing large booms, with the two brigs and sloops following ; after them Generals Burgoyne, Phil- lips and Riedesel in their pinnaces; next to them the second battalion, and the rear was brought up with the suttlers and followers of the army."
The Royal George was a fine new ship, built for this campaign the winter before, and fitted to carry twenty- four guns. The Inflexible, the Carleton and the Maria we have seen before ju Northwest Bay, and again the
.
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Maria has the distinction of carrying the officer highest in rauk, the gay uniforms of Burgoyne and his staff showing vividly under the white sails. The sun shone bright on musket and bayonet, brass buttous, gold lae ... plumes and scarlet cloth, with floating banners and pennons, the shining guns of the artillery, and the pol- ished instruments of a band playing the most inspiring martial airs. Somewhere in all this glittering pageant went two heavy, rough-built vessels, the row-galley Washington and the gondola Jersey captured in the fight between Carleton and Arnoldl the year before. Their names seem to have remained unchanged, like that of the Royal Sacage, which was built and named by the British, taken at St. John's by Montgomery, and used by Arnold as his flag-ship in the battle of Valeour.
On the night of the 25th of June the German battal- ion under Riedesel made its camp at Button Bay. We read in his memoirs : "The weather was delightful, and we reached Bottom bay the same night. On the day following, (the 26th, the army arrived at nine o'clock in the morning at Crown Point." "Bottom bay," of course, is a miss-reading of Gen. Riedesel's notes by his biographer, -possibly a mistake of his translator.
Gen. Riellesel's biographer says: "Fifteen hundred horses had been purchased in Canada for the army. They were to be sent to Crown Point by land." And Palmer says, in his History of Lake Champlain : "Seven hundred carts were brought on with the army, to be used in transporting baggage and provisions across the portages between the lakes and the Hudson river, and
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fifteen hundred Canadian horses were sent by land up the west side of the lake, under a strong escort." Mr. David Turner, editor of a Westport newspaper in the forties, was wout to claim that this wagon train passed through Westport, and camped one night on the hill north of the village, now known as "Almon Allen's hill." Burgoyne's orderly books and the published diaries of two of his officers give no hint of horses brought from Canada in any way except by water.
This German Baron Riedesel is one of the most in- teresting figures in the army of Burgoyne, partly on his own account, and partly because of his beautiful wife, who followed him from Germany to the wilds of America with three little children. She reached Que- bec on the 11th of June, after her husband had started with the army. They had two blissful days together, and then were obliged to part, he to his military duty, and she to remain in Canada until his return from the campaign. Then it happened, precisely as it might have happened in a novel, that at the battle of Hub- bardton, July 7th, a certain Major Ackland was badly wounded. His wife, Lady Harriet Ackland, had also followed her husband to America, and was then in Montreal. Hearing of her husband's wound, she started at once to join bim. When she arrived, and the story was known, the whole army went wild with admiration. A beautiful young woman of rank, the daughter of an earl, passionately devoted to a brutal husband, thread- ing her way through forest and lake for love of him, - it was all pitched to the high, quisotie level of the
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drama that Burgoyne and his men were playing. G. !: Burgoyne knew of Riedesel's wife staying in Canadi (like a sensible woman as she was,) and he said to hi !... "General, you shall have your wife here also!" So the Baroness was sent for, and we may add her name to th. list of famous people who passed in sight of Westport,- and never a sweeter, more womanly soul looked out upon it. She was accompanied by two maids and her three children, six year old Gustava, Frederica, and the baby Caroline. In her diary she does not describ ... her journey through the lake with much detail, but says : "During the night we had a thunder storm, which: appeared to us more terrible, as it seemed as if we were lying in the bottom of a caldron surrounded by mount- ains and great trees. The following day we passed Ticonderoga." Were they storm-bound that night in our bay, close under North Shore, with the thunder re- verberating from the cliffs ? They seem to have slept on board the boat for fear of the rattlesnakes on shore.
When the army of Burgoyne surrendered at Sara- toga, the Baroness and her children were taken charge of by Philip Schuyler, and how prettily she tells the story of his taking the babies in his arms and kissing them, to the infinite reassurance of the mother's heart. They were lodged in the Schuyler mansion, and treated with the most distinguished consideration.
The Gilliland children, were in Albany at this time also, in the care of their grandmother. They had fallen upon evil times, for their father was in prison upou a charge of treason, and their slaves had run away. Our
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Elizabeth was then a girl of thirteen, the oldest of : family of five. They may have seen the little German children whose father was a prisoner too, coming out of the door of the Schuyler house, or riding out with their mother in the grand Schuyler coach.
As the army of Burgoyne passed through Northwest bay, spreading out its ranks upon the water as it. emerged from the Narrows, only one man in all the fleet looked upon these shores with eyes of possession and familiar acquaintance, and that was Major Philip Skene, who had received from the king six years before the patent which still bears bis name, and upon which part of the village of Westport now stands. Iu those six years he had done much and traveled far, seeing many a coast with which he could contrast the stretch of wooded shore, unbroken, desolate, washed by waters which reflected every leaf and stone with double bril- lianey that still June day. As he gazed he must have thought of his work at Skenesboro, where he had built mills and forges and ships, and perhaps be planned to do the sanie in Northwest bay when this campaign should be over, and the king's authority acknowledged without dispute on all the continent. His mind must have been full of his settlement at the end of the lake, toward which the army was hastening, for he had not seen it since its capture by the Green Mountain Boys, more than two years before. At the time of that event he was in England, leaving his son Andrew in charge of the colony. He returned from England with two fine new things. One was a wife with a fortune of forty
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thousand pounds, (he having been a handsome and well-connected widower,) and the other was a resplen- dent title, -"Lieutenant-Governor of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and Surveyor of His Majesty's Woods and Forests bordering on Lake Champlain." As he stepped off the ship at Philadelphia he was arrested by the authority of Congress, and was kept a prisoner for more than a year. One can imagine the consternation of the bride at such an ending to her wedding trip. Now he had been exchanged, had been to England again, joined the army of Burgoyne, and found himself once more on the familiar waters of Lake Champlain. Within a few days he was at Skenesboro again, the army having swept the Continentals out of its path in ruin and rout. He showed Burgoyne his colony, or what remained of it, and told him all his plans for the gov- ernment of the Champlain valley. It has been said, by the way, that his acquaintance with Gilliland was inti- mate, and that he meant to make him bis viceroy when he himself should become Governor. If this be true, it may serve to explain something of the mysterious im- prisonment of Gilliland in Albany at this time, which has been hitherto attributed entirely to the malicious persecution of Arnold, between whom and Gilliland, we know, there existed the bitterest hatred. A man who had reason to expect an appointment of such import- ance from the crown may well have been suspected of sympathy with the royalists. But whatever the truth may be, we lost all chance of ever finding it out when Governor Skone, with the rest of the army, surrendered
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at Saratoga. He insisted to the last, with true Scotch tenacity, that the country people of the lakes were loyal at heart, and only wanted the chance to flock to the standard of the king. He never saw Skenesboro, or his ore bed, or his patent at Northwest bay again, and all his property was promptly confiscated by Congress as soon as peace was declared.
Late in September the. forces of St. Leger, having failed to make a junction with Burgoyne by way of the Mohawk river, followed him through Lake Champlain. When Burgoyne surrendered October 17, 1777, the news soon reached Ticonderoga, and the British garri- son which had been left there hastily dismantled the works and took to the boats, intent upon escaping to Canada. Before they were half way down the lake, Captain Ebenezer Allen (of the tribe of Ethan) came ont upon them with a party of Green Mountain Boys aud cut off the rear division, capturing fifty men and a large quantity of baggage and military stores.
Although after this year the lake was the scene of no great national event, it was none the less full of picturesque scenes. The forts were not occupied by either power, and the lake was one great Debatable Ground, with the British ships passing up and down at will, while small parties of Green Mountain Boysranged along the shores, keeping close watch of every move- ment. Red-coated soldier and blanketed savage, some- times both wearing belts from which dangled fresh scalps, went by northward in boats or on the ice, drag- ging with them captives from the border settlements,
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and there are tales of these captives escaping and flee- ing southward over the same trails. The Johnsons and the Butlers from the valley of the Mohawk made this their pathway, and the face of Joseph Brandt, adorned with war-paint and with eagle's plumes, looked more than once upon the place where a descendant of his own, not sixty years after, stood in a Christian pulpit and preached peace and piety with benevolent zeal .*
In May of 1780 came Sir John Johnson, at the head of his Royal Greens and his Indian allies, five hundred in number, on their way to visit the Mohawk valley once more with fire and blood. At Crown Point they disembarked from the ships which had brought them up the lake, and took to the woods, following a well- known trail to Johnstown. Turning instantly when their blow had been struck, they began their retreat the 23rd of May, taking with them both prisoners and plunder. Gov. Clinton himself followed them in close pursuit, going by way of Saratoga and Lake George. hoping to cut them off before they reached Lake Cham - plain, but they gained their ships almost under the eyes of his scouts. He wrote to General Howe: "I with great Difficulty got on a Force superior to Sir John's Party, but was not able to head him or gain his place of Embarkation (Bullwagers Bay) until about Six Hours after he left it." All that was left for the baffled Con- tinentals was to keep scouts ou and about the lake all summer, with orders to report every movement of the
*Rev. Thomas Brandt, a lineal descendant of Joseph Brandt, preached in the Baptist church of Westport for six years, in the forties.
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enemy. In command of one of these parties was Major Ebenezer Allen, (the same who captured a part of the retreating garrison of Ti after Saratoga) and on July 1, 1780, he wrote to headquarters as follows :
"Sir, I received intelligence by a Scout last Evening which came from Lake Champlain, that they saw two large Ships lying near Crown Point last Sunday at 12 o'clock, and two Tenders. The two Large Vessels had about ten Batteaux to each of their Sterns. The next Day they saw one of the Ships and one Tender sail down toward St. Johns, the other fell down as far as Raymonds Mills, there cast Anchor; Also a large mast Boat went to the Shore and landed a Number of Men and made Fires."
So we see that Raymond's Mills was a place still well known, although Raymond himself had been gone four years, and we suppose the settlement to have been deserted. The two large ships may have been the Royal George and the Inflexible, and it is probable that the whole flotilla had just returned from taking Sir John and his forces to St. John's, with their wretched prisoners. Some of the men brought with them their own wives and children and slaves, hitherto left in the enemy's country, and forty of the Royal Greens carried knapsacks packed with the Johnson plate, which had been baried on the flight of the family at the beginning of the war.
In October the scouts reported the whole British fleet moving up the lake, eight large vessels, twenty-six flat-boats and more than a thousand men, commanded
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by Major Carleton (nephew of Sir Guy). This was in protection of Sir John Johnson, again ravaging upon the Mohawk. The keen eyes of the scouts of Clinton peered out at the king's ships from many an unsus- pected thicket, and stole along the shore in skiff's like the Rangers of a generation before. Col. Alexander Webster, writing to Gov. Clinton Oct. 24, 1780, says that the scouts "moved from thence to Bullwagga and Grog bays, Rayment's Mills and its vicinity. The last scout informs that they recounoitered those bays and other parts of the lake from the Beautiful Elm in Pan- ton."
The movements of the British upon the lake caused grave concern among the Continental forces to the south, greatly increased by the suspicion that Vermont was listening to overtures from commissioners of the crown. All the next summer the fleet sailed up and down the lake, sometimes making alarming feints, but in reality doing very little damage. If the diplomacy of the Vermont leaders served to protect the Grauts from the incursions of the enemy, the deserted condi- tion of the western shore, as well as the mountain barriers, operated to the same end. Lient. Hadden, one of Burgoyne's officers, wrote in his journal when he came through the lake, "It may not be improper to remark that there are but very few settlements on the Jake, not 20, and those only single Houses," and settle- ment upon the frontier of course ceased entirely dur- ing the war.
In October of list an express arrived from the south
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to General St. Leger at Ticonderoga, bearing the intel- ligence of the surrender of Cornwallis. Instantly he embarked his men and stores and sailed away to Can- ada, and for the last time ships flying the banner of England sailed past our shores.
Late in July of 1783, while the treaty between Great Britain and the United States was still pending, Gen. George Washington made a northern tour, visiting Ti- conderoga and Crown Point, accompanied by Gov. George Clinton and some of his generals. "I could not help," he says, "taking a more contemplative and ex- tensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States." And so he stood upon the ramparts of Crown Point, with Clinton at his side, and looked away down the beautiful lake upon the outline of our Coon mountain and North Shore, with the glittering blue of the Narrows, through which Arnold's ships came so gallantly seven years before. He saw the shore where lay the burning Congress, and he thought with agony that if one shot had found the beart of the leader on that day, the Vulture would never have dropped clown the Hudson in another October with a traitor ou board. And writing to a friend upon his return, in al- lusion to this trip, he says that he "could not but be struck with the goodness of that Providence which has lealt her favours to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them." With these wise and reverent words closes for us the last scene of the Revolution.
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