USA > New York > Saratoga County > History of Saratoga County, New York : with historical notes on its various towns > Part 2
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The county of Saratoga was set off from the county of Albany by an act of the legisla- ture of the State on the 7th day of February, 1791.
The county of Albany, out of which Sara- toga county was formed, was one of the twelve original counties into which the Duke of York divided his province on the Ist day of November, 1683.
III .- JOHN CABOT.
The British claim of title to lands in north- eastern North America was founded upon the discovery of the same by John Cabot in the spring of 1497. Of the voyage of Cabot little is certainly known. He probably sailed from Bristol, England, in the year 1496, remained through the winter in Iceland, and the follow- ing spring took the route of the Northmen* of the eleventh century, and reached the conti- nent in the vicinity of Labrador, or Newfound- land. But it is uncertain how much of the coast he visited. The American coast seems to have been known in the thirteenth century in Iceland and Norway, before the voyage of Cabot, as the "Nyja Land" and as the "Newe Isle" or "Newe found land." It is, however, in proof by documentary evidence that Cabot had returned to England before the 10th of August, 1497, and reported his discovery of the "New Isle," claiming to have followed its coast for the distance of three hundred. miles, which would bring him in the vicinity of Boston.
It is also certain that the next year ( Feb- ruary 3, 1498,) John Cabot obtained a patent from Henry VII. in which the new country is described as "The lande and isles late founde by the said John in oure name and by oure com- mandment."
IV. - GIOVANA DA VERRAZANO.
In 1523 four vessels fitted out by the French government sailed from some port in Brittany
* For the legal boundaries of the county, see Sec. 2, Title I., Chap. II., Part I., R. S. of N. Y .- SYLVESTER's HIS. SAR. CO, PHILA., 1878, page 10.
*The discovery of America by the Danish navigators in the be- ginning of the eleventh century has been long in dispute, but the weight of authority seems to be lately conclusively in its favor.
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OF SARATOGA COUNTY.
for the New World. Three vessels were soon disabled and lost. The remaining one was the Dalfina, and was under the command of Giovana da Verrazano, a Florentine. It sailed from the Madeiras in 1524, crossed the Atlantic and cruised up the American coast. From the report of the commander to Francis 1., King of France, under date July 8th, 1524, it appears that he entered the waters now known as the Bay of New York.
V. - JAQUES CARTIER.
In the year 1555 Francis I., King of France, fitted out a voyage to the New World under the command of Jaques Cartier, an eminent mariner of St. Malo, a seaport of Brittany. The fleet consisted of three ships only, rang- ing from forty to one hundred and twenty tons burden. The prayer of the Breton mariner, upon entering on the waters of the wild, stormy Atlantic in those days was this, "Oh God, protect thou me; my boat is so small and thy ocean so vast."
They embarked on the 19th day of May, and after a stormy passage arrived on the coast of Newfoundland on the 7th day of July. On the 10th day of August, which is the festival of Saint Lawrence, the martyr, they discovered and entered the broad bay which forms the mouth of the great river, and named it in honor of the saint. The Indian name for the river was Ho-che-la-ga.
Cartier proceeded on his voyage up the river until he came to the narrows opposite what is now the city of Quebec. Here he found a little Indian village called by the Indians Sta- da-co-ne. Its chief, whose name was Don-na- co-na, met Cartier and his companions at the landing, gave them some bread and some wine pressed from the wild grapes which then grew in great abundance along the shores.
The Indians here told the French that many days' journey up the river there was another Indian town called Ho-che-la-ga, being named after the river.
Cartier proceeded up the stream in quest of this other village. The river grew more nar- row and more rapid, and Cartier left his ships and went on in small boats with his Indian guides and only two white companions. They reached in a few days the spot where now stands the city of Montreal.
On the island of Montreal, Cartier found an old palisaded Indian town containing many wigwams built long and narrow after the fash- ion of those of the Iroquois nations of central New York. In this village were about a thous- and inhabitants of the Iroquois lineage. It was Ho-che-la-ga, the capital of the Indian nation, whose hunting ground of that name lay along both sides of the river above the confluence of the Ottawa.
Cartier landed at this forest town on the 2d day of October, amid the crimson and golden hues of the Canadian autumn woods.
When Cartier and his white companions, clad in glittering armor, went on shore at this wild Indian village, the half nude natives crowded around them in wonder -regarding them more as demi-gods than men.
They even brought their chief, who was "old and full of palsy," says an old narrative, * and was clad in a robe of rich furs with a crown of red feathers on his head, and laid him before Cartier that he might be healed by the magical medicine touch of the white man.
The Indians then led Cartier to the top of the mountain which overlooked their village. Cartier planted a large cross of cedar wood on the mountain top, and then solemnly taking possession of the great forest state of Ho-che- la-ga, in the name of the French King, named the mountain on which he stood Mount Royal, from whence comes the modern name Montreal.
From this voyage came the French posses- sion and occupation of Canada under the name of New France, and the French and Indian wars which followed, in which Saratoga county was so often involved.
" Pinckerton's Voyages, Vol. 12, page 653.
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
VI. - SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN.
In the beginning of the summer of 1609, months before Henry Hudson sailed up the North River, Samuel de Champlain discovered and explored the lake which still bears his name, and took possession of the region by planting on its shores the Cross and the Lilies of France.
Champlain was the founder of New France. In the year 1608 he planted his colony at Quebec, in the heart of the old, wild, savage wilderness, upon the site of the old Indian village of Sta-da-co-ne, found there seventy years before by Jaques Cartier, under the sway of the chief Don-na-co-na.
Champlain first sailed up the St. Lawrence in the year 1603. Upon his return he pub- lished his first work, entitled Des Sauvages. On his second voyage he attempted to plant a colony at Port Royal, in that part of Acadia called Norumbega, but returned to France in 1607. It was upon his third voyage that he founded Quebec in 1608.
During the winter following, while on his hunting excursions with the Indians, Cham- plain listened to marvelous stories of a great inland sea stretching far to the southward of the St. Lawrence, filled with wonderful islands and lying in the land of the much-dreaded Iroquois.
Upon the opening of spring Champlain fitted out an expedition to visit and explore the famous inland waters. His party consisted of two white companions only besides his Indian allies, who numbered sixty warriors, with twenty-four bark canoes. The Indians were Hurons, Abinicas and Montagnais, all of the Algonquin nations. After a toilsome passage up the rapids of the Richelieu river, Champlain entered the lake-the far-famed "wilderness sea " of the Iroquois, whose tran- quil waters, studded with islands, stretched far beyond the southern horizon. From the forest-covered shores on either side rose lofty mountain chains, whose highest peaks were
yet covered with patches of snow. Over all was flung the soft blue haze called moun- tain snake, that served to temper the fierce sunshine of our American summer and to fill all the landscape with spectral-like forms of shadowy beauty. Who does not envy the stern old explorer and forest ranger his first view of the beautiful lake that was destined to bear his name onward to the latest pos- terity?
Champlain, with his flotilla of savages, pro- ceeded cautiously up the lake for fear of meeting the Iroquois on the war-path, for it was time for them to begin their annual depredations against the Canadian Algonquin tribes. They traveled only by night, resting on the shores by day. After starting out on the evening of the 26th day of July, they dis- covered dark moving objects on the lake before them. It was a flotilla of Mohawk canoes, all loaded with warriors. In a moment more each party of savages saw the other, and their hideous war-cries mingling, echoed along the wild shores.
The Mohawks landed at once and began a barricade upon the bank, of fallen trees inter- locked with bark wood, as was their custom on such occasions. The Algonquins locked their canoes together with long poles within bow-shot of the Iroquois barricade, and danced in them till morning their hideous war-dance. It was mutually agreed between the hostile bands that the battle should not begin until daylight. So when the early summer dawn of that northern latitude began to streak the east, the impatient Algonquins landed and the Iroquois marched out of their barricade in single file to meet them in the combat. The Mohawk-Iroquois were full two hundred strong -the boldest, finest warriors of the New World - their tall, lithe forms and noble bearing eliciting the warmest admiration of Champlain and his white companions. Cham- plain, who had been before concealed, now advanced to the front with arquebuse in hand and clad in glittering armor.
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OF SARATOGA COUNTY.
The Mohawks seeing for the first time such a war-like apparition in their path, halted and stood gazing upon Champlain in mute aston- ishment. Champlain levelled his arquebuse at two chiefs distinguished by their tall plumes, and fired. They both fell dead at his feet. Then there rose an exulting yell from the Al- gonquin allies, and they sent whizzing through . the air clouds of feathery arrows at their foes. But the Iroquois, panic-stricken at the unex- pected appearance of the white man, and amazed by the noise and smoke of his fire- arms, fled through the forest in uncontrollable terror toward their homes on the Mohawk river, leaving everything behind them.
The bitter memory of this first war-like en- counter between them and the French forever afterward rankled in the minds of the Iroquois Five Nations of Central New York, and they became in consequence of it the warm friends and allies of their near neighbors, the English, in all the devastating wars which so long there- after afflicted the great Northern Valley, of which Saratoga county forms so conspicuous a part.
VII. - HENRY HUDSON.
In the year 1609 another equally distin- guished European explorer entered the terri- tory of the province of New York.
On the 6th day of April in that year Henry Hudson, an English mariner in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, began a voyage to the northern coast of Asia. For some reason or other he was diverted from his object, and turned his ships toward North America. On the 12th day of September in that year Hudson discovered and entered the mouth of the beautiful river now called by his name, which serves to drain the waters of southeastern New York from the mountain belt of the Adirondack wilderness to the sea, and which for seventy miles of its course washes the northern and eastern borders of Saratoga county. It is believed that Hudson ascended the river as far up as the mouth of
the Mohawk, at the old Indian hunting-ground called Nach-te-nak.
In his voyage up the river Hudson had sev- eral adventures with the Indians and two or three skermishes with them. The little ship in which he sailed was called the "Half- Moon." He named the stream " The River of the Mountains," which is a literal transla- tion of the Iroquois name of it, the Ca-ho-ta- te-a. The Mohicans called it the Shat-e-muck. The Dutch named it the Mauritius, and other names. It was the English who named the stream in honor of its first explorer, after they had wrested it from Dutch control in 1664, and called it the Hudson.
Hudson a year or two afterward discovered the great northern bay which also bears his name. Then his ship's crew mutinied, he was set adrift in a small boat upon the wild northern ocean, and was never heard of more.
VIII. - NEW NETHERLAND.
The exploration of the Hudson river by Henry Hudson resulted in the founding of what is now New York by the people of Hol- land. At first the government of Holland did nothing toward planting a settlement on the Hudson, but private enterprise was not long idle. For three years after the return of Hud- son the little vessels of the Dutch traders tra- versed the waters of the river, but it was not till 1613 that a little fort was built, with two or three small houses adjoining it, on Manhat- tan Island. Prominent in these private trad- ing enterprises were Hendrick Christaensen, Adriam Block and Cornelis Jacobsen May. Block and Christaensen fitted out a vessel together in 1611. In 1612 several merchants fitted out the ships Fortune and Vigor and placed them under their command. Other merchants joined in the trade in 1613.
Block spent the winter of 1613-14 on Man- hattan Island and built a yacht of sixteen tons, the Onrast ( Restless) -the first vessel built by white men in these waters.
In the spring of 1614 Block sailed through
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Long Island Sound and discovered the Hous- atonic and Connecticut rivers - going up the latter a long distance and naming it the Varsche ( Fresh Water) river. He also sailed further east. Block Island was named in his honor. In 1614 also Christaensen sailed up the Hud- son and set up the first great trading post upon the river. This was built on Castle Island, near what is now Albany, and was called Fort Nassau in honor of the Stadt- holder.
At length, in 1614, the States General of Holland began to take an active part in the planting of New Netherland.
On the 27th day of March, in that year, they granted a decree giving any discoverer of "new passages, havens, lands, or places the exclusive right of navigating the same for six voyages."
On the 6th of October following the " United New Netherland Company " received by charter the monopoly of the trade to the American region " between New France and Virginia, being the sea coast between 40° and 45°," then first officially called New Nether- land. The charter of this company expired by limitation January Ist, 1618.
Finally the great Dutch West India Com- pany was chartered June 3d, 1621, and this company turned over to its Amsterdam cham- ber the affairs of the province of New Nether- land, which formed a part of its possession. In 1623 the company sent over from Holland in the ship New Netherland a company of thrifty "Walloons" to plant a settlement at Manhattan, under the command of the com- pany's first director, Captain Cornelis Jacob- sen May.
This was the beginning of the Dutch colon- ization of the valley of the Hudson.
The Dutch occupancy of the Hudson lasted until 1664, in which year the colony passed under the control of Great Britain and hence- forth was a British province, under the name of New York.
In the meanwhile, in the year 1623, Adrim
Joris built Fort Orange on the west bank of the Hudson at what is now the city of Albany, and a little colony of eighteen families of Walloons laid the foundation of the future capital city of the State of New York.
IX. - NEW YORK.
Under the protectorate of Cromwell, an English expedition for the conquest of New Netherland was planned but never carried into effect.
In 1635 Charles I. granted to William, Earl of Stirling, Long Island, Nantucket and the other islands off the coast of Massachusetts, together with an extensive region now in- cluded in Maine and Nova Scotia.
In 1663 the Duke of York purchased from Henry, then Earl of Sterling, his rights and titles to all of the above named islands and lands. Then the Duke of York's brother, Charles II., in 1663, granted to him all the lands then occupied by the Dutch between the Connecticut and Delaware rivers. This grant to the Duke of York is described in the original patent as follows:
All that Island or Islands, commonly known by the name of Mat-tow-acks or Long Island, Scituate and .being towards the west of Cape Cod and the Narrow Higgaasetts butting upon the Main Land Between the Two Rivers then called and known by the several names of the Connecticut and Hudsons river, together also with the said River called Hudsons river and all the Lands from the west side of Connecticut River to the East side of Delaware Bay.
This grant was made under the claim of title on the part of the English, which they had always insisted on by virtue of the dis- covery of John Cabot in 1497, but which, until then, they had not deemed it expedient to assert by force of arms.
Although England and Holland were then at peace, yet England had grown jealous of the then rapidly growing commercial import- ance of Holland, and actuated by this feeling and by virtue of the grants above mentioned to Lord Stirling and himself, the Duke of
·
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OF SARATOGA COUNTY.
York borrowed of his brother, King Charles, four ships belonging to the English navy, and in the spring of 1664 sent over an armed expedition under command of Col. Richard Nicolls, with a commission authorizing him to reduce the Dutch of New Netherland and to govern the country as his deputy. This expedition resulted in the complete sub- jection of New Netherland to the crown of Great Britain, as stated upon a foregoing page. The conquest was confirmed by the treaty of Breda, July 10th, 1667.
X. - ALBANY COUNTY.
On the Ist of November, 1683, the General Assembly of the provinces of New York passed an act dividing the province into " Countyes for the better governing and settling courts in the same," in the quaint language of the preamble to the same. In the act the county of Albany is bounded and described as follows, viz :
The county of Albany to contain the towns of Albany, the colonies of Renslaerswyck, Schonecteda, and all the villages, neighborhoods and Christian Plantacens on the East Side of Hudson River from Roelof Jansens Creeke, and on the West Side from Sawyer's Creeke to the Sar- raghtoga.
It appears from the above description that Albany county as first set off contains within its limits only the southern half of what is now Saratoga county. But by subsequent acts of the General Assembly Albany county was en- larged so as to contain not only the whole of Saratoga county but all the rest of the province lying to the north and west as far as the Can- ada line, and eastward of Lake Champlain to the Connecticut river, thus including all of what is now the State of Vermont.
XI. - GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS.
Out of this claim of the Duke of York to the territory now constituting the State of Ver- mont, so clearly established by the description in his patent, arose the famous contest between the authorities of Albany county and the Green
Mountain Boys, known in history as the con- troversy over the "Hampshire Grants."
While New York claimed jurisdiction as far east as the Connecticut, New Hampshire claimed as far west as the Hudson. Some twenty-five years before the war of the Revo- lution broke out, Benning Wentworth, gover- nor of New Hampshire, granted a large tract of land lying west of the Connecticut to his friends, who laid out a township which they called Bennington, in honor of the governor, and laying it out into lots, sold them to set- tlers. About the same time the colonial gov- ernment of New York granted the same lands to other parties, who, failing to get peaceable possession, called upon the sheriff of Albany . county to assist them with the strong arm of the law. But the Green Mountain Boys, led by the intrepid Eathen Allen, resisted success- fully the most strenuous efforts of the Albany sheriff. In the meanwhile appeal was made to the crown. The King's Council decided in favor of New York. Yet the Green Mountain Boys continued their forcible resistance to the authorities of New York until the close of the Revolutionary war, when the trouble was ended by the congress of the United States admitting Vermont as a state into the Union.
XII .- TRYON COUNTY.
Just before the war of the revolution broke out, in the year 1772, Albany county was for the first time divided and two new counties carved out of it-Tryon county to the west and north, and Charlotte county to the north and east.
Tryon county was named in honor of Wil- liam Tryon, who was then governor of the province. The easterly line of Tryon county began at a point on the Canada line near the Indian mission village of St. Regis, and ran thence due south through the Upper Saranac Lake and along the westerly bounds of what are now the counties of Essex, Warren and Saratoga until it struck the Mohawk river, about ten miles west of the city of Schenec-
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
tady. From the Mohawk this line turned southwesterly around what is now Schenectady county and then again southerly through the centre of what is now Schoharie county to the Mohawk branch of the Delaware river. Thence down that stream to the northeast corner of the State of Pennsylvania. Tryon county included all that part of the province of New York which lay to the westward of the above described line.
Charlotte county was named in honor of the Princess Charlotte, eldest daughter of King George III. Charlotte county included all the northern part of the province of New York which lay to the north of what are now the counties of Saratoga and Rensselaer, and east of the east line of Tryon county. It also included the westerly half of what is now the State of Vermont, then known as the Hamp- shire Grants.
The annals of Tryon county, the near neigh- bor of Saratoga, are but a record of blood and tears, in the war of the revolution.
In the spring of 1774, Sir William Johnson held his last grand council with his Iroquois neighbors, the Indians of the Six Nations, at his manor house in Johnstown. It was an occasion of more than ordinary pomp and ceremony. Delegations of sachems, war- chiefs, warriors and women, from all the castles of the Six Nations, were entertained for days at Sir William's expense. On the last day of the council Sir William made a speech to the assembled nations, of more than ordinary eloquence and power. But the terrors of the impending conflict, which he knew must soon come, cast an unwonted gloom over his spirit. Exhausted by his effort, Sir William was carried to his bed, to die before the smoke had ceased to rise from his council fires.
In less than two years after his death the war-cloud which had been so long gathering
broke like a whirlwind over his loved home in the valley of the Mohawk. £ Tryon county then became a scene of desolation and blood such as even the old Wilderness, with all its savage horrors, had never seen before.
When the war broke out in 1775, Gov. Tryon reported ten thousand whites and two thousand Indian warriors as comprising the population of Tryon county. Two years be- fore the end of the war the Indian tribes were broken and scattered. Of the ten thousand white inhabitants, one-third had espoused the royal cause and fled to Canada, never to re- turn, one-third had been driven from their homes or slain in battle, and of the remaining third three hundred were widows and two thousand were orphan children.
In 1784 the people dropped the then odious name of Tryon and substituted instead the name of the lamented Montgomery. From what then became Montgomery county, by re- · peated subdivisions the most of the counties of the State have been carved out.
At the same time Charlotte county was changed to Washington, and those two once famous names for counties have long been nothing but geographical expressions, yet rich in annals.
XIII. - SARATOGA COUNTY.
On the 7th day of February, 1791, the county of Albany was again divided, and the county of Rensselaer set off on the east side of the Hudson river, and the county of SARA- TOGA was erected with nearly its present boun- daries on the west side of Hudson, in the angle formed by the junction with the Hudson of the Mohawk.
Such is the genesis of the county of Sara- toga. An account of its division, first into districts and then into towns, will be given further on in these pages.
# See Campbell's Annals of Tryon County.
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OF SARATOGA COUNTY.
CHAPTER II.
TOPOGRAPHICAL FEATURES.
The county of Saratoga presents three natural divisions of surface. The northern and western part is mountainous. Through the central part, from northeast to southwest, there extends across the county a sandy plain from five to seven miles in width, evidently an old marine beach of what was once an inland sea, which covered the valley of the Hudson in a former geological epoch. The remainder of the county, being the southeastern belt, is filled with long, low, hilly ridges, with narrow valleys intervening.
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