USA > New York > Saratoga County > History of Saratoga County, New York : with historical notes on its various towns > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87
On the Ist day of April, 1693-that being the year in which the Indians gave to Peter Schuyler and others a deed of Sarahtoga- Robert Livingston, jr., and David Schuyler petitioned Col. Thomas Dongon, then gover- nor of the Province, for license to purchase of the Indians that part of Kayaderrossera which lay along the west bank of the Hudson north of Sarahtoga up as far as the "Little Carrying Place" (now Fort Miller) and as far back in the woods as the Indian property then extended. On the 26th day of August, 1702, the Indians gave a deed of the above described strip to Livingston and Schuyler. This was the first Indian deed of any part of Kayader- rossera, and antedated the Indian deed of the whole tract (mentioned below) by more than two years.
Upon looking at the map it will be seen that the description in the Indian deed to Living- ston and Schuyler covered a very important part of the county of Saratoga. Beginning at the Hudson the strip was about five miles in. width, measuring north from near Schuyler- ville, and extending that width due west across the whole county ; it included the south half of what are now the towns of Northumber- land, Wilton, Greenfield and Providence, and a strip a half mile wide along the northern border of the towns of (Old ) Saratoga, Sara- toga Springs, Milton and Galway.
It will be further seen that this first Indian deed covered the whole of Woodlawn Park, as well as a half mile strip off the northern end of the corporate limits of the village of
39
OF SARATOGA COUNTY.
Saratoga Springs, and included the High Rock, the Empire, the Star, the Red, and other mineral springs.
But this old Indian deed of so important a part of Kayaderrossera is no cloud upon the present title to any of the lands conveyed by it, for Livingston and Schuyler released all their interest in the same to the proprietors of the whole tract, through whom the present owners derive their title.
On the 6th day of October, 1704, some of the Mohawk chiefs gave a deed of the whole of Kayaderrossera to Sampson Shelton Brough- ton, attorney-general of the province, and his twelve associates.
This deed was given in pursuance of a li- cense to extinguish the Indian title given him by Lord Cornbury, governor of the province, bearing date the 2d day of November, 1703.
To obtain this license Broughton filed the following petition, which was the first step in the negotiations for Kayaderrossera :
To his Excellency, Edward Vicount Cornbury, Captain- General and Governor-in-Chief in and over the Pro- vince of New York and Territories depending thereon in America 'and Vice-Admiral of the same, etc., in Council.
The humble petition of Sampson Shelton Broughton, Esq., Attorney-General of the said Province, in behalf of himself and comp., most humbly showeth:
That your petitioner being informed of a certain tract of vacant and unappropriated land in the County of Albany, called or known by the Indian name of Kayarrossos, adjoining to the north bounds of. Schenec- tady on the east side thereof, to the west bounds of Saratoga on the north side thereof, and to Albany river on the west side thereof.
Your said petitioner most humbly prays your Ex- cellency that he may have a license to treat with the native Indians, present possessors and owners of the said tract of land for the purchase thereof and to pur- chase the same.
And your petitioner humbly, as in duty bound, shall ever pray, etc.,
SA. SH. BROUGHTON.
In answer to this petition the license to purchase was given, bearing date as above stated, and in said Indian deed given for the
purchase of Kayaderrossera in the year 1704, but the patent to the proprietors was not issued until the year 1708.
In the meantime Sampson Shelton Brough- ton died, and his widow, Mary Broughton, went back to England, taking the Indian deed of Kayaderrossera with her among her hus- band's paper.
On the 17th of April, 1707, Samuel Brough- ton, son of the Attorney-General, filed a peti- tion asking that his mother might be substi- tuted in the place of his father in the grant.
In the year 1708 the other proprietors filed a petition asking for a patent and setting forth the fact that they had not the possession of the Indian deed and accounting for its absence as above stated.
A controversy then arose between the Broughtons in regard to the grant, which was finally settled by making Samuel Broughton one of the patentees in place of his father, and so the great parchment, being the " Pat- ent of Kayaderrossera," now on file in the County Clerk's office at Ballston Spa, was issued to its thirteen proprietors, named as follows, viz :
NANNING HARMANSE. JOHANNES BEEKMAN.
RIP VAN DAM. ANN BRIDGES.
ADRIAN HOAGLAND. JOHANNES FISHER.
JOHN TUDOR. MAJOR BICKLEY.
PETER FANCONNIER. IXEIS HOAGLAND.
JOHN GOTHAM.
JOHN STEVENS.
SAMUEL BROUGHTON.
It was a condition of the patent of Kayad- errossera that settlement should be made thereon within seven years after its date and delivery. Yet for more than sixty years this condition remained unfulfilled. Of a truth it was hardly possible for the proprietors to ob- serve that condition of the grant until after the termination of the French and Indian wars and the final conquest of Canada in 1763. In fact, no attempt was made to settle the same, but one petition after another was filed praying for an extension of time therefor.
40
BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
It is true that in 1732 the patentees filed a petition asking that the tract might be surveyed and its boundaries determined and marked, on account of various depredations that were be- ing committed by owners of adjoining lands, who disputed the boundary lines.
But nothing was done toward a survey at that time, and for more than thirty years longer the claimants of this magnificent domain slum- bered upon their "paper rights," as the Indians afterward called their title in derision.
At length, in 1763, the French and Indian wars being over, the white claimants of Kay- aderrossera began to look with longing eyes toward what they considered their landed property in the old wilderness.
In pursuance of this desire some one of the proprietors of Kayaderrossera, in the year 1764, began to issue permits to settlers to occupy some part of the land. In pursuance and by virtue of these permits several families, in that year, moved upon the tract in the vicinity of Saratoga Lake, near the mouth of Kayaderrossera river.
In the autumn of the same year a band of Mohawks, while on their annual hunting ex- cursion, fell upon these settlers and drove them away.
Learning from the settlers that they claimed by right of purchase from white men who claimed to own the land by virtue of an Indian deed, the Mohawks were alarmed, for, as they said, "they had never so much as heard that any deed of the same had ever been given."
The Mohawks at once appealed to Sir Wil- liam Johnson, the Indian agent for the pro- vince, for information on the subject, and were greatly surprised to learn from him that it was alleged by the white men that the whole of their favorite hunting-ground had been deeded away by their fathers more than two genera- tions before.
At the urgent request of the Mohawks Sir William called a council at Johnstown to con- sider the subject.
In council assembled, Abraham, the brott.er
of King Hendrick, in an eloquent harangue, presented the case to Sir William in behalf of his people. He asserted that upon the most diligent and searching inquiry among the oldest and most intelligent people of his tribe it could not be ascertained that any such grant had at any time been made. In conclusion Abraham demanded in the name of his tribe "that the patent be forever relinquished and held void."
Thereupon, Sir William, believing from the evidence presented at the council that the In- dians had been grossly wronged, warmly took up the matter in their favor, and made every effort in his power to have the grant set aside and annulled.
In the first place Sir William wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor, Colden, stating the case as he understood it, and urging relief.
That very autumn Sir William introduced a bill into the Colonial Assembly to vacate the patent on the ground of fraud.
These measures failing, in the year 1765 Sir William appealed to the council in person, in behalf of his dusky brethren, but the members of the council put him off with, among other things, the plea that to vacate the patent would be disrespectful to the council who granted it.
By this time the controversy had been taken up warmly by all the tribes of the confederacy of the Six Nations, and Sir William in their behalf petitioned to have the patent vacated on the ground of fraud, by act of Parliament.
At length the proprietors themselves became alarmed for the safety of their patent, and offered to compromise with the Indians by paying them a certain sum of money to satisfy their claim. The Mohawks thought the sum offered too small, and the effort failed.
Thus the matter went on till the year 1768, when the proprietors of Kayaderrossera gave to the governer, Sir Henry Moore, full power to settle with the Indians. In pursuance of this authority Sir Henry proceeded to the Mo- hawk country in the early summer of 1768, and called a council of the Indians to deliberate
41
OF SARATOGA COUNTY.
upon the matter. But it was found that the proprietors had no copy of the Indian deed to produce in evidence on the occasion, and that, as no survey had ever been made, no proper understanding of the subject could be arrived at, and the council was dissolved. Upon his return to New York the governor ordered a survey of the patent to be made. The outlines of this great patent were accord- ingly given by the surveyor-general, and the boundaries being ascertained a compromise was arrived at. The proprietors relinquished a large tract on the northwestern quarter of what they had claimed to be their land, and fixed the northern and western boundaries as they now run. They likewise paid the Indians the sum of five thousand dollars in full of all their claims, and the Mohawks thereupon rati- fied the patent and forever relinquished their claims to their old favorite hunting-ground.
The Indian title being thus quieted the pro- prietors proceeded at once to survey their lands.
Such proceedings were had that commis- sioners were appointed to partition the tract among its owners. The commissioners com- pleted their survey in the year 1771. They divided the patent into twenty-five allotments, and each allotment into thirteen equal lots, that being the number of the original proprie- tors.
The proprietors or their heirs or assigns, as the case might be, cast lots as to location, each having a single lot in each allotment. It would doubtless be interesting to trace more in detail the incidents attending the granting and settlement of this important patent, but our space will not permit.
11 .- THE SARATOGA PATENT.
In the year 1683, on the 26th day of July, the Mohawk sachems of the first and second castles, representing their tribe, gave a deed of the old hunting-ground called Sar-ach-to-goe to Cornelis van Dyk, Jan Jansen Bleeker, Peter Philippsen Schuyler, and Johannes Wendel.
Of this tract a patent was granted to them, bearing date November 4th, 1684.
On the 25th day of October, 1708, a war- rant was issued for a confirmation patent to Peter Schuyler, Robert Livingston, Dirk Wes- sels, Jan Jan Bleeker, Johannes Schuyler, and Cornelius Van Dyck, the grandson and heir of Cornelis van Dyk mentioned in the first patent. In this warrant the tract was directed to be surveyed into lots and divided between the proprietors.
111 .- OTHER PATENTS.
THE VAN SCHAICK PATENT .- This patent includes the present town of Waterford and part of the town of Half-Moon. It was granted to Anthony Van Schaick by Governor Thomas Dongon, on the 31st day of May, 1687.
This patent was given in confirmation of a patent of the same tract called the Half-Moon patent, granted on the 16th of October, 1665, to Philipp Petersen Schuyler, and Goosen Ger- retsen van Schaick, upon a warrant granted by the Dutch authorities July 10th, 1664.
THE CLIFTON PARK PATENT .- This patent includes the southeastern part of the town of Clifton Park and the southwestern part of the town of Half-Moon. The tract was called by the Indians She-non-de-ho-wah, and was granted on the 17th day of September, 1703, to Nan- ning Harmansen, Peter Fauconier, Henry Holland, Henry Swift, and William Morrison, the four first named to have two-ninths thereof each and the last named to have the remain- ing one-ninth. It was granted under the yearly quit-rent of forty shillings, and on con- dition that settlements should be made there on within three years after peace with France.
THE APPLE PATENT .- On the 13th day of April, 1708, William Apple petitioned the gov- ernor, Lord Cornbury, setting forth that twenty years before (1689) he and his partner, Har- manus Hagadorn, had planted a field of corn on the north bank of the Mohawk, in the county of Albany, and when it was all ready for the harvest, the Mohawks, who were on
312
42
BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
the war-path against Canada, encamped on the field and destroyed it, to their loss of $400. That in consideration therefor the Mohawks thereafter gave them a deed of the land, signed by four sachems of the tribe. The land was described in the Indian deed as follows, to wit :
A certain piece of land lying at the north side of the river Schenectady ( Mohawk), nigh the bounds of said town, beginning at a creek called Eel-Place, along the said river, under the high, rocky hills, and from the said river side northeast into the woods unto the Long Lake, being in breadth alongst the said river one mile or thereabouts.
The petition further set forth that thereafter the petitioner was wounded in the attack on Schenectady on the 8th of February, 1690, and that he had a large family of small chil- dren dependent on him for support.
The prayer of the petition was granted, and the patent issued for the tract above described, in the town of Clifton Park.
THE NISKAUNA PATENT. - This was a grant of a small tract of land lying along the north bank of the Mohawk river in the town of Clifton Park, issued 13th April, 1708, to John Rossie and others.
PALMER'S PURCHASE .- Only a part of this large tract lies in Saratoga county. The rest is in Warren and Hamilton counties. The part in Saratoga county covers all of the town of Day north of the Sacondaga and the west- ern part of the town of Hadley, which lies north of the Sacondaga.
THE DARTMOUTH PATENT. - This patent covers the eastern part of the town of Hadley and extends north into Warren county. It was issued October 4th, 1774, to Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, and contains, in both counties, 18,036 acres.
THE NORTHAMPTON PATENT .- This tract lies on both sides of the Sacondaga river in the southwest corner of the town of Edinburgh and northwest corner of the town of Provi- dence and extends into Fulton county. It was issued to Jacob Mase and others October, 1741, and contained 6,000 acres.
THE LIVINGSTON PATENTS. - These two tracts lie on both sides of the Sacondaga to the northeast of the Northampton tract and in the town of Edinburgh. They were issued to Philip Livingston and others November 8th, 1760, and contained 4,000 acres.
THE JOHN GLEN PATENT .- This tract is a small gore of land lying between the Hudson river and the north line of the Kayaderrossera tract at South Glens Falls in the town of Moreau.
THE PATENT TO JOHN GLEN AND FORTY OTHERS. - This tract contained forty-five thousand acres of land and the usual allow- ance for highways. The warrant for the pat- ent bears date the 9th of March, 1769, and was issued to John Glen, jr., Simon Scher- merhorn and their associates. The survey for the same was made by Nanning Vischer and bears date the 2nd day of July, 1770.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PLANTING OF THE EARLY SETTLE- MENTS IN SARATOGA COUNTY-HALF- MOON-THE DUTCH PIONEERS-THEIR INFLUENCE OVER THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE COUNTRY.
I .- INFLUENCE OF THE DUTCH.
Like New York and Kingston on the Lower Hudson, like Albany on the Upper Hudson, the first settlers at Half-Moon, along the north bank of the Mohawk, near its junction with the Hudson, and at Saratoga, further up the stream, were the Dutch from Holland.
In the early years of the seventeenth cent- ury, when these Dutch settlements along the banks of the Hudson and Mohawk were planted, the little republic of Holland, from which the settlers came, was one of the most progressive and enlightened countries of Eu- rope.
Of a truth the people of the Netherlands
43
OF SARATOGA COUNTY.
at the mouth of the Rhine, among whom the Pilgrim fathers sought shelter, and who sent their colonists to found New York, were then among the leaders of Europe, not only in civil and religious freedom, but in wealth and culture.
Of a truth, when the Dutch settlers came to the New World, not only political freedom, but statecraft, agriculture, organized indus- tries, navigation, finance, science, letters, and the fine arts, all had long flourished in Hol- land almost as in no other country.
Apt scholars in that splendid school of free- dom, industry and culture, the Pilgrims came to New England well equipped for their task of founding a newer and better empire, while the Dutch, when they came to New York, brought with them as their birthright all the ideals of the freedom and the culture they had left behind them in Holland.
Feudalism had taken less root in Holland than elsewhere, and was checked by the de- velopment of town life in the form of munici- pal republics.
The walled cities were richer and more nu- merous than in England. The clergy was not one of the estates of the realm; there was a religious establishment which tolerated other faiths; taxation required the consent of the taxpayers ; land could be bought and sold in fee simple, and deeds and mortgages could be recorded ; there was a system of self-gov- ernment which had its town meetings, and its voting by written secret ballot, and its munici- pal representation in the state or provincial legislature ; and there was a republic of united states with its written constitution.
The Netherlands had the first system of common schools in Europe, besides founding five universities.
Before ever there was a Bible printed in England the common people of the Nether- lands had bought and sold and read twenty- four editions of the Dutch New Testament and fifteen editions of the Bible itself.
And it may truthfully be said that England
herself owes the beginning of her commercial and manufacturing supremacy to the great numbers of Dutch emigrants who, in the six- teenth century, sought refuge from the terrors of Spanish rule in the Netherlands and came to the very counties, too, in England, from which three-fourths of the Puritans who emi- grated to America came.
It is true, also, that the Dutch, who were the earliest settlers of the valleys of the Hud- son and the Mohawk, transplanted to Ameri- can soil many things usually credited to the New England Puritans, but which the English rule, after the conquest of 1664, abolished and substituted English ways instead.
The Dutch, for instance, brought with them careful land laws, religious toleration, the written ballot, separation of church and state, the village community of freemen, an inex- tinguishable love of liberty, and were in the habit of treating the Indian as a human being possessing the rights of manhood.
From the above we must infer that nearly all the political and other institutions which are peculiarly American in their scope and workings were copied from the Dutch and not from the English ideals.
II. - THE PLANTING OF HALF-MOON.
Around the early settlements of Half-Moon -- now Waterford-and Sar-ach-to-goe-now Schuylerville-in the closing years of the seventeenth century, clusters a wealth of his- toric memories.
The pioneer settlements of the old wilder- ness are always objects of interest. In them we see the beginnings of great states-a half dozen log huts built in the centres of little clearings, hewn out of the unbroken forests, bordered on either side by the pathless woods.
In looking back through the centuries we see, in our mind's eye, in these rude pioneer homes, the father, with his gun by his side, planting corn among the blackened logs and stumps or in the little Indian meadows on the river's bank. We shall see the mother surrounded
44
BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
by her infant children, plying her daily toil within the single room of her humble home, and often casting anxious glances into the shadowy woods which her imagination peo- ples with hordes of wild beasts and wild men and with troops of witches, goblins and other uncanny things.
We see in the daily struggles for the daily bread, in the hardships and dangers, in the sombre religious life of those early pioneer communities, the origin and the growth of those homely and sturdy virtues upon which the prosperity of great states has since been so securely founded.
The first settlement in Saratoga county was made at the " Half-Moon," near what is now Waterford. The hamlet known as the Half- Moon, in the early provincial history of the State, was situated at the first great bend in the Mohawk river, three miles above the Cohoes Falls on the north side of the stream, and was on the ridge of highlands bordering the valley of the Hudson about three miles west- ward of the river. What is now Waterford, so often called "The Half-Moon," was in early days called " Half-Moon Point," or as often, the "Foreland of Half-Moon." Only one place is now in the town of Half-Moon, and the ancient Half-Moon is now merged in the village of Crescent, which has of late years sprung up on the Erie canal about a mile to the west of it.
All through provincial times the Half-Moon was one of the points of interest on the old military trail which led north from Albany to Lakes George and Champlain.
Below the Cohoes Falls where it strikes the valley of the Hudson the Mohawk separates into four branches-locally called "Sprouts" - the northerly and southerly ones reaching the Hudson five miles apart at Waterford and West Troy respectively.
To avoid these numerous channels the old military road north from Albany was built over the hills above the falls and crossed the Mohawk at ancient Half-Moon. It therefore
became a military post of some importance- the first outpost north of Albany. A stock- aded fort was built there and garrisoned dur- ing all the wars.
The region around the Half-Moon and the Cohoes Falls was a favorite fishing and hunt- ing ground of the Mohicans, who, under the sway of Uncas, were the hereditary owners of the whole valley of the Upper Hudson, but who were driven away from it by the Mohawks about the advent of the white men. Yet, when the first white settlers came to the Half-Moon a remnant of the Mohicans was still there. The Indian name for Half-Moon was Nach- te-nach. From the mouth of Stony Creek, which runs into the Mohawk at Half-Moon, the Indians had a carrying-place across the main land eastward from the Mohawk to the Hud- son, thus shortening the trail and avoiding the Cohoes Falls.
It is a matter of tradition rather than of record, but probably true, that as early as 1633 some white people came across the Mohawk from the Manor of Rensselaerwick, built their rude habitations on the Indian lands at the Half-Moon, and thus became the first settlers of Saratoga county. The land was fertile ; the waters were full of fish, the woods of game, and life was easy in the wilderness. But the most lucrative business of these settlers at . the Half-Moon was the trade with the Indians in furs and skins.
This state of things at the Half-Moon lasted during the next thirty years of the Dutch occu- pancy of the province.
In the meantime some English fur traders from the valley of the Connecticut river visited the Half-Moon to buy furs from the Indians who came there, and made the attempt to pur- chase the region lying round about the Half- Moon of the Mohicans and drive out the Dutch settlers, as they had done on the Connecticut thirty years before.
The reader will remember that it is stated in Chapter I. of this history that in the year 1614 Adrien Block, one of the Dutch adven-
45
OF SARATOGA COUNTY.
turers at Manhattan, sailed through the Helle- gat (now corrupted into Hell Gate) and along the sound, discovering in his progress the Housatonic and Connecticut rivers. The last named river he named the Freshe water.
For several years afterward the Dutch visited the Connecticut (Quon-eh-ti-cut, "long tidal water," as the Indians called it), and drove a lucrative trade with the Indians. But in the year 1633 the Dutch attempted to plant a colony on the Connecticut river at what is now Hart- ford, built a fort there and began a settlement.
In the autumn of the same year the New Englanders at Plymouth fitted out an expedi- tion which sailed up the Connecticut, broke up the Dutch settlement, and finally drove them away.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.