USA > New York > Schoharie County > History of Schoharie county, and border wars of New York > Part 41
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
455
AND BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK.
posed along the path on the crusted snow, that his enemies might know what he had done, giving the captives deer-skin straps with which to tie their shoes. The pursuing party found the buckles, but as it was near night the chase was given over, from fear, probably, of an ambuscade, as the numbers of the presumptuous foe were unknown. Brant first conducted his prisoners to the Oneida cas- tle, some sixteen miles southwest of Utica, and after procuring a supply of corn directed his course to Fort Niagara by the great southwestern route .* Early in the same spring, two boys, who had gone back of an orchard, only a few hundred yards from Fort Herkimer, to drive home cows, were surprised and captured by seven Indians and two tories, and hurried off to Canada .- Wil- liamson.
On the 9th day of July, 1781, a party of the enemy, number- ing about five hundred, mostly Indians, under the command of Captain John Dockstader, a tory, who had gone to Canada from the vicinity of the Mohawk, entered a small settlement called Curry Town,t in the present town of Root, three miles southeast from Spraker's Basin. A small block house had been erected near the dwelling of Henry Lewis and picketed in, previous to this invasion, which took place about 10 o'clock, A. M .; and so unexpected was it, that most of the settlers were at their occupa- tions at home when the first alarm was sounded. The Henry Lew-
*An incident mentioned by Priest, in the memoirs of David Ogden, (a cap- tive at the time,) as having taken place before their arrival at Niagara, de- serves a notice. Having halted al noon to rest, " Brant took a notion that Corporal Belts should exercise his men and fellow-prisoners, to see, as he said, whether the Yankees could go through the tactics of Baron Steuben. The corporal was very loth to do this, through diffidence or a broken spirit, hanging back considerably ; but Brant insisted upon it, when Betts drew out his men in due order, fifteen in number, quite a company, dressed them in a straight line, and then went through the manual exercise according to Sten- ben, to the full approbation of Brant. But as they did this, the tories assay. ed to make sport of them, which Brant forbid with a terrible frown, saying that the Yankees went through with it a d-d sight better than they could, and that he liked to see the thing done well, although it were done by the enemy."
t So called after William Curry, the patentee of the lands in that settle- ment.
30
456
HISTORY OF SCHOHARIE COUNTY,
is house is still standing. Jacob Dievendorf, a pioneer settler at that place, was at work in a fallow, with his two sons, Frederick and Jacob, and a negro boy named Jacobus [James] Blood. The last two were captured ; and Frederick, a lad twelve or fourteen years old, in attempting to escape to the fort, was overtaken, toma- hawked and scalped. Mrs. Dievendorf, with several female chil- dren and five or six slaves, fled from her dwelling and reached the fort in safety. Mrs. D. was a large fleshy woman, and in hastily climbing a fence, on her way to the fort, it fell with her. Peter Bellinger, a brother of Mrs. Dievendorf, who was plowing in the settlement, hearing the alarm, unharnessed a horse, mounted it, and rode toward the Mohawk, pursued by several Indians, who arrived in sight of the river almost as soon as he did ; he, how- ever, escaped. Rudolf Keller and his wife happened to be at the fort when the invaders appeared ; Keller, Henry Lewis, and Con- rad Enders being the only men in the fort at the time. Keller's oldest son, discovering the enemy, ran home : and as they lived too far north of the fort to think of gaining it, he hurried the rest of the family into the woods northwest of the house, where they gained a place of temporary safety. As they entered the woods they looked back and saw the Indians at their dwelling. Fred- erick Lewis and Henry Lewis, Jr., were among the first to gain the fort. The former fired three successive guns to warn the set- tlers of danger, and several, thus seasonably warned, found a safe retreat in the forest. Jacob Tanner, with hisfamily, were among the last to gain the picketed inclosure. The escape of this fa- mily would afford the artist a fair subject for his pencil. As the Indians [were approaching his dwelling, he fled from it with a small child in one hand and a gun in the other, followed by his wife, with an infant in her arms, and several children on foot hold of her clothes. The family were pursued toward the fort by the tawny savages, with uplifted tomahawks, thirsting for their blood. Finding he could not cut off their retreat, the Indian in advance drew up his rifle and fired at Tanner. The ball passed just over the head of the child he carried, and entered a picket beside him. Several guns, fired from the fort, caused the enemy to gain a more respectful distance.
457
AND BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK.
The Indians plundered and burnt all the buildings in the settle- ment, a dozen or more in number, except the house of David Lewis, who resided where Henry Vorhees now does, and a log school- house. Lewis was a tory, and although his house was set on fire, an Indian chief with whom he was acquainted, gave him permis- sion to put it out when they were gone. He did so, and part of the building is still standing. Jacob Moyer and his father, who were cutting timber in the woods not far from Yates's, were found dead and scalped, one at each end of a log. They were killed by the party who pursued Peter Bellinger. The Indians were visible about the settlement until after four o'clock, P. M., when they moved off with their booty. They either killed or drove away most of the cattle and horses in the neighborhood. Several of the latter which were let loose by the Dievendorfs on the approach of the enemy, fled from their pursuit, and leaping a fence the saga- cious animals gained a place of safety in the forest ..
The lad Frederick Dievendorf, after lying insensible for several hours, recovered and crawled toward the fort. He was seen by his uncle, Mr. Keller, who went out to meet him. As he ap- proached the lad, whose clothes were dyed in his own blood; the latter still bewildered, raised his hands imploringly and besought his uncle not to kill him. Mr. Keller assured him of his intended kindness ; took him up in his arms and carried him to the fort. His wounds were properly dressed and he recovered; but was killed several years after by a falling tree. Jacob Dievendorf, senior, fled before the Indians on their approach, and in his flight ran past a prisoner named James Butterfield, at a little distance from whom he threw himself under a fallen tree. His pursuers enquired of Butterfield what direction he had taken. " That way," said the prisoner, pointing in a different direction for the one taken. The party were thus put upon a course which soon carried them past Dievendorf, and left him his own master. Some of the pursuing Indians passed over the log under which the object of search was concealed, and had they looked back, must have discovered him. The captives taken along by the enemy, were Jacob Dievendorf, jun., the negro Jacob, two lads by the
458
HISTORY OF SCHOHARIE COUNTY,
name of Bellinger, and a little girl by the name of Miller, ten or twelve years old .*
On the morning of the same day on which Curry Town was burnt, Col. Willet dispatched Capt. Gros from Fort Plain, with forty men, with the two-fold object of looking for provisions, and for American foes. As it was known that the settlements of New- Dorlach and New Rhinebeck, were mostly inhabited by tories ; thither Capt. Gros directed his steps, in the hope of getting a few beeves for the garrison. Near the former residence of one Baxter, he struck the trail of the enemy ; drew up his men beside it, and marched them three times over the ground; when he found that one hundred and twenty men would hardly begin to beat a cor- responding track. By this test the number of the enemy was es- timated to be, at least five hundred, the number it was after- wards ascertained fully to equal.
Selecting two of his best men to follow the trail, Capt. Gros marched his company to Bowman's creek, to await the report of the scout. The latter proceeded about a mile and came upon the ground where the enemy had encamped the previous night. They approached sufficiently near to observe a large number of packs; and saw a few Indians cooking food-making prepara- tions, as they supposed, for the return of their comrades, who, as it proved, had then gone to destroy Curry Town. They proceed- ed hastily to the creek and reported to Capt. Gros what they had discovered, who dispatched John Young and one other man on horseback to Fort-Plain, to inform Col. Willet of the espionage, proposing to await his further orders at Bowman's creek.
Willet sent a message to Lieut. Col. Veeder to march as speedi- ly as possible with what troops he could collect at Fort Paris and elsewhere, to the theatre of action. Collecting all the men that could with safety be spared from Fort Rensselaer and Fort-Plain,
· The preceding facts respecting the invasion of Curry Town were obtained by the writer at repeated interviews with John, a son of Rudolf Keller, above named; Jacob Dievendorf, the young captive named; and Toby Blood, at that time a young slave in the Dievendorf family. Butterfield, although a stranger to Dievendorf at the time of saving his life, came to Curry Town af- ter the war, and was hospitably entertained by him.
459
AND BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK.
with the militia he could in the mean time assemble, Col. Willet set out for Bowman's creek. Passing Fort Clyde, a picketed block-house in Frey's Bush, a draft was made upon that for ad- ditional troops, and about midnight he united his forces with those of Capt. Gros : the aggregate number of which was 260, many of whom were militia. Willet set out for the camp of the enemy, and arrived in its vicinity about daylight. They were encamped in a cedar swamp on the north side of the Western turnpike, near the centre of the present town of Sharon. A part of this swamp may now be seen N. E. of the public house kept by Jacob Hiller, about two miles east of the Sharon springs. At that period the swamp extended farther eastward, and the encampment was on the highest ground in the swamp, only a few rods distant from the turnpike, as now laid. On the south side of the road a ridge of land may be seen, and still south of that a small valley. By a circuitous route Col. Willet gained this little dale, and there drew up his men with care in a crescent.
Thus prepared to receive the enemy, who were nearly double his own forces, he sent several men over the ridge to show them- selves, fire on the foe, flee, and thus elicit pursuit within the Ame- rican defiles. The decoy succeeded admirably, the whole party snatching up their weapons joined in the pursuit of the fugitives ; and Willet's victory must have been most signally complete, had he stationed his men nearer the enemy's camp, as he might have done without observation : but having nearly half a mile to run, the stool-pigeons were so hotly pursued that the lines were broken to rescue them, which prevented the surprise from being entirely successful. So closely were the camp spies pursued, that Fre- derick Bellinger, one of the number, was overtaken and slain. Willet's men had been previously instructed to take trees or fallen logs and not leave them, and they were in all cases to reserve their fire until they had a fair shot. The battle lasted about two hours, when, to use the words of an American soldier who was in that battle, " The Indians got tired of them, and made off."- John Adam Strobeck. He was a private under Capt. Gros, was in the hottest part of the engagement, and was wounded in one hip.
460
HISTORY OF SCHOHARIE COUNTY,
The enemy, in their retreat, were hotly pursued by the Ameri cans, led on by Col. Willet in person, and so completely were they routed, that most of their camp equipage, and plunder ob- tained the day before, fell into the hands of their victorious pur- suers. Willet continued the chase but a short distance, fearing he might in turn fall into a snare, and the tables be turned upon him .- Strobeck.
When the enemy returned in the evening to their encampment- distant from Curry Town 12 or 14 miles-they captured a Ger- man living near the former place, named Carl Herwagen. Find- ing it necessary to retreat, the Indians chose to kill their prisoners, lest they should lose the value of their scalps. Herwagen, who had been tied to a tree during the engagement, was loosened by his captor, who told him to run with the retreating Indians, in- stead of doing which he turned and fled the other way-was shot down, tomahawked and scalped. The prisoners were all scalped except Butterfield and one of the Bellinger boys, who were taken to Canada .- Jacob Dievendorf,* Mrs. Tunis Vrooman and Fre- derick Hiller. The latter settled in the vicinity of the Indian camp soon after the war.
Col. Willett, had five men killed in this battle, two of whom were Bellinger before mentioned, and a soldier named Kittle : and eight wounded, two mortally; Capt. Robert Mckean, a brave and meritorious officer who died the next day at Fort Rensselaer,t and a private who died at Fort Plain. Among the wounded was a son of Capt. McKean, who received a bullet in his mouth. The loss of the enemy was very severe, although never satisfactorily known ; it was supposed in killed and mortally wounded, to be about fifty. Capt. Dockstader undertook the principal direction of this body of destructives, as was afterwards ascertained, to show
· The Life of Brant erroneously states that he, (Dievendorf,) wns buried by Willet's men. He says he partially buried himself in leaves, to keep off the punkies and musketoes which annoyed him.
t This fort, erected early in 1781, was at Canajoharie, where a stone-house owned by Philip Van Alstine was inclosed. This ancient dwelling, now owned by John II. Moyer, is still standing. It was for a time the head quar- ters of Col. Willet.
461
AND BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK.
himself worthy of a major's commission. He is said to have had one other engagement, and returned to Canada with his forces greatly reduced, glad to retain a captain's commission .- Strobeck.
Two of the enemy carried a wounded comrade from the battle field, on a blanket between two poles, all the way to the Gene- see valley, where he died. Col. Willett returned to Fort Plain without burying any of the dead. After the battle was over and the conquerors had left the field, Col. Veeder,* arrived there with one hundred men from the north side of the river, mostly from Stone Arabia. He buried the Americans killed in battle, and for- tunately found and buried those murdered near the camp. Young Dievendorf, who had been scalped, was discovered alive rustling among the leaves, and his bloody face was mistaken for that of an Indian by one of Veeder's men who leveled a gun to fire upon him ; but a fellow soldier seasonably knocked up the weapon. Miss Miller, also scalped, was found alive, and was with the lad Dievendorf taken along to Fort Plain. The little girl was very weak when found, and on drinking a draught of cold water she instantly expired before reaching that fort. Jacob Dievendorf and his brother Frederick, under the care of Doctor Faught, a German physician of Stone Arabia, recovered from their wounds. -Strobeck, Dievendorf and Hiller.
Jacob Dievendorf's head was five years in healing. He still lives in Curry Town; is one of the wealthiest farmers in Mont- gomery county ; and is in truth a living monument of that unholy policy which armed the savage, taught from his infancy to prac- tise cruelty on an enemy instead of mercy, with a tomahawk and scalping knife, to slay the helpless women and unoffending off- spring of the rebel sons of Briton, who dared demand as their right, the privileges of British subjects.
Most of the cattle driven away from Curry Town, being aban- doned in the retreat of the enemy, found their way back alone to their former pastures : one of twelve horses taken by the enemy was recovered near the Indian camp, and three more broke loose from their new masters and returned to the settlement .- John Keller.
. Col. Veeder resided in the Mohawk valley, two miles west of the village of Fonda, on the farm now owned by Lynds Jones.
462
HISTORY OF SCHOHARIE COUNTY,
On the morning of the same day on which Col. Willet en- gaged the enemy, the Rev. P. N. Sommer, the Lutheran minister of Schoharie, then blind, was to have preached in New Rhinebeck, in which settlement he had several sons with whom he dwelt. His hearers, some from a distance of five or six miles, were as- sembling at the barn of Conrad Brown, and he had taken his text, as a messenger, named Utman, arrived and reported that he had heard several hundred guns fired in rapid succession a few miles distant. The minister, it is said, turned deadly pale on hearing the report, and the meeting was instantly broken up. Philip Hoff- man, the old gentleman living near the France family, who had escaped from the tomahawk of Crysler and his mercenaries the preceding fall, hastened home from the meeting to secrete his wife once more ; and just as he arrived at his house some half a dozen Indians came up and killed and scalped them both. No other injury was done in the settlement at that time .*
The Indians, in their retreat from Sharon, crossed the west creek in New Dorlach, near the former residence of Col. Rice, on their way to the Susquehanna .- Brown.
John D. Hiller, who now owns the ground on which the Sha- ron battle was fought, found several relics of that contest after the land was cleared up ; one of which, the barrel of a fowling gun, of London manufacture, is still in his possession. Many hu- man bones which were bleeching on the land below, were collect- ed and buried.
I conjecture that some small parties of the Indians who accom- panied Capt. Dockstader, lingered about the Susquehanna and re- turned to the frontier settlements. In the latter part of July, a party of the enemy, consisting of Capt. David, a Mohawk sa- chem, Seth's Joseph, a Schoharie Indian, and brother of Henry, and seven others-one of whom was suspected by the prisoners to have been a painted tory-surprised William Bouck (a relative
. Henry France, Marcus Brown, and the record of the Lutheran Church, which records the murder of Hoffman and wife, and Herwagen, as having transpired on the 10th day of July, the date given by several living witnesses. Col. Stone erroneously dates the occurrence on the 1st of July.
463
AND BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK.
of his namesake previously captured,) and his son Lawrence, (then 18 years old,) Frederick Mattice and his son Frederick, (a lad 10 years old,) and two little girls : one a sister of young Mattice, and the other a cousin. The captives when surprised, were engaged in harvesting wheat in the afternoon, near a large oak tree, which is still standing on the lands of John Henry, in Middleburgh. Two other lads, George, a son of Frederick, and Nicholas, a son of Wm. Mattice, who were in the field when the enemy appeared, escaped by flight .*
The party moved directly up the Schoharie valley, and after proceeding several miles, the two girls were liberated and returned home. They encamped the first night twelve or fifteen miles dis- tant from the wheat-field. When the journey commenced, the Indians had but little to eat : near the Gen. Patchin place, they shot a hedgehog, which, when they encamped at night, after burning off the quills instead of skinning, they roasted for their supper. Tomahawks were used instead of carving knives to dis- tribute it, but the prisoners declined eating.
At night, the captives were stripped of part of their clothing and tightly bound. In the evening a thunder shower came up, and all the party took shelter under a large tree. As they laid down to rest, Lawrence Bouck was so closely pinioned, he told Capt. David he could not sleep, and the rope was loosened. He then laid down between two Indians, while a third one located himself so as to substitute his body for a pillow. While the In- dians were eating supper, Lawrence, having an opportunity, told the elder Mattice, who was his uncle, that he intended to make his escape that night. Some time in the night, he worked him- self out from under the precious head he pillowed, and sat up. Perceiving the party all asleep, he succeeded in loosening the cord which bound his arms. A band, such as the Indians generally used to carry burdens over their shoulders, adorned his neck ; which, in his first efforts to loosen, he shirred in a noose tightly
. The particulars relating to the captivity of these persons, were derived at personal interviews, from Lawrence Bouck and the younger Mattice : two of the captives.
464
HISTORY OF SCHOHARIE COUNTY,
around his throat ; but this also he removed; then at a single bound, without touching his hands, he sprang upon his feet : a feat which he declared himself unable ever afterwards to perform. Casting his eye over the group indistinctly visible upon the ground around him, he saw no movement; and taking French leave of his drowsy companions, he directed his steps towards the Upper Schoharie fort, only a mile or two from which he had been cap- tured. Bouck afterwards learned from his father, that his running awoke the Indians, several of whom pursued him one hundred yards or more; but it being too dark to discover the course he had taken, they returned. The two Mattices were led out in the morning and tied to a tree to be killed, the Indians suspecting them of having loosened the cords which bound their fellow pri- soner. Mr. Bouck told them that his son would not have made his escape, had he not feared they would bind him so tight as to cause his death. He was treated with far less severity on the way to Canada, than was either Mattice or his son.
·
Lawrence Bouck arrived near the Patchin place, on his return, just at daylight, where he saw numerous tracks, and was at first seriously alarmed, as the captors had asserted, the day previous, that a large body of Indians were to attack the Schoharie settle- ments that day ; but on examining the tracks, his fears were dis- pelled, by observing that the feet which made them had not been mocasoned, as those of Indians would have been.
When it was known at the forts that the Boucks and Mattices were taken prisoners, Col. Vrooman dispatched Capt. Gray, with a small company of troops, in pursuit. He followed until eve- ning, and not overtaking the enemy, returned to Schoharie. Had he prosecuted the pursuit next day, it was believed he would have come up with them. It was the tracks of these soldiers that Law- rence Bouck discovered while returning .- George Richtmyer.
The captives were twenty days journeying to Niagara, and se- veral times were greatly straightened for food. Once on the way, probably on the Susquehanna, they lived a day or two on green apples ; and for four days they had nothing to eat. At Oquago they fortunately found a colt which had been lost by Capt. Dock-
465
AND BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK.
stader's party. This was killed, divided and feasted upon. Part of the animal was dried by the fire and taken along. One wild duck was also shot on the way. They went down the Susque- hanna river to Chenango Point, (now Binghamton)-on foot, however-and from thence to the Genesee valley, where the pri- soners were compelled to run the gantlet. Young Mattice had been previously divested of all his clothing, except his shirt, which rendered him peculiarly vulnerable to the gads and corn-stalks used by the young Indians. In the Genesee valley they obtained green corn and pumpkins. On arriving at the Tonawanda creek, the punkies tormented young Mattice nights, and he adopted the expedient of the lad Dievendorf-that of burying his person in the forest leaves-to keep them off. They all laid down to rest nights, like so many dogs in a kennel.
On arriving at Niagara the prisoners were confined in the guard house. They were soon after separated, Bouck being taken first to Montreal and then to Quebec-from whence, being exchanged for an American prisoner, he was removed to Halifax, and soon after sailed for Boston. From the latter place he traveled to Scho- harie, where he arrived between Christmas and New Year's day, the year succeeding his capture .* The Mattices did not return home until after the conclusion of peace. A tory brother of the elder Mattice, who had left Schoharie in 1777, then residing in Canada, on learning that Frederick was a prisoner, tried to per- suade an Indian to kill him. Such was the fraternal affection too often manifested in the Revolution by those who espoused the roy- al cause. Mr. Mattice was retained by an Indian, five weeks, to construct a log house. During this time, the latter, on one occa-
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.