Landmarks of Monroe County, New York : containing followed by brief historical sketches of the towns of the county with biography and family history, Part 4

Author: Peck, William F. (William Farley), b. 1840; Raines, Thomas; Fairchild, Herman LeRoy
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Boston : Boston History Co.
Number of Pages: 1160

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LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

George the Second, of land which was already included in the grant of 1726, for it conveyed a tract beginning six miles east of "Tierondequat," extending twenty miles on the lake shore and going thirty miles inland, thus embracing the greater part of what is now Monroe county. Many inducements were held out to settlers after that time, but none would come, probably for the reason that no fort was erected here, to which they could fly for protection.

A little army of nearly three thousand men, consisting of British troops and provincial militia with nine hundred Iroquois, all under General Prideaux, passed along here in July, 1759, on their way to attack the French fort of Niagara, at the mouth of that river. They encamped for one night at Irondequoit and for another at the bay to which was given the name of the commander.1 Three weeks later the same army stopped again at Irondequoit on their return, this time under Sir William Johnson, who had succeeded to the command, as General Prideaux had been killed in the siege that ended with the fall of Fort Niagara. Among the six hundred prisoners who accompanied the troops was Captain Pouchot, the French commander at the fort, who, after his return to his native land, wrote a memoir of the "old French war," with observations upon this part of the country, illustrated by several maps. On one of these are pictured the natural features of this locality, Charlevoix's nomenclature being pretty closely adhered to, both on the map and in the text, for in the one the Genesee river is put down as the Cas con-chacon, while in the other it is called Cascon- chiagon. Irondequoit bay is down as the Baye et Fort des Sables, and the three falls of the river are also indicated, as well as the principal Indian trails in this vicinity, one of which leads through a place called Anjogeen, apparently the same with the present Honeoye Falls. Pouchot feels it necessary to remark that "the Fort des Sables is only some high banks of sand which are found around the bay of this name," and then he goes on to say that one enters upon the navigation of the river through this bay, from the head of which is a portage of nine miles. The necessity for this toilsome route he explains by saying that, while

] The name assumed its present form by starting with a barbarous mispronunciation of its original (Prideaux) and thence a popular error connected it with the unfortunate British general, Braddock. There was, however, at least one intermediate style, for a map in a little book published at Albany in 1798 puts it down as Braddoe bay.

SULLIVAN'S CAMPAIGN.

the mouth of the river would be very good for the anchorage of vessels, the entrance is difficult on account of a bar, but if the country were in- habited a very convenient passage might be made. The navigation of the upper river, then made only in bark canoes, would, he observes, " be much more considerable if these countries should come to be occu- pied by Europeans." All the land between the bay and the river he declares to be low and marshy, even as far back as the upper falls, which he calls the Rideau des Cotes (or " side curtain "). " The whole country along these rivers," he says, "is beautiful and fertile, as is also in general the whole that the Iroquois inhabit."

A translation was made of this valuable work in 1866, in which were placed two engravings of the Genesee falls, reproduced from originals by Mazell, which were executed by that celebrated artist from drawings made on the spot by Capt. Davies, an officer in the royal regiment of artillery, who accompanied the army in 1759. There is also given in some editions of this translation a map of the country of the Iroquois, prepared in 1771 by Guy Johnson, the nephew and son-in-law of Sir William and his successor as "sole superintendent of the Six Nations and other northern tribes." Its interest to us lies in the names given upon it, where Canandaigua is put down as "Canandanigey," the Gen- esee as " Little Senecas' river," Irondequoit as " Adiarundaquat bay " and Sodus as " Aserotus bay."

CHAPTER V.

SULLIVAN'S CAMPAIGN.

The Revolutionary War -- Attitude of the Iroquois -- The Confederacy Divided -- Raids of the Indians -- The Massacre at Cherry Valley -- Reprisals Ordered -- Washington's Instructions to Sullivan -- Advance of the Army --- Destruction of Property -- Atrocities on Both Sides -- Killing of Boyd and Parker-Close of the Conflict.

The war of the Revolution passed by Monroe county, but there was one campaign that came so near to it and that was so closely associated with it as to be a fit subject for mention in this sketch. That is the in-

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

vasion of the Genesee country by a patriot army under Gen. John Sul- livan. The fall of Quebec in September, 1759, and the formal cession of Canada to the English crown four years later, had made but little difference in the relation of the Iroquois tribes to the American settlers in this state. They had always been, on the whole, friendly to the English, and they were so still. But when the discontent of the colonists against the exactions of the British government reached a height that indicated an appeal to arms, the Iroquois were thrown into a state of perplexity that ended in a disagreement which brought about the downfall of the confederacy. That compact and formidable league, which had for centuries resisted all attempts to break its force, fell to pieces because, for the first time, unity of action could not be main- tained. Both of the white parties in the approaching struggle perceived, at an early day, the importance of obtaining the alliance of the Six Nations. Shortly before the war broke out, the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, an influential missionary among the Oneidas, had tried to induce the whole confederacy to declare itself on the American side, and others had gone so far as to intrigue among the Canadian and Nova Scotia Indians for the same purpose. On the other hand Colonel Guy Johnson, who possessed much of the personal control of his uncle over the savages, found little difficulty in committing the Mohawks, the most warlike of all the tribes, irrevocably to the British interest. A grand council was held at the Long House, and earnest efforts were made by the Mohawk sachems to induce all the others to unite with them. If they had succeeded, it might not have changed the result of the war of independence, but it would have prolonged the conflict and increased the misery of many thousands. As it was, the Oneidas stood firm for the Americans and took the war-path in that cause, while the Ononda- gas and the Tuscaroras stood aloof, not engaging as tribes, though many of their young men fought on the patriot side.

The Mohawks, at the eastern end of the line, took up the hatchet for King George, almost to a man, and their example was followed by the Cayugas and by the Senecas at the western end, who put into the field their full fighting force of nearly a thousand men, leaving the tillage of the ground to the women and children. In addition to these ferocious allies, General Burgoyne had enlisted, in a more regular manner, a large

SULLIVAN'S CAMPAIGN.

body of Canadian Indians, and with them, as well as a finely equipped British army, had invaded New York in 1777. Not only did the Senecas and the Mohawks co-operate with this force, but after Bur- goyne's surrender they continued the war on their own account, some- times in connection with a band of loyalists called Butler's Rangers, and sometimes by themselves. Falling upon defenseless villages they slaughtered many of the inhabitants, while the settlers upon outlying farms were never safe from their murderous forays. None of these affairs excited more general horror than the massacre at Cherry Valley, the most western of the white settlements, in which, after an unsuccess- ful attack upon a garrisoned fort, many of the people in the surrounding village were killed and a few were carried off into captivity. This act, which was largely in revenge for the destruction of the Indian village of Unadilla, in Pennsylvania, was committed by a band consisting partly of loyalists, but mainly of five hundred Senecas, who, under the leader- ship of their war-chief, Sangerachta, set out for the purpose from Fort Niagara, near which most of the tribe were then located.

The limit of endurance seemed to be reached; relief from these con- tinued surprisals, this constant danger that threatened extinction, must be obtained in some way, or the whole state of New York, west of the Hudson, would have to be abandoned to its original occupants. Con- gress was beset by appeals for help, and finally that body, in 1779, authorised General Washington to "take the most effective measures for protecting the inhabitants of the states and chastising the Indians." To the mind of the commander-in-chief nothing appeared so well calcu- lated to accomplish this result as an invasion of the country of the Senecas, and for this purpose an army of about five thousand men was put under the command of General Sullivan, whose instructions from Washington included the following words: "The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners, of every age and sex, as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground, and prevent them planting more. Parties should be detached to lay waste all the settle- ments, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country be not merely overrun but destroyed." These severe directions were fully complied with.

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY."

In the summer of 1779 Sullivan's army advanced up the Chemung river, and encountered at Newtown, near the present city of Elmira, a hostile force, consisting of loyalists, British regulars and Indians, the last of whom were mainly Mohawks, most of the Senecas having fled to the western part of their own territory. The engagement at that point was not sauguinary, the enemy being easily routed and driven from their intrenched position. From Newtown the advance was continued to Geneva, Canandaigua and Conesus, the enemy keeping well out of sight most of the time. Desolation marked every step of the progress of the army, forty-one Indian villages being obliterated, a hundred houses torn down and hundreds of acres of corn, beans and potatoes being destroyed, with an enormous number of fruit- bearing trees. Finally the Genesee was reached, and there, at last, was found the "Chinesee castle," of which the invaders were in search, but its name was more pretentious than its reality, and it did not take long to destroy it, for its defenders had vanished. It was situated at Little Beard's Town, now Cuylerville, in Livingston county, and that was, perhaps, the most northern point of Sullivan's advance, though many writers think that some portion of his army descended the Genesee as far as the site of Rochester. Nothing, however, but tradition and oft-repeated stories, whose origin cannot be traced, forms the ground for that belief, and against it is the fact that neither the general's report nor any of the journals of the soldiers, which were quite full and which have been offi- cially published, give any indication thereof.

Atrocities were committed on both sides during the campaign. Our soldier shot down more than one defenseless squaw, and an incident is recorded in their journals where a house was burned to the ground with two decrepit savages in it. A milder form of barbarity was shown in the custom of scalping the dead and bringing the reeking trophies into camp, and, in two instances, in taking off the skin of slain Indians from the hips downward, to make into leggings, one pair of which was to be worn by a major in the Continental army. These acts have ex- cited little detestation among the white people, because they have not been much written about, but great indignation has been felt, and properly, over the fate of two soldiers who fell into the hands of the savages. As General Sullivan was not able to find any guides to lead

S. L. BREWSTER.

SULLIVAN'S CAMPAIGN.

him further north than Conesus lake, he dispatched twenty-six riflemen, under Lieut. Thomas Boyd, as a scouting party. These found the village on the Canaseraga creek of which they were in search and had started to rejoin the army when they found themselves surrounded by several hundred Rangers under the command of Colonel Butler and Indians under the leadership of Brant. Twenty of the soldiers were killed at once, four escaped, Boyd and a private named Parker were captured. The lieutenant refused to divulge anything with regard to the move- ments of the army and he was put to death after being tortured in the most horrible manner, while Parker was beheaded without preliminary suffering. Brant and Butler, especially the latter, have been blamed for having permitted this atrocious deed, but there seems to be no valid reason for the accusation. Brant left the scene, and probably his Mo- hawks went with him, before Boyd's examination, and immediately after that Butler and the Rangers marched hurriedly away to Fort Ni- agara. During the confusion of the retreat, for such it was, the two prisoners were evidently carried off by the few Senecas present, for they were killed during the day by direction of Little Beard, a sub- chief of that tribe. So hot was the pursuit of the patriot troops that they came upon the mangled bodies of the victims while they were still warm and their remains were buried on the spot where they died. There they rested until 1841, when, on the 21st of August, the anni- versary of the massacre, they were brought to Rochester and deposited with imposing ceremonies in a receptacle on the summit of Revolu- tionary hill, in Mt. Hope cemetery, Governor Seward delivering the address on the occasion.

The Genesee river was the western limit of this inglorious invasion, and from that Sullivan returned eastward. He ended his campaign without having forced his foe to any decisive fighting and content with having inflicted untold misery and sorrow, for he had broken up the homes of a whole people who in the following winter suffered destitu- tion, hunger and even starvation in the vicinity of Fort Niagara, where all the Seneca families had sought refuge. The whole movement was of doubtful utility, for it produced scarcely any impairment of the fighting force of the powerful tribe; the women and children were the principal sufferers, and the warriors had, after that, an additional stim- 5

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

ulus to the ferocity with which they made reprisals upon the white set- tlers long after the war had practically ceased between the contending armies. It was, in its effects, Denonville's invasion over again, and the final results would have been as disastrous as in the former case if the war had turned the other way, leaving the Indians with a free hand with which to yield the scalping-knife and kindle the torture fires. As it was, the Senecas never returned to their former settlements east of the Genesee, but gathered in straggling parties near the western frontier, issuing from their lairs to work vicarious revenge, and, as swiftly as they had appeared, retreating to their lurking-places, whither it was indiscreet, if not impossible, to follow them. These destructive raids continued during the interval between the surrender of Corn- wallis, on the 19th of October, 1781, and the final signing of the treaty of peace, on the 3d of September, 1783. Even after that time the Senecas in the neighborhood of Fort Niagara, encouraged, as some think, by the officers of the garrison, would have continued the war on their own account and in their own way.

One of the terms of that treaty was that all private debts on either side should be paid in sterling money, and another condition was that Congress should recommend to the several states that further proceed- ings against the loyalists should not take place and that persons with claims on confiscated lands might have facilities for recovering them. But the recommendations of Congress were wholly disregarded ; the Tories, as they were called, were dreadfully harassed, particularly in New York state, and were deprived of most of their rights, while the express provision regarding private obligations to residents of Great Britain was thwarted by the refusal of several of the states to repeal the statutes which precluded the collection of such debts. Under the loose government of the Confederation, which preceded the Union, Congress was powerless to compel compliance, and England, in the meantime, retained its clutch upon the northern frontier fortresses in the United States, as it had a right to do, until justice should be done, so that it was not till 1795 that these posts were finally surrendered. That left Fort Niagara for a long time as a nucleus of disaffection, a safe retreat for the savages. Toward the close of 1783 or in the early part of 1784 they had laid their plans for a stealthy and murderous

SOVEREIGNTY AND PRE-EMPTION.

excursion on a grand scale, but, just before they were about to start, Ebenezer Allan, a man white by birth but Indian by association, of whom more will be said hereafter, got hold, in some way, of a belt of wampum and sent it, as a symbol of peace, to the commandant of the nearest American post. That officer, though he may have had some suspicion of the fraudulent nature of the transaction, assumed to think that all was done in good faith. He immediately answered the missive by sending to the sachems a message declaring that the wampum was accepted and that peace should endure between the white men and the Indians. The latter were grievously chagrined at the trick that had been played upon them, but their respect for the sacredness of the pledge was so potential that they abandoned their sanguinary intention, and from that time there were no hostilities between the races in the region of Western New York.

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CHAPTER VI.

SOVEREIGNTY AND PRE-EMPTION.

Surrender of Northwestern Territory -- Dispute between New York and Massachu- setts -- Conflicting Royal Charters-Rights of Conquest from the Dutch -- Commission- ers Appointed -- A Settlement Effected.

The independence of the thirteen colonies having been acknowl- edged, and the conflicts with the Indians being at an end, it might be supposed that New York would remain in peaceful and undisputed possession of all the lands within its borders and that its territorial limits would be as well defined as those of any other country. Far from it. A new source of contention developed itself, which required the greatest exercise of moderation and discretion to prevent the argu- ment from growing into an appeal to arms between two sister states. Allusion has been made above to the fact that the claims of the English colonists were based on charter rights and on conquest from the Dutch. When the French claims, based on the right of discovery, were put out of the way, the British government cared little which colony owned or

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

held jurisdiction over any particular piece of territory, and the colonies themselves, before the Revolution, were scarcely more concerned about the matter. But during the war mutual jealousies began to crop out, and the southern states, hemmed in, as was then thought, by the range of the Alleghany mountains, were distrustful of the great preponder- ance that might be obtained by New York and New England if the expansion of the Northwest, which was recognised as belonging to those states, should ever assume the proportions that were claimed for it. Partly to quiet these apprehensions and partly, as was stated, to provide "a common fund for the expenses of the war," the delegates in Congress from New York, in pursuance of an act of the legislature, executed a deed on the Ist of March, 1781, ceding to the United States both the jurisdiction and the right of soil in all lands west of Lake On- tario. Four years later Massachusetts followed the noble example of New York by giving up all its claim to that region, but Connecticut refused to part with its land beyond the border till 1800, and even then it retained a large tract in Ohio, which has always been known as the Western Reserve.

Soon after independence was achieved, the dispute between Massa- chusetts and New York, as to which was the real owner of the land in the western part of the latter state, assumed a definite form. Massa- chusetts, with some show of reason, based its claim upon priority of charter. In 1606 James the First of Great Britain granted to two associations, called the London company and the Virginia company, all the land on our eastern coast running from the thirty-fourth to the forty fifth parallel of north latitude, the dividing line being uncertain from the fact that the southern, or Virginia, territory overlapped the other by three degrees. Ignoring both of these charters, more partic- ularly the first one, James gave, in 1620, to the council in Plymouth, England, a grant of land extending from the fortieth to the forty-eighth degree and running from sea to sea. Under this charter a sub- grant was given by the home company, in 1621, to the colonists of Plymouth, Mass., whose original patent was invalid by reason of their having ob- tained it from the Virginia company, whereas they had settled on land belonging unquestionably to the London company. In 1628 the same council gave to what became the Boston colony a grant of land imme-

SOVEREIGNTY AND PRE- EMPTION.

diately north of that given to the Mayflower people and running, like theirs, to " the western sea." In the next year King Charles the First gave a charter confirming this grant and calling the grantees "the gov- ernor and company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." This last charter was afterward revoked and toward the end of that century the two colonies and the region north of them were united under one government as "the province of Massachusetts Bay." In this docu- ment the territory was stated to extend " toward the South sea, or west- ward as far as the colonies of Rhode Island, Connecticut and the Narra- gansett country." This was a most vague delimitation, meaning, if it meant anything, " as far as those colonies extended," for it was well known, at that time, that they lay south of the new province, and the western boundary of Connecticut had been fixed, a few years before that, at a line twenty miles east of the Hudson river. It was really upon the charter of 1620 that the claim of Massachusetts for indefinite extension rested, and the weakness of the claim lay in the fact that the charter had been superseded by that of William and Mary in 1691.

New York's claim was actually much stronger, though it did not go back so far for an English charter. It was based, primarily, on the Dutch discovery, in 1609, of the Hudson river-for Hendrick Hudson, the first explorer of that stream, though an Englishman by birth, was then in the service of Holland-and on the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, in 1614, both of which events occurred before King James's charter of 1620. How far west the sovereignty of Holland ex- tended, or was then supposed to extend, is quite uncertain, but the Iroquois, not only Mohawks but Senecas, at this end of the line, made concessions indicating that the Dutch influence, to say the least, was widespread in this direction. In March, 1664, Charles the Second, with characteristic generosity in giving away what did not belong to him, deeded to his brother, then Duke of York and Albany and afterward King James the Second, all the land held and possessed by the Dutch in this country, and later in the same year an expedition was sent over which made the royal gift something more than words by capturing New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, whose names were at once changed to correspond with the ducal titles. Holland reconquered its North American province in 1673, but a year later gave it back in exchange

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

for Surinam, in South America, and then Charles's deed of gift to James was made more valid by its reissue in the same words. The claim of New York was strengthened by the fact that in repeated cessions of lands by the Indians, alluded to in the preceding pages, though the different grants had been made to the king of England, those cessions had been obtained by the efforts of the governors and other officials of the colony of New York, that all the deeds had been witnessed in their presence, without the mention of any other colony, and that New York had always borne the expense of the Iroquois alliance and was relied upon alone to preserve it.

So much for its own claim, and with regard to that of Massachusetts it was pointed out that the two royal charters of 1620 and 1628 ex- pressly excepted from their operation "all lands actually possessed and inhabited by any other Christian prince or state ; " that, as the Dutch were at that time in possession and occupancy of the New Netherlands, their lands could not be granted away by the English sovereign, and that the language quoted was really a recognition of their ownership and jurisdiction. In answer to this, Massachusetts admitted that New York succeeded to all the rights of Holland, whatever they were, but it was insisted that the Dutch had never settled or made any positive claim of jurisdiction further west than the Mohawk river, which should therefore be taken as the boundary ; that Charles the Second's grant did not define the western limit at all, and that the Indians did not cede directly anything to New York. Thus it will be seen that the principal force of the arguments of each disputant lay in showing up the weakness of the other side, rather than in establishing the tenability of its own position.

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Landmarks of Monroe County, New York : containing followed by brief historical sketches of the towns of the county with biography and family history, Part 4

Author: Peck, William F. (William Farley), b. 1840; Raines, Thomas; Fairchild, Herman LeRoy Publication date: 1895 Publisher: Boston : Boston History Co. Number of Pages: 1160

Author: Peck, William F. (William Farley), b. 1840; Raines, Thomas; Fairchild, Herman LeRoy
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Boston : Boston History Co.
Number of Pages: 1160