USA > New York > The old New York frontier : its wars with Indians and Tories, its missionary schools, pioneers, and land titles, 1614-1800 > Part 24
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
A singular event seemed sent by a good Providence to our relief ; it was reported to me that unusual shoals of fish were seen moving in the clear waters of the Susquehanna. I went, and was surprised to find that they were herrings. We made something like a small net, by the interweaving of twigs, and by this rude and simple contrivance we were able to take them in thousands. In less than ten days each
363
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
family had an ample supply, with plenty of salt. I also obtained from the Legislature, then in session, 1,700 bushels of corn. This we packed on horses' backs, and on our arrival made a distribution among the families, in proportion to the number of individuals of which each was ' composed.
364
V
Jacob Morris and Talleyrand's Visit
1787-1795
A FRIEND and associate of William Cooper was General Jacob Morris, an early pioneer on the Butternut Creek. He had been an officer in the Revolution, on the staff of the disgraced General Charles Lee, and had served at the battle of Monmouth, where Lee's ignominious retreat nearly lost the day. General Morris arrived by way of Ot- sego Lake in 1787, and on the way fell in with com- missioners, going out to run the line between New York and Pennsylvania. In a published letter he says that, at a place twenty miles down the Susque- hanna, he met one of the Cullys whom he had en- gaged to visit the Butternut Creek, and report on his lands. Here General Morris, for eight gallons of rum, purchased a bateau, and on June 14th arrived with his goods at the mouth of the Unadilla River. The next day he " proceeded up the Unadilla about eight miles and camped up the Butternut Creek about two miles that evening, being the first white man that ever attempted its navigation." General Morris is, of course, in error here, the valley of the Butternut Creek having been settled before the Revolution. His statement gives interesting evi-
365
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
dence of the oblivion and desolation which the Border Wars had spread over the early settlements on the head waters of the Susquehanna.
General Morris thought the creek a beautiful stream. " I do solemnly declare," he said, "it is the handsomest navigable creek I ever laid my eyes upon." He decided to build a frame house, instead of a log one, as it would cost very little more, and a log-house was "eternally out of repair, sinking upon the door and window frames and always a dirty house." One of the first frame structures in the town must have been this house of General Morris, which a few years ago was still standing. He settled at the north end of the patent granted to his father, Lewis, and his uncle, Richard, to in- demnify them for property destroyed by the British. This property was on the estate of Morrisania, now a part of New York City, in the Borough of the Bronx. Originally the Morris patent, as already seen, had been granted to Lewis Morris's brother, Staats Long Morris, but he was now a British officer and the State was appealed to in 1785 for a new grant to other members of the family.
Lewis Morris had been one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. At the time of the signing, a large British force had landed within a few miles of Morrisania, and a short distance away ships of war were anchored. More than a thousand acres of fine wood land are said to have been ruth- lessly burned. His dwelling was attacked and injured, the family were driven out, the stock was seized, and tenants and servants were sent away. From that time until the evacuation of New York by the British, the family of Lewis Morris suffered many hardships from loss of property and the ruin
366
JACOB MORRIS
of their home, and this tract of forest land, known as the Morris patent, was given as compensation for their loss.
Jacob Morris was born in Morrisania in 1755. He therefore made his way to the Unadilla River, when thirty-three years old. His father had intend- ed him for a merchant, but on the outbreak of the war he offered his services to the American cause, and became an aide-de-camp to General Charles Lee. With Lee he went south, and is said to have served with credit at Fort Moultrie and elsewhere before the disastrous defeat at Monmouth. He was at one time attached to the staff of General Nathaniel Greene. When peace ensued, he returned to New York City, and was elected to the Legislature, serv- ing as Senator and Assemblyman. When he came down the Susquehanna, nearly sixty years of life were before him, during which he was to become one of the leading men in Otsego County.
Some of his activities were absorbed in what are known as " the political wars of Otsego Co." Gen- eral Morris and Judge Cooper were the Federalist leaders and Jedediah Peck the Democratic leader. Peck is described by Beardsley as an indomitable Democrat, a preacher as well as a man of affairs, illit- erate, but shrewd and wary. As a judge, however, his conduct was exemplary and honorable.
Wide interest for a time was taken in these " wars." They grew out of the election for governor in 1792. John Jay, although chosen on the face of the returns, was, by the action of the canvassers for Otsego and two other counties, declared defeated, and George Clinton took office in his place. Rufus King and Aaron Burr, the United States senators from New York, gave opposite opinions of the legal points in-
367
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
volved. Alexander Hamilton corresponded with King in regard to the dispute, counselling peaceful submission.
Mrs. Jay in writing a letter to her husband at the time, referred to the canvassers as having " taken upon them to give the people a governor of their election, not the one the people preferred," and added " people are running in continually, to vent their vexation. Poor Jacob Morris looks quite dis- consolate." Jay himself viewed the matter with philosophy and patriotism. " In a few years," he wrote to his wife, " we shall all be laid in the dust and then it will be of more importance to me to have governed myself than to have governed the state."
Contemporary with Morris as a pioneer, or nearly so, was Abijah Gilbert, who settled at Gilbertsville. He kept the first hotel. William Musson opened the first shoe store, and Abijah Gilbert and Joseph Shaw, built the first grist mill. Mr. Gilbert came from Warwickshire, England, that beautiful land in which lies the famed village of Stratford, where 300 years before a writer of immortal works first opened his eyes.
Many pioneers on the Susquehanna might have seen riding on horseback, in the late summer of 1795, a Dutch gentleman and two Frenchmen. One of the Frenchmen had recently arrived from Eng- land, and was best known as a former bishop of Autun-the gentleman whom Carlyle described as " his irreverent reverence of Autun," and now bet- ter known as Talleyrand. The other was named Beaumetz. Talleyrand had left France as one of that large body of émigrés whom the Reign of Ter- ror forced out of their native land.
On going to England, he had been expelled
368
TALLEYRAND'S VISIT
from the country, and while waiting for his ship at Falmouth had chanced to meet another famous exile named Benedict Arnold, who was then under sen- tence of death. Talleyrand on hearing that Arnold was an American, though ignorant of his name, asked him for letters of introduction in America. Arnold replied : "I am perhaps the only American who cannot give you letters for his own country. All the relations I had there are broken off. I must never return to the United States." Talleyrand, who reports this reply, adds that Arnold " dared not tell me his name."
Some thirty months were spent by Talleyrand in this country, the winter being passed in New York and Philadelphia, "without any other aim," he wrote, " than that of being away from either France or England, and impelled by the sole interest of see- ing with my own eyes the great American nation whose history is only beginning." The summers he spent in travel through the interiors of New York, Connecticut, and other States, visiting among other places the upper Susquehanna Valley on horseback.
Samuel Breck, who met Talleyrand in New York before he and Beaumetz set out on their journey, says Talleyrand had a rifleman's suit made for the occasion, and remarks the " pride and delight " with which the ex-Bishop of Autun displayed it. Several days and perhaps a week are believed by Wilkinson to have been spent where now stands Binghamton. A visit was also made to some Frenchmen who had settled in Greene. Talleyrand spent a few days at Cooperstown as the guest of Judge Cooper, and an acrostic on the Judge's daughter, printed in the Ot- sego Herald for October 2, 1795, is ascribed to him.
Talleyrand's Susquehanna visit seems to have been
369
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
a direct outcome of his acquaintance with Gouver- neur Morris, an uncle of Jacob Morris, whom he had known intimately in Paris, where Morris was for a time a conspicuous political figure. It was also at Gouverneur Morris's suggestion that three French princes in those years visited this country, receiving in their temporary distress advances of money from him for their expenses. They went to the Gene- see country, where Morris was interested in land. One of them was that Duke of Orleans who after- ward rose to be King of France, under the name of Louis Philippe. Returning from the Genesee country they went down the Susquehanna from Tioga Point in a bateau to Harrisburgh. The full story of their inland tour has never yet been told, even in French, else we should know whether they also came into Otsego County for the purpose of seeing the nephew of their benefactor. That Tal- leyrand visited General Morris is next door to a certainty, for he went to Cooperstown. Talleyrand, as well as the French princes, may have had financial aid from Gouverneur Morris.
During his journey Talleyrand says his mind was " neither free nor active enough to induce me to write a book." But we have in his memoirs several interesting passages that refer to his wilderness jour- ney, and among them these :
I made up my mind to leave Philadelphia, and therefore proposed to M. de Beaumetz * and to a Dutch gentleman of the name of Heydecoper to travel inland with me. They both accepted, and I must confess that I was pleased with the undertaking from the beginning. I was struck with
* Beaumetz had been a member of the States General at the outbreak of the French Revolution, but he emigrated in 1792. He finally died in India.
370
TALLEYRAND'S VISIT
astonishment ; at less than 154 miles' distance from the capital, all trace of men's presence disappeared ; Nature, in all her primeval vigor, confronted us; forests old as the world itself ; decayed plants and trees covering the very ground where they once grew in luxuriance ; others shoot- ing forth from under the débris of the former, and like them destined to decay and rot ; thick and intricate bushes that often barred our progress; green and luxuriant grass deck- ing the banks of rivers ; large, natural meadows ; strange and delicate flowers quite new to me ; and here and there the traces of former tornadoes that had carried everything before them. Enormous trees all mowed down in the same direction, extending for a considerable distance, bear wit- ness to the wonderful force of these phenomena.
On reaching higher ground, our eyes wandered as far as the sight could range over a most varied and pleasant pict- ure. The tops of trees and the undulations of the ground, which alone interfere with the uniform aspect of large ex- tents of country, produce a peculiar effect. In the face of these immense solitudes, we gave free bent to our imagina- tions ; our minds built cities, villages and hamlets ; the mountain forests were to remain untouched ; the slopes of the hills to be covered with luxuriant crops, and we could almost fancy we saw numerous herds of cattle grazing in the valley under our eyes. There is an inexpressible charm in thinking of the future when travelling in such countries.
To be riding through a large wild forest, to lose one's way in it in the middle of the night, and to call to one's companion in order to ascertain that you are not missing each other ; all this gives impressions impossible to define, because each incident reflects comically on the others. When I cried, " So-and-so, are you here ?" and my com- panion replied, " Unfortunately I am, My Lord," I could not help laughing at our position. That " unfortunately I am " so pitifully uttered, and that " My Lord " in allusion to the Autun bishopric, sounded most ludicrous.
Talleyrand returned to Europe early in 1797. Affairs in France were then to undergo the historic
371
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
change ushered in by young Napoleon Bonaparte's "whiff of grapeshot." Talleyrand at once threw himself into that flood tide by which men were led on to great fortunes, and eventually won for himself wide celebrity as the chief adviser of Napoleon and the first diplomatist in Europe.
372
VI
Churches Father Nash and Others Founded
1795-1809
A FTER the Revolution, missionaries speedily followed the pioneers, but the actual organi- zation of churches-except that Cherry Val- ley still maintained the church founded with the settlement of the place -- did not begin until the cen- tury had nearly closed. Early on the list were the Baptist church in Morris, organized in August 1793, and the Baptist church in Franklin, over which the Rev. Mr. Bacon was presiding in 1799. Soon afterward a Presbyterian church was established in Sidney. The faiths which Englishmen know as Nonconformist naturally were the first to start re- ligious societies among frontier settlements, founded mainly by New England and Scotch-Irish folks.
At Cooperstown, the Presbyterians and Congrega- tionalists founded a society in 1798, and in 1800 had secured a regular pastor ; but as early as 1795 what was called The First Religious Society of the Town of Otsego was formed, with Elisha Moseley as minister for six months, and out of this is be- lieved to have grown the society of 1798. To about the same period belongs the organization of the Presbyterian church of Oneonta, of which the first pastor was the Rev. Alexander Conkey. In the village of Morris a Presbyterian church was organized as " The first Presbyterian Church of
373
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
Unadilla," Morris as well as several other towns in Otsego County being then a part of the town of Unadilla.
Some time before 1796, an Episcopal minister, Daniel Burhans, D.D., had made a tour of the valley and visited various remote settlements. At Morris, in 1793, had been organized an Episcopal church, and in this work Dr. Burhans probably had some share. Dr. Burhans was a native of Connecticut, and had spent his youth in New Milford, one of the few Connecticut towns where Episcopalianism, after trial enough, had secured a foothold. Becoming a teacher, he had settled in New Lebanon, Columbia County, N. Y., not far from Catskill. Dr. Burhans before 1796 had made a tour of the upper Susque- hanna, returning with a conviction that a promising field existed for active missionary work by the Epis- copal Church.
He finally prevailed on the principal of the academy at New Lebanon, Daniel Nash, to prepare for orders and proceed into the country to continue the work. A native of Great Barrington, Mass., Daniel Nash had been graduated from Yale College in 1785, and for the next ten years had been prin- cipal of academies in New York and New Jersey. He had been reared a Congregationalist, but in 1797, after two years of preparation, was ordained an Episcopal deacon in St. George's Chapel in New York, by Bishop Provost, the first Bishop of New York, and a priest in 1801, by Bishop Moore. From 1797 until his death, Father Nash labored with great zeal as a missionary and acquired the offi- cial title of Rector of the Churches in Otsego County.
The supreme testimony to Father Nash's devo- tion and practical talents for church building, seems
374
FATHER NASH
to lie in the fact that he was able on such territory to succeed at all. Before his arrival, as we have seen, the upper Susquehanna settlements had been dominated by the faith of Calvin, not only since the Revolution, but before it. Indeed one cannot find anywhere a trace of Episcopal influence in the valley before he and Dr. Burhans began their work. Such influence prevailed along the Mohawk, but never on the Susquehanna. Outside of the Scotch-Irish, nine-tenths of the pioneers from 1784 until 1810 were from New England, and mainly from Connec- ticut, the home of Congregationalism. Nothing is more remarkable about them than the fidelity with which, on the new soil, they preserved the habits, customs, and faith of their older home.
Father Nash came into the valley with his wife for companion in his work, and this she remained through all his labors. They lived in rude cabins of unhewn logs, having scarcely a pane of glass at the windows and only a single room. In 1797 Philander Chase, who was afterward a bishop, made him a visit while on a tour of missionary observation in Central New York. Chase had succeeded Robert G. Wetmore, who had already labored along the head waters of the Delaware and Unadilla rivers, and from ill-health had been forced to retire. Bishop Chase says he helped Father Nash " carry his little articles of crockery, holding one handle of the basket, and Mr. Nash the other, and as they walked the road, talked of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." Even the log-cabin he lived in, was not his own. " Nor was he permitted," says Chase, " to live in one for a long time together." When it became necessary to change his residence, " he had not the means to move substances from one
375
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
cabin to another, except with his own hands, assisted only by his wife and his small children, and a passing missionary." The doors of the cabin had wooden hinges, creaking as they were turned. While the children built the fire, Mrs. Nash prepared the food for the bishop and the family. Of his wife's share in his religious work, Father Nash himself has written :
Often she gave me a child and then got on the horse behind me with another in her arms, and thus we would go to public worship for a number of miles. She excelled in music and I understood it all. When the congregations did not well understand how to make the responses she always did- it in a solemn manner.
A house in which Father Nash often conducted services was that of Percefer Carr, in Edmeston, the pre-Revolutionary settler and friend of Brant, who had been driven from his home by the Oneida Indians, and afterward had returned to it. Father Nash's labors in Otsego County lacked but one year of embracing a period of forty years. As late as 1835 he preached in Butternuts, Richfield, and New Lisbon. In Judge Cooper he had a valuable friend. Fenimore Cooper knew him well, and has given an instructive picture of his life and times in the " Pio- neers," where he appears as the Rev. Mr. Grant.
Many churches in Otsego County were the di- rect outcome of Father Nash's influence, and among these was St. Matthew's church of Unadilla. Ex- cept for him the latter church must have been a Presbyterian organization. The settlers in Unadilla, with scarcely an exception, were from Connecticut and Massachusetts. Many had already contributed liberally to the support of a Calvinistic church in
376
FATHER NASH
Sidney, among them men who were afterward asso- ciated with the founding of St. Matthew's.
This church was founded, not so much in the interest of any particular denomination, as to pro- , mote good order in the community. In its growing prosperity the new settlement had been suffering from vigorous energy unrestrained by moral influ- ences. The ease with which licenses were obtained, the cheapness of whiskey, and the remoteness from centres of authority, had led to wild and free life, and the order-loving men from Connecticut had become eager to set up an influence which should check the growth of disorder. What, in other places, and notably in Meredith, took the form of a ringing protest from a " law and order committee," in Una- dilla took the form of a church founded in 1809.
Similar conditions in other communities may have aided him in his work, but his own personality, his pious zeal, his apostolic sincerity and simplicity, were the main factors in his extraordinary success. Dr. Burhans once said that Father Nash had done more to establish and extend the Episcopal Church " than any other clergyman ever did in the United States "-surely an exalted tribute to a man labor- ing in such conditions. Father Nash spent the re- mainder of his life in Otsego County, dying in Burlington at the home of his son-in-law in 1836. With his wife, he was buried some years later in the churchyard of Christ Church, in Cooperstown, be- neath the shade of a noble pine-tree-a place he had himself chosen for the purpose. His grave, with that of his wife, remains a familiar spot in that burial ground. It is marked by an obelisk of marble, on which appears the name " Father Nash," the name Daniel being omitted. Under Father Nash, Christ
377
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
Church was organized in 1811. Within its grounds, and not far from Father Nash, also lies buried Feni- more Cooper .*
Father Nash's memory has been deservedly hon- ored in the shire town of Otsego. No Otsego pioneer deserves honor more-not the road builder or the leveller of forests, not the men who fought against Brant and the Tories, not William Cooper, with his vast land enterprises. To none of these, in so large a degree can we apply with such full measure of truth, the sayings that no man liveth unto himself, and that his works do follow him. The labors of Father Nash recall nothing so forcibly as the labors of the French Jesuits among the Iroquois in the seventeenth century. Apostolic is the word for his simplicity, as well as theirs, his heroic devotion, his complete self-abnegation.
* The same enclosure contains the grave of a man who, twenty-five years ago, was prominent in the newspaper world of New York City- Ivory Chamberlin.
378
VII
A Great Highway
1769-1802
B EFORE the war something of a road had been cut through the woods from Otsego Lake southward along the Susquehanna, and other primitive roads led to and from the lake ; but these highways had almost disappeared during the later years of the war, when Nature had done her effective work of reclamation. The one leading from the lake southward was improved in 1786 as far as Hartwick, and others were speedily taken in hand. Further down the river efforts were made to establish convenient communication with the Hud- son, and out of this grew a road which eventually became the great highway for a large territory. It was called the Catskill Turnpike, and had its termi- nus on the Susquehanna at Wattles's Ferry.
This road, as a turnpike, properly dates from 1802, but the road itself is much older. Its eastern end had been opened long before the Revolution with a terminus in the Charlotte Valley. It seems then to have been hardly more than a narrow clearing through the forest, what farmers call a " wood road," or fron- tiersmen a " tote road." It served as a convenient route to the Susquehanna, because much shorter than the older route by the Mohawk Valley. Over this road on horseback in 1769, as we have seen, came Colonel Staats Long Morris and his wife, the Duchess of Gordon.
After the war demands rose for a better road, and
379
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
one was soon undertaken with its terminus at Wat- tles's Ferry. This terminus appears to have been chosen because the river here was deep enough to permit the use of " battoes " during the low water that prevailed in summer. By the summer of 1788 the road was in passable condition. Alexander Har- per and Edward Paine in February, 1789, declared that they had been to "a very great expense in opening the roads from Catskill and the Hudson to the Susquehanna River." In the same year a peti- tion was filed for a road " from the Ouleout to Can- nadessagos " (the old Indian town near Geneva) ; and another in the same year in behalf of a proposed road, obviously the same, "from the Ouleout to Kyuga Lake." The road to Cayuga Lake (Ithaca) made slow progress, and in 1791 General Jacob Morris addressed to Governor Clinton a letter which shows that it was then still to be undertaken. Early in 1790 the State had taken the road to Catskill in charge. In August G. Gelston made up from sur- veys a map from Catskill "running westerly to the junction of the Ouleout Creek with the Susquehan- na River." The country had been previously ex- plored for the purpose by James Barker and David Laurence .*
In 1791 Sluman Wattles charged his cousin, Nathaniel Wattles, £4, 6s. for " carting three bar- rells from your house to Catskill," {I for " five days work on the road," and 15 shillings for " in- specting road." Besides Nathaniel Wattles, Menad Hunt was interested in the work, and in 1792 the two men appealed to the State to be reimbursed for money paid out above the contract price.+ During this year the father of the late Dr. Samuel H. Case,
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.