USA > New York > The old New York frontier : its wars with Indians and Tories, its missionary schools, pioneers, and land titles, 1614-1800 > Part 8
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It is probable that Alexander was never the actual owner of a patent that has carried his name to our times, and will carry it to remote generations of land- owners. It is much more obvious that Hugh was the real Wallace at first interested, and that another interested person, and eventually the sole one, was Gouldsborough Banyar. In some of the early road surveys the patent is called Banyar's Patent.
The history of many patents is curious in that the real owners frequently were not those to whom the patents were issued. Long before the Revolu- tion the greed for land had become so sharp that a limitation had been imposed as to the amount which any one person could hold : this limit was 1,000 acres. An easy way out of the difficulty, however, was found. Accommodating friends acted as fictitious owners, and promptly made over to the real persons in interest the titles granted in their names. Cer- tain facts point to this method in the case of the Wallace patent. It is known, for example, that in 1772, and at other times before the Revolution, Hugh Wallace and Banyar sold lands from this patent to the Rev. William Johnston, who settled in Sidney, and lots 61 and 62, comprising 100 and 384 acres respectively, to Robert McGinnis about the same time, and yet the name of neither appears in the list of those to whom the patent had been issued two years before.
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THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
Banyar was of English birth, and had come to America about 1737. He soon rose to be a man of note in the province. In 1755 he was a registrar of the Colonial Court of Chancery, and in 1753, 1756, and 1769 an officer of the Prerogative Court, which attended to the probate of wills and the granting of licenses of marriage. When Cadwallader Colden became acting Governor in 1769, he was Deputy Secretary of the Council, and when a riotous demonstration followed the arrival of the Stamp Act paper, his name appeared on a placard posted by Colden seeking to quiet the enraged people.
When the war came on, Banyar retired from the city to a place on the Hudson River. He was a Tory in his sympathies, and possessed large landed interests. As early as 1754 he had applied for a tract of 1,000 acres in what is now Cobleskill. All through the State land papers runs evidence of an earth hunger on his part, that was appeased in many parts of Tryon County. He was advantageously situated to realize his ambition, holding the office he did. With the advent of war Banyar's extensive holdings became a powerful incentive to discreet action. He escaped the fate of the Wallaces, but escaped narrowly. On January 15, 1776, his name appeared on a list of suspected persons who were to be arrested, and he was one of those from whom arms were taken. His home on the Hudson was at Red Bank, and later at Rhinebeck.
It is related that while he lived at Rhinebeck a British officer arrived from New York City with a sealed letter asking his advice as to the best method of attacking Esopus. He received the letter, en- tertained the officer and his attendants handsomely, and sent them away with a sealed reply which con-
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THE PATENT CALLED WALLACE'S
tained this brief message : "Mr. Banyar knows nothing." This was an example of the prudence with which he bore himself throughout the conflict. When the war closed, he took up his home in Al- bany, and in Albany he continued to live until 1815, actively interested in internal improvements, and generously contributing to them. He died with- out children at the age of ninety-one. Worth, who knew him in Albany, as early as 1800, says of him :
Among other curious objects that attracted my attention during the early part of my residence in Albany, was a blind old man led about the streets by a colored servant. It was Gouldsborough Banyar, a most intelligent, wealthy, and re- spectable old gentleman. He was the most perfect type of the Anglo-American then living. He was the last of a race (a class of men now totally extinct), a race born in Eng- land, grown rich in America, proud of their birth and prouder of their fortune. He was a royalist in feeling (at the outbreak of the war) and doubtless in principle-his feelings it is believed underwent no change: his principles in the course of time became temperately and I may add judiciously modified by his interests. He had while in his office of Secretary obtained from the Crown many large and valuable tracts of land.
These lands were the source of his wealth. With the eye of intelligence sharpened by the peculiarity of his posi- tion he watched the course of events and like a skilful pilot steered between the extremes. He wisely kept a friend in either port and had always an anchor to windward. In short, he preserved his character from reproach on the other side of the water and his lands from confiscation on this. It is impossible, I think, to reflect a moment upon the posi- tion which Mr. Banyar occupied during the war of the Rev- olution, and the manner in which he sustained himself in it, without conceding to him a thorough knowledge of the world, great sagacity and great address.
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THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
For a long period the Banyar lands in the Sus- quehanna Valley were leased on the redemption plan ; that is, for a lot of say one hundred and sixty acres, $24 rent was annually paid, with the privilege -in some cases at least-of purchase at $400. Older residents of Unadilla remembered a gentleman named Dexter who used to come out annually from Albany to collect the rents, and on Sundays was certain to be seen in St. Matthew's Church. It was from Mr. Banyar that this church received the gift of a farm on the road to Sidney long known as the Church Farm. Some of the Banyar leased lands were not purchased until very recent times, and perhaps all have not yet been acquired in fee simple. By the terms of his will, the name of Gouldsborough Banyar must survive with ownership of the property, and thus there exists to-day an opulent gentleman of that name.
When the student of titles in this valley reaches the period at which purchases were made by settlers, he encounters besides Banyar's name, the names of other men who were well known as large land- owners in this State at that period, and who lived chiefly about Albany and in New York. Best known among such names is Livingston. In Sidney a large tract was owned by Peter van Brugh Liv- ingston. He died about 1792, and after that date we meet with John Livingston's name. John Liv- ingston was one of the original stockholders of the Catskill turnpike. He sat in the Assembly in 1786 from Albany County, in 1788, 1790, and 1801 from Columbia County, and for several terms was a senator.
Another name associated with these lands is Van Vechten. Abraham van Vechten was an eminent
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THE PATENT CALLED WALLACE'S
lawyer in Albany, a graduate from the office of John Lansing. Having been the first lawyer admitted to practice, after the adoption of the Constitution, he was familiarly called the "father of the New York bar." He was born in Catskill, educated in New York, and began to practise law at Johnstown, but soon removed to Albany, where he had much dis- tinction. He served in the Legislature, was Attor- ney-General, a member of the Constitutional Con- vention of 1821, and declined a seat on the Supreme Bench offered him by John Jay. He was born in 1761 and died in 1837.
John and Abram G. Lansing, other owners, be- longed to an ancient Albany family. John Lansing was an eminent lawyer, a native of Albany; was often a member of Assembly, twice Speaker of the Assembly, a member of Congress, a delegate with Alexander Hamilton and Robert Yates to the Phila- delphia convention that framed the Constitution of the United States, a justice of the State Supreme Court, Chief-Justice of the State, and Chancellor. He mysteriously disappeared in New York in 1829, and was supposed either to have been robbed and murdered or accidentally drowned.
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IV
The First Settlers
1720-1772
I N the coming of the Scotch-Irish to the head- waters of the Susquehanna, the New York frontier received a new and vital addition to those human forces which preserved and ex- panded its patriotism during the Revolution. To the valley of the Mohawk and Schoharie men of this race had not yet come. Following the Dutch, who at Schenectady had planted the first considera- ble settlement beyond Albany, the Palatines, about 1720-25, or thirty years after Schenectady was destroyed by Frontenac, had arrived in those val- leys-a hardy, industrious, stolid race, by whom wealth was easily wrested from the fertile soil that extended southward to Schoharie from Fort Hunter and which bordered the Mohawk for many miles around German Flatts. A few of the English left Manhattan Island and the Hudson Valley for the Mohawk, and to the Mohawk, long after the first Palatines, came others of German and Dutch origin, forsaking their earlier homes in the Hudson Valley. Following Sir William Johnson in the middle of the century also came a few Irishmen with many Scotch Highlanders of the Catholic faith. But these were mainly traders or officials and were sel- dom or never agriculturalists. These additions left the bulk of the Mohawk and Schoharie population still German and Dutch - perhaps three-fourths of it.
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THE FIRST SETTLERS
During the last years of the French War, the in- dustry of these people had been so productive that, between the mouth of East Canada Creek and Tribes Hill, nearly 500 dwellings had been erected, with excellent farm buildings and large areas of land in an excellent state of cultivation. When the Revo- lution began, the whole valley was populous enough to be divided into four districts for organization and defence, each with a committee of its own-the Mo- hawk, Canajoharie, Palatine, and German Flatts dis- tricts, the latter being the most westerly and having for its chief village a town of seventy houses. How thickly populated the valley had become may again be seen in the chain of forts which stood there in I779. Beginning with Fort Hunter and extending westward, there were in the order named, Fort John- son, Fort Harrison, Fort Hendrick, Fort Herki- mer, Fort Dayton, Fort Schuyler (on the site of Utica), Fort Stanwix, and Fort Bute, while, what was known as the Royal Block House, stood near the eastern end of Oneida Lake.
From these three elements-Palatine, Scotch- Irish, and Dutch-came the men who bore the shock of war when the conflict with England began. It was they who became patriots almost to a man ; it was the houses and crops of these which were burned; it was they who were murdered or made prisoners, they who took the field against the in- vader and died at Oriskany, Klock's Field, and Johnstown. The ranks of the Tories, meanwhile, were recruited from the English, Irish, and Scotch Highlanders. By men of those races were organ- ized the forces which, with Brant and his Indians, effected the massacres of Cherry Valley and Wyo- ming ; burned Springfield, German Flatts, and Can-
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THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
ajoharie ; reconverted into a wilderness the upper Susquehanna ; laid waste the Schoharie Valley and spread desolation through almost every settlement on the Mohawk west of Schenectady.
Among these frontier communities the ones planted by the Scotch-Irish on the Susquehanna formed the extreme outpost of civilization in New York. Of all these regions theirs was the most sparsely settled ; they were themselves the most re- mote from contact with other settlers, occupying as they did the high lands of a new water-shed ; it was upon them that the Indian and Tory raids in the Border Wars were first to fall, and it was their lands alone that became entirely depopulated-a state of annihilation to which no other part of the frontier was reduced. Who these men were and whence and how they came may therefore be set forth in detail.
The Scotch-Irish comprise a people who have exerted wide influence in American history. In the seventeenth and early in the eighteenth century they were maintaining in the north of Ireland the stern faith of Calvin. Besides following the teachings of John Knox, they had a political faith devoted to freedom, as opposed to the oppression exercised by the English Crown. Unable to find peace at home, they at last concluded to emigrate to the New World. About 1720 the movement westward had reached large proportions. Douglas Campbell says, " ships enough could not be found to carry from Ulster to America the men who were unwilling to live except in the air of religious freedom." This migration bears, at several points, an interesting resemblance to the great Palatine influx from which the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys, as we
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THE FIRST SETTLERS
have seen, had received their strongest tide of population.
Mr. Campbell shows that the Scotch-Irish influx continued half a century. Entire districts were almost depopulated. Within a period of two years, some 30,000 crossed the Atlantic. Many were well-to-do farmers. Others had been bred in Scot- tish universities. As a class, they were the equal of any emigrants who in those times sailed out of English harbors. To that Scotch-Irish emigration America owed General Henry Knox, John Stark, Anthony Wayne, John Sullivan, and George, James, and De Witt Clinton. From the same stock were descended Patrick Henry and Daniel Boone, and so were Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Hugh McCulloch, and Horace Greeley. Of those who landed in Boston from five ships in August, 1710, the larger portion went to New Hampshire, and in their settlement revived the name of the Irish town of Londonderry, memorable to them for its siege. Others went to Worcester, and others to Maine.
From the New Hampshire settlement came the men who built up Cherry Valley,* the first perma- nent settlement within the domain of Otsego County. John Lindesay having obtained in 1738 his patent of 18,000 acres, came into the country at once with his wife, his father-in-law, Lieutenant Congreve, and a few servants. Lindesay had been Naval Officer of the Port of New York, as well as
* Cherry Valley then formed part of Albany County, but from Albany in 1772 Tryon County was taken off and named in honor of the British Governor of New York, William Tryon, only to be called Montgomery County a few years later, after the patriot soldier who fell at Quebec. Tryon County, as formed in 1772, embraced a large territory that has since been divided into several counties-Otsego, Montgomery, Herkimer, Fulton, Hamilton, St. Lawrence, Lewis, Oswego, Jefferson, and parts of Delaware, Oneida, and Schoharie.
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Sheriff of Albany County. During the first winter he suffered from want of food, but an Indian from Oghwaga relieved his wants by bringing food from the Mohawk Valley. Following him came a young clergyman named Samuel Dunlop, whose acquaint- ance Mr. Lindesay had made in New York City, and who in 1741 induced several Scotch-Irish fami- lies from Londonderry to emigrate to Mr. Linde- say's patent. Among them were David Ramsey, William Galt, William Dickson, and James Camp- bell .* By these men were laid the foundations of the Cherry Valley settlement which was to play so conspicuous a part in the later history of the upper Susquehanna.
It is believed that a log church was almost at once erected near the present Phelan house, and that Mr. Dunlop there opened a school. The local tra- dition is that he often taught his boys to scan Ho- mer and Virgil as they attended him while plough- ing in the fields. The settlement grew slowly. Ten years later only a few additional families-not more than five-had come in; but in 1754 an im- portant accession was obtained in the Harpers, who came from Windsor, Conn. The father of the Harpers had gone to Maine in 1720 with other Scotch-Irish, and thence, owing to trouble with the Indians, had removed to Massachusetts. Gould +
*James Campbell, the ancestor of Judge W. W. Campbell, the author of the Annals, and of Douglas Campbell, was born at Londonderry, Ire- land, in 1690, and was a son of William Campbell, of Campbelltown, Argyleshire, Scotland. William Campbell, a cadet of the house of Auchenbreck, engaged in Monmouth's rebellion, and escaped to Ireland, where he served as a lieutenant-colonel at the siege of Londonderry. James Campbell landed in Boston in 1728, and in 1735 removed to Lon- donderry, N. H., and thence to Cherry Valley.
t Jay Gould, the celebrated New York millionnaire, wrote a History of Delaware County just before he became of age, which was an enter- prise supplementary to a map he had made of Delaware County. In
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THE FIRST SETTLERS
says they removed to Windsor in 1741. One of the boys was John, who, about 1760, went back to Connecticut to attend school at Lebanon, which was near Windsor, and here he enjoyed the acquaint- ance of an Indian boy whom he was afterward to meet on this frontier in quite different circumstances -Joseph Brant.
It was not until after 1763 that Cherry Valley enjoyed any marked increase. With the English conquest of the country now achieved, new confi- dence inspired the men who wished to people the fertile lands beyond the Hudson. In 1769 forty or fifty families, mostly Scotch-Irish, were living in the settlement, while smaller colonies in the same neighborhood could count up as many more, a large proportion of the latter being Germans, who had come from Schoharie and the Mohawk.
The settlers of this period who went beyond the head of the river found it necessary to employ certain boats which had long been used by traders and mis- sionaries. They were called " battoes," a corruption of the French batteaux, and originally had been adopt- ed as substitutes for the bark canoe, which was not strong enough to bear the weight of heavy mer- chandise. French traders had used them probably for a half century before they were employed by the Susquehanna pioneers. Those which English trad- ers used were mostly built at Schenectady, white pine boards being used. The bottoms were made flat to adapt them to shallow water, and at each end collecting his material he had valuable assistance from his friend S. B. Champion, of the Bloomville Mirror. In the spring of 1856 Mr. Gould had his manuscript ready for the printers and placed it in the hands of a Philadelphia house. A few weeks later the printing house was destroyed by fire and only a few proof-sheets of the book escaped destruction. At Roxbury he courageously rewrote the book and it was issued late in the same year.
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THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
they were sharp and higher than in the centre. Their length was from twenty to twenty-five feet, and the sides from twenty inches to two feet high. In the centre they were three and a half feet wide. Of these boats much has been read by all who are familiar with narratives of pioneer life at that time. Civilization had no more important tool.
Cooper, in his "Wyandotte," brings a family down the river in one of these boats and up the Unadilla to a stream that answers to Butternut Creek in 1765. He represents Captain Willoughby, with a force of mechanics and laborers, as following the Mohawk to Otsego Lake, from which the party went in boats to the mouth of the Unadilla, "which stream they ascended until they came to the small river that ran through the captain's estate." In the following spring the captain took his family out from Albany. He made visits to " Edmeston, of Mount Edmeston," and by the spring of 1775 the settlement numbered more than one hundred souls. The ensuing story relates to the arrival of seventy or eighty warriors, Mohawks and Onondagas, in the autumn of 1776, and the dispersion of the set- tlement to which, after the Revolution, the survivors returned.
Fiction though all this is, it is a fairly accurate picture of those times, in so far as pertains to dates, locality, and events. We know that in 1765 Joa- chim Van Valkenberg, whose family had been in the Mohawk Valley forty years, settled at the mouth of Schenevus Creek, where for many years he sup- plied food and shelter to incoming pioneers. On the Unadilla River, settlements had been attempted even earlier, at least in the upper part of the valley, which was entered by crossing the hills from the
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THE FIRST SETTLERS
upper Mohawk. From the Oriskany patent in 1724, one Squire Brown, whose first name has been lost, came with three or four families to occupy lands not far from the confluence of the two branches of the · Unadilla, near where now is the village of Unadilla Forks. But in the following year these families were driven out by the Indians.
How soon another attempt was made is uncer- tain, but we may assume that when missionary work had been well begun at Oghwaga and in Oneida, the way was opened to settlers. Soon after Colonel Ed- meston obtained his patent, Percifer Carr, in his employment, arrived with his family. He had sailed from England in the same vessel as John Tunnicliffe, ancestor of the well-known family of Richfield. This was as early as 1765. Carr began a clearing, and to him Cooper perhaps refers as one of those who com- posed the small community at Mount Edmeston. At South Edmeston is still preserved a clock which Colonel Edmeston brought to this country from England. To this locality in 1774 came Abel and Gideon De Forest, who seem to have belonged to the French Huguenot stock which had made still earlier settlements on the northern part of Manhat- tan Island, now known as Harlem.
The locality was not far from the scene of an in- cident of the French War-German Flatts, where in 1751 had arisen a village of sixty dwellings and about 300 souls. An attack was made on the settle- ment by a French officer named Belêtre on Novem- ber 12, 1757. He aroused the settlers at three o'clock in the morning, burned their buildings, killed forty or fifty persons, and made prisoners of about 130. Belêtre, after killing all the cattle and horses, hastily retreated, and when Lord Howe
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THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
came up from Schenectady he found " nothing but an abandoned slaughter field." From this village, either before its destruction or soon after, settlers probably crossed the hills to the Unadilla-the dis- tance being about ten miles.
The entire Mohawk Valley had then become a fairly populous place, from which a family now and then sought new land on the Susquehanna. In 1757 a French traveller between German Flatts and the mouth of the Mohawk found 683 farm-houses on the way, not including houses in the villages of Canajoharie, Fort Hunter, and Schenectady, the lat- ter town having 300. Many of these dwellings were built of stone. Circumstances point to con- temporary settlements on the Unadilla River above its mouth. Several families which came in after the Revolution are believed to have been here be- fore it began. Patents having been issued, it was almost inevitable that settlements should be begun. Owners of patents desired first of all things to see their lands occupied. Besides Scotch-Irish, Ger- mans came. We know that when the war began, some of the Unadilla settlers who fled before Brant, went to German Flatts instead of Cherry Valley.
In Richfield Springs, on the Schuyler patent, settle- ments as early as 1758 had been begun. Remains of them were found near Schuyler's Lake * after the war. A small improvement at the foot of the lake was known as the Herkimer farm, and the creek at the same place also bore the Herkimer name. Near the site of Richfield Springs had settled the family of Tunnicliffe on an estate to which they gave the name
* Now called Canadurango Lake. It lies near the village of Rich- field Springs. On a map of 1756 it is called Canadurango Lake, which shows that its original name has been restored to it.
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THE FIRST SETTLERS
of The Oaks, used afterward as a name for Oaks Creek .* At the head of Otsego Lake, as early as 1762, a settlement had been planted, one of the men being Nicholas Lowe of New York, who for a time, according to Richard Smith, lived on the place. At the foot of the lake white men probably had lived at much earlier dates + than these-for the most part traders-and in 1761 John Christopher Hartwick had obtained his patent to the lands that still bear his name, but his deed from the Indians was dated in 1752. Mr. Hartwick, in attempting to take possession in 1761, settled at the foot of Otsego Lake, only to discover that this place was not included in his patent. In consequence, his actual settlement further south was delayed several years. In 1800 Mr. Hartwick committed suicide.
Throughout Otsego the Fort Stanwix treaty stimulated immigration at once. Here now was a vast and fertile territory which might be peacefully occupied. For two or three years the surveyor's chain and rod became familiar instruments. Care-
* Levi Beardsley's Reminiscences. Mr. Beardsley read law in Cherry Valley, where he devoted some thirty years to its practice. He served in the Assembly, and was twice elected State Senator, being president of the Senate in his last term. Mr. Beardsley, who had accumulated a large property, lost heavily on land investments-losses which he might have borne had he not become further involved by indorsements. Re- moving to Columbus, O., where he had a farm, he again lost through fire. Disposing of the land, he returned East, and spent his old age in New York City, where his Reminiscenses were published - a large volume filled with matter of much interest in Otsego County. It is written in an elevated and flexible style, and reveals an understanding at once vigorous and generous. It has a charm not always found in the writings of old men who have met with misfortune-being tolerant and sympathetic as well as intellectual, and it has not a trace of bitterness toward any human being. The reader closes it with a feeling that its author was an inspiring example of the old man beautiful.
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