USA > New York > The old New York frontier : its wars with Indians and Tories, its missionary schools, pioneers, and land titles, 1614-1800 > Part 9
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t Cooper in The Deerslayer places them there in 1743-45. But these must have been traders.
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ful and elaborate maps were drawn and parchment deeds executed.
Contemporary with the treaty were new settlers at the two ends of Otsego Lake, the Springfield one being occupied by Captain Augustin Prevost, who had served in the British army in Jamaica, and the one at the southern end by Prevost's father-in-law, Colonel Croghan. Captain Prevost was making improvements in May, 1769. He had built a log- house, had cleared sixteen or eighteen acres of land, and erected a saw-mill, "the carpenter's bill of which," says Smith, " came to $150." He had arrived early during the previous year, taking up a house which Nicholas Lowe had occupied. Sir William John- son described him in 1769 as having "a good property." Three miles west of Prevost a Mr. Young, before 1769, had erected a saw-mill, from which Prevost probably got his lumber. Prevost brought in several families and employed them in making improvements .* Between him and Cherry Valley existed a German settlement of ten families who had come into the country in 1767. A man named Myers kept a tavern and established a pot- tery in what is now the town of Middlefield. Twelve families were living there in 1769.
Colonel Croghan, in the summer of 1769, had car- penters and other men at work building two dwellings and five or six other structures. While attempting to colonize his extensive tract, he lived on it for a few years with his family. About this time a man named Cully, from Cherry Valley, made a settle-
* At the time Springfield was burned, in 1778, the following were the heads of families who were driven out : George Canouts, Isaac Collier, William Staneel, George Mayer, Conrad Picket, Henry Bratt, David Teygert, Adolph Wallrath, Isaac Quack, John Spallsbery, Jonah Heath, Henry Deygert, George Bush, and a Mrs. Davis.
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ment at the mouth of Cherry Valley Creek. Others in the same neighborhood were named Carr and Burrows. In the town of Maryland, on the Sche- nevus Creek, farms had been taken up, and the place had received its present name as early as 1769. The same appears to be true of Worcester. Contemporary with Croghan was Colonel Staats Long Morris, who came to view and make plans for the Morris patent. With him came his wife, the Dowager Duchess of Gordon, their route into the country having been from Catskill over a road to the Schoharie or Charlotte River, and thence to the Susquehanna. Colonel Morris in 1770 had induced settlers to make their homes on his tract; among them Andre Renouard at Elm Grove, and Louis and Paschal Franchot in Louisville, which they named after the French King. The Franchots had recently come to America from France. In 1892 their last male descendant in the county died at Morris. Other Frenchmen appear to have followed. Cooper makes Leather Stocking refer to " one or two Frenchmen that squatted on the flats and married squaws." In 1777 followed Benjamin Lull with several grown-up sons, and then Jonathan Moore from Dutchess County. In the same year Ebenezer Knapp took up his home on Butternut Creek, and Increase Thurston soon followed him. Other families on this stream were named Brooks, Garret, and Johnson. The settlements formed by these men were known collectively as the Old England District.
With the survey of the Otego patent in 1769 preparations were made for a large immigration. With Smith and Wells, who were from Burlington, N. J., had come Joseph Biddle, William Ridgway,
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and John Hicks. The survey completed, they began to bring into the country goods and building material. One of those whom they induced to settle was Joseph Sleeper, a Quaker preacher from their own State, who built the first saw-mill in what is now Laurens,* and also the first grist-mill. For erecting his grist-mill, Sleeper received an additional gift of 100 acres of land lying on both sides of Fac- tory Creek, a tributary of the Otego. Sleeper was not only a preacher, but a surveyor, millwright, car- penter, stone-mason, and blacksmith, and built his mills himself. His patrons often lived thirty miles away. Sleeper intended to plant a Quaker colony around his mills, but the Revolution inter- fered with the enterprise. Brant was a frequent visi- tor at his house. Sleeper lived on friendly terms with all the Indians. William Ferguson belongs to this period in the settlement of Laurens. He was from Cherry Valley, as was also Joseph Mayall, who ar- rived in 1771 and was followed by others. Mayall had been employed by Smith and Wells as a chain- bearer, and afterward in the war gained repute as a scout. By trade he was a weaver, and it is related that he used standing trees as supports for his loom.
Richard Smith was a frequent visitor to the Otego patent after making the survey-for once in 1773 and again in 1777. In 1770 he took title to 4,000 acres lying on both sides of the Otsdawa Creek, a
* Named after Henry or John Lanrens. Henry Laurens was presi- dent of Congress in 1777-78. He was afterward captured by the Brit- ish, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and exchanged for Lord Corn- wallis. In 1782, with Jay and Franklin, he negotiated the treaty of peace. He was a native of Sonth Carolina and died in 1792. His son, John Laurens, was aide and secretary to Washington, taking part in every battle of the Revolution in which Washington's immediate command was engaged.
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few miles above its mouth. He owned another tract on Otego Creek, in the town of Laurens, on which he built a large house to which he gave the name of Smith Hall. This house was still standing in 1896. During his tour of the valley, he had for guide Joseph Brant, whose wife and child went with the party. Smith was a brother of Samuel Smith, the historian of New Jersey. He was elected a mem- ber of the Continental Congress, and served until 1776, when his health failed.
Near the mouth of Otego Creek about 1772 settled Henry Scramling, who took up 1,000 acres on both sides of the Susquehanna, and during the war was a second lieutenant in the Tryon County militia. Near the mouth of the Charlotte settled Henry Young, whose family appear to have been at Worcester, Mass., with the Rev. William John- ston thirty years before. Henry Scramling had two brothers, David and George, who came with him, either before the war or on his return after it. Some of the Scramling lands have never passed from possession of the family, who originally were from Fort Plain. George Scramling kept the first tavern in Oneonta, on a site where afterward stood the Peter van Woert residence. David Young was a brother-in-law of Henry Scramling, and with him came his brother, John Young. Another early Oneonta name is Stoughton Alger, who lived on land now known as the Bingham and Pierce farms, and John van Derwerker, who became a captain in Colonel Harper's regiment in the Revolution. Van Derwerker built the first grist-mill in the town, on what are now called the Morrell Flatts, remains of it being still visible. His daughter became the wife of John Young, who kept a hotel for many years.
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The most of these Oneonta families were from the Mohawk Valley.
Captain Peter Bundy, of Salem, Mass., is said to have come to lands now a part of Otego in 1777, which is probably a mistake for an earlier date, as the war was then in progress. He settled here again after the war. Mr. Bundy brought a family of chil- dren with him, his household goods being conveyed on a sled shod with wood and drawn by oxen. Near Otego village a family named Ogden settled. They were from Saratoga County, where they had lived for perhaps ten years, and had a son named David who joined Colonel Harper's regiment in the Revolution as second lieutenant.
To the Scotch-Irish of Cherry Valley we proba- bly owe the coming of the men who settled in what was long known as the paper-mill district of Una- dilla. One of them was Dr. McWhorter, who as late as 1840 was living in Cortland County, then an octogenarian. He told Harvey Baker he had " studied medicine and commenced its practice in Unadilla " while that town was in Albany County, which fixes the date as before 1772. From this we may infer that at that time settlers had arrived in considerable numbers.
By the early summer of 1777 it is certain that this part of Unadilla had become what for the time was a village. A map of the valley made in the following year by Captain Gray indicates a number of dwellings as then standing, and calls the place Unadilla Town. Some of these families seem to have occupied farms afterward known as the Gould Bacon, Bundy, Deyo, McMaster, Arms, and Nor- man Foster farms. Soon after the Fort Stanwix treaty, three families were here, their names being
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Woodcock, Sluyter (or Sliter), and Dingman. The Sliters came in 1770, and were from Poughkeepsie, where their ancestor had settled in 1663. Others soon came. Mr. Johnston, the founder of Sidney, induced families to follow him from the Mohawk Valley and others from Cherry Valley. One of these was his son-in-law, David McMaster, who afterward, if not then, took up a home on Unadilla soil. Before the war, and probably in 1772, Rob- ert McGinnis acquired title to lots 61 and 63 of the Wallace patent and settled on them. He was after- ward active in the British cause.
The family of Harper, of Cherry Valley, who were to become the stanchest patriots during the Border Wars, along with seventeen other persons, secured a patent in what was afterward named Har- persfield. It comprised 22,000 acres .* John Har- per, the principal proprietor, in 1770 went over to the head of the Charlotte with his wife and a sur- veyor whom Governor Tryon had sent out. While the men were engaged in making the survey, Mrs. Harper erected a rude log-hut with bark roof, and spent several days and nights in it alone. The entire family came over from Cherry Valley in the following spring. Besides John, the father, and Abigail, his wife, there were nine children, includ- ing William, who became a member of the Provin- cial Congress ; James, who took part in the war; Mary, who was made a prisoner at the massacre of Cherry Valley and carried into captivity ; John, who held a colonel's commission during the Revolution ; Joseph, who fought against the Indians in Harpers-
" The title-deed to this tract long remained in the possession of the Harper family. In 1861 it was destroyed in a fire at West Harpersfield. The seal attached to it was of the usual kind for that period, a thick piece of wax, round and large as a tea-saucer.
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field and Schoharie, and Alexander, who fought at Joseph's side and was made a captain. After the war Alexander was a prominent land-owner in Del- aware County, and later went to Ohio, where he founded a place called Harpersfield.
Of all the Scotch-Irish who settled on the upper Susquehanna we have the fullest account of the Rev. William Johnston. He was a native of Mullow Malo, Tyrone, had been seven years a student at Edinburgh University, and came to America before 1736, when under twenty-five years of age. He in time found his way to Worcester, Mass., where some of his countrymen formed a Presbyterian church, with him for pastor; but from the Congre- gationalists they met with violent opposition. When they had nearly completed a church edifice, it was attacked at night, chopped down and destroyed. An appeal for redress was met with reply that Mr. Johnston's ordination was " disorderly." Permission to rebuild was refused. The whole body of Scotch- Irish then left the place, many of them going with Mr. Johnston to Windham, near Londonderry, N. H., where in 1747 Mr. Johnston was made pas- tor of a young church, holding its first meetings in a barn. He served the church with " great faith- fulness " until 1752, when, for want of proper sup- port, he laid down his charge. At Windham he married Anna Witter Cummings, daughter of a physician in the British service, and said to have had an income of $600 a year, which was cut off during the Revolution.
From Windham Mr. Johnston found his way to Schenectady County, and with him went some of the Scotch-Irish. In that region he preached many years. That he knew the men of Cherry Valley is
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clear enough, and that he should have acquired an interest in the Susquehanna region was natural, for at Schenectady lived many of the best-known fur traders, and not far from the place was the home of Sir William Johnson. Accordingly, in the sum- mer of 1770 he came in by way of Cherry Valley. Accompanied by an Indian guide he went as far down as Oghwaga, where were missionaries with whose work he was familiar. He no doubt bore some message from Sir William Johnson, and through Johnson's influence aimed to establish friendly relations with the red men. He described the Indians as living on venison, fish, beans, and corn. Deer existed by the thousands and fish by the hundred thousand.
Returning to Schenectady, Mr. Johnston, from Mr. Banyar, " purchased a tract of 640 acres situ- ated at the flats one mile east of the Unadilla Forks" (sic) for $1 per acre. On 250 acres of this land was white pine timber of the largest size. In the following year he went back to his land with his son Witter. In the autumn he con- cluded to leave his son with the three friendly Ind- ian families living at the place, and returned to com- plete arrangements for bringing his wife and other children into the country. During the summer he and Witter had erected a log-house sixteen by twen- ty-two on the west side of what was afterward known as Brant Hill, and had cleared some land. Besides his wife he brought back in the spring four daugh- ters and his son Hugh, born in Duanesburgh in 1763.
Other families soon followed them. Captain Gray's map shows for this settlement two mills which John Carr built on what is now known as
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the Baxter mill site, near the mouth of Carr's Creek, the iron for these mills having been carried on his back by Carr himself from Otsego Lake. Another building at the same place was John Carr's dwell- ing, while farther west were a number of houses, one of which was Mr. Johnston's. In the account that has come down to us of the settlement at the time of Brant's visit in 1777, Brant's words of warn- ing are : " I will give these five families forty-eight hours to get away. So long they shall be safe." By " five families " Brant meant those who would not declare themselves for the King. Dingman, Carr, and Woodcock were Tories. Of the five " rebel " families, we know the name of only two- Johnston and Sliter.
When the church at Worcester, Mass., was dis- persed by the Congregationalists, Lincoln says many of its numbers "emigrated to the colony on the banks of the Unadilla in New York," from which it would appear that they were in advance of Mr. Johnston by many years. It is more probable that during the thirty years following the dispersion, they had remained with him in Windham and the Mo- hawk Valley. Three years after the Johnstons ar- rived, a young Indian poisoned himself from disap- pointment in love. He was buried in the ground set apart by the Johnstons for a cemetery, and his grave was the first ever opened in that ground. Mr. Johnston read a Christian burial-service over this young heathen child of the forest. A baptismal bowl of old blue china, which Mr. Johnston brought to America from Scotland, was in use for many years in the church at Sidney, and is now in possession of John Henry Johnston.
But the town of Sidney had been settled at another
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point. Several families had taken up farms on the site of the future Wattles's Ferry. Sometimes the place was known as Albout, or Ouleout,* and some- times as the Scotch Settlement. The earliest au- thentic date connected with it does not go back of the beginning of the war, but its origin seems to date from near the time of Mr. Johnston's arrival. These men undoubtedly came from Cherry Valley. None of their names has come down to us. Even the part which they took in the war is in doubt. Priest says they went to Cherry Valley, which im- plies that they were Whigs, but another statement is that they became Tories and went to Canada. It is not unlikely that both parties were represented in this little village.
The mills on Carr's Creek were not important mills, except as the earliest industries in all that re- gion. Some years later Abraham Fuller built larger ones on the Ouleout at East Sidney, where now stand the mills long known as Lloyd's. The date given for this enterprise is 1778, which is, perhaps, too early, but if correct it shows that along this stream were many farms then in cultivation.
The foregoing is the available record of pioneers who invaded the Susquehanna before the great con- flict. The settlements they made marked the far- thermost advance westward in the province of New York. If we bear in mind the Fort Stanwix line, we can understand why the first settlement in Bingham- ton was not made until 1787; the first in Ithaca not until 1784 ; in Elmira, not until 1787 ; in Auburn, not until 1793, and in Buffalo not until 1794.
* Written Aulyoulet in 1768 and translated for Dr. Beauchamp as A Continuing Voice. In 1779 a stream "east of Unadilla " was called the Owarioneck, which meant Where the Teacher Lives. This was, per- haps, the Indian name of Carr's Creek.
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Therein lies the special eminence of the upper Sus- quehanna lands as an old New York frontier.
By these men was initiated on this frontier that perpetual warfare of man against nature to which an actual end never will come so long as " water runs and grass grows." It is a familiar story of pioneer life and has often been described-that first warfare waged with the axe and fire against count- less numbers of towering trees covering hills and bottom-lands with primeval growths. On sites where other giants had grown up and died of old age in the long and uncounted past, the pioneer, by felling these prides of the forest, literally cut out the space whereon to rear his humble home, its roof of bark, its walls of logs, its floor the bare earth.
Gradually he extended his cleared area and was able to plant corn and wheat, the blackened piles of half-burnt logs and the enormous stumps he could not extract making later in the season the only blemishes on the golden surface of his autumn fields. Beyond his clearing lay the narrow forest-borders of his home. From the smallness of his first expanse of cleared land, sprang a feature that became familiar to many frontier homes. It was well into the fore- noon ere the sun could reach his cabin-door, and it was early in the second half of the day when the last rays of light vanished from his western windows, casting dark shadows from the adjacent forest over his small domain.
As time went on, the pioneer's problem was how to get rid of vast accumulations of timber in fields where he had felled the pine, the oak, and the maple. Enormous bonfires were lighted, and from the re- mains pot and pearl ashes were obtained. These fires made stirring scenes to look upon and must
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have been a chief source of heightened pleasure for the small boy. On hill-sides as well as in valleys, conflagrations were lighted, and so vast were some of them as to brighten and make resplendent at night for miles around the hills across the valleys, the waters of streams, and the azure sky above them all. Not less familiar were the noises made by falling trees and the resounding axe-blows that were echoed back from neighboring hills.
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V
Journal of a Tour in 1769
HE journal of Smith and Wells gives us not only an authentic description of settlements, but many other facts important to a history of the pioneers. Smith and his companion had left their home early in May for New York, and had proceeded up the Hudson in a sloop to Albany, and by the Mohawk to Canajoharie, or " to Scram- lin's, which is nearly opposite to Col. Fry's." The journal often shows us where roads had been opened. The condition of the frontier roads proves, as nothing else can, how deep an impression had been made on the wilderness.
First of all roads to the Susquehanna, was the Cherry Valley one from Canajoharie, by way of Bow- man's Creek, which had been begun soon after the founding of the settlement in 1740. A quarter of a century later Smith described it as from the Mohawk " the only wagon road to Lake Otsego." As early as 1768 there existed a road westward from Catskill to the Susquehanna, which we must accept as the beginning of a turnpike completed more than thirty years afterward. While at Catskill in May, Smith learned that the Duchess of Gordon and Colonel Morris had just gone by that route "to Cherry Valley and the Susquehanna with two wagons." On reaching Cherry Valley himself, Smith was in- formed that " there is a route from Kaatskill across to this line, namely : from Kaatskill to Akery, 8 miles ; to Batavia, 12; to Red Kill, 8 ; from Red Kill to a lake at the head of the Mohawks, or main branch
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of the river Delaware,# 12, and to Otego about 16 ; in all 56 miles." At " Yokums " Smith learned from Mr. van Valkenburg of a path to Schoharie, " the same which Col. Morris and the Duchess of Gordon lately took on horseback with their retinue."
At this period a primitive road also existed from Cherry Valley westward to Springfield, while an- other went to the settlement at Middlefield. Over the route from the Mohawk to Cherry Valley went many Connecticut people who, before the Revolu- tion, settled in the Wyoming Valley. With the set- tlements that followed the Fort Stanwix treaty, came roads in various parts of the country. In 1777 there existed not only a footpath down the valley from Otsego Lake, but " some thing of a road along the river." + Another ran from the upper Otego Creek Valley to Otsego Lake. Richard Smith, Na- thaniel Edwards, and others built it in the summer of 1773. The lake at Richfield was then connected with Otsego Lake, and elsewhere forests had been opened and hills crossed in order to provide routes shorter than those which followed the courses of streams. These roads, however, were scarcely more than narrow lines of clearing through the wilder- ness. They represented one of the two extremes in roads, of which the other is represented by mac- adam and asphalt. But in the Smith journal we find many other statements that light up the history of what to this generation is an unknown period in Susquehanna history, and among them these :
13th May, 1769-At Scramlin's we turned off from the river, pursuing a S. W. course for Cherry Valley.
* Summit Lake is probably here referred to, but it is the head of the Charlotte instead of the Delaware.
t Affidavit of John Dresler, in the " Brant MSS." of the Draper Col- lection.
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We met, on their return, four wagons which had carried some of Col. Croghan's goods to his seat at the foot of Lake Otsego. The carriers tell us they were paid 30 shil- lings a load each for carrying from Scramlin's to Capt. Prevost's, who is now improving his estate at the head of the lake. There are farms and new settlements at a short distance all the way from the Mohawk river. In Cherry Valley there are about 40 or 50 families, mostly of those called Scotch-Irish, and as many more in the vicinity consisting of Germans and others.
14th-Being Sunday we attended Major Wells and his family to the new Presbyterian meeting house, which is large and quite finished, and heard a sermon from the Rev. Mr. Delap (sic), an elderly, courteous man who has lived in this settlement about 20 years. The congregation though not large, made a respectable appearance, several of them being genteely dressed. From our lodgings, about the center of the valley, down to the mouth of Cherry Valley Creek they reckon 12 or 14 miles, and in freshet one may pass in canoe from the house to Maryland. There are 3 grist mills and one saw mill, and divers carpenters and other tradesmen.
16th-This morning we proceeded in Col. Croghan's batteau, large and sharp at each end, down the lake. This situation commands a view of the whole lake and is in that respect superior to Prevost's. Here we found a body of Indians, mostly from Ahquahga, come to pay their devoirs to the Col. Some of them speaks a little English. We lodged at Col. Croghan's, and next morning got all ready to go on the survey, Robert Picken, our other surveyor, being gone down to wait upon the Duchess of Gordon and Col. Morris, whose tract adjoins to our patent.
17th-We departed at 9 o'clock with two pack horses carrying provisions and baggage and one riding horse with men on chairs, carriers and servants, and two Mohawk Ind- ians as guides, one of them Joseph Brant .* Our
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