USA > New York > Warren County > Warren county : a history and guide > Part 6
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
Meanwhile, at Fort William Henry, French soldiers tore down the bar- racks and heaped logs and bodies to form a huge funeral pyre that blazed all night. Short of provisions, Montcalm forebore to attack Webb and sailed away down Lake George on August 16, leaving the wilderness once more in possession of the wolves, with the ruined fort and the smouldering pyre a grim scar in that setting of primitive beauty.
With Fort William Henry gone, the French held all the northern sec- tion of the Great Warpath. Fort Edward was the most advanced English outpost on the frontier, and Webb, for a time, despite the arrival of upwards of 10,000 militia, was frantic for fear Montcalm would attack it. Almost unchecked, French Indians "swept the forest trails and border hamlets, resistless and merciless ... carrying dismay to the scattering set- tlements along the New England boundary" and making almost useless for transportation or travel the military road through Warren County. On this note ended the campaign of 1757 - a complete failure for the English and Colonials and the subject of bitter criticism in America and England.
During the winter it was deemed advisable to strengthen the hardy corps of rangers under the intrepid Rogers in order that all possible pro-
65
WARREN COUNTY GUIDE
tection might be afforded the frontier and the line of communications from Fort Edward to Lake George. Rogers, now a major, often used the Seven Mile Post at Halfway Brook as his base of operations. Among the officers who accompanied him on bold forays, or led detachments on their own, were Captains Israel Putnam and John Stark. "Remember Fort William Henry!" became their cry.
Since Loudoun planned to attack Forts Frederick and Carillon at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, Major Rogers and bands of his men spent the winter scouting. They traveled through Warren County repeatedly, using the military road to Fort William Henry and thence down Lake George, to harass the enemy and bring back information. Late in Decem- ber 1757, Rogers took two French soldiers from Captain Hebecourt's garrison at Fort Carillon, killed more than a dozen cattle close to the fort, and left this note tied to a horn of one of them: "I am obliged to you, sir, for the rest you have allowed me to take and the fresh meat you have sent me. I shall take good care of my prisoners. My compliments to the Marquis of Montcalm."
On March 10, 1758, Rogers, with a detail of 180 rangers and officers, received orders from Colonel William Haviland, commandant at Fort Edward, to scout the French position at Fort Carillon, seek any signs of coming activity, and harass the enemy in any way possible. Legend says that when the already famous ranger told Haviland the French were watching his movements very closely and that 400 men were needed for the expedition, the commander refused, because he disliked Rogers. If he did so, the refusal undoubtedly reflected the contempt of regular officers for any suggestion from a colonial officer.
That night the little detail camped at Halfway Brook. The weather grew bitter cold; the snow was deep. Resting without fires in the day- time, they made their way down the ice of Lake George in two fatiguing night marches. On the morning of the 13th Rogers decided to leave the lake and for better protection proceed through the snowbound forests to the west of the mountain now known as Rogers Rock.
Whether the French had learned about the approach of the Rangers from a deserter whom Rogers mentioned later, or from prisoners, or from Indian scouts who had watched him from a mountain top, or whether it was through the sorcery of a medicine man who had just arrived at Fort Carillon with 200 Indians, they had certainly prepared such a reception as befitted so dreaded a foe. Rogers, too, was on the alert, and when his flankers reported a hundred Indians advancing up Trout Brook through the four feet of snow that covered its frozen surface, he ordered his men to hide and hold their fire till they could wreak terrible havoc on the enemy at the first volley.
66
WARREN COUNTY GUIDE
Half the Rangers in hot pursuit of the fifty surviving Indians soon encountered the main body of French and Indians variously estimated at from 250 to 700. Leaving fifty dead behind, the pursuing Rangers fell back to join their comrades. The entire company then retreated up the mountain slope, fighting desperately from tree to tree. In danger of being outflanked, Rogers dispatched Lieutenant Phillips with all the men he could spare to cut off the passage to his rear. Phillips was surrounded and, though he surrendered under a promise of protection, the Indians, enraged at their losses, tied him and his men to trees and hacked them to death.
Rogers and the remnant of his force made a last ditch stand in the lengthening shadows of the declining day. Often the fighting was hand to hand. A ranger who fell wounded or exhausted was tomahawked at once. Finally, under cover of darkness, those who were still able fled singly or in small groups toward Lake George. Since they had snowshoes, the deep snow aided the escape of a small number, including Rogers.
Among the many legends that surround this bold leader is one that he fled from the encounter to the summit, then named Mt. Pelee, above Trout Brook, where a cliff slopes abruptly into the waters of Lake George some hundreds of feet below. One story is that he slid down the precipice in safety, a truly superhuman feat. Another is that he tossed over his pack, and back-tracked on reversed snowshoes so that his pursurers thought he had made the fatal leap, and descending a nearby path, picked up his pack. Then the superstitious Indians, who saw him jauntily mush- ing away up the lake, thought he must be a god and feared to follow him. At all events, the hill is now called Rogers Rock and its steep face, Rogers Slide.
Suffering terribly without their greatcoats, blankets, and knapsacks, the retreating survivors, some wounded, were met near the Narrows on the evening of the fourteenth by a relief detachment under Captain Stark. The English loss was 125 killed, the French at least as heavy. Some authorities claim the dead reached a total of 300. Certainly this Battle on Snowshoes was a bloody engagement, perhaps the bloodiest skirmish of the French and Indian war.
With the approach of spring the great William Pitt, a power in the British ministry, announced that the campaign of 1758 would be pushed with all energy to avenge the humiliations of the previous year. He removed Loudoun and Webb, but, yielding to some influence at court, retained as commander in chief the third of that inept trio, Abercromby. Pompous, fat, regarded by his men as old though he was but fifty-two, Abercromby was entirely unsuited to lead an army into the wilderness of Lake George and Champlain. Probably aware of this, Pitt appointed as
67
WARREN COUNTY GUIDE
second in command a really able young soldier, George Augustus, Lord Howe. But Pitt could not control fate, and the bodies of 2,000 brave men, piled in the woods at Ticonderoga, bore awful testimony to Aber- cromby's failure in a crisis.
During April preparations went rapidly forward. Abercromby selected Amherst and Wolfe to lead an attack on Louisburg and Forbes to push against Fort Duquesne. He himself would advance on Carillon and Crown Point, the French controls on that "military key to the Continent," the Great Warpath through Warren County. The Colonies were asked to supply 20,000 men. Animated by liberal crown subsidies and the energy displayed by the King's officers, they forgot their bitter criticism of the last campaign and on the whole responded with spirit.
Howe reached Fort Edward on May 8 with a large part of the expedi- tionary force. He immediately began to make a study of the area and, with a democracy very unusual to the times, learned woodland warfare from such Colonial stalwarts as Colonel Lyman, Major Rogers, and Captains Putnam and Stark. He had a grasp of the situation such as Abercromby never possessed and while he lived was, as Pitt intended, the real commander of the expedition in everything but name.
On May 20 Lord Howe encamped with a force of 2,000 men on the Garrison Ground at Halfway Brook; and on the 22nd he reached the ruins of Fort William Henry. Here during June was assembled the largest army ever gathered together in America up to that time, 6,367 regulars, 9,034 Provincials. "The shores, the foot of mountains and the broken plains between them were studded thick with tents." Among the veteran regiments present was the noted Black Watch or 42nd Highlanders.
On the evening of July 4 Abercromby gave the command for embarka- tion to advance on Ticonderoga; stores and ammunition were loaded during the night and the next morning the whole vast array was afloat on Lake George. This greatest flotilla of war ever to appear on any American lake consisted of more than a thousand bateaux, whaleboats, and flatboats - an armada six miles long, stretched out in serpentine triple files.
In the late afternoon the cavalcade rested at Sabbath Day Point; at daybreak it reached the foot of the lake. Ahead stretched the forest- covered plain along the outlet of Lake George; on the left reared the bare face of Rogers Rock, from the crest of which a French scouting force under the Canadian officer Langy closely watched the English landing.
Shortly after noon of July 6 the British, with Lord Howe leading one of three columns behind a vanguard under Rogers and Lyman, advanced through the woods on the western bank of the outlet. The bridges leading to the portage and sawmill on the eastern side of the outlet had been
68
WARREN COUNTY GUIDE
destroyed by the French. Suddenly Howe's troops, lost in the deep woods, encountered Langy's scouts, who, misjudging the circuitous course nec- essary to avoid their enemy, were also lost in the same forest.
Brisk firing began; Rogers and Lyman turned and caught the French in the rear; only fifty of their 350 men escaped, but they sold their lives dearly. Lord Howe fell in one of the early volleys, a rifle ball through his breast. It was stark tragedy for the British - a needless death resulting from a chance encounter. It bereft Abercromby of his chief adviser, and robbed the army of the one man in whom it reposed confidence. There- after all was confusion, indecision, folly. Deep in the woods the army was ordered to lie on its arms for the night; the next morning Abercromby ordered it back to the landing.
Meanwhile Montcalm was faced with a desperate problem. Mount Defiance, within easy cannon range, commanded his fort, and he could not prevent the British from dragging guns to its summit if they chose to do so. Nor could he stop a detachment from crossing behind him to Lake Champlain to cut off his supplies, and he was provisioned for only a few days. Levis had just arrived with a hundred men, bringing his garri- son up to 3,600, but he could not count on further reinforcements. If invested, the fort must fall soon with all retreat cut off, and enemy can- non could drive him promptly into the narrow limits of the masonry and earthworks of Fort Carillon. Even at the eleventh hour he wavered between fight and flight. It was Abercromby's failure to advance after the death of Lord Howe that brought about Montcalm's fateful decision.
Calling in all his troops, the energetic Marquis set them to work build- ing a massive barricade of logs on the crest of the ridge that crossed the neck of land half a mile in front of the fort. Beyond the barrier for a considerable distance he ordered all the trees cut down and left where they fell, an interlaced, tangled mass. At the base of the log wall Mont- calm arranged a hedgerow of sharpened branches pointing outward. The rest he left to Abercromby's stupidity.
The English commander neither brought up his artillery to breach the French defences nor did he send troops to the shore of Lake Champlain north of Carillon to sit across Montcalm's line of communication and starve him out. Instead, as soon as Bradstreet's corps had repaired the bridges, he advanced along the portage and took post at the sawmill.
At noon of July 8, Abercromby received false information at his saw- mill headquarters that the enemy numbered 6,000 and were expecting reinforcements of another 3,000. On the advice of his engineer and in accord with the wishes of his over-impetuous officers, he issued orders to take the barricade by assault. It could not be done. The fallen trees
69
WARREN COUNTY GUIDE
slowed up the advance, broke the ranks. The hidden defenders, urged on by such skilled leaders as Montcalm, Levis, and Bourlamaque, poured in a murderous direct fire and cross-fire.
All this stood revealed in the first attack. But the blundering British general failed to change his orders. For six hours, through six attacks, he allowed his furiously fighting troops to pile their bodies grotesquely on the logs, branches, and stakes of Montcalm's terrible abatis. Not until evening shadows lengthened did he draw off his soldiers, defeated, with a loss of nearly 2,000 dead, wounded and missing. The Black Watch was almost wiped out in fierce attacks, and Major Campbell, who had been told by the ghost of a cousin he had wronged that he would die at Ticon- deroga, lay near death with a shattered arm.
Montcalm drew a deep sigh of relief: the first round was won. The English, he believed, would now bring up their cannon. After all they still outnumbered him four to one. His surprise when scouts reported the enemy gone can be imagined. Apparently panic-stricken at the blood bath he had caused, Abercromby was in full retreat toward his camp at the head of Lake George.
Here he ordered entrenchments thrown up with all haste and behind them sat himself down for the rest of the season. Exultant French raid- ers, under the well known bushrangers La Corne, Marin, and Courte- manche, added to his humiliation by continually harassing the English camp, cutting off supplies and communications by way of the military road to Fort Edward, and massacring wagon train convoys. So weighted down with defeat was Abercromby that it was only to be rid of Brad- street's importunings that he allowed that Colonial officer to march off to Fort Frontenac, where his boldness and skill won a signal victory.
At last the Canadian and Indian forays became so irksome that a pali- saded enclosure known as Fort Williams was built near the southern end of French Mountain. Another such picket fort, Four Mile Post, was erected on the road between present-day Glens Falls and Hudson Falls. In addition a large force was installed at Halfway Brook, just north of Glens Falls. These measures, along with a victory of Rogers over Marin at Fort Anne, tended to reduce the effectiveness of the French guerrilla warfare and may be counted as the only gains of an expedition begun on a plane of exalted promise.
While the French center held firm at Ticonderoga, the right and left wings crumpled under the blows of abler generals - Amherst and Wolfe at Louisburg, Forbes at Fort Duquesne, and Bradstreet at Fort Frontenac. These defeats seriously affected the French morale, and internal strife spread in Canada.
70
WARREN COUNTY GUIDE
The northern English colonies, bitterly disappointed by the repulse of Abercromby, rallied their flagging hopes at the news that Lord Jeffrey Amherst, victor of Louisburg, would be commander in chief in 1759 and lead the "grand central advance against Ticonderoga and Crown Point." Once more they stretched their lean resources to provide men and money.
Much reconnoitering by Rogers and his Rangers and the usual bloody raids by flying squadrons of Canadians and Indians signaled the advent of spring. Amherst, to protect his line of march, ordered Major West to Four Mile Post in May, and in June sent a larger detachment to build a log-walled fort at Halfway Brook. Completed on June 21, 1759, it stood across the road from the old Seven Mile Post and later became known as Fort Amherst. The line of communications protected, General Thomas Gage marched to Lake George with the vanguard of the main army and threw up or strengthened fortifications, which have since been called Fort Gage, on a hill west of the ruins of Fort William Henry.
In June, Amherst arrived at Fort Edward with all his forces. A stern disciplinarian, the general ordered constant drilling and exercises for the Colonial militia, severe punishment for insubordination, and death to deserters. As a salutary lesson four executions took place with the entire army drawn up on parade, and one Burk, "for abusing and offering to strike his officer at Halfway Brook," received 400 lashes, 30 before each regiment, except Schuyler's, where the poor wretch got 40 lashes.
At the same time Amherst also took strong measures to suppress the massacring and scalping of women and children that had long character- ized American border warfare. Issuing an order to his own scouts to take no scalps under any circumstances, he served notice on Vaudreuil that he would "revenge it by the death of two men of the enemy, for every woman or child murdered by them."
As June waned, "that valley by the head of Lake George which for five years past had been the annual mustering-place of armies" echoed again to the din and clang of arms as 5,000 regulars and an equal number of militia made camp. While Amherst waited for his artillery to come up he kept his troops busy, a procedure he invariably followed, by directing Colonel James Montressor to construct Fort George. Only the southwest bastion was ever completed.
On the 21st of July Amherst moved down the lake in a pageant remin- iscent of Abercromby, along the route of that ill-starred general. Rogers' Rangers, again in the van, pushed rapidly forward the next morning to drive the French from the rising ground since called Mount Hope. On the 23rd the English moved toward the barricade against which the waves
71
WARREN COUNTY GUIDE
of Abercromby's assault broke so terribly the year before. The entrench- ments were undefended.
Bourlamaque, in command of the fort, under orders to retire on the slightest danger of being trapped, decided the same night to withdraw his army, leaving only 400 men under Captain Hebecourt to delay the enemy. On the 26th this detachment set mines, which failed to blow up more than one bastion of the fort, and retreated. Above the sulphurous glow the white flag of France was left flying.
In the morning of July 27, 1759, the French flag was hauled down "and for the first time in its dark and bloody history, the red cross of St. George flaunted its silken folds above the blackened and grim battle- ments of Carillon," now renamed Ticonderoga. On August 1, Amherst received word that Crown Point was abandoned by the enemy: the French center, so long a thorn in the side of the English, was broken at last; a surge of joy and relief swept like a hurricane across the northern English colonies.
For France the debacle followed fast. In September 1759, Quebec fell to Wolfe; on September 8, 1760, Vaudreuil surrendered Montreal to Am- herst and later signed a full capitulation for Canada. By the terms of the Peace of Paris, February 10, 1763, Canada became a British possession.
Revolution
T HE Peace of Paris, ending the French and Indian War, reduced to a minimum the long existing danger of bloody Indian raids on the northern frontier of New York and New England. At once the colonizing genius of England envisioned the wilderness border turned into productive farms and thriving villages. Large grants of land were made and in less than ten years from the close of the war, speculators were reaping a rich harvest and stout-hearted British pioneers were hew- ing a pathway to freedom in Warren County.
Hardly were they well settled when the disturbances of the Revolution began to invade their primitive domain. Although many were peace- loving Quakers, some nurtured rebel sympathies, while others had Tory leanings. Indeed, as Holden points out in his History of Queensbury, they were swept by the ground swell presaging a storm which was surging up from the Atlantic seaboard to fall with sharp and unmerited severity upon the non-combatants of these border towns.
In 1767 the Crown abrogated the powers of the rebellious New York Assembly. At the same time General Thomas Gage, his Majesty's com- mander in chief in North America, demonstrated to the new frontier the dangers inherent in revolt by taking steps to place Ticonderoga, Crown Point and Fort George on a war footing. Bitterness and blows between New York and the Hampshire Grants over land patents, a disputed por- tion of which extended to the shores of Lake George, added to the general insecurity.
Rumors of political strife and rebel activity stirred every conversation. Whigs on the border formed societies akin to the Sons of Liberty. Often neighbors and even members of the same family took opposing sides on the question of resistance to the Stamp Act, Mutiny Act, and similar decrees of the British Parliament.
The strife between Whig and Tory even reached into the family of Quaker Abraham Wing, and tore it asunder. He and his sons adhered strictly to their religious tenets enjoining peace, and there is no evidence that they sided with either faction. Possibly they felt that this was the best way to insure possession of their lands. But it was certainly a desire to protect their titles to royal patents that influenced many settlers to remain loyal to the King.
Such a loyalist was Daniel Jones, husband of Abraham Wing's daugh- ter, Deborah. He had worked in partnership with his father-in-law to build mills using the water power of Wing's Falls, later renamed Glens
73
WARREN COUNTY GUIDE
Falls. He also owned land in both Kingsbury and Queensbury and was a man of importance among the pioneers. His brother David was the fiance of Jane McCrea, the beautiful girl whose murder by Indian raiders, incited by the Tories, helped to arouse the country side against General Burgoyne and contributed to his defeat at Saratoga. After the fall of Ticonderoga and Fort George, Queensbury was no safe place for Tories, so Daniel Jones fled with his family to Montreal, and David joined the Loyalist army to become a captain under Burgoyne.
James Higson and Andrew Lewis, on the other hand, were uncom- promising Whigs. With their wives, Content and Mary, daughters of Abraham Wing, they were seized in 1777 by Tory and Indian raiders and carried to Montreal. Though the men were forced to run the gauntlet by their Indian captors, Daniel Jones and other kinfolk of theirs among the Loyalist refugees were able to befriend and protect them while they were held in Canada.
William Robards, a prominent land owner in Queensbury, and his brother-in-law Andrew Fuller were also captured with Higson and Lewis. Fuller remained a prisoner for the duration of the war but Robards, a bold and hardy pioneer, broke through a boarded window in his prison and fled through the streets of the old French section of Montreal. None of the shots aimed at him by pursuing guards took effect and, encouraged by cheering Canadians, he jumped the city wall and disappeared into the forest. After a grim and hazardous journey through the wilderness, sleeping by day and traveling by the stars, he reached Lake George, found a canoe, and finally arrived home safe, but so gaunt and ragged that his overjoyed wife fainted when she saw him.
Even before the stand of the embattled farmers at Lexington and Con- cord an agent was sent by the revolutionists to Canada to report on the feelings of the people toward the revolutionary party. Apparently sensing the importance of the capture of Ticonderoga in the molding of public opinion, this agent suggested that on the outbreak of war Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, who were already well known for their bold resistance to New York in the land controversy, be engaged to seize the fortress.
Accordingly, Connecticut, on April 28, 1775, dispatched a small body of men, one of whom was Colonel Barnard Romans, to join forces with Ethan Allen for the dangerous enterprise. On May 3, Massachusetts commissioned Benedict Arnold to lead an expedition having the same design. When the hard-grained Green Mountain Boys refused to follow any other leader than their own, Arnold and Allen, having arranged a joint command, surprised and captured the Fort on May 10, 1775.
74
WARREN COUNTY GUIDE
Another detachment of thirty men of the Connecticut expedition under Captain Herrick made a rapid march to capture Skenesborough, now Whitehall, a settlement founded and controlled by Philip Skene, an ex-major of the British army. In 1773 Skene had formulated and dis- patched to the King a grandiose scheme to set up all northern New York and part of Vermont into a separate province with Skenesborough as capital and Skene as governor. The plan was under consideration when his capture put an end to the ex-major's "ambitious machinations."
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.