USA > New York > Warren County > Warren county : a history and guide > Part 9
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Somewhere along Carleton's red trail he had been joined by that bitter foe of the Whigs, Gilbert Harris. Gil may have been responsible for the hard treatment now visited on old Moses, his brother. This aged patriot was forced to remove his shoes and stockings and shoulder a huge pack. His bloody footprints marked the weary miles through the wilderness. William, a hardy, muscular woodsman and scout, would gladly have shouldered his father's burdens but his plea for permission to do so fell on deaf ears. Arriving finally at Bulwagga Bay, the prisoners were embarked on bateaux for the trip to Quebec.
On their arrival they were ransomed from the Indians and became prisoners of war. Higson was freed almost at once through the influence of his Tory brother-in-law and good friend, Daniel Jones. The elder Harris and three others were sent to Halifax and later exchanged, Harris eventually returning to his home in Dutchess County. William Harris and the remaining 13 were confined on an island in the St. Lawrence, and put to work under a guard of soldiers. Their provisions were brought from the mainland by boat.
On this procedure hinged a plan to escape, formulated in the spring of 1781 by William Harris and thirteen other prisoners. For several days they hid small amounts of food. Then seven bold spirits, including Har- ris, all that would leave when the crucial moment arrived, seized the boat and made their way to the south shore of the river. Before them stretched the vast, wilderness of northern New England. With Harris leading the way they struck off southward.
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In a few days their food gave out and starvation, fatigue, and black flies dogged their footsteps. Finally, over Harris' protests, his companions built a fire in a swampy hollow and smothered it with damp wood to drive off the scourging insects. Around this the party camped. All soon fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion, unmindful of the pillar of smoke that floated like a banner above the trees.
About midnight they awoke to the sound of rifle fire. Three of the party were squirming wounded on the ground. As Harris came to his feet, he saw a tomahawk in the hand of a tall Indian raised above the head of one of his companions. Swiftly the powerful scout grappled with the red man, threw him into the fire, and forced his head into the flames. At this moment Cyrenus Parks, a Tory and former neighbor of Harris, raised a clubbed rifle over Harris and ordered him to release the squirm- ing Indian.
"You won't kill an unarmed man will you, Parks, and an old neighbor, too?" parleyed Harris.
The only reply was a blow that broke the scout's upraised arm, and, crashing on his skull, laid his scalp open down to the ear.
Several hours later when he groaned into semi-consciousness he had another gash on his head made by a tomahawk, two lacerations on the forehead made by the butt of a gun and a bayonet wound in the chest. Evidently he had been left for dead. His companions were gone, his knap- sack, coat, and shoes as well. Hardly conscious, Harris slung his broken arm through a neckerchief and staggered away.
Living on roots and herbs and an occasional frog, caught with his good hand and eaten raw, he at length stumbled out of the woods to the bank of a swift stream that barred further progress. Looking about for mate- rials to construct a raft, he finally became aware of two men who had been watching him from upstream. Too tired, hungry, and weak from pain and loss of blood to resist further, Harris waved for help although he feared they were enemies. They turned out to be two of his fugitive comrades who washed his horrible wounds, by this time crawling with maggots, and contrived bark splints for his broken arm.
Next morning the three men crossed the stream on an improvised raft, and several days later reached a log cabin in a clearing. One of the trio cautiously approached the house and begged for something to eat from the French woman whose men folk were not at home. She refused but the desperate fugitive found and took a loaf of corn bread. He then re- turned to his companions with welcome food but the unwelcome news that they were still in Canada.
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With what speed their weary bodies could muster they again turned southward. Finally the gaunt fugitives reached the Connecticut River at a point in southern Vermont. At the home of a relative in Salem, several months were required to heal Harris' wounds, but after he recovered he served in the border militia until the close of the war.
After these grim experiences it is not strange that Harris carried to his grave a deep and unreasoning hatred of all Tories and Indians. These found no welcome in Harris Hollow, Harrisena, where Old Bill became a noted local character. On one occasion he is said to have shot an Indian peddler merely because the red man made threatening gestures at the Harris children who were taunting him. A sequel to this story is that he also killed a brave sent by the tribe to avenge the murder, braining the Indian with a hoe when the warrior made the mistake of asking Old Bill to direct him to the Harris home.
Cyrenus Parks, the Loyalist who had wielded the gun butt against Bill's head during his flight from Canada, had a Patriot brother, Joseph, who came to occupy the Parks home near the Harris homestead. After the Revolution he visited Bill Harris and in a roundabout way suggested that the scout forgive and forget his grudge against Cyrenus. Bill told Joseph with considerable heat that he would shoot Cyrenus on sight. Joseph pressed the point until Bill savagely shouted:
"Joseph, Cyrenus is at your house, and if he wants to live he had better keep out of my way." Cyrenus did.
With Carleton's retirement down Lake George major warlike activity ended in Warren County. General John Stark appointed by Washington to resume command of the Northern Department in June 1781, did his best to preserve order with untrained and poorly armed militia, but war parties, some of them outlaw bands, roamed the countryside plundering such settlements as still survived and effectively discouraging any at- tempts to resettle the abandoned homesteads.
A contributing factor to the widespread insecurity was British- occupied Ticonderoga, used as a base with the tacit consent of General Haldimand for raiding parties sent out to harass the frontier, while the general carried on his intrigue with the Hampshire Grants. General Schuyler, placed in charge of intelligence after being acquitted of an absurd charge of neglect of duty during the Burgoyne campaign, again pressed into service the spy Moses Harris, and his colleague Fish. They were to attempt to intercept some of the correspondence between Haldi- mand and the leaders of the Grants.
Soon these secret agents reported a conference with the Tory, Andrew Rakely, and others which purported to reveal that the Americans of the
History
BATTLE ON SNOWSHOES, 1758
Painting by J. L. G. Ferris
Courtesy Glens Falls Insurance Co.
DEATH OF COLONEL EPHRAIM WILLIAMS, 1755 Courtesy Glens Falls Insurance Co.
Painting by F. C. Yohm
MONTCALM ENDEAVORS TO RESTRAIN HIS INDIAN ALLIES, 1757 Painting by J. L. G. Ferris
Courtesy Glens Falls Insurance Co.
COLONISTS MAN GUNS AT BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE, Painting by F. C. Yohm
Courtesy Glens Falls Insurance Co.
ABERCROMBY SURVEYS HIS WAR FLOTILLA ON LAKE GEORGE, 1758
Painting by F. C. Yohm
Courtesy Glens Falls Insurance Co.
GENERAL WASHINGTON AT THE TIME OF HIS VISIT TO WARREN COUNTY IN 1783
Painting by J. L. G. Ferris
Courtesy Glens Falls Insurance Co.
ROGERS SLIDE, SCENE OF CAPT. ROBERT ROGERS' ESCAPE FROM INDIANS, 1758
RESCUE OF MAJOR ISRAEL PUTNAM NEAR Painting by J. L. G. Ferris
GLENS FALLS, 1758 Courtesy Glens Falls Insurance C
******
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Hampshire Grants "were to lay down their arms, and the British were to advance to the south end of Lake George and erect fortifications with a view to the command and occupation of the contiguous country." But nothing happened. This with similar false messages demonstrated that the spies misinterpreted the astute politicians of the Green Mountains who were simply playing politics in an endeavor to secure a favorable settle- ment of their land fued with New York, and "managed for two years to play fast and loose with the Canadian authorities and the Continental Congress, being loyal and true to neither."
In the fall of 1781 another foray was made through the western section of Warren County on the settlements about Johnstown. But this time the invaders, led by Major Ross and that active Loyalist, Walter Butler, came to grief. In the last battle of the war, fought on October 25, a few days after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, the New York and New England militia under Colonel Marinus Willett defeated the raiders, who suffered heavy losses. Their retreat became a rout. Intercepted at Jerseyfield by local militia from the Mohawk Valley, which Walter Butler had repeat- edly ravaged, he was slain with many of his men. No prisoners were taken, but it is doubtful whether more than a very few of the fugitives reached Canada. They had abandoned their baggage and probably most of them had not even a blanket, a gun, or more than a day's rations. Snow lay on the ground and fifty miles of the mountain fastness of Warren County lay between them and Ticonderoga, the nearest British base.
Through all of 1782 rumors of invasion from Canada were frequent and as often proved false. Much of this false information emanated from Ticonderoga as a part of the British scheme to secure the loyalty of the Hampshire Grants on one side and occupy the attention of the New York border troops on the other. But all the conspiring, all the unrest and uncertainty came at last to an end when, in April 1783, Washington pro- claimed a cessation of hostilities. Pioneers began at once to reestablish their settlements. Less than a month later the annual town meeting was held as usual in Queensbury.
After the war Moses Harris, whose espionage work had been so effective, received a pension, purchased land in Queensbury near Lake George, and developed the section called Harrisena. There he lived until his death on November 13, 1838, at the age of 89. Some of his descendants still reside in Warren County. A grandson erected a monument to Moses in the little country burial ground of the Harrisena Episcopal Church. The stone bears this epitaph:
.. He was a man that was true to his friends and his country. He was the man that carried the package for Gen. Schuyler and from Gen. Schuyler to Gen. Washington. It went, and without doubt was the
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instrument that put Gen. Burgoyne's journey to an end. He it was that bought the Patten granted to John Lawrence and others when wild; and settled the same, being two thousand acres, to the benefit of his children and grandchildren. For which I think I ought to do something to his memory. J. J. H., Grandson
Growth and Government
R OYAL patents or Colonial land grants were early used to bring settlers to the virgin wilderness. In essense the plan was sound but in practice it fell into much abuse. The grants caused trouble with the Indians who feared confiscation of their lands; they were a prolific source of court squabbles over land titles; and only too often they went to influential favorites and land speculators who never intended to become settlers. Eventually cheap land did bring pioneers, but none of their settlements in Warren County became permanent until after the Revo- lution.
On September 3, 1696, the Reverend Godfrey Dellius, Dutch minister at Albany, used his influence to obtain from Acting Governor Fletcher a patent to territory "lying upon the east side of the Hudson River, be- tween the northernmost bounds of Saratoga and the Rock Rossian [Split Rock on Lake Champlain], containing about 70 miles in length and 12 miles broad, subject to a yearly rent to the crown of one hundred raccoon skins." This grant included a large part of present-day Warren County. Because Dellius' deeds to the land were declared fraudulent, the patent was vacated at the instance of Lord Bellamont on March 21, 1699.
"For the illegal and surreptitious obtaining of said grants" Dellius was removed from his ministry, and was succeeded in 1700 by the Reverend John Lydius. In 1732 the latter followed the course of his predecessor, securing from Governor Shirley of Massachusetts a confirmation of his alleged Indian deeds to land bordering on the southern shores of Lake Champlain and Lake George and extending to the Hudson. Thus it em- braced some territory now a part of Warren County. No settlement resulted here, however, and the grant seems to have lapsed in 1791 with the death of John Henry Lydius, son of the original patentee.
The great Kayaderosseras Patent, issued by the Crown in 1708 to thirteen grantees, was based on deeds supposed to have been given to the influential Robert Livingston and David Schuyler by the Mohawk Sachems, Joseph and Hendrick. It contained 800,000 acres, lying be- tween the Mohawk and the Hudson and on it are based many of the land titles in the Town of Luzerne and some in the southwestern part of Queensbury. Because of a claim that the grant encompassed more land than the original agreement, it was the cause of resentment among the Indians and consequent anxiety to the settlers for sixty years. For over a hundred and fifty years its indefinite boundaries and inadequate surveys brought about numerous law suits. Perhaps it is significant that the name Kayaderosseras is derived from an Indian word meaning crooked stream.
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As late as 1857 Thomas B. Bennett sued Abraham Wing III of Glens Falls in a land claim case based on the Kayaderosseras Patent. Wing founded his defense on the same land grant, whereas the plaintiff expected him to claim under the Queensbury Patent, and Bennett was defeated. Another fact established by a lawsuit stemming from the Kayaderosseras Patent was that Baker's Falls, at the present village of Hudson Falls, was the third fall in the Hudson River, rather than the falls at Fort Miller.
The winding course of the Hudson from the western boundary of Queensbury down to Hudson Falls left a gore of over two thousand acres between the north boundary of the Kayaderosseras Patent and the south- ern bank of the river, east of the present South Glens Falls. This tract about 1770 became the Glen Patent. Although it was across the Hudson from Warren County, the patentee's name is perpetuated in Glens Falls.
The patent most important to the settlement of the County was issued on May 20, 1762. It granted 23,000 acres lying on the Hudson River west of Kingsbury to Daniel Prindle and others, twenty-three grantees in all. Just four weeks later, June 18, a proprietor's meeting showed that the ownership of the Queensbury Patent, as it was named, had almost entirely changed hands. Influential men had evidently lent their names for obtaining the grant, without intending to become settlers. Probably they merely acted as agents for Abraham Wing, a Quaker, and certain of his neighbors of the Society of Friends in the Oblong, Dutchess County, who proposed to pioneer on the wilderness frontier.
The patent stipulated that a community or a village be erected in the township, that town officers be elected, and that three acres of each thou- sand be put in cultivation within a specified time. It further reserved to the Crown all mines of gold and silver, all white or other pine trees of large dimensions suitable for masts, and provided for certain annual rentals.
In the summer of 1763 two men slowly made their way up the old military road from Fort Edward. They were Abraham Wing and his son-in-law, Ichabod Merritt, both Quakers from the Dutchess County Oblong. Their destination was the Garrison Grounds at Halfway Brook where they possibly intended to locate the community to be established in the Town of Queensbury, granted and surveyed the previous year. This was the beginning of settlement in Warren County.
Wing and Merritt were not the very first residents. Occupying the barracks at Halfway Brook at their arrival was Jeffrey Cooper, a former sailor, who was left behind by General Amherst when he withdrew his troops about 1759 or 1760. Cooper cut no great figure in the developing colony. It was Abraham Wing who, from the beginning, exhibited those qualities of political and industrial leadership necessary to the advance- ment of the new settlement.
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In 1771 Edward and Ebenezer Jessup, sharp and enterprising land trad- ers, secured patents for about 15,000 acres in what is now the central and northern sections of the Town of Luzerne. The Jessups founded Jessup's Landing and Jessup's Little Falls on the Hudson, near the site of the present-day village of Lake Luzerne, and resided there in a sort of back- woods feudal magnificance until the Revolution.
Not content with these extensive holdings, the two promoters engin- eered in 1772 the famous Totten and Crossfield Purchase of 800,000 acres, lying mostly north of Warren County, but embracing all the present Town of Johnsburg and part of Chester. The Mohawks and Caughna- wagas ceded this vast tract during a grand council at the home of Sir William Johnson. In 1774 the Jessups obtained another grant of 40,000 acres in what are now the Towns of Warrensburg and Thurman. During the Revolution they were Loyalists and their settlement was raided and destroyed in 1777 by an American detachment ordered out by General Gates.
From time to time in this manner the Colonial, and later the State, Government patented a great share of the lands in the County. The Dart- mouth Township of 1774 granted much of the territory in Stony Creek and Thurman. James Caldwell, by patent and purchase in 1787, obtained most of the land about the head of Lake George, while other tracts along the shores were granted through small military patents, gifts to dis- charged soldiers.
Although records are not definite, settlers probably came to the clear- ings around Fort William Henry and Fort George shortly after the advent of the pioneers in Queensbury. During those years a few soldiers estab- lishing bounty claims, and settlers seeking the opportunity to market the towering pines of this wilderness frontier, scattered their log cabins on the primitive roads, Indian trails, and numerous streams surrounding the new settlements.
By the early 1770's the groundswell of the Revolution had begun to make itself felt, and by 1780 heaps of ashes and stump-blackened clear- ings were almost the only evidences of attempted civilization in a land abandoned. But this was only an interlude in the march of settlement. American victory and peace in 1783 brought back most of the old and many new settlers. Land was cheap and a fortune might be hewn out of the virgin wilderness; the desire for wealth and power, here as elsewhere, was a powerful incentive spurring pioneers to brave the dangers and dis- comforts of an inaccessible frontier.
Beginning about 1787, James Caldwell established mills and improve- ments on his property at the head of Lake George. By attracting settlers
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with families and promoting trade he laid the foundations for a village, then called Caldwell, now Lake George.
In 1790 settlement began to spread through the northern, and especially in the northwestern, part of the county. John Thurman was primarily responsible for this movement. A shrewd and industrious pioneer, he had acquired much territory in the Hyde Township and the Totten and Crossfield Purchase. It is said of him that on a visit to New York City he showed beechnuts as samples of buckwheat raised on his patent to prospective settlers. So wild and difficult of access were some sections of the north and west that it was 1820 or 1830 before even sparse settlement had spread to all sections of the County.
In these same years the State sold to individuals the large Hague, Brant Lake, Northwest Bay and Warrensburg Tracts. But gradually the practice came into public disfavor. It was becoming evident that the wild lands were worth much more than the five to fifteen cents an acre paid to the State by the private interests. Clamor, too, began to arise for the preser- vation of the resources and beauty of the Adirondacks. Goaded into action by a campaign for conservation, the Legislature in 1885 passed an act to prohibit the sale of any State-owned lands. But long before land grants were outlawed the settlements which were their primary object had been made.
The early settlers walked hand-in-hand with privation and hardship. Industries for many years were few and small; money was scarce. Food of necessity was raised by each family on its stump-dotted clearing, with the larder bolstered by game from the surrounding forest. Clothing was the product of the home loom; boots and shoes were made of native leather by traveling bootmakers. A farm surplus was difficult to dispose of since the only markets lay at great distances, and the scarcity of money made barter almost the only kind of business transaction.
Although forest game was a boon, the wolf, panther, lynx and other wild animals were a constant danger to the scanty flocks and herds of the settlements and even attacked the settlers. It is told that one settler drove a few sheep to his farm and put them in a pen for safekeeping. That night wolves broke into the enclosure and killed all but two. These two were summarily slaughtered to "save" them. Rattlesnakes remained a menace only until hogs, running wild in the woods and unfenced clearings, did away with them almost completely.
A new pioneer was always welcome in any of the tiny communities. His coming meant another farm cleared, a new neighbor, a helping hand in work, a comrade at play, one more in the little circle to share prosperity or adversity. The call would go out to gather and help build newcomers
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a log cabin. That same night the new home, usually a single room in need of much finishing, would be occupied. It was a life for the stout-hearted with comfort only a minor consideration.
In return for the help accorded him, the new settler would soon be called upon to join a house-raising or a logging bee, the latter a process by which many hands made clearings in the forest. Any "bee" was a gala fete, a social get-together, the occasion for play as well as work. Down came the trees and up went the new house to the tune of a jug, frequently passed.
This fraternity, sociability and mutual helpfulness did much to make life endurable and even gay in spite of the loneliness and hardship of isolated frontier communities. Class distinction was almost unknown for the common poverty, toil, and danger were effective levelers, destroying caste and other social barriers. All mingled freely; the joys and sorrows of one were the joys and sorrows of all; but there was scant privacy, luxury, culture, art, or book learning.
As settlements grew, one of the first considerations became the estab- lishment of schools (see Religion and Education). At an early date, rustic seats of learning were widely scattered throughout the wilderness. Teach- ers, who were boarded around at settlers' homes, were usually men better known for their ability to use the hickory stick than for any great amount of learning. Schoolhouses were as crude as the educational system. Many a boy whose homespun pants made it hard to tell whether he was coming or going might be seen on a frosty morning lugging an armful of wood to school as his share of the necessary fuel.
Increasing population brought more district schools, and it was not uncommon to find a teacher with more than fifty students ranging in age from toddlers to adults. Schools in the rural and agricultural sections were, as a rule, better attended and more liberally supported than in cen- ters of trade and industry until, with the enforcement of child labor laws and state aid for free public schools, the wealthier urban communities set higher standard of education. Warren County still has a few one-room schools for small children in outlying districts with a sparse population, but the trend is toward transporting students by bus to large central schools, well staffed, and offering a varied curriculum on a par with city schools.
The growth of churches paralleled that of schools. The pioneers, pre- dominantly the New Englanders, were devoutly, sometimes intolerantly, God-fearing. Church buildings were few, and schoolhouses and homes served as the first places of worship. At intervals hardy evangelists or circuit riders came long distances to minister to the religious needs of the
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scattered settlements. Gradually, every little district built its church, frame or brick low-steepled buildings with sheds behind for the horses and carriages. Many of these now stand forlorn and forsaken, while those less numerous descendents of the pioneers who still live in rural parts of the County drive their cars to attend Sunday services in distant villages.
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