USA > New York > Washington County > Washington county, New York; its history to the close of the nineteenth century > Part 15
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in a measure, at least, a source of our present national life, it is emi- nently proper and fitting that those, like Putnam and Stark, both of whom took such a prominent part. should be commemorated not only in story and in song, but in enduring granite and bronze. One, in fact, is but the correlative of the others. Sana mens in corpore sano is as true of the body politic as of the body physical; and, if our existence as a united nation is to be preserved, it will be by keeping intact the mental and physical energies of the nation. Correlative ideas, envolved under varying circumstances, they are proofs of the same spirit of liberty --. the same strong energy of purpose.
CHAPTER XI.
1763-1775.
EARLY SETTLEMENTS IN THE COUNTY - FIRST CHURCH ERECTED IN SALEM - THE GREAT NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANT CONTROVERSY - PROMINENT SETTLERS : JUDGE. WILLIAM DUER, COLONEL, SKENE, ETC. - FIRST COURT HELD AT FORT EDWARD.
Although the treaty of Peace, by which Great Britain obtained possession of the whole of Canada, was not formally ratified until 1763, yet, it was evident that with the fall of Quebec, three years previously, the long and bloody war was virtually at an end. Having no fears of further Indian raids and atrocities by which the settlement of this County (known then as Charlotte County) had been for so long retarded, people now began to flock into it in continually increasing numbers- taking up land and clearing it of its brushwood and timber, preparatory to its cultivation. In fact, the excellence of its soil had long been generally known; and it required only the assurance of complete freedom from molestation for the future prosperity of the country.
Many of the new settlers were of Scotch-Irish descent, who settling in the present Towns of Argyle, Salem, Greenwich and Kingsbury1 formed the nucleus of a God-fearing community-direct traces of their health- ful religious influence being felt down to the present day. Indeed, almost the first act of these early emigrants-even before completely clearing their farms-was to erect at Salem in 1765, a church built of
1 A history of all these towns will be given in its appropriate place, in a separate division of this work.
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logs-their interstices being filled in with clay-having the floor of earth; while the seats were composed of rough, unhewn tim- ber laid across blocks of wood. This is supposed to have been the first church erected north of Albany. It was , forty feet long and was the largest building in the County save the barracks at Fort Edward. In the same year, the first school-house in the County was also built at Salem "of similar materials and of like architecture." Over this primitive church, Rev. Dr. Thomas Clark was pastor. Dr. Fitch with his usual felicity of expression, calls him the " Primitive Apostle of the Northern Wilderness." This divine, before the erection of the church, preached the first sermon ever delivered in Salem, and perhaps in Washington County in the summer of 1765, in the house of a Mr. James Turner, to a few persons who had gathered from the surrounding country. Mrs. Edward Savage, who died about 1840, related to Dr. Fitch the particulars of her coming to this meeting. Then a mere girl, she started early on a Sabbath morn- ing from her father's house, seven miles south west in Argyle now Greenwich, and walked alone to her sister's farm (Mrs. Livingston's) who accompanied her the remaining distance, which they pursued by a row of blazed trees, there being no path, and not a house having been then erected on the way. As they emerged from the woods into Mr. Turner's clearing, his children espied them; and, surprised at the unusual sight, ran into the house exclaiming to their mother that " some women were coming !" " Had it been bears or wolves," said Mrs. Savage, " they would scarcely have considered the occurrence worth reporting."
After suffering imprisonment in Ireland for refusing to take the oath of allegience in its prescribed form by kissing the book (regarding it as a remnant of Popish superstition) Dr. Clark came over with the greater part of his congregation, and after a brief sojourn at Stillwater finally settled at Salem.1 Preliminary, however, to taking this step of
1 " Such a degree of affection," writes Dr. Fitch, "as subsisted between him and his flock has had few parallels. Unrepelled by the gloomy walls of his prison, parents brought their infant children hither for baptism; and hither, also came the betrothed youth and maiden to have the marriage ceremony performed. Old pious men went down to their graves, bewailing their sad case, in being thus cruelly deprived of their beloved pastor's counsels and prayers in their dying moments. Among this number was a venerable elder of his church, Elias, nephew of Professor Samuel Rutherford, one of the Westminister Assembly of Divines. From his prison he wrote, between January and April, 1754, a series of letters which were read to his congregation on the Sabbath," These were afterward published in a pamphlet of fifty-two pages. The next
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removal from his native land, Dr. Clark had been in correspondence with Robert Harper, the Dean of Kings, (now Columbia) college in New York city, furnishing him with the names of one hundred families who were desirous of emigrating with him to the colony of New York and there taking up land. "To an inhabitant of Salem," writes Dr. Fitch, " this list [still preserved ] seems like some old assessment roll or a similar document of his own town, so familiar do a large number of the names upon it sound, and he can scarcely realize that it emanated from the other side of the Atlantic nearly a century ago.1" As a result of this correspondence, Mr. Harper obtained a warrant from Governor Sir Henry Moore, dated November 23d, 1763, to survey a tract of 40, 000 acres [four hundred acres to each family ] north of the present boundaries of Queensbury and Kingsbury on which to locate their families. Thus encouraged, Dr. Clark and his affectionate congregation sailed from Newry, May Icth, 1764, and arrived safely on the 28th of July of the same year in the harbor of New York. In concluding his journal of his voyage across the Atlantic, Dr. Clark devoutly writes: "The all- gracious God carried near three hundred of us safe over the devouring deep, in the arms of His mercy. Praised be His name ! "
And here, before speaking in detail of other prominent settlers in this county, it seems well to dwell at length upon the manner these grants of land were obtained, and also of the incipient controversy that arose about this time regarding the New Hampshire Grants-which · controversy to a certain extent affected the tenures by which the settlers on the eastern boundary of the county-then extending some miles into the present State of Vermont-held their farms.
The lands, granted by the Colonial Governments at this time, were, it must be understood, not sold outright. No payment was required and no money needed to be expended except to the public officials through whose hands the warrants passed. The grantees were thus, as a matter of fact, given a perpetual lease, an annual quit-rent being reserved for the Crown. These quit-rents generally consisted of a few skins of fur-bearing animals, an ear of corn, or " three grains of wheat " if demanded. Besides this, however, an annual quit-rent of two shillings
regularly ordained minister of whom we have any authoritative knowledge who was over a congre- gation in Washington county was the Rev. Francis Baylor, a Moravian. He was called to a church in Sandy Hill about 1775, but left there in 1777. This church-though since removed a few rods from its original site-is still ( 1900) standing. It was bought some years since by the Catholics and after the latter had erected a new edifice, it was, as I say, removed.
1 This was written in 1849.
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and sixpence sterling was imposed on every one hundred acres, besides which, all pine trees suitable for masts for the Royal Navy were also reserved to the Crown. "We smile," says Dr. Fitch, "at the exorbi- tance of this last reservation, which is inserted in all the patents issued at this period, not only in Washington county but in all parts of the colonies, as we recur to the fact that the pine trees growing in some single towns in this county [ Washington] even if it had been possible to fell and transport their bodies entire to tide water, would have been adequate to supply all the navies in the world with spars for centuries." The several Colonial Governors, also, on account of the fees attached to the granting of the patents, were guilty of what might at the present day be called "an abuse of trust," to the home government, and if an individual desired to obtain a grant, say for two thousand acres, he had only to procure the signature of one of his confidential friends, and pay the fees and the affair was completed.1 The fees for the grant of one thousand acres were as follows: to the Governor, $31.25; to the Secretary of State $10; to the Clerk of the Council $10 to $15; to the Surveyor-General, $14.37; to the Attorney-General, $7.50; to the Receiver-General $14.37; and to the Auditor, $4.62-making the total amount nearly $100. It will thus be seen that the cupidity of these various public officials was a great source of detriment to the county by retarding its growth and preventing poor but stalwart and honest people from settling within its boundaries-for although this amount ($100) seems to us at the present day but a trifle, yet to many of the men of that time, when money was scarce it was no easy matter to obtain it. This sum, also, at that time was equal in its purchasing power fully to $400.
Then again, there were numerous grants of lands made to the discharged officers and privates of the French War, a large number of which were located in this county. This brought in a class of inhabi- tants that as a general thing were not desirable- though some of these men made good citizens; and, taken all in all, were perhaps eventually. a source of credit to the county. The Royal Proclamation, by which these grants were given, after a general preamble, closed as follows: "and whereas we are desirous, upon all occasions, to testify our royal sense of approbation of the conduct and bravery of the officers and soldiers of our army, and to reward the same, we do hereby command
1 This in the slang of the present day would be called " having a pull."
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and empower the Governors of our said provinces in North America, to grant without fee or reward, to such reduced officers as have served in North America during the late war, and to such private soldiers as have been or shall be disbanded in America, and shall personally apply for the same, the following quantities of land subject at the expiration of ten years to the same quit-rents as other lands are subject to in the same condition of cultivation and improvement viz: To every person having the rank of a field officer 5,000 acres; to every captain 3,000 acres; to every subaltern or staff officer 2,000 acres; to every non-com- missioned officer 200 acres; to every private man 50 acres."
The first of these military grants was that known as the " Provincial Patent, " containing 26, 000 acres and which now forms the present Town of Hartford, granted May 2, 1764. Another grant under the same clause of his Majesty's proclamation (just quoted) was the one designated as the " Artillery Patent " of 24, 000 acres. It was granted Oct. 24, 1764 to Joseph Walton, John Wilson, David Standish and others, and covered all of the south-eastern and most valuable part of the present township of Fort Anu. "How many of the British troops" says Fitch, who made an exhaustive examination of the old records at Albany, " I have not been able to ascertain. This much, however, is certain: that the Towns of Granville and Hampton, and parts of Hebron were bestowed upon some thirty captains and lieutenants." Other parts of Hebron, it would appear, as well as the Camden tract in Salem, those in Fort Anne, Dresden and Putnam, together with all the tillable lands on both sides of Lake Champlain, at least for a considerable distance beyond Crown-Point were run ont mostly into fifty and two hundred acre lots, which were granted to non-commissioned officers and privates. "The names of those grantees," further writes the same author, "indicate that they were all, without scarcely an exception, Scottish Highland- ers-many though not all of them, belonging to His Majesty's seventy- seventh Regiment of Foot."
Strange, however, as it may seem, when, even at that day the fertility of the land was well known, of all the commissioned officers and regular troops of this regiment, only one became an actual · settler and well known in the county at an early day. This person was the Reverend Harry Monroe, who had been a clergyman of the Church of England and a chaplain in the Regiment. Thus, having the rank of a subaltern officer, taking advantage of the Royal Proclamation he resigned from the army August 23d, 1764, and obtained a grant of
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2, 000 acres situated in the northern part of the Town of Hebron. In 1774, after a sojourn in New Jersey he persuaded some six families to move on to his land, each of them taking a lease of 100 acres for twenty- one years at the rent of one shilling a year.1 " These settlers were all of them Scottish Highlanders, some of them being discharged soldiers who owned land of their own in this same neigborhood." Rev. Mr. Monroe accompanied them to Hebron and built a cabin for himself, in no wise superior to those of his neighbors, which consisted of rough logs roofed with bark, having but a single room and without any floor except the earth. His cabin stood on the west side of the brook flowing out of the marsh on his land. This marsh, which consists of about twenty-six acres and is situated in the middle of " Monroe's tract, " gave to the vicinity the name of " Monroe's Meadows" which it still retains. This marsh, which by drainage he had converted into a farm meadow, was a great pet of his; hence, when Monroe assembled his neighbors for divine worship on the Sabbath, with his back to the building (the services were held in the open air) and his Bible upon a table before him while gazing over his group of hearers, it used to be profanely said of him that he "was adoring his meadows more than his God! "
It should be kept in mind that, during the time we are considering the entire northern portion of the county, including the disputed terri- tory now constituting the State of Vermont and which was adopted into the Federal Union soon after the close of the Revolutionary War, was nominally a part of the County of Albany. So much so was it thus considered, that in October, 1763, David Wooster (afterwards General, and killed in the skirmish at Danbury April 26, 1777) and others petitioned the New York Colonial Assembly for the formation of five new counties to be taken off of that of Albany. Tavo of these were to be east of the Green Mountains. The third "was to run from the summit of the Green Mountains as far west as the Governor might think proper," having for its southern limit the north line of Massa- chusetts, the Mohawk River, and a line " connecting the mouth of that River with the northwest corner of that State;" while the northern boundary was to be " an east and west line crossing the Hudson at Fort Miller; while the fourth county was to lie directly north of the foregoing,
1 Three of the great-grand-sons of one of these settlers, viz; Stephen, Thos. L. and George Bradley Culver, are vet living and retain a great and reverent fondness for their ancestor's memory. The first two live respectively in Mt. Vernon, N. Y. and New York City, and the fast is the cashier in the North Granville Bank, North Granville, Washington County, N. V.
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its northern boundary being "an east and west line running through the- north end of Lake George." The fifth was to extend to the boundary of Canada, although this project was, after much discussion, rejected by the Colonial Assembly of New York-probably because its projectors. had not sufficient money to "lobby " it through.' Yet this circumstance is mentioned to show how indefinite the boundaries between New York and New Hampshire were at this time.
During the year 1766, the wordy (and in some instances the more- than wordy) conflict between the New Hampshire grantees and the New York authorities had already begun-the former contending that the latter refused to confirm the grants except on the payment of exorbitant fees; and from what is known of the conduct of these author- ities and the bribes they had exacted from their own people it must be confessed that they had, in these charges, some right on their side. Indeed, this controversy between New York and New Hampshire, in relation to their boundary line (which of course affected many of the farmers on the eastern boundary of Charlotte-now Washington county) was now at its height. The great Congress held at Albany, N. Y, in 1754 (in which Benjamin Franklin was a prominent member) had decided that the charters of the Colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts were of a very liberal and uncertain character. The charter granted to the Plymouth Company in 1620-from which was derived that of Connecti- cut-covered the expanse from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of northern latitude, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. New York, or more properly the New Netherlands, being then a Dutch possession, could not, however, be claimed as a portion of these grants, as an exception was made of all territory " then actually possessed by any other Christian Prince or State." The dispute concerning the- Wyoming lands was not the only one to which the indefinite phraseology of the charter had given rise. Upon the conquest of the New Nether- lands by the Duke of York, in 1664, controversies immediately arose- between that Province and those of Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay. These disputes, however, were subsequently adjusted by negotiations and compromise-the commissioners agreeing that the boundary between New York. Connecticut and Massachusetts, should be a line drawn north and south, twenty miles east of the Hudson river. Hardly had the
1 I make this statement advisedly; for a history of the manner in which laws having for their end, the pecuniary benefit of their projectors, shows that the venal assemblyman of the present day could take " points " from the assemblyman of that day!
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controversy been to all appearances amicably sattled, when New Hampshire, without the least justice or title, insisted upon having the same western boundary as her sister colonies. The people of New York, who had yielded to the decision of the commissioners with a very bad grace, were in no mood to brook further encroachments upon their territory; and they therefore, boldly protested against this assumption of New Hampshire.
Protests, however, availed little. In 1749, Benning Wentworth, at that time Governor of New Hampshire, granted a township six miles within the territory claimed by New York and which, in honor of the Governor, was named Bennington. This grant was the occasion of a lengthy correspondence between Wentworth and Governor George Clinton1; and renewed protests on the part of the latter. Protests and letters, however, were alike unheeded by the Governor of New Hamp- shire, who, intent upon increasing his private fortune," continued in defiance of all right to issue patents to all those settlers who wished and could afford to pay for them. Such persons, as it may readily be supposed, were not few. A road which had been cut through the wilderness from Lake Champlain to Charlestown in New Hampshire by General Amherst as a means of communication with Crown Point, had revealed the richness of the land. Many, therefore, hastened to purchase; and during the year 1761, no less than sixty patents were issued, a number which, in 1763, had been increased to one hundred and thirty-eight. At length, justly alarmed by the growing audacity of Governor Wentworth, and having written to him a letter with no effect, Lieutenant-Governor Colden, on the eighteenth of December, 1763, issued a proclamation, in which the grant of Charles the Second to the Duke of York was recited; the jurisdiction of New York as far eastward as the Connecticut river, asserted; and the sheriff of Albany county enjoined to return the names of all persons who, by virtue of the New Hampshire Grants, held possession of lands westward of that river. This was answered three months afterward, on the thirteenth of March, by a counter proclamation from Governor Wentworth, declaring that the grant to the Duke of York was void, and that the grantees should be encouraged in the possession of their lands.
I The Colonial Governor-not our George Clinton, Governor of New York, after the Revolution.
? The reader, who has noted what I have said regarding the fees exacted by the Colonial Governor and his officials regarding the grants of land, will readily understand the above refer- ence to " his private fortune."
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Meanwhile, the New York Assembly, through their agent, Mr .. Charles, laid the question in dispute before the Board of Trade in London, setting forth in their petition, " that it would be greatly to the advantage of the people settled on these lands to be annexed to New York." The result was that, on the 20th of July, 1774, an order was made by the King in council, declaring " the western banks of Connecti- cut river, from where it enters the Province of Massachusetts, as far north as the forty-fifth degree of latitude, to be the boundary line between the two provinces of New Hampshire and New York." This decision of the Crown was received by the latter province in December with very great satisfaction. Had the matter been allowed to rest here all would have been well. Governor Wentworth, in obedience to the Royal authority, ceased issuing patents westward of the Connecticut River, and those who had settled upon the grants, were totally indifferent as to which Government received their allegiance, provided they could cultivate their farms in quietness. No sooner, however, was this. decision received, than the Governor of New York chose to interpret the words "to be " as referring to past time, and construed them as a virtual admission that the Connecticut River always had been the eastern boundary of the Province. He, therefore, delared that the grants from Wentworth were invalid, and insisted that the grantees either should surrender or repurchase the lands upon which they had settled and in many instances improved. Especially did this affect the farms then lying East of the Hudson and including what was then a part of the present Washington County. To this unjust demand the majority of the settlers refused to accede. Notwithstanding which, the Governor of New York granted their lands anew to others who forthwith brought ejectment suits against them and obtained judgments in the courts at Albany. All attempts, however, to enforce the judg- ments thus obtained, were met by the settlers with a spirited resistance. The civil officers sent to eject them were seized by the people and severely chastized with "twigs of the wilderness;" and a proclamation from Governor Tryon in the summer of 1764, offering a reward of one hundred and fifty pounds for the apprehension of Ethan Allen, the principal offender, was met by a counter and burlesque proclamation from the latter offering five pounds for the Attorney-General of the Colony of New York.
Thus arose that fierce controversy beteen the hardy Green Mountain Boys of Vermont and the authorities of New York which, lasting with.
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great violence for more than twenty-six years, was finally terminated by the long disputed New Hampshire grants being, in 1791, as before stated, received into the Federal Union as the State of Vermont.1
I have dwelt thus at length upon the causes which led to this important controversy-so greatly affecting the titles to the eastern boundary of Washington County-that the reader, when the time comes for closing up the account of its final settlement by commissioners in 1812, may have a full and comprehensive understanding of the merits of the matter.
Among the numerous incidents to which this controversy gave rise, one, out of many of a similar character, will be now related to show the curious complications to which it gave rise.
For example, among those Highland soldiers of the seventy-seventh regiment, of whom mention has been made as having settled in the county, especially in the Towns of Hebron and Salem, on both sides of the line claimed by the New Hampshire people, was a John McDonald who had obtained a patent of two hundred acres. To this grant he was entitled as Corporal of that regiment. After obtaining his grant he returned to Seotland, married, and returned to this country, when, greatly to his chagrin and surprise, he found that all but thirty acres of land had been, during his absence, cut off into Rupert in accordance with the boundary line claimed by the New Hampshire grantees.2
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