Chapter IV: Introduction: By Albert Shaw (2)

In considering the story of Saratoga, we cannot confine our attention to the town of Saratoga Springs, with its sharply defined boundaries and rectangular lines of political division which mark the limit of the voters for supervisor at the annual town-meeting. But if we include the county in our narrative, then, indeed, may we recall the vision which presents the individuality of the name Saratoga. For Saratoga County is outlined by a great eastward and southern sweep of the Hudson River for seventy miles from its narrow gorge at Luzerne, where the wild savage chief of colonial days leaped across the mighty river to escape his pursuing foe, down over the precipitous Palmer’s Falls, and over the cavern-haunted Glen’s Falls, and onward to old Fort Edward, where its waters turn shortly to the south and pursue their troubled way along the “hillside country,” which received here its Indian name, “Se-rach-ta-gue,” which means “hillside country of the great river.” It is also said that in the Indian language Sa-ragh-to-ga means the “place of the swift water,” in allusion to the rapids and falls that are in contrast with the “still water” a few miles below. Thence the Hudson flows on until it receives the four sprouts or mouths of the Mohawk River, which spreads out from the precipitous falls at Cohoes. This great intersecting western valley separates the northern from the southern highlands of New York, and is, like the great northern valley, a natural highway and thoroughfare. In the angle formed by the junction of these two long, deep valleys or passes through the mountain ranges, “in the angle between the old Indian war-trails, in the angle between the pathways of armies, in the angle between the great modern routes of travel, in the angle formed by the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers,” is Saratoga County, the Saratoga of history and romance. Not only the stealthy tread of the Iroquois sped over these hills, not only the swift canoe of the Algonquin shot over these streams, but also the disciplined armies of France and of England marched and countermarched, fought by day and bivouacked at night on this ground, from the time that Hendrick Hudson opened the lower valley of the Hudson River, and Samuel Champlain discovered the broad lake that bears his name, until the Revolutionary period closed.

While Jamestown was still struggling for existence, and Plymouth Bay was still unknown, the contest had already begun in the northern valley of the Hudson which initiated its long service to the progress of the western world. This remarkable triangle, the Saratoga and Kay-ad-ros-se-ra of the Indian occupation, and the Saratoga County of the present time was, like Kentucky, “the dark and bloody ground,” the hunting- and fishing-place of the Five Nations on the south, and their enemies, the Algonquins, on the north. Here each summer, in search of fish and game, they built their hunting lodges on Saratoga Lake, called by the Dutch, who believed it to be the “head-waters” of the Hudson, “Aqua Capita.” Every season brought conflict between the savage tribes, and later the French, year after year, marched down from Quebec and Montreal to intimidate their unceasing foes on the Mohawk.

In 1642, and again in 1645, the Iroquois in retaliation hastened along the old war-trail at the foot of Mount McGregor and returned each time laden with their tortured captives, the French prisoners and their Indian friends. The two famous expeditions of Courcelle, Governor of Canada, and of Lieut.-Gen. de Tracy, made their way in 1666 through the valley; first on snow-shoes, to starvation and despair—and again with the buoyant tread of a victorious legion. In 1689 the Iroquois followed the old trail on their way to that massacre of Montreal which emphasized what is justly called the “heroic age” of that poetic and devoted settlement. The French and Algonquins again in 1690 bivouacked at these springs as they descended to the cruel massacre of Schenectady. And in the same year the English, led by Fitz John Winthrop, made a fruitless march over the historic war-path.

The French, urged by Frontenac, came down the valley in 1693, destroyed the castles of the Mohawks, and started on their return with three hundred prisoners. The news created intense excitement through the whole Province of New York. Governor Fletcher hurried up from New York City, Major Peter Schuyler hastily gathered three hundred white men and three hundred savages for defence, and was joined by Major Ingoldsby from Albany with an additional force. Coming along the old trail, the French and Indians halted with their captives about six miles north of the village of Saratoga Springs, at a point near Mount McGregor at King’s Station. The battle-ground lies on the terrace, which is distinct from the foothills of the mountains, and has long been known as the “old Indian burying-ground.” On this plateau, so near the gay streets of Saratoga, the camp-fires of a thousand hostile men throwing up entrenchments flared through the night. On the following day the English sustained successfully three fierce assaults on their works, and the French, worn with the long journey, were glad to retreat in the darkness of a raging storm, as night fell on their wounded and captives.

Again, during Queen Anne’s War, beginning in 1709, old Saratoga, which lies at the mouth of the Fishkill, was so seriously threatened that Major Schuyler built a fort below the mouth of the Batten Kill. In 1731, the French built Fort Frederick at Crown Point. From this stronghold, during King George’s War, which began in 1744, they swung their forces with deadly effect upon the English settlements. The forts at Saratoga were then refitted and manned, but not in time to prevent the terrible massacre of old Saratoga in 1745.

History has recorded and poetry sung the woes of Wyoming and of Cherry Valley, but the silence of the virgin forest has encompassed the tragic events that occurred at Saratoga on the fatal morning of the 17th of November, thirty years before the Revolution.

“Profound peace had reigned in the old wilderness for a
generation, and the fertile soil had filled the smiling land
with fatness. Many dwellings and fruitful farms dotted the
river bank; long stables were filled with sleek cattle, and
around the mills were huge piles of timber waiting the market
down the river.”

The scowling portholes of the old Schuyler mansion seemed to laugh between the tendrils of the creeping vines. Suddenly, in the early morning, the scene of peace and prosperity was changed to slaughter, pillage, and destruction. Philip Schuyler, the elder, was offered immunity in the midst of the fray, but he spurned safety at the expense of his neighbors, and was shot to death in his own doorway. The houses and forts were burned to the ground, the cattle killed or burned in their stalls, and only one or two inhabitants escaped to tell the tale.

BRONZE STATUE IN NICHE OF SARATOGA MONUMENT, SCHUYLERVILLE, N. Y.]

This war was a prelude to the French and Indian, or Seven Years’ War, which, with its five campaigns, raged continuously through the war-worn valley of the grand northern waterways. Nearly a century and a half of struggle, first of the French discoverers and missionaries with the savages, and then of the Frenchmen and Iroquois, and later the French, the Indians, and the English, had proved the importance of this valley as the northern doorway to the country. Of the three expeditions first planned to be sent simultaneously against the French—one under Braddock against Fort Duquesne, another under Shirley against Niagara, and another under Johnson against Crown Point,—the third was considered the most important.

In August, Major-General William Johnson took command in person and pushed on to the outlet of Lake George, intending to build a fort at Ticonderoga as a defence against Crown Point, to which the French had extended their possessions in the last interval of peace. Before his design could be accomplished, desperate warfare disturbed the placid waters of the beautiful lakes and so discolored their outlying waters that time has not yet effaced the name of “Bloody Pond.”

Abercrombie’s campaign in 1758 was a fatal mistake. The brilliant hope inspired by his fine army of Regulars with their splendid accoutrements, his thousands of boats paraded on the broad lake with banners flying and strains of music unknown in the wilderness, was turned to gloom when a few days later the boats returned laden with the dead and dying, and carrying the body of the beloved Lord Howe.

Again, in 1759, the war-trail of old Saratoga was trodden by an English army, twelve thousand strong, under the command of the successful Lord Amherst. In the autumn the final conflict came when the death of Wolfe signalled the triumph of England, and the great waterways passed under the sovereignty of the Anglo-Saxons.

For some years, Sir William Johnson suffered from the effects of a wound received in the hip during the war. In 1767, his Indian friends told him about the “Great Medicine Waters” of Saratoga, and carried him by boat and on a stretcher to the mysterious spring. The waters proved so beneficial that he was able to return over the “carrying-place” unaided and on foot. The waters which he drank were taken from the High Rock Spring of Saratoga Springs. Once they overflowed the cone-like rock through which they now rise and from which they are dipped, and the rock was gradually deposited and formed by the overflow. The process has lately been repeated by new springs like the Geyser and the Champion, which for some years threw the water several feet into the air, leaving a heavy cascade-like deposit about the opening. Gradually the waters subsided, the geyser effect was lost, and like the High Rock Spring they have fallen below the level of the ground.

In the year (1767) of Sir William Johnson’s expedition, the old land troubles with the Six Nations were settled amicably at the Fort Stanwix conference, where over three thousand red men met the English commissioners. The complaints of alleged frauds in purchase and surveys included the Kayadrossera patent, which covered 700,000 acres lying between the Hudson and the Mohawk, obtained by grant in 1703 and confirmed in 1708.

Yet quiet did not prevail. The restless spirits of the wilderness were stirred by their first political aspirations. The Schuylers, whose possessions extended over the old Saratoga hunting-ground, awoke the farmers to an interest in the burning questions of the day. Sloops sailing up the Hudson brought rumors of riots in New York City, and of the resistance offered by the Sons of Liberty to the execution of the Stamp Act. When news came that no good patriot would wear imported garments, the women redoubled their efforts to produce from spinning-wheel and loom the homespun fabric. As the King grew more determined, and the people learned more clearly what rights were theirs, the British soldiers became violent and the patriots more indignant and outspoken. The first military order of the home government to put the forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga on a war basis was quickly followed by the tramp of soldiers through the wilderness. The rumble of artillery and of commissary wagons broke once more the stillness of the forest. The farmers who lived along the old war-trail revived by the evening fireside the stories of the French and Indian wars. The Indians, quick to discern the coming storm, began once more, under the influence of the Johnson family (allied to them through Brandt and his sister), to destroy property and massacre the unprepared. The settlers of the “long valley” were bearing at this time the brunt of the preliminary warfare of the American Revolution. They met the issue bravely. While they fought, their wives and daughters gathered in the crops, melted into bullets the treasured pewter teapots and sugar-bowls, learned to shoot, to barricade their houses or their little forts, and to conceal themselves from prowling bands of Indians and savage Tories. It was then that the Royalist Governor Tryon, taking refuge on a war vessel, exclaimed, “The Americans from politicians are now becoming soldiers.” Had he witnessed the courageous deeds of the women of the great waterways, he would perhaps have added, “The women from housekeepers are becoming farmers and fighters.”

ORIGINAL IN SARATOGA COUNTY CLERK’S OFFICE.]

FROM TABLET ON SARATOGA BATTLE MONUMENT, SCHUYLERVILLE, N. Y.]

New anxieties arose in the Province of New York as rumors multiplied of the advance in stately procession of a new and splendid army of the British, recently arrived in Canada, down the old war-path through Champlain and Lake George on the way to Albany to unite with the British wing ascending the Hudson River. Inspired by General Schuyler, commanding the American army, the farmers seized whatever firearms they could find and hurried to his camp. The women of Albany hammered the leaden weights from the windows of their houses, moulded them into bullets, and urged on the men. The militia of New England, aroused by the invasion, came by hundreds and by thousands until the river hills were covered. The hasty breastworks planned by Kosciuszko were completed, and the rude recruits were hurriedly formed into regiments and brigades. Gates, who superseded Schuyler, lay with his staff in the rear of the army, while Morgan with his riflemen held guard at the western extremity of the entrenched camp on the hills, with his headquarters at Neilson’s. This was the defensive camp of the Americans at Bemis Heights, and it stretched from the river bank westward over the hills about two miles and faced the north. Here they lay in wait for Burgoyne, who had rallied from his repulses at Bennington and Fort Stanwix, and was pressing down the bank of the Hudson River toward Albany from Fort Edward.

On the 13th of September, a bridge of boats was stretched across the Hudson River—just below the mouth of the Batten Kill—for the passage of Burgoyne’s army. They halted for the first night amid the charred wheat-fields of General Schuyler’s farm on the south side of the Fishkill. On the morrow they hastened on to Coveville, and thence to Seward’s house, where again their white tents were spread over the country.

On September 19th Burgoyne moved forward to outflank the American camp on the west. An obstinate fight of many hours about the old farm-well and in the great ravine followed, and the British failed in their attempt to pass the Americans or to weaken their line. But they held persistently to the position they had taken at Freeman’s Farm and at the close of the battle fortified their camp from the point on Freeman’s Farm in a line to the eastward on the bank of the river, where they built three redoubts upon three hills. The fortified camp of the Americans lay about a mile and a half below in a line parallel with the British. Here, within bugle-call of each other, for two weeks, the hostile forces sat upon the hills of Saratoga, frowning defiance at each other, and ready to open the conflict at a moment’s warning.

Burgoyne waited in vain for the Americans to attack him behind his works, and for a message, hourly expected, that Clinton would come from New York to his relief. Hunger pressed sorely upon the army. The brilliant conquests he had pictured to himself were fading from his grasp. He called his officers together in council. Silence and gloom hung over them. Should they advance or retreat? His imperious will dictated the advice he desired. Finally Fraser sustained the commander. An advance was ordered. On the 7th of October the British marched from their entrenchments in battle array. Burgoyne led the centre; Fraser a flanking column to the right; the royal artillery to the left, and the Hessians in reserve. Like a great bird of prey they settled in line of battle upon the broken ground that separated them from the American camp. Gates took up the gauntlet thus thrown down and exclaimed, “Order out Morgan to begin the game.” With a word to his command the watchful and heroic Morgan dashed into the struggle, scattered Burgoyne’s advance-guard, rushed on against the trained forces of Fraser, and swept them from the position to the left which they had taken in advance. With masterly skill and courage, Fraser rallied his men, and was forming a second line of defence, when he fell mortally wounded.

The sharp whistle of Morgan called his men once more to action. They charged, while Poor and Larned attacked the centre and the right. The battle swayed back and forth through the great ravine. Another charge from Morgan and the British retreated to their entrenchments. At this moment the impatient Arnold, stung to madness by the slights put upon him by Gates, dashed across the field. He gathered the regiments under his leadership by his enthusiasm, bravery, and vehemence. He broke through the lines of entrenchments at Freeman’s Farm. Repulsed for a moment, he assailed the left and charged the strong redoubt of Breyman which flanked the British camp at the place now called Burgoyne’s Hill. The patriot army, fired with hope and courage, crowded fearlessly up to the very mouth of the belching guns of the redoubt, won the final victory of the day, and then, exhausted by the desperate fight, dropped down for a few hours’ rest before they took possession of the British camp.

But there was no rest for the defeated army. Silently and sullenly during these hours, they withdrew from the works at Freeman’s Farm, and huddled closely together under the three redoubts by the river. Here the women, Madam Riedesel, Lady Ackland, and others, trembled and wept over the dying Fraser. Here the hospital stood with its overflowing throng of the wounded and the dead. The great and princely army waited in doubt and despair while their commander wavered in his plans. Should he try to hold his dangerous ground, should he risk another engagement, should he retreat? The last course was chosen. On the following night a retreat began as the last minute-guns were fired magnanimously by the Americans, in honor of Fraser’s funeral, which took place at sunset. The sun fell behind the heights upon which the exultant Americans lay; heavy clouds followed, and quickly after, amid the drenching rain, the army of Burgoyne, abandoning their sick and wounded, began the retreat up the river.

Retracing their steps from Bemis Heights, the scene of their disaster, they followed up the river road to the Fishkill and the Schuyler mansion, which they burned to the ground. Failing here in an attempt to make a stand against the advancing Americans, they fell back, formed an entrenched camp, and planted their batteries along the heights of old Saratoga. In this camp they still hoped to hold out until relief should come up the Hudson from New York. Here the romance and pathos of the campaign culminated, as described by Madam Riedesel, the accomplished and beautiful wife of the Hessian general, in her thrilling account of the retreat and of the agonizing days that followed. At the Marshall house, where she had taken refuge, the cannonballs thrown across the river crashed through its walls, and rolled along the floor, so that the sick and wounded were driven into the cellar where she and her children and the broken-hearted widows of the dead were suffering, watching, and starving. Frail by birth and rearing, Madam Riedesel stood in the doorway of the cellar, and with arms outspread across the open door held at bay the selfish, brutal men who would have crowded out the sick and dying. Burgoyne and his army, entrenched on the hills, and with the river below, yet had no water to drink, except a cupful brought now and then for the faint and wounded from the river by the British women, on whom the gallant Americans, ever tender toward woman, would not fire.

Finally, driven to the last extremity, with the Americans on the north, where Stark had seized Fort Edward, to the east, where Fellows held the river bank, and to the south, where Gates had thrown his victorious army, Burgoyne sent in his terms of surrender. Almost on the site of old Fort Hardy, his brave but unfortunate troops laid down their arms, and near the site of the old Schuyler mansion, which they had so recently burned, Burgoyne surrendered his sword to General Gates. Along the road, just across the Fishkill, the American army stretched in two lines, between which the disarmed prisoners were marched to the shrill notes of the fife and the measured beat of the drum, to the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” played for the first time as a national air.

ORIGINAL SIGN IN GRAND UNION HOTEL, SARATOGA SPRINGS, N. Y.]

General Schuyler, the hospitable and magnanimous, was on the ground. Neither the slight he had received from Congress nor the injuries inflicted on him by the British could quench his generous nature. He rejoiced with his victorious countrymen, he sympathized with the fallen enemy, he protected and cared for the helpless women.

During the summer of 1777 he had cut a road from his farm at old Saratoga through the wilderness to the High Rock Spring, already famous for its medicinal properties. He built a small frame house on the ledge of rocks overhanging the spring, and here for several summers his family came with him for rest and recreation as they had formerly gone to the comfortable mansion at old Saratoga. This was replaced by a rude cabin, and there, in 1783, Washington was entertained when, with General Clinton, he came to visit the Saratoga battle-ground. The party proceeded northward to Ticonderoga, and on their return stopped at High Rock Spring. General Washington was so strongly impressed with the value of the water and the beauty of the region that shortly afterward he tried to buy the property, but Livingston, Van Dam, and others had already secured it.

The events of the Revolution had discouraged the few settlers who first came to the springs, and for years afterwards but two log cabins offered a shelter to adventurous tourists. In 1791, Gideon Putnam cleared his farm at Saratoga, and Governor Gilman of New Hampshire in 1792 discovered Congress Spring. Putnam built his large boarding-house and tavern, and far-seeing and liberal-minded, he purchased extensive tracts of land and secured the foundation of the beautiful and prosperous village which is now a delight to visitors and a valued home to its residents. It is essentially a place of “homes,” where people of large or small means are assured of that quiet and ease which cannot be found in cities or towns which depend for their prosperity on active commercial or manufacturing interests.

SCHENECTADY

THE PROVINCIAL OUTPOST OF LIBERTY

BY JUDSON S. LANDON

Schenectady was settled in 1662. To give to the story of the settlement its proper character among the beginnings of free institutions in America it is necessary to recall the fact that the States-General of the Netherlands in 1621 chartered a trading concern, the Dutch West India Company, granted it the monopoly of the fur trade in New Netherland, and permitted it to govern, so long as it could, whatever colonies might inhabit the territory. The company thus formed ruled over the territory from 1624 to 1664, when the English, trumping up a stale claim of prior discovery, interfered and took possession.

The company’s rule was arbitrary, but not without good features. Traders are not apt to cavil over religious dogmas,—the company permitted freedom of conscience and worship. Subjects and servants render better obedience and service if treated with kindness and justice. The directors of the company seemed to know this, and professed to govern accordingly, but their governors sometimes found pretexts for the injustice which promised the surest profits.

Some of the colonists insisted that the people ought to have a part in the government. The Dutch governor, when he most needed their support, would promise concessions. He sometimes seemed to have begun to make them, but he made none that were substantial. Why should the trading company sentence itself to death?

Agriculture was necessary for the food-supply of the new province, and promised customers for the imports from Holland. Liberal terms were extended to the agriculturist. Men of wealth were tempted by offers of vast tracts of land, with a sort of feudal sovereignty, on condition that each of them would establish fifty families upon his domain. Among others the manor or lordship of Rensselaerswyck was established, embracing nearly all the territory now comprised within the counties of Albany and Rensselaer. Literally its jurisdiction was subject to that of the West India Company, but practically it was independent of it. The company established a trading and governmental post at Beverwyck or Fort Orange, now Albany, and exercised supreme jurisdiction, exclusive of that of Rensselaerswyck, for at least musket-range about the fort.

Among the colonists and traders who had been attracted to Beverwyck and Rensselaerswyck were some intelligent and enterprising men, mostly Protestant Dutchmen, who, after varied experience but general good fortune in the province, resolved to go apart by themselves and establish a community where justice equality and liberty could be secured and enjoyed, free from the overlordship of a patroon, and as remote as was practicable from contact with the grasping West India Company, either at Fort Orange or Manhattan.

The leader of these men was the founder of Schenectady, Arendt Van Curler. He was the nephew of Killiaen Van Rensselaer, and came from Holland in 1630 as director of his uncle’s principality. This he managed with great success for many years. All accounts agree in describing him as a man of honor, benevolence, ability and activity. His unvarying fairness and tactful address soon secured for him the respect and confidence of all who knew him, and especially of the Mohawk Indians. In their opinion he was the greatest and best white man they ever knew. They decorated him while living with the distinction of “very good friend,” and honored him when dead by calling other governors “Curler” or “Corlear,” a title which still survives with the same meaning in the language of the scattered remnants of their tribe. It was through his good offices that peace was secured between the province and the Five Nations, among whom the Mohawks were the foremost, and preserved unbroken during his life. By following his policy peace was long maintained after his death.

The beauty and fertility of the Mohawk country early attracted his attention. A letter addressed by him in 1643 to the “Noble Patroon” at Amsterdam exists, in which, after giving an account of his stewardship as manager of his uncle’s interests, he writes that the year before he had visited the Mohawk country, where he found three French prisoners, one of them being the celebrated Father Jogues, “a very learned scholar, who was very cruelly treated, his finger and thumb being cut off.” These prisoners were doomed to death, but Van Curler succeeded in effecting their release. Father Jogues, however, eager for the salvation of their souls, returned to them two years later, to suffer martyrdom at their hands. In this letter Van Curler writes:

“Within a half-day’s journey from the Colonies lies the most
beautiful land on the Mohawk river that eye ever saw, full a
day’s journey long.” He says “it cannot be reached by boat
owing to the strength of the stream and shallowness of the
water, but can be reached by wagons.”

Another part of this letter is worth transcribing:

“I am at present betrothed to the widow of the late Mr.
Jonas Bronck. May the good God vouchsafe to bless me in my
undertaking, and please to grant that it may conduce to His
honor and our mutual salvation. Amen.”

We know that the good lady long survived him, and as his widow was conceded some special privileges by the government.

“The most beautiful land” upon which Van Curler looked, was the Mohawk Valley, embracing Schenectady and extending far to the westward.

As he stood upon the crest of the upland southwest of the present city, where the sandy plain abruptly ends and gives place to the rich bottom-lands a hundred and fifty feet below, he looked northwesterly upon a wide expanse of meadow, through which the Mohawk River, gleaming in the sunlight, slowly wended. His eye rested upon the outline of that break in the mountains where the Mohawk has gorged its bed, through which in our day the New York Central Railroad passes from the seaboard to the Mississippi without climbing a foot-hill. It is the only level pass through the great Appalachian chain between the St. Lawrence Valley and the Gulf of Mexico. Not a tree and scarcely a bush grew upon this plain, but here and there were scattered patches of beans, corn and pumpkins, the fruit of the industry of the Mohawk women; and upon the higher ground where Schenectady now stands, the second great castle of the Mohawks, the Capitol of the Five Nations, stood, surrounded by many wigwams of the tribe. The nearer hills and the more distant mountains were clothed with forests. This cleared and fertile intervale, set in its forest frame, was due to the volume of water which in the spring freshets pours down the river. Three miles east of the city its channel is crossed by great ledges of shale rock, through which the river has cut its way, which still remains too narrow for the immediate passage of its waters when greatly swollen. These, overflowing and enriching the bottom-lands above, also denude them of their forest growth.

The Indian name of the place was Schonowe, the first syllable pronounced much like the Dutch “schoon,”—beautiful. Some of the Dutch, sharing Van Curler’s idea of the beauty of the place, wished to call it _Schoon_, beautiful, _achten_, esteemed, _del_, valley,—_Schoonachtendel_. The Indian name and the Dutch substitute were combined and confounded in a various and perplexing orthography which remains to us in the deeds, wills and other papers of that time, from which the name Schenectady was finally evolved.

Although Van Curler was attracted thus early by this beautiful land, it was long before he could realize his purposes. He married the Widow Bronck and continued the care of his uncle’s interest in the manor of Rensselaerswyck. But despite the success of his management the longer he stayed the more he saw and deplored the evils inherent in the feudal system. To his enlarged and benevolent mind the system itself was essentially one of serfdom.

The patroon was lord of the manor, the owner of all the land and of a fixed share of all the produce of his subjects or tenants, with the right of a pre-emption of all the surplus beyond what was necessary for their support. They took an oath of allegiance to him: they could not hunt or fish or trade or leave the manor without his consent or that of his representative. If they sold their tenant right and improvements, a part of the price was his. His will was the law, for his subjects renounced their right of appeal to the provincial government from his decrees or those of his magistrates. He was an absentee, and measured the merit of his agents by the amount of their remittances. The government of the province as administered at Fort Orange or at Manhattan was as good as could be expected from a trading company, but was odious to men of Van Curler’s enlarged understanding.

The firearms of white men at Beverwyck and in Rensselaerswyck began to impair the value of the hunting grounds in their vicinity, and Van Curler learned that the Indians might consent to sell their lands at Schenectady. He looked about for associates in the purchase of the lands and their settlement, and sifted out fourteen. He applied to the Director General or Governor of the province, Peter Stuyvesant—whose real qualities and worth and those of his good subjects the pen of Irving has replaced with the genial travesties of his enduring caricature,—and obtained his reluctant consent to the purchase. He then applied to the Indian chiefs. They too were reluctant. Schonowe was the site of one of their most ancient castles. It had long been their favorite home. Their traditions covered many generations, but no tradition reached back to their first coming. Still they well remembered that Hiawatha had lived here, two centuries or more before.

Hiawatha, the chief, of whom the Great Spirit was an ancestor, and whose wisdom, goodness and valor far surpassed that of other men, was the founder of the confederacy of the Five Nations. He devoted his long life to the good of his people, teaching them to live nobler and better, and finally was borne in the flesh to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Longfellow sings of Hiawatha with no stint of poetic license, but his harmonious numbers do not surpass the Indian estimate of his qualities. No doubt there was such a man, of exceptional wisdom, valor and influence, and that he disappeared without being known to have died. Around his memory tradition, employing the figurative language of the Indians, accumulated myths and magnified them.[16]

Van Curler was persistent, and in the end the Indians could not find it in their hearts to deny their “very good friend,” and the deed was formally executed and delivered at Fort Orange, July 2, 1661.

The founders entered into possession. The Indians bade them welcome, and began to move their wigwams up the valley. It was their first step in the many stages of their unreturning journey toward the setting sun. Their own sun thus passed its zenith, but they did not know it.

The colonists fixed their home or village lots upon the land above the sweep of the river floods, occupying for this purpose that part of the city west of the present Ferry Street. They assigned to each proprietor a village lot, two hundred feet square; a larger lot for a garden just south of the village, and a farm upon the bottom-lands beyond, with privileges in the outlying woodlands. Other settlers joined them. They sold them village lots and farm and garden lands, until the farm lands of the Van Curler grant were disposed of. Those who came still later bought village lots, but they had to buy farms of the Indians from lands outside of the Van Curler grant. Mechanics, traders and workmen came who did not want land, or lacked the means to buy it. Many of the proprietors were rich enough to own slaves, which—or shall I say whom?—they brought with them. Very soon by dint of industry their houses were built of the lumber sawed at their own mills, their farms were promising abundant crops, their gardens were blossoming, while their cattle were grazing in more distant pastures.

In this little republic the freeholders were the source of authority. By them and of them five trustees were elected “for maintaining good order and advancing their settlement.” The “Reformed Nether Dutch Church” was early established with its elders and deacons, and later, with its settled domine, maintained a guardianship over the people and especially the widows, orphans, and the poor. The community was under the titular jurisdiction of the province; the laws of Holland were in force with respect to contracts, property rights, and domestic relations, and were observed as a matter of course. The governor appointed the trustees or their nominees, _schepens_ or justices of the peace, and they appointed a _schout_ or constable, with large executive powers. This official, conscious of his power, and arrayed in a garb denoting it, solemnly pointed his pipe stem and sometimes even shook his sword, at the wayward. If any were so refractory as not to mend their ways after such an admonition, he haled them before the schepen. This magistrate, as his commission was construed, had the right so to supply the defects in the Dutch laws and the ordinances of “Their High Mightinesses, the noble Dutch West India Company,” as to “make the punishment fit the crime.” This meant that he could impose such a fine as the schout thought collectible, or such other punishment as he would undertake to inflict. Causes of great gravity, such as complaints by the traders at Beverwyck that the accused had infringed upon their monopolies, were brought before that jurisdiction, but the records disclose no practical benefits to the complainants.

In 1664, two years after the first settlement, the province and its government passed by conquest from the Dutch to the English. This made but little change at Schenectady. The system of government already begun was continued. The manor of Rensselaerswyck was confirmed to the patroon with some change in the sovereignty, but none in his property rights. Beverwyck became Albany, the county of Albany was established, and embraced Schenectady. The court at Albany took jurisdiction of such larger causes as the “Duke’s Laws,” conferred upon it, and the minor ones remained as before within the jurisdiction of the local magistrates. There were but few ministers of the gospel in the province, and it was not until 1684 that the Reverend Petrus Thesschenmaecher, a graduate of the University of Utrecht, was installed as their first resident pastor or domine. It was a memorable day, when that pious man, in his black silken robe, ascended the high pulpit of the church edifice which, loopholed for musketry together with his dwelling-house, awaited his coming, and in the deep solemn guttural of his Nether Dutch speech, led the worship of his dutiful flock. These Dutch Protestants did not agonize about God’s wrath like the Puritans; they assumed His loving care, as a child does its father’s. The ordinances and forms of worship prescribed by the Church were regarded as duties to be observed as well as privileges to be enjoyed, and the higher the social or official state of the individual, the more prominent and circumspect must he be in his religious observances. One of the documents of that day opens in these words: “We, the justices, consistory, together with the common people of Schanegtade, conceive ourselves in duty bound to take care of our reverend minister.” It is signed by the justices, elders, deacons and many others who, we must assume, were “common people.” There remains a marriage contract in which a widower and a widow recite how much property each brings to the marriage state; the widow enumerating among other property three slaves, for whose freedom upon her decease, however, she provides. No doubt the justices, the consistory, the freeholders and the common people observed this order of precedence on this and all like occasions; the widow being preceded by a slave bearing a warming-box for her feet, a metrical version of the Psalms, and the book of devotion containing the liturgy, the _Heidelberg Catechism_, the _Confession of Faith_ and the canons of the Church, as all these had been approved by the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619.

Long before this learned graduate of the University of Utrecht was secured, the Rev. Gideon Schaets, minister at Albany, was permitted by his Church to visit Schenectady at least four times a year, upon a week day (“since it would be unjust to let the community be without preaching”—so the record at Albany recites), and administer the Lord’s Supper, baptize the children and officiate at marriages. Marriage, however, was a civil function over which a magistrate was competent to preside. As early as 1681 the Church had an investment for the support of the poor of 3,000 guilders, which had reached 4,000 guilders in 1690, when the Church perished in the destruction and massacre of that year.

The inhabitants of this frontier village, who welcomed with open hands and glad hearts their first domine, might well be pardoned if there was a leaven of worldly pride in their greeting. Where else in all the provinces was there a more prosperous, more generous, more intelligent and better ordered people? There was no lack of substantial plenty. Who more than they were entitled to establish a Church and have a domine of their own? In October, 1683, the first legislative assembly chosen by the freeholders was summoned to convene in New York, to frame laws for the province. By the governor’s proclamation Schenectady had been accorded a representative, and thus its importance in the body politic was recognized. The village was the frontier bulwark of civilization, where the white man and the Mohawk Indian, by keeping faith with each other, kept bright the chain of friendship which made the Five Nations the allies of the Province of New York. To guard against French and Indian incursions, a stockade had been built around the village. This was a high fence made of three rows of posts set together firmly in the ground. There was a gate upon the north and south sides, and a fort within the stockade at each gate. Although often alarmed, it was not until the war between England and her allies and France, which was soon declared after James II. abdicated the crown of England in the revolution of 1688 and William and Mary came to the throne, that this frontier village was seriously threatened. Jacob Leisler, a Dutch trader and captain of a military company, of great zeal but of small ability, seized the government in the name of William and Mary and brought confusion among the people by his presumption. The common people favored Leisler. They “blessed the great God of Heaven and Earth for deliverance from Tyranny, Popery, and Slavery.” The aristocracy opposed him, and complained that “Fort James was seized by the rabble, that hardly one person of sense and estate does countenance.” Their wisest leader, Van Curler, had long been dead;[17] and the people of Schenectady became hopelessly divided. Warnings were frequent, but vigilance was relaxed, and at last the blow fell upon a defenceless people.

On the night of the 8th of February, 1690, one hundred and fourteen Frenchmen and ninety-six Indians, sent by Frontenac, Governor General of Canada, after a twenty-two days’ march from Montreal, through the snow and the wilderness, stole in through the open gates of the stockade, massacred sixty of the inhabitants, plundered and burned about sixty houses—leaving only six—and carried away thirty captives. The survivors, who were fortunate enough in the confusion to escape either by accident or flight, numbered about two hundred and fifty. Their distress cannot be described. They buried their dead, their beloved pastor being among the slain. They made what provision they could against the severity of the winter and then took thought of the future. Should they abandon the place where for a quarter of a century they had lived in peace and plenty, and seek safety elsewhere? Help and counsel came to them from Albany, Esopus and New York, from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and not least from the friendly Mohawks, all encouraging them to stay. Indeed, there was no place of assured safety in the whole province. The war threatened all the English colonies. The colonies sent their delegates to New York, where they concerted measures for the common defence. This was the first general American Congress. To abandon Schenectady would be to encourage the enemy, to endanger the whole province by discouraging its allies, the Iroquois or Five Nations, causing them to distrust the valor and prowess of the English arms, and possibly to embrace the oft proffered alliance of the French. Schenectady must be held, cost what it might. The survivors finally concluded to stay. Twenty-four of the freeholders subscribed to a paper, stating:

“In the first place, it is agreed to resort to the North Fort
to secure our bodies and defend them.

“Secondly, that the crops or fruits of the earth—that is, the
winter grain, shall be in common for the use of all, and all
the mowing lands for this year.

“Thirdly, the widows shall draw their just due and portions.

“If any one will voluntarily depart or draw up for Canada, he
shall yet have his full share and the benefits.

“Every one that shall stand to these articles shall obey the
orders of their officers, on the penalty of such punishment
as shall be seasonable, without expecting any favor, grace or
dissimulation.”

The survivors began the work of reconstruction and defence. Every able-bodied man became both citizen and soldier, ready for service at home or on scout or picket or skirmish duty, wherever the approach of the enemy was to be feared. Schenectady became a military camp where the provincial troops, reinforced by detachments from New England and by their Iroquois allies, made good the safety of Schenectady and thus kept watch and ward over the English dominion in North America. They recognized Governor Leisler’s authority and sent a representative to the two sessions of his Assembly held in April and October, 1690.[18]

The warlike state of things existed from 1690 until after the peace of Ryswyck in 1697. Upon the return of peace, Schenectady began to resume its former state and prosperity. The people rebuilt their church and called the Rev. Bernardus Freerman as their pastor. How dear he became to them the many children named in his honor attest. The Dutch population was sprinkled with a few English-speaking soldiers who chose to make it their home. Its importance increased as a centre of trade, not only with the Indians, but with those hardy pioneers, who, attracted by the fertile lands, or the desire to join the friendly Indians in their hunting expeditions, pushed farther up the valley. The traders at Albany protested against this invasion of their monopoly, and also against the exercise of milling, weaving and tanning privileges, but in a famous law-suit in the Supreme Court of the province, the Albany monopolists were beaten, and Schenectady’s full right to freedom of trade and manufacture was established. Then came Queen Anne’s War with the French, lasting from 1701 to 1713, and Schenectady was again in peril, and again garrisoned, for the same reason and much in the same way as before; but, the Iroquois having made a treaty of peace with Canada, the brunt of the war fell upon New England and Schenectady passed safely through it.

From the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to the “Old French War,” 1744-48, peace prevailed. In the latter war many inhabitants of the village were killed in skirmishes or cut down by skulking Indians in the service of the French. In one skirmish, or rather massacre, at Beukendal, three miles northwest of Schenectady, twenty men were killed and thirteen captured and carried away. Then came the last French war, from 1753 to 1763. The English now had posts at Fort Hunter, Fort Schuyler, Fort Johnson and Oswego on the west, at Fort Ann and Fort Edward on the north. Sir William Johnson and others had established settlements up the Mohawk Valley. Sir William was general superintendent of Indian affairs and a Major-General in the English service. His influence over the Iroquois was commanding; his early victory at Lake George was important; the English carried the war into the French territory. Schenectady enjoyed immunity from attack, and was enabled, besides maintaining a garrison in its fort, to send its quotas of troops to distant service, one company assisting in the English siege and capture of Havana in 1762.

The treaty of Paris in 1763, by which the French yielded the dominion of North America to the English, seemed to promise a lasting peace. But the War of the Revolution came on. Our Indian allies, the Iroquois, remained faithful to their long allegiance to the English Crown, and became our enemies under the leadership of Sir John Johnson, who, succeeding to the estate and title of his father, Sir William, adhered to the Crown, under which both became ennobled. Schenectady was again threatened, from the side of Canada, but by its former friends and allies. Aside from its contribution of six companies to the patriot cause, its position made it the base from which those who adhered to the English cause sought to send aid and comfort to the enemy. General Washington came here early in the struggle, and made arrangements for the frontier defence.[19]

The Schenectady patriots appointed a committee of vigilance and safety, who, as the one hundred and sixty-two written pages of their records show, repressed with strong hand and scant ceremony the slightest evasions of the orders of Congress and of the military authorities, and all attempts at treasonable intercourse with the enemy. Finally American independence was won, and Schenectady, after nearly a century of unrest, enjoyed the blessing of permanent peace. The forts and stockade soon disappeared.

Meantime the little village had steadily grown, becoming a chartered borough in 1765, and advancing to the dignity of a city in 1798. Schenectady received its first officially carried mail on the 3d day of April, 1763,—Benjamin Franklin being the colonial postmaster-general,—founded the Schenectady Academy in 1784, which became Union College in 1795, and read its first newspaper, _The Schenectady Gazette_, January 6, 1799.

The military occupation and the increasing importance of the frontier trade added largely to the English population. As early as 1710, the Rev. Thomas Barclay, the English chaplain to the fort in Albany, preached once a month at Schenectady, where, as he writes, “there is a garrison of forty soldiers, besides about sixteen English and about one hundred Dutch families.” At that time the Dutch had no pastor. Mr. Barclay writes, “There is a convenient and well built church which they freely give me the use of.” It was not, however, until 1759, when there were three hundred houses in the village, that the English population undertook the erection of a separate church. They “purchased a glebe lot and by subscription chiefly among themselves erected a neat stone church,” and called it St. George’s. This stone church, with its subsequent additions, is the handsome St. George’s of to-day. Its site had previously been covered by the English barracks. There is a tradition that the Presbyterians assisted in the erection of St. George’s with the understanding that the Anglicans were to go in at the west door and the Presbyterians at the south door, but that the Anglicans managed to get the church consecrated unknown to the Presbyterians. The latter, upon finding it out, were so indignant that they set about building a church for themselves. Be this as it may, the Presbyterians commenced building their church in 1770, and finished it with bell and steeple, the latter surmounted by a leaden ball gilded with “six books of gold leaf.”

In 1767 the Methodist movement began here under the lead of Captain Thomas Webb, a local preacher bearing the license of John Wesley. The movement was favored and advanced by the preaching of that great orator, George Whitefield, then making his last American tour. The society, however, waited until 1809 before building its first church edifice. In the same year Schenectady County was carved out of Albany County.

All this while the English speech was gaining over the Dutch. Children of Dutch parents, despite the teaching of the nursery, would acquire and use the English idiom. Finally some of the members of the Dutch Church ventured to suggest the propriety of having service now and then in the English tongue. The staid burghers were shocked. But, the question once raised, the younger generation grew bolder, and the elder began to listen. Domine Romeyn, a graduate of Princeton College, a fluent master of both languages, and eminent for his varied learning and as the founder of Union College, was pastor of the Church from 1784 to 1804. He so far yielded to the new demand as to preach in English upon occasions of which he was careful to give previous notice. It was not until 1794 that the leading members of the Church represented to its consistory the necessity of increasing the services in English,[20] “to the end that the church be not scattered.” Ten years later, at the close of Domine Romeyn’s long ministry, the Dutch language ceased to be heard from the pulpit of the church. But there are still surviving a few—very few—inhabitants to whom the Dutch is their mother tongue. One of them informs the writer that when he visited Holland he conversed with ease with the people, but that he sometimes used words not familiar to them and afterwards learned that these words were of Indian origin.

UNION COLLEGE.]

As Schenectady is two hundred feet above tide-water at Albany, it early became the headquarters of the western trade, goods being carried to and from the West upon canoes, bateaux, and the “Schenectady Durham boats.” The trade developed into large proportions, and during the hundred years closing with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, many traders made fortunes which were considered large in those days. Upon the completion of the canal the commercial prosperity of the city declined. The decline seemed to be confirmed by the era of railroads, notwithstanding the “Mohawk and Hudson” was the first railroad built in the State, its first passenger train arriving in Schenectady from Albany, September 12, 1831, and on the second railroad, the “Saratoga and Schenectady,” the first train left Schenectady for Saratoga, July 12, 1832.