Chapter XIII: The earth all light and loveliness, in summer's golden hours, (2)

At the time of the attack, the Indians had placed most of their prisoners on the horses which they had stolen from Currytown, and each was well guarded. When they were, about to retreat before Willett, fearing the recapture of the prisoners, and the consequent loss of scalps, the savages began to murder and scalp them. Young Dievendorff (my informant) leaped from his horse, and, running toward the swamp, was pursued, knocked down by a blow of a tomahawk upon his shoulder, scalped, and left for dead. Willett did not bury his slain, but a detachment of militia, under Colonel Veeder, who repaired to the field after the battle, entombed them, and fortunately discovered and proceeded to bury the bodies of the prisoners who were murdered and scalped near the camp. Young Dievendorff, who was stunned and insensible, was seen struggling among the leaves; and his bloody face being mistaken for that of an Indian, one of the soldiers leveled his musket to shoot him. A fellow-soldier, perceiving his mistake, knocked up his piece and saved the lad's life. He was taken to Fort Plain, and, being placed under the care of Dr. Faught, a German physician, of Stone Arabia, was restored to health. It was five years, however, before his head was perfectly healed; and when I saw him (August, 1848), it had the tender appearance and feeling of a wound recently healed. He is still living (1849), in the midst of the settlement of Currytown, which soon arose from its ashes, and is a living monument of savage cruelty and the sufferings of the martyrs for American liberty. *

Toward evening we left Currytown for Cherry Valley, by the way of Sharon Springs. The road lay through a beautiful, though very hilly, country. From the summits of some of the eminences over which we passed the views were truly magnificent. Looking down into the Canajoharie Valley from the top of its eastern slope, it appeared like a vast enameled basin, having its concavity garnished with pictures of rolling intervales, broad cultivated fields, green groves, bright streams, villages, and neat farm-houses in abundance; and its distant rim on its northern verge seemed beautifully embossed with wooded hills, rising one above another in profuse outlines far away beyond the Mohawk. We reached the Springs toward sunset, passing the Pavilion on the way. ** They are in a broad ravine, and along the margin of a hill; and near them the little village of Sharon has grown up. ** Our stay was brief---just long enough to have a lost shoe replaced by another upon our horse, and to visit the famous fountains--for, having none of the "ills which flesh is heir to" of sufficient malignity to require the infliction of sulphureted or chalybeate draughts, we were glad to escape to the hills and vales less suggestive of Tophet and the Valley of Hinnom. How any _but invalids_, who find the waters less nauseous than the allopathic doses of the shops,

* The little girl (Mary Miller) was found scalped, but alive, and was taken, with the lad Dievendorff, toward Fort Plain. She was very weak when found, and on taking a draught of cold water, just before reaching the fort, instantly expired.

** The Pavilion is a very large hotel, situated upon one of the loftiest summits in the neighborhood, and commanding a magnificent view of the country. It was erected in 1836 by a New York company, and is filled with invalids and other visitors during the summer.

*** The Sharon Sulphur Springs have been celebrated for their medical properties many years, and are said to be equal in efficacy to those in Virginia. There is a chalybeate spring in the neighborhood. The whole region abounds in fossils, and is an interesting place for the geologist.

Arrival at Cherry Valley.--Judge Campbell and his Residence.--His Captivity.--Movements of Brant

296and, consequently, are happier than at home, can spend a "season" there, within smelling distance of the gaseous fountains, and call the sojourn _pleasure_, is a question that can only be solved by Fashion, the shrewd alchemist in whose alembic common miseries are transmuted into conventional happiness. The sulphureted hydrogen does not infect the Pavilion, I believe, and a summer residence there secures the enjoyment of pure air and delightful drives and walks in the midst of a lovely hill country.

It was quite dark when we reached Cherry Valley, eight miles west of Sharon Springs. * This village lies imbosomed within lofty hills, open only on the southwest, in the direction of the Susquehanna, and as we approached it along the margin of the mountain on its eastern border, the lights sparkling below us, like stars reflected from a lake, gave us the first indication of its presence.

In the course of the evening we called upon the Honorable James S. Campbell, who, at the time of the destruction of the settlement in 1778, was a child six years of age. He is the son of Colonel Samuel Campbell, already mentioned, and father of the Honorable William W. Campbell, of New York city, the author of the _Annals of Tryon County_, so frequently cited. With his mother and family, he was carried into captivity. He has a clear recollection of events in the Indian country while he was a captive, his arrival and stay at Niagara, his subsequent sojourn in Canada, and the final reunion of the family after an absence and separation of two years. ** His residence, a handsome modern structure, is upon the site of the old family mansion, which was stockaded and used as a fort at the time of the invasion. The doors and window-shutters were made bullet-proof, and the two barns that were included within the ramparts were strengthened.

In a former chapter we have noticed that Brant's first hostile movement, after his return from Canada and establishment of his head-quarters at Oghkwaga, was an attempt to cut off the settlement of Cherry Valley, or, at least, to make captive the members of the active Committee of Correspondence. It was a sunny morning, toward the close of May, when Brant and his warriors cautiously moved up to the brow of the lofty hill on the east side of the town, to reconnoiter the settlement at their feet. He was astonished and chagrined on seeing a fortification where he supposed all was weak and defenseless, and greater was his disappointment when quite a large and well-armed garrison appeared upon the esplanade in front of Colonel Campbell's house. These soldiers were not as formidable as the sachem supposed, for they were only half-grown boys, who, full of the martial spirit of the times, had formed themselves into companies, and, armed with wooden guns and swords, had regular drills each day. It was such a display, on the morning in question, that attracted Brant's attention. His vision being somewhat obstructed by the trees and

* Cherry Valley derived its name, according to Campbell, from the following circumstance: "Mr. Dunlop [the venerable pastor whose family suffered at the time of the massacre in 1778], engaged in writing some letters, inquired of Mr. Lindesay [the original proprietor of the soil] where he should date them, who proposed the name of a town in Scotland. Mr. Dunlop, pointing to the fine wild cherry-trees and to the valley, replied, 'Let us give our place an appropriate name, and call it Cherry Valley,' which was readily agreed to."--Annals of Tryon County.

** The children of Mrs. Campbell were all restored to her at Niagara, except this one. In June, 1780, she was sent to Montreal, and there she was joined by her missing boy. He had been with a tribe of the Mohawks, and had forgotten his own language; but he remembered his mother, and expressed his joy at seeing her, in the Indian language. Honorable William Campbell, late surveyor general of New York, was her son. She lived until 1836, being then 93 years of age. She was the last survivor of the Revolutionary women in the region of the head waters of the Susquehanna.

*** This pleasant dwelling is upon the northern verge of the town, on the road leading from Cherry Valley to the Mohawk. The sketch was taken from the road.

Brant deceived by Boys.--Death of Lieutenant Wormwood.--Shrewdness of Sitz.--"Brant's Rock."

297shrubs in which he was concealed, he mistook the boys for full-grown soldiers, and, considering an attack dangerous, moved his party to a hiding-place at the foot of the Tekaharawa Falls, in a deep ravine north of the village, near the road leading to the Mohawk. * In that deep, rocky glen, "where the whole scene was shadowy and almost dark even at mid-day," his warriors were concealed, while Brant and two or three followers hid themselves in ambush behind a large rock by the road side', for the purpose of obtaining such information as might fall in his way.

On the morning of that day, Lieutenant Wormwood, a promising young officer of Palatine, had been sent from Fort Plain to Cherry Valley with the information, for the committee at the latter place, that a military force might be expected there the next day. His noble bearing and rich velvet dress attracted a good deal of attention at the village; and when, toward evening, he started to return, accompanied by Peter Sitz, the bearer of some dispatches, the people, in admiration, looked after him until he disappeared beyond the hill. On leaving, he had cast down his portmanteau, saying, "I shall be back for it in the morning." But he never returned.

As the two patriots galloped along the margin of the Tekaharawa Glen, they were hailed, but, instead of answering, they put spurs to their horses. The warriors in ambush arose and fired a volley upon them. The lieutenant fell, and Brant, rushing out from his concealment, scalped him with his own hands. Sitz was captured, and his dispatches fell into the hands of Brant. Fortunately they were double, and Sitz had the presence of mind to destroy the genuine and deliver the fictitious to the sachem. Deceived by these dispatches concerning the strength of Cherry Valley, Brant withdrew to Cobelskill, and thence to Oghkawaga, and the settlement 'was saved from destruction at that time.' Its subsequent fate is recorded in a previous chapter.

Judge Campbell kindly offered to accompany us in the morning to "Brant's Rock." *** Having engaged to be back at Fort Plain in time the next day to take the cars for Albany at two o'clock, and the distance from the "rock" being twelve miles, over a rough and hilly road, an early start was necessary, for I wished to make a sketch of the village and valley, as also

* The Tekaharawa is the western branch of the Canajoharie or Bowman's Creek, which falls into the Mohawk at Canajoharie, opposite Palatine.

** Campbell's Annals.

*** This rock, which is about four feet high, lies in a field on the left of the road leading from Cherry Valley to the Mohawk, about a mile and a half north of the residence of Judge Campbell. It is a fossiliferous mass, composed chiefly of shells. Behind this rock the body of Lieutenant Wormwood, lifeless and the head scalped, was found by the villagers, who had heard the firing on the previous evening. Judge Campbell, who accompanied us to the spot, pointed out the stump of a large tree by the road side, as the place where Lieutenant Wormwood fell. The tree was pierced by many bullets, and Judge Campbell had extracted several of them when a boy.

Morning Scene near Cherry Valley.--Light--Departure for Albany.-- Woodworth's Battle

298of the rock. At early dawn, the light not being sufficient to perceive the outline of distant objects, I stood upon the high ridge north of the village which divides the head waters of the eastern branch of the Susquehanna from the tributaries of the Mohawk. As the pale light in the east grew ruddy, a magnificent panorama was revealed on every side; and as the stars faded away, and trees, and fields, and hills, and the quiet village arose from the gloom, and the sun's first rays burst over the eastern hills into the valley, lighting it up with sudden splendor, while the swelling chorus of birds and the hum of insects broke the stillness; and the perfumes of flowers arose from the dewy grass like sweet incense, the delighted spirit seemed to hear a voice in the quivering light, saying,

"From the quicken'd womb of the primal gloom

The sun roll'd black and bare,

Till I wove him a vest, for his Ethiop breast,

Of the threads of my golden hair;

And when the broad tent of the firmament

Arose on its airy spars,

I pencil'd the hue of its matchless blue,

And spangled it round with the stars.

I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers,

The birds in their chambers of green,

And mountains and plain glow with beauty again

As they bask in my matinal sheen.

Oh, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth,

. Though fitful and fleeting the while,

What glories must rest on the home of the blest,

Ever bright with the Deity's smile."

William Pitt Palmer.

On the north the Valley of the Canajoharie stretches away to the Mohawk, twelve miles distant, whose course was marked by a white line of mist that skirted the more remote hills; and on the south Cherry Valley extends down among the mountains toward the Susquehanna proper, and formed the easy war-path to the settlement at its head, from Oghkwaga and Unadilla. From the bosom of the ridge whereon I stood spring the head waters of the eastern branch of the Susquehanna and those of Canajoharie. I had finished the sketch here given before the sun was fairly above the tree-tops, and, while the mist yet hovered over the Tehakawara, we were at Brant's Rock, within the sound of the tiny cascades. There we parted from Judge Campbell, and hastened on toward Fort Plain, where we arrived in time to breakfast, and to take the morning train for Albany. Before leaving, let us take a parting glance at the Revolutionary history of the Mohawk Valley, for we may not have another opportunity.

Soon after the irruption of Dockstader, or Doxstader, into the Currytown and New Dor-lach settlements, a party of Tories and Indians made a descent upon Palatine, under the conduct of a son of Colonel Jacob Klock. They were betrayed by one of their number, and fled to the woods for safety, without accomplishing any mischief. At the German Flats and in that vicinity several spirited rencounters took place between the enemy and the patriot militia. One of them was marked by great bravery on the part of Captain Solomon Woodworth, and a small company of rangers which he had organized. He marched from Fort Dayton to the Royal Grant for the purpose of observation. On the way he fell in with an Indian ambush. Without warning, his little band was surrounded by savages, who made the forest ring with the war-whoop. One of the most desperate and bloody engagements of the war ensued. Woodworth and a large number of his rangers were slain, and the victorious Indians took several of them prisoners. Only fifteen escaped.

Another affair occurred at a settlement called Shell's Bush, about five miles north of Herkimer village, which deserves a passing notice. A wealthy German named John Christian Shell, or Schell, had built a block- house of his own, two stories high, the upper one projecting so as to allow the inmates to fire perpendicularly upon the assailants. * One sultry

* At that time there were no less than twenty forts, so called, between Schenectady and Fort Schuyler. They were generally strong dwellings stockaded, and so arranged that fifteen or twenty families might find protection in each.

Descent of Tories upon "Shell's Bush."--Shell's Block-house.--Furious Battle.--Capture of M'Donald.--Luther's Hymn.

299afternoon in August, while the people were generally in their fields, Donald M'Donald, one of the Scotch refugees from Johnstown, with a party of sixty Indians and Tories, made a descent upon Shell's Bush. The inhabitants mostly fled to Fort Dayton, but Shell and his family took refuge in his block-house. He and two of his sons (he had eight in all) were at work in the field. The two sons were captured, but the father and his other boys, who were near, reached the block-house in safety. It was finally besieged, but the assailants were kept at a respectful distance by the _garrison_. Shell's wife loaded the muskets, while her husband and sons discharged them with sure aim. M'Donald tried to burn the blockhouse, but was unsuccessful. He at length procured a crow-bar, ran up to the door, and attempted to force it. Shell fired upon him, and so wounded him in the leg that he fell. Instantly the beleaguered patriot opened the door and pulled the Scotchman within, a prisoner. He was well supplied with cartridges, and these he was obliged to surrender to his captors. The battle ceased for a time. Shell knew the enemy would not attempt to burn his castle while their leader was a prisoner within it, and, taking advantage of the lull in the battle, he went into the second story, and composedly sang the favorite hymn of Luther amid the perils that surrounded him in his controversies with the pope. * But the respite was short. The enemy, maddened at the loss of several of their number killed, and their commander a prisoner, rushed up to the block- house, and five of them thrust the muzzles of their pieces through the loop-holes. Mrs. Shell seized an ax, and, with well-directed blows, ruined every musket by bending the barrels. At the same time Shell and his sons kept up a brisk fire, which drove the enemy off. At twilight he went to the upper story and called out to his wife, in a loud voice, informing her that Captain Small was approaching from Fort Dayton with succor. In a few minutes, with louder voice, he exclaimed, "Captain Small, march your company round upon this side of the house. Captain Getman, you had better wheel your men off to the left, and come upon that side." This was a successful stratagem. There were no troops approaching, but the enemy, deceived by the trick, fled to the woods. M'Donald was taken to Fort Dayton the next day, where his leg was amputated, but the blood flowed so freely that he died in a few hours. ** The two sons of Shell

* The following is a literal translation of the hymn, made for the author of the Life of Brant by Professor Bokum, of Harvard University. It is from a German hymn book published in 1741.

A firm fortress is our God, a good defense and weapon;

He helps us free from all our troubles which have now befallen us.

The old evil enemy, he is now seriously going to work;

Great power and much cunning are his cruel equipments,

There is none like him on the earth.

2.

With our own strength nothing can be done, we are very soon lost:

For us the right man is fighting, whom God himself has chosen.

Do you ask, who is he? His name is Jesus Christ,

The Lord Jehovah, and there is no other God;

He must hold the field.

3.

And if the world were full of devils, ready to devour us,

We are by no means much afraid, for finally we must overcome The prince of this world, however badly he may behave,

He can not injure us, and the reason is, because he is the judge,

A little word can lay him low. '.

4.

That word they shall suffer to remain, and not to be thanked for either;

He is with us in the field, with his spirit and his gifts.

If they take from us body, property, honor, child, and wife,

Let them all be taken away, they have yet no gain from it,

The kingdom of heaven must remain to us.

** M'Donald wore a silver-mounted tomahawk, which Shell took from him. Its handle exhibited thirty-two scalp notches, the tally of horrid deeds in imitation of his Indian associates.

Death of Shell and his Son.--Cessation of Hostilities.--Departure from Fort Plain.--Albany.--Hendrick Hudson.

300 were carried into Canada, and they asserted that nine of the wounded enemy died on the way. Their loss on the ground was eleven killed and six wounded, while not one of the defenders of the block-house was injured. Soon after this event Shell was fired upon by some Indians, while at work in his field with his boys. He was severely wounded, and one of his boys was killed. The old man was taken to the fort, where he died of his wound. *

During this summer the Tories and Indians went down upon Warwasing and other portions of the frontier settlements of Ulster and Orange counties. These expeditions will be elsewhere considered. The irruption of Hoss and Butler into the Johnstown settlement in October, and their repulse by Colonel Willett, have been related. With that transaction closed the hostilities in Tryon county for the year, and the surrender of Cornwallis October 19, 1781 and his whole army at Yorktown, in Virginia, so dispirited the Loyalists that they made no further demonstrations, by armed parties, against the settlements. Attempts, some of them successful, were made to carry off prominent citizens. ** The Indians still hung around the borders of the settlements in small parties during 1782, but they accomplished little beyond producing alarms and causing general uneasiness. Peace ensued, the hostile savages retired to the wilderness, a few of the refugee Tories, tame and submissive, returned, and the Mohawk Valley soon smiled with the abundance produced by peaceful industry.

We left Fort Plain toward noon, and reached Albany in time to depart for New York the same evening. Columns of smoke were yet rising from the smouldering ruins of a large portion of the business part of the city lying near the river, south of State Street; and the piers along the basin, black and bare, exhibited a mournful contrast to the air of busy activity that enlivened them when we passed through the place a few weeks before. I have been in Albany many times; let us take a seat upon the promenade deck of the Isaac Newton, for the evening is pleasant, and, as we glide down the Hudson, chat a while about the Dutch city and its associations, and its sister settlement Schenectady, and thus close our

FIRST TOUR AMONG THE SCENES OF THE REVOLUTION.

The site of Albany was an Indian settlement, chiefly of the Mohawk tribes, long before Hendrick Hudson sailed up the North River. It was called _Scagh-negh-ta-da_, a word signifying _the end of the pine woods, or beyond the pine woods._ Such, and equally appropriate, was also the name of a settlement on the Mohawk, at the lower end of the valley, which still retains the appellation, though a little Anglicised in orthography, being spelled Schenectady. From the account given in Juet's Journal, published in the third volume of Purchas's Pilgrimages, of Hudson's voyage up the river, it is supposed that he proceeded in his vessel (the _Half Moon_) as far as the present site of Albany, and perhaps as high as Troy. *** But he left no colony there, and the principal fruit of his voyage, which he carried back to the Old World, was intelligence of the discovery of a noble river, navigable one hundred and sixty miles, and passing through the most fertile and romantic region imaginable. This

* Stone's Life of Brant.

** The most prominent Tories engaged in this business were Bettys and Waltermeyer. We have noticed in another chapter the attempt of the latter to abduct General Schuyler. Among the prisoners thus made by these two miscreants, from Ballston, were Samuel Nash, Joseph Chaird, Uri Tracy, Samuel Patchin, Epenetus White, John Fulmer, and two brothers named Bontas. They were all taken to Canada, and, after being roughly treated, were either exchanged, or became free at the conclusion of the war.

*** Henry or Hendrick Hudson was a native of England. While seeking a northwest passage to Japan and China, he explored the coasts of Greenland and Labrador in 1607-8. After returning to England from a second voyage, he went to Holland and entered the service of the Dutch East India Company, who fitted out the _Half Moon_ for him to pursue his discoveries. It was during this voyage that he sailed up the river which bears his name. The next year (1610) he was sent out by an association of gentlemen, and in that voyage discovered the great bay at the north called Hudson's Bay, where he wintered. In the spring of 1611 he endeavored to complete his discoveries, but, his provisions failing, he was obliged to relinquish the attempt and make his way homeward. Going out of the straits from the bay, he threatened to set one or two of his mutinous crew on shore. These, joined by others, entered his cabin at night, pinioned his arms behind him, and with his sons, and seven of the sick and most infirm on board, he was put into a shallop and set adrift. He was never heard of afterward.

Early History of Albany.--Fort Orange.--First Stone House.--The Church.- -The Portrait of Hudson.

301discovery was made early in the autumn of 1609.

As soon as the intelligence reached the Dutch East India Company, they sent out men to establish trading posts in the country in 1614, and the place was named, by the Dutch, Beaverwyek, or Beaver town, from the circumstance that great numbers of beavers were found there. A fortification, called Fort Orange, was built in 1623. * The town retained its original name until 1664, when the New Netherlands (as the country upon the Hudson was called) passed into the hands of the English.

1610 These traders ascended the river and built a blockhouse on the north point of Boyd's Island, a little below Albany; and it may be said* that in 1612 Albany was founded, for in that year the first permanent trading post was established there. Next to Jamestown, in Virginia, it was the earliest European settlement within the thirteen original colonies. A temporary fort was erected by the name of Albany, one of the titles of James, duke of York, the brother of Charles II., afterward King James II. of England.

The first permanent settlement that was made at Albany (the traders resorting thither only in the autumn and winter) was in 1626, and from that time until 1736 many respectable Dutch families came over and established themselves there and in the vicinity. Among them occur the names of Quackenboss, Lansing, Bleeeker, Van Ness, Pruyn, Van Wart, Wendell, Van Eps, and Van Rensselaer, names familiar to the readers of our history, and their descendants are numerous among us. The first _stone_ building, except the fort, was erected at Albany in 1647, on which occasion "eight ankers" (one hundred and twenty-eight gallons) of brandy were consumed. *** About this time the little village of Beaverwyek was stockaded with strong wooden pickets or palisades, the remains of which were visible until 1812. The government was a military despotism, and so rigorous were the laws that quite a number of settlers left it and established themselves upon the present site of Schenectady, about one hundred years since. A small church was erected in 1655, and the Dutch East India Company sent a bell and a pulpit for it, about the time when its first pastor, Rev. Gideon Schaats, sailed for Beaverwyek. It became too small for the congregation, and in 1715 a new and larger edifice was erected on its site. This stood about ninety-two years, in the open area formed by the angle of State, Market, and Court Streets.

Albany had become a considerable town when Kalm visited it in 1749. He says the people all spoke Dutch. The houses stood with the gable ends toward the streets, and the water gutters at the eaves, projecting far over the streets, were a great annoyance to the people. The cattle, having free range, kept the streets dirty. The people were very social, 1657.

* Eight curious pieces of ordnance were mounted upon the ramparts of Fort Orange, called by the Dutch, according to Vanderkempt, stiengestucken, or stone pieces, because they were loaded with stone instead of iron balls. These cannon were formed of long stout iron bars laid longitudinally, and bound with iron hoops Their caliber was immense. The fort does not seem to have been a very strong work, for in 1639 a complaint was made to the Dutch governor that the fort was in a state of miserable decay, and that the "hogs had destroyed a part of it."

** This picture is copied from a painting said to be froth life, now in the possession of the Corporation of the city of New York, and hanging in the "Governor's Room," in the City Hall. It was in the old Stadt House, and was in existence in Governor Stuyvesant's time.

*** Letter of the commissary, De la Montagnie, to the Dutch governor of New Amsterdam (New York).

Kalm's Description of Albany.---Its Incorporation.---Destruction of Schenectady.---Colonial Convention.--Walter Wilie.

302and the spacious stoops, or porches, were always filled at evening, in summer, with neighbors mingling in chit-chat. They knew nothing of stoves; their chimneys were almost as broad as their houses; and the people made wampum, a kind of shell on strings, used as money, to sell to Indians and traders. * They were very cleanly in their houses; were frugal in their diet, and integrity was a prevailing virtue. Their servants were chiefly negroes. In 1777, according to Dr. Thatcher (Military Journal, p. 91), Albany contained "three hundred houses, chiefly in the Gothic style, the gable ends to the streets." He mentions the "ancient stone church," and also "a decent edifice called City Hall, which accommodates generally their assembly and courts of justice." It also had "a spacious hospital," erected during the French war. It was incorporated a city in 1686, and was made the capital of the state soon after the Revolution.

Albany was an important place, in a military point of view, from the close of the seventeenth century until the hostilities, then begun between the English and French colonies, ceased in 1763. It was the place where councils with the Indians were held, and whence expeditions took their departure for the wilderness beyond. It never became a prey to French conquest, though often threatened. In the depth of the winter of 1690 a party of two hundred Frenchmen and Canadians, and fifty Indians, chiefly Caughnawaga Mohawks, sent out February 8, 1691 by Frontenac, menaced Albany. They fell upon Schenectady at midnight, massacred and made captive the inhabitants, and laid the town in ashes. Sixty-three persons were murdered and twenty-seven carried into captivity. The church and sixty-three houses were burned. A few persons escaped to Albany, traveling almost twenty miles in the snow, with no other covering than their night-clothes. Twenty-five of them lost their limbs in consequence of their being frozen on the way. Schenectady, like Albany, was stockaded, having two entrance gates. These were forced open by the enemy, and the first intimation the inhabitants had of danger was the bursting in of their doors. ** Informed that Albany was strongly garrisoned, the marauders, thinking it not prudent to attack it, turned their faces toward Canada with their prisoners and booty. The settlement suffered some during the French and Indian war, but it was rather too near the strong post of Albany to invite frequent visits from the enemy. It is said that Schenectady was the principal seat of the Mohawks before the confederacy of the five Iroquois nations was formed.

One of the most prominent events that occurred at Albany, which has a remote connection with our Revolution, was the convention of colonial delegates held there in 1754. For a long time the necessity for a closer political union on the part of the English colonies had been felt. They had a common enemy in the French, who were making encroachments upon every interior frontier, but the sectional feelings of the several colonies often prevented that harmony of action in the raising of money and troops for the general service which proper efficiency required. It was also evident that the Indians, particularly the Six Nations of New York, were becoming alienated from the English, by the influence of French emissaries among them, and a grand council, in which the several English colonies might be represented, was thought not only expedient, but highly necessary. Lord Holderness,

* Wampum is made of the thick and blue part of sea clam-shells. The thin covering of this part being split off, a hole is drilled in it, and the form is produced and the pieces made smooth by a grindstone. The form is that of the cylindrical glass beads called bugles. When finished, they are strung upon small hempen cords about a foot long. In the manufacture of wampum, from six to ten strings are considered a day's work. A considerable quantity is manufactured at the present day in Bergen county, New Jersey.

** Walter Wilie, who was one of a party sent from Albany to Schenectady as soon as the intelligence reached that place of the destruction of the town, wrote a ballad, in the style of Chevy Chase, in which the circumstances are related in detail. He says of his ballad, "The which I did compose last night in the space of one hour, and am now writing, the morning of Friday, June 12th, 1690." He closes it with, "And here I end the long ballad, * The which you just have redde; I wish that it may stay on earth Long after I am dead."

Proceedings of the Colonial Convention.--Names of the Delegates.--Plan of Union submitted by Franklin.

303the English Secretary of State, accordingly addressed a circular letter to all the colonies, proposing a convention, at Albany, of committees from the several colonial assemblies, the chief design of which was proclaimed to be the renewal of treaties with the Six Nations. Seven of the colonies, namely, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, responded to the call, and the convention assembled at Albany, in the old City Hall, on the 19th of June, 1754. James Delaney was chosen president of the convention. The chiefs of the Six Nations were in full attendance, their principal speaker being Hendrick, the sachem afterward killed near Lake George while in the service of the English. The proceedings were opened by a speech to the Indians from Delaney; and while the treaty was in progress, the convention was invited, by the Massachusetts delegates, to consider whether the union of the colonies, for mutual defense, was not, under existing circumstances, desirable. The General Court of Massachusetts had empowered its representatives to enter into articles of union and confederation. The suggestion was favorably received, and a committee, consisting of one member from each colony, was appointed. ** Several plans were proposed. Dr. Franklin, whose fertile mind had conceived the necessity of union, and matured a plan before he went to Albany, now offered an outline in writing, which was adopted in committee, and reported to the convention. The subject was debated "hand in hand," as Franklin observes, "with the Indian business daily," for twelve consecutive days, and finally the report, substantially as drawn by him, was adopted, the Connecticut delegates alone dissenting. *** It was submitted to the Board of Trade, but that body did not approve of it or recommend it to the king, while the colonial assemblies were dissatisfied with it. "The assemblies did not adopt it," says Franklin, "as they all thought there was too much _prerogative_ in it, and in England it was judged to have too much of the _democratic_." The Board of Trade had already proposed a plan of their own--a grand assembly of colonial governors and certain select members of their several councils, with power to draw on the British treasury, the sums thus drawn to be reimbursed by taxes imposed on the colonies by the British Parliament. This did not suit the colonists at all, and Massachusetts specially instructed her agent in England "to oppose everything that shall have the remotest tendency to raise a revenue in America for any public uses or serv-

* The following are the names of the commissioners from the several states:

New York.--James Delaney, Joseph Murray, William Johnson, John Chambers, William Smith.

Massachusetts.--Samuel Welles, John Chandler, Thomas Hutchinson, Oliver Partridge, John Worthington

New Hampshire.--Theodore Atkinson, Richard Wibird, Mesheck Weare, Henry Sherburne.

Connecticut.--William Pitkin, Roger Wolcott, Elisha Williams.

Rhode Island.--Stephen Hopkins, Martin Howard.

Pennsylvania.--John Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Peters, Isaac Norris.

Maryland.--Benjamin Tasker, * Benjamin Barnes. **

** The committee consisted of Hutchinson of Massachusetts, Atkinson of New Hampshire, Pitkin of Connecticut, Hopkins of Rhode Island, Smith of New York, Franklin of Pennsylvania, and Tasker of Maryland.

*** The plan proposed a grand council of forty-eight members--seven from Virginia, seven from Massachusetts, six from Pennsylvania, five from Connecticut, four each from New York, Maryland, and the two Carolinas, three from New Jersey, and two each from New Hampshire and Rhode Island. The number of forty-eight was to remain fixed, no colony to have more than seven nor less than two members; but the apportionment to vary within those limits, with the rates of contribution. This council was to have the general management of civil and military affairs. It was to have control of the armies, the apportionment of men and money, and to enact general laws, in conformity with the British Constitution, and not in contravention of statutes passed by the imperial Parliament. It was to have for its head a president general, appointed by the crown, to possess a negative or veto power on all acts of the council, and to have, with the advice of the council, the appointment of all military officers and the entire management of Indian affairs. Civil officers were to be appointed by the council, with the consent of the president.- -Pitkin, i., 143. It is remarkable how near this plan, submitted by Franklin, is the basis of our Federal Constitution. Coxe, of New Jersey, who was Speaker of the Assembly of that province, proposed a similar plan in his "Carolana" in 1722, and William Penn, seeing the advantage of union, made a similar proposition as early as 1700.--Hildreth, ii., 444.

* This name is differently spelled by different writers. Pitkin, in his text (vol. L, p. 142), writes it Trasker, and in the list in in his appendix (429) it is Trasher.

** Williams, in his Statesman's Manual, has it Abraham instead of Benjamin. I have followed Pitkin.

Early Patriotism of Massachusetts.--Albany in the Revolution.--General Schuyler's Mansion.--Return to New York.

304ices of government." This was the first proposition to tax the colonies without their consent, and thus early we find Massachusetts raising her voice as fearlessly against it as she did twenty years afterward, when her boldness drew down upon her the vengeance of the British government.

During the Revolution, and particularly after the British took possession of New York-city, Albany was the focus of revolutionary power in the state. There the Committee of Safety had its sittings; and, after the destruction of the forts in the Highlands, and the burning of Esopus (Kingston), it was generally the head-quarters of the military and civil 1777 officers in the Northern Department. There the captive officers of Burgoyne's invading army were hospitably entertained by General Schuyler and his family at their spacious mansion, then "half a mile below the town."

The house is still standing, at the head of Schuyler Street, a little west of South Pearl Street, upon an eminence some thirty feet high in front, and completely imbosomed in trees and shrubbery. Within it the Baroness Reidesel was entertained, and there occurred those events mentioned by her and Chastellux, which I have noticed in a preceding chapter (pages 91 and 92). It was the scene, also, of the attempted abduction of the general by the Tory, Waltemeyer, when he robbed the patriot of his plate in 1781, mentioned on page 223. There La Fayette, Steuben, Rochambeau, and other foreign officers of eminence were entertained, and there the noblest of the land, as well as distinguished travelers from abroad, were frequent guests during the life of the owner; and its doors were opened as freely when the voice of poverty pleaded for assistance as when the great claimed hospitality and courtesy.

We arrived in New York on the morning of the 1st of September. The air was cool and bracing, the day was fine, and the lately-deserted streets and shops were thronged with mingled citizens and strangers plunged as deeply in the maze of business as if no forgetfulness of the leger and till had occurred while babbling brooks and shady groves wooed them to Nature's worship. There I rested a few days, preparatory to a visit to the beautiful valley "On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming!". *

* This view is from Schuyler Street. The edifice is of brick, having a closed octagonal porch or vestibule in front. It was built by Mrs. Schuyler while her husband was in England in 1760--1. The old family mansion, large and highly ornamented, in the Dutch style, stood nearly upon the site of the present City Hall, between State and Washington Streets. It was taken down in 1800.

Departure for Wyoming.--Newark and its Associations.--The old Academy.-- Trip to Morristown.

305