It Happened Here-- In Sir William's Footsteps 
Part 1--The Jessups

 

For a few thousand New Yorkers, and many thousands of Colonists across the English Colonies in North America the end of the French and Indian Wars occasioned an unleashing of dreams.
For most of these thousands the dream was for a few acres or a few dozen acres of land where they could build a home, farm and live without fear of attack from the French and their Indian allies.  During the war the British and colonial governments had fueled these dreams by inducing/rewarding soldiers and officers with grants of undeveloped land for their military service. For a few of these, their dreams were of a much greater magnitude and they looked to the example of Sir William Johnson for inspiration.

Rte 5, Ft. Johnson

William Johnson had come to America in 1738 to look after the estate of his uncle, Admiral Peter Warren in the Mohawk Valley and to supervise and collect rents from the tenant farmers on Warren's lands.  Soon, however, Johnson became involved in the profitable fur trade and in buying and selling all sorts of commodities to both colonial and Native American fur traders. Fur trading with the Indians led to buying land from them and land speculation.  Johnson moved several times from his original house  in Warrensbush, to across the river where his house/trading post would lie astride important trading routes. The Mohawks came to trust him, adopting him into their tribe, giving him the name Warraghiyagey, "Man who does much business." In time, he acquired large parcels of land, north of the Mohawk, into Cherry Valley and beyond, toward Lake Otsego. At the close of the French and Indian Wars he developed a town, Johnstown, building a palatial house for himself in the midst of his tenant farms, and importing craftsmen to sell goods and services to his tenants. Johnson ran flour mills and saw mills.  For clearing his land he owned some-sixty slaves and ran a profitable lumber business.

Ft. Johnson

Johnson's success in turning the wilderness into his private fortune inspired two brothers,  Edward and Ebenezer Jessup.  Edward had raised a militia company and served as its captain in Amherst's campaign in 1759 in the late war. His service acquainted him with the wilderness north of Albany, up into the Champlain region.  In 1764 the brothers moved to Albany to engage in land speculation. They sought out Sir William Johnson for his advise and help. In 1767 they were granted a patent for 41,000 acres around Lake Luzerne and the northern Hudson region.  They would follow it with two more purchases of 15,000 acres, a whopping 800,000 acre purchase, and another of 40,000 acres. They would own most of what would become northern and western Warren County and lands west to the West Canada Lakes. Sir William Johnson became an invaluable negotiator helping them purchase the land from the Mohawks and Caughnawagas (Canadian Mohawks). By 1773 they had established themselves in the lumber industry, cutting timber along the northern Hudson River and floating it down to their mills south of Lake Luzerne.  Their mills along with the ferry they operated and the town that sprung up around the mills became known as Jessup's Landing.  It remained Jessup's Landing until 1886, when its name was changed to Corinth.

In back of Post Office, Jessup's Landing Beach, Corinth

 Edward and Ebenezer Jessup, joined by their brother Joseph, built elaborate log mansions and furnished them richly, entertaining Sir William Johnson, and his entourage--his son John, nephew Guy, and their families; the Clauses and the Butlers. Even Governor Tryon enjoyed their hospitality.

But such opulence on the frontier and the strong Loyalist opinions they espoused generated early and fierce resentments.  In the first winter months of 1775 arsonists struck their mills, and destroyed the ferry. The Jessups closed their mills, laid off their workforce, packed their belongings and escaped with their families to seek refuge up river with the Johnsons at their Fish house camp.* When Sir John Johnson left for Canada in May, 1775, the Jessup men went with him.

Co. Rte. 44, Lake Luzerne

Rockwell Falls (since widened for logging)

Though the Jessups had made a successful escape, apparently Edward, Ebenezer and Joseph returned to the Patent to recruit Loyalist supporters the following year. In the summer of 1776 they were able to meet Sir Guy Carlton's invasion force with eighty recruits at Crown Point. Though Carleton's army was ultimately forced to turn back because of the lateness of the season, the following year, Edward was again recruiting in the region, this time narrowly avoiding capture. A rebel militia unit from Ballston Spa seized 31 recruits he had persuaded to join up and they would have taken him as well, but Edward managed to jump across Rockwell Falls, on the Hudson, and make his escape. Eventually he would meet up with General Burgoyne's army, and his brother Ebenezer at Willsboro. Plans were made for the Jessups to field a their own regiment, The King's Loyal American Corps, with Ebenezer as Lieutenant Colonel, and Edward as Captain. Previously the Jessups and their volunteers had been attached to Sir John Johnson's King's Royal Regiment of New York. But for the present campaign, Ebenezer remained with Johnson's Regiment and Edward took over Burgoyne's batteaux service.

The campaign, of course, did not go as they had hoped. Stopped at Bemis Heights, Burgoyne's Army was surrounded and forced to surrender. Most of the Loyalists, fearing they would be mistreated by the Patriots, if captured, opted to try to slip away at night before the surrender and try to make their way back to Canada. Not until 1781 would Jessup's Loyal American Corps have enough soldiers to become an independent unit. The Jessup brothers were said to have been taken into custody, then paroled to be allowed to make their way back to Canada, after promising to not engage in future combat. Whether they were paroled or simply escaped with so many other Loyalists, they continued as active combatants. Ebenezer Jessup led the loyalist contingent in a 1778 ship and batteaux raid that devastated the lower Lake Champlain valley and towns in the interior of Vermont, via the Otter Creek.

In 1779 with 57** other prominent Tories they were named in a remarkable document of the New York Legislature. Condemned for Treason, in absentia, they were banished from New York; their property was seized; and they were condemned to death if they were ever captured within the state.

Co Rte 35, 3mi. west of Kingsbury

The Jessups undoubtedly
knew the Jones' family, if
in fact, they didn't recruit
them to the cause. The
1781 Loyal Ranger roster
lists both a Capt. John Jones
and a Lt. David Jones. 





 
For the next four years,  following the Burgoyne debacle, Jessup's "Loyal Americans" saw service mainly along the northern-most end of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu river, building up fortifications from Montreal to Sorel and doing garrison duty, with occasional raids south into rebel territory. Edward accompanied Sir John Johnson on his raids into the Mohawk and Schoharie valleys in the summers of 1780 and 1781. Finally in November 1781 members of the still incomplete Loyal American Corps were combined with fragments of other units to form the Loyal Rangers but by now, with the war winding down, the new unit saw action in only a pair of minor raids. By the summer of 1783 Edward Jessup was involved in resettling his men in townships allocated to them along the Saint Lawrence River. The Jessups would pass from American history into Canadian history, becoming important developers of Upper Canada. Edward would found the town of Prescott, Ontario, and be honored by having a chapter of United Empire Loyalists named for him. Ebenezer eventually moved his family to England to try to gain compensation from the Crown for the vast acreage lost by the brothers. He finally was awarded an administrative post in Calcutta, India, where he died in 1818.



Next Week -- In Sir William's Footsteps, Part 2 Will Gilliland

Marker(s) of the Week--


Question:  What do you do after
you have built the town's major
industry, run the general store,
built most of the houses in town 
and held many town offices?


 

Co. Rte. 4, Hadley

Answer:  Become the town's
Postmaster.














 *The Sacandaga river empties into the Hudson at Hadley/Lake Luzerne. "Upstream" from there is southwest, past the "Fish house" to Mayfield where it makes an abrupt turn northward and continues into the Adirondacks. The section from Mayfield to Conklinville is now dammed, forming the Great Sacandaga Reservoir.

** Others included Sir John Johnson, Daniel Claus, John Butler, Ex-Governor Tryon, Ex-Albany Mayor Cuyler, and Phillip Skene of Skenesboro.

It Happened Here -- The Short Violent Life of Walter Butler --part 2

 The following year, 1779, Indians and Tories operating out of Fort Niagara were thrown on the defensive by a large scale invasion by the Continental Army, itself, designed to break the back of  Iroquois, and force them into dependency on their British allies.  Rebel armies under General George Clinton and General John Sullivan met at Tioga and began marching north into the heart of the Iroquois homeland destroying everything in their path. John and Walter Butler's Rangers were out in front of them and snapping at their heels, taking an occasional straggler but there was little the Butler's 250 or so Rangers could do against a Continental army of 4000 to 5000.  And their Indian allies, so adept at the techniques of ambush and confident in small force maneuvers stood overawed at their enemy's numbers. Desperate to stop the American advance, the Indians and Tories constructed a line of breastworks along the Chemung River, camouflaging them with tree branches in the futile hope they could spring a trap on the American army. While ambushes might work against small forces (Oriskany, Battle of Lake George--"the Bloody Morning Scout") or larger incautious armies (Braddock at the Monongahela), they would not likely succeed against a larger army well screened by scouts and pickets.

Chemung Co. Rte 60, Lowman

And so it was that the Clinton-Sullivan Army knew of the Indian/Tory's intentions even before their breastworks were completed. While John and Walter waited with their Rangers behind the concealed breastworks, and groups of Indians attempted to lure a column of Continentals to within range of the hidden Tories and Indians, two other columns of Sullivan's army attempted to work their way around in back to envelop them.  It was then Sullivan's artillery opened up on the breastworks, to focus British and Indian attention in front of the barricade, to allow Sullivan's columns to complete their encirclement undetected.  But then the unexpected happened.  Some exploding shells landing in back of the Indians led them to believe they were already encircled by artillery. The panicked Indians scattered and quickly discovered the encircling columns before Sullivan's army could close the trap. In total disarray Indians, Tories and British regulars bolted through the opening, and escaped. Remarkably, less than three dozen Indian and Loyalist troops were killed, wounded or captured, but the Indians were badly rattled. They would never again stand to fight Sullivan's Army during the rest of the entire campaign. Only when Sullivan, after four weeks of destroying Indian fields and villages was preparing to return did a significant skirmish occur.  In the Genessee Valley a large party scouting ahead of the main army was ambushed.
Twenty two scouts were killed and its leaders, Lieutenant Boyd and and Sargent Parker were captured. The Indians poured out their anger from weeks of frustration and impotence into torturing them.  The Butlers, infamously, did nothing to stop them.

The year 1780 remains a large mystery in the life of Walter Butler.  In the dead of winter Butler was sent to Detroit to establish a small garrison among the Miami Indians. He was back in Montreal in February pushing for the exchange of his mother and siblings, and fuming when the courier going between the British and American capitals left without his knowledge, frustrating him from sending money and correspondence to his mother.  Among the rebels, the Butler legend had  grown such that he was rumored to be involved in every frontier attack from the smallest raid on an isolated cabin, to the campaign of Sir John Johnson and Joseph Brant that swept up the Schoharie  and both sides of the Mohawk valley, causing the destruction of  hundred of homes and farms. But the documentary evidence does not support his participation in any raids that year.  So where was he? Can one infer anything from a cryptic comment in a letter he wrote in the summer? Butler wrote he was ready to give up his prejudice against Ethan Allen and was ready to fight with him.  In 1780 Governor of Quebec, Sir Frederick Haldimand began secret diplomatic initiatives to get Vermont to join Canada as an independent province. For several years Vermont had tried to become the 14th State of the United States. Their efforts had been frustrated by powerful land speculators in New York and New Hampshire who hoped to still be able to carve off large chunks of Vermont territory for their states, and their personal gain. In response to this rejection Vermont had declared itself an independent republic. Haldimand hoped to bring Vermont back into the British fold by beginning a secret correspondence with Vermont's leaders, Ethan Allen, his brother Ira, and Thomas Chittenden, the Vermont Governor. Was Walter Butler involved in this secret initiative?  Was he being held back in reserve, so if the negotiations should succeed he might be ready with Ethan Allen to defend Canada's new province, or to go on the offensive, from Vermont?  We probably will never know.

In the fall, the following year Walter Butler was back in public view when  Major John Ross and Butler embarked on another raid of the Mohawk Valley, this year focusing on Johnstown, which had been spared in last year's major valley raid.  A strategy seems to have emerged in which many smaller raids of from a half dozen to a few dozen Indians and Tories would be launched from the early spring through the summer to keep Whig forces off balance and under pressure and to provide scouting information to the British in Montreal and Fort Niagara.  A larger raid, or raids, were planned for the fall, after the wheat was harvested and could be destroyed in the barns.

Whig strategy was evolving, too, as community militias were cooperating to counterattack and attempt to destroy the raiders.  In the 1780 valley raid militia garrisons from several forts and the Albany County Militia had sallied out to meet the invaders but poor coordination had contributed to their defeat at Stone Arabia.  Militia units, nevertheless, continued to pursue them, resulting in a running battle that became known as the battle of Klock's field. In the spring of 1781 Governor George Clinton asked Marinus Willett  to take over command of  militia along the New York frontier. Willett, formerly in charge of Fort Stanwix, was known and trusted by Mohawk Valley residents. Intelligent, and a fighter, he based his operations at Fort Plain, but developed a plan for a "flying camp"--he and a sizable militia strike force would shuttle between the twenty-four forts in the Mohawk, Schoharie and Cherry Valleys so his enemies would never know from where they might be counter-attacked.  Increased numbers of scouts and runners would provide intelligence to his forces as soon as raiders entered the region.

Johnson Ave., Johnstown

Coming down the Champlain, Lake George, Scandaga corridor, Ross and Butler hit the settlements of Warrensbush and Currytown  (Coreytown) but avoided setting fire to buildings in Currytown for fear of alerting Willett's forces, before they reached their main objective, Johnstown.  They had just reached Johnstown when Willett caught up with them near Johnson Hall with a force of about 415 militiamen. Though outnumbered by nearly 300, Willett divided his force sending half of his men to attack the British/Indian/Tory force from the rear. The right side of Willett's line gave way and began to fall back into Johnstown when Willett's flanking force hit the raiders from the rear. The battle then broke up into a number of small fights before the raiders began to withdraw.

Herkimer Co. 129/147 SE of Grey, bridge at Black Creek

Soon after the battle, Willett's men regrouped and provisioned themselves to give chase to the raiders. Five days later, along Black Creek the militiamen caught up with stragglers from the fleeing raiders. A sharp little skirmish occurred before the raiders were able to break clear.
Later in the day, with a wet snow falling, the militiamen caught up again with the Indians and Loyalist on the banks of the West Canada Creek
Several Oneida Indians, were at the head of Willett's pursuing force. In the rear guard of the raiders was Walter Butler. When Butler saw the Indians emerge from the dense forest and level their rifles at him he growled "Shoot and be damned!" and attempted to scramble up the opposite bank.  A rifle ball pierced his hat trimmed with gold braid and split the upper part of his skull. As he fell back, dying, the Oneidas moved in to remove his boots, his clothes and his scalp.

[ARROW]
1 MILE EAST
COL. MARINUS WILLETT ROUTED
BRITISH-TORY FORCE OCT. 30, 1783 (sic)
ALONG WEST CANADA CREEK;
WALTER BUTLER, TORY LEADER
WAS KILLED BY AN ONEIDA
Location: FAIRCHILD RD., 
NORTH OF HINCKLEY RESERVIOR

(1781 is the correct date. I was unable
 to locate this marker.)

With the weather steadily worsening Colonel Willett abandoned the pursuit.  The people of the Valleys greeted the news of Walter Butler's death with more joy and relief than they expressed for the surrender of Lord Cornwallis' Army in Virginia that same week.  Justified or not, Walter Butler had come to symbolize the cruelty and savagery of war on the frontier.

Over time, Walter Butler became a figure of legend, and myth. A story developed that Butler's body instead of being left to the animals of the forest had been secretly brought back to Schenectady to be interred underneath his family pew at St. George's Church. A rector of St. George's wrote this bit of
doggerel:
                                      "Beneath the pew in which you sit,
                                       They say that Walter Butler's buried.
                                       In such a fix, across the Styx,
                                       I wonder who his soul has ferried?
                                       And so the ages yet unborn
                                       Shall sing your fame in song and story,
                                       How ages gone you sat upon
                                       A Revolutionary Tory."*

N. Ferry St., Schenectady

The Broadalbin author, Robert W. Chambers in six historical novels created, as one of his fictious villians "Walter N. Butler," and Stephen Vincent Benet writing the short story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" made Walter Butler the foreman of the jury-of-the-damned that included Benedict Arnold and Simon Girty.

*quoted from www.findagrave.com

Marker of the Week--Military Roads

Military Rd., corner of Herkimer Co. Rte. 60, Norway

Last year in a Marker of the Week, (9-7-14) "If you think its a Long Way to Tipperary..." I reported on a marker in Gloversville that told of General Izard's march from Plattsburgh to Sacketts Harbor.  Such a round-about route was necessitated by the British control of the Saint Lawrence and the lack of a direct route across the northern part of the state. This summer I came across a NYSHM marking that route crossing the hamlet of Norway, in Herkimer County.  

After the end of the War of 1812 the U.S. built an east/west road across northern New York, beginning in Peru, on the shore of Lake Champlain. through Plattsburgh, ending in Hopkinton.  The road which ended before it reached Sacketts Harbor, was one of the first forays of the U.S. government into road building, after the National (Cumberland) Road, which crossed the Alleganys and connecting Cumberland Maryland with Wheeling, WVA.

Military Tpke. Corner of Clinton Co. Rte. 3

It Happened Here -- The Short Violent Life of Walter Butler --part 1

Old Trail Rd., Fonda

At the beginning of 1774 the future must have seemed bright for Walter Butler.  For two generations the Butlers had been faithful and trusted functionaries of the great landowner and crown Superintendent of Indian affairs, Sir William Johnson.  Walter's grandfather had been given a huge piece of land overlooking the Mohawk valley by the Mohawks (some said during a night of carousing with them at Fort Johnson,  Sir William's second home and trading post)  In 1742 Walter's grandfather had built Butlersbury and Walter had been born there about 1751.  In 1774 Walter was practicing law in Albany.

The Butler Homestead

Little is known about Walter's childhood. His father was frequently away on business with the Indian Department, and it is likely he formed an especially close bond with his mother who with three younger children must have depended heavily on him to help run her household. He may have been educated at home and he may have received some education from Edward Wall, a schoolmaster at Sir William's free school, set up before 1769 in Johnstown.  Wall married Walter's cousin Deborah. One historian has suggested he may have followed in the footsteps of Joseph Brant, a decade before, receiving some instruction at Eleazer Wheelock's school, in Lebanon, Connecticut.  In 1768 John Butler was commissioned as a Lt. Colonel in a new militia regiment and as was typical for the time, son Walter along with several other sons of prominent fathers was commissioned an ensign in the unit.  By the early 1770's Walter was reading for the practice of Law in the office of Peter Silvester in Albany and a few years later was in a law partnership with Peter Van Shaak.

Then beginning in the summer of 1774 things began to fall apart. In July, Sir William suddenly died. The heirs to the Johnson empire, son Sir John Johnson, nephew Guy Johnson, and cronies Daniel Claus and Joseph Brant did not share the same affection for the Butler family that Sir William had, and throughout his short life they seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time second guessing or belittling his and his father's efforts. Seemingly, almost overnight the difficulties and squabbles of the New England Yankees became the concerns of settlers in the Mohawk Valley. The Loyalists, as they soon would call themselves, felt compelled to draft a statement of loyalty to the Crown in March 1775, which young Walter naturally signed; then following the conflict at Lexington and Concord, in April, a group of dissidents attempted to raise a "Liberty Pole" near Caughnawaga*. Walter rode out with the Johnsons to break up this meeting. The Johnsons collected arms and fortified Johnson Hall while local Committees of Safety were formed to counter any actions of the Loyalists might take. 

Johnson Hall, Johnstown

*NYSHMs It Happened Here post of 7/4/15

Rte 5, Amsterdam

In May,  Guy Johnson heard he was about to be arrested by the provisional government in Albany and the local Committee of Safety. He fled to Canada, taking Sir John and 170 of his male supporters with him. Walter and his father John Butler left with them. Soon after they arrived in Montreal they learned Lady Johnson and Mrs Butler had been taken into custody with Walter's younger brothers and sister. This fact likely weighed heavily on Walter and he would spend a great deal of effort the next few years going through channels to obtain their release and obtaining women and children hostages to exchange for his family members.

The Battle of Bunker Hill and the attack on Fort Ticonderoga confirmed that a state of war existed.  Walter enlisted as an ensign in the 8th Regiment of Foot helping to thwart the first attack on Montreal by Ethan Allen's force. The following summer Butler was with St. Leger's Army when it invested Fort Schuyler (Stanwix).  He was there in the thick of the fighting at the Oriskany ambush and less than a week later he initiated one of the strangest episodes of his life.

Oriskany Battlefield,  Rte 69,  West of Oriskany

Rte 5, Mohawk

From the long perspective of history the Battle of Oriskany was an American victory because it turned back the western invasion force that intended to link up with Burgoyne's Army. But in the first days following the battle it seemed anything but a rebel victory. After a horrific battle, the Tryon county militia limped home, having failed to break the siege of Fort Schuyler, and having lost over 400 of its approximately 730 militiamen. On the heels of this debacle, Walter Butler talked his superiors into allowing him to go to the heart of the Mohawk Valley to recruit disillusioned valley residents to the Loyalist side. With about a dozen loyalists and Indians he appeared at the Shoemaker Tavern, the home of a prominent Tory, in German Flats,  under a flag of truce and began to harangue Tory sympathizers and anyone who would listen. Before long, the local militia got wind of Butler's activity; the tavern was surrounded and Walter Butler was in custody. Walter was not in uniform so he was charged with being a spy. Butler may have believed his flag of truce exempted him from being held and tried as a spy, but the court convened by Col. Marinus Willet would have nothing of his arguments and shortly he was carted off to Albany, in irons, to be hanged. But in Albany his fortunes began to look up as former law colleagues and friends convinced the authorities to stay his execution indefinitely. Conditions in the Albany gaol, however, were brutal as he sat in irons in an unheated cell, subsisting on starvation rations. After a few months his health broke down and his Albany friends feared for his life. They prevailed on the authorities to offer him a parole--a house arrest in Albany, in exchange for his promise not to try to escape.  While his health gradually improved, his father and his loyalist friends in Canada learned of his improved situation and plotted his escape. Though the details were never revealed, some facts became known. Alcohol was provided to get the lone guard stationed at his quarters drunk.  A horse was provided to allow him to slip through the early morning streets of Albany and a guide or guides met him to make his escape through the wintry Adirondacks to Quebec.

Rte 166, Cherry Valley

While his son was still in custody, Walter's father, John had been given permission to recruit a new unit, Butler's Rangers. Walter was given a captaincy in the Rangers. Throughout the spring and summer of 1778, Walter, while still recovering,  worked to build up and provision and house the new regiment while his father led contingents of the Rangers with Joseph Brant's Indians in attacks on the Wyoming Valley, on the Pennsylvania frontier.  The Americans retaliated by burning the Loyalist and Indian towns of Unadilla and Ouaquaga where Joseph Brant had based his operations.

By November, Walter was ready for a campaign of his own. The rich farming community of Cherry Valley was targeted, and because of the lateness of the season it was expected that all the summer's grain harvest would now be stored in barns where it could be destroyed. On the way, Butler's Rangers met up with Brant's Indians, still smarting from the destruction of their Susquehanna bases. Because it was so late in the year, the Cherry Valley Fort commander, Colonel Alden refused to believe reports of Indians and Tories in the vicinity of the Valley, and in the early morning hours of November 11th, Walter Butler's and Joseph Brant's raiders fell on a community totally unprepared for an attack. Most of the fort's officers were caught away from the fort in the homes of local residents where they were garrisoned. Colonel Alden was tomahawked and scalped as he attempted to make a run for the fort.  While Walter and his Rangers concentrated on attempting (unsuccessfully) to take the fort, Brant's Indians and Indian department men attacked the houses and barns in the village. Probably on Walter Butler's orders, a large number of women and children were taken captive for hostages, but many of the men in the village, children too young to survive the rigors of captivity, and women who resisted were slaughtered.  Did Butler order a massacre?  Did Brant?  We will probably never know.  It is just as likely the Seneca Indians that comprised most of the native-American raiders, out of control, initiated the atrocities themselves.  Brant, a Mohawk, probably did not have the control over the Senecas he might have had over his own Mohawks.  One thing is certain, among the Americans,  Butler was blamed for the massacre of innocents, and his reputation, following on the heels of the his father's campaign on the Pennsylvania frontier, the "Wyoming Massacre," experienced a rapid growth.

 The following year, Indians and Tories operating out of Fort Niagara were thrown on the defensive by a large scale offensive of the Continental Army, itself, designed to break the back of  Iroquois, and force them into dependency on their British allies.  Rebel armies under General George Clinton and General John Sullivan met at Tioga and began marching north into the heart of the Iroquois homeland destroying everything in their path. John and Walter Butler's Rangers were out in front of them and snapping at their heels, taking an occasional straggler but there was little the Butler's 250 or so Rangers could do against a Continental army of 4000 to 5000.  And their Indian allies, so adept at the techniques of ambush and confident in small force maneuvers stood overawed at their enemy's numbers. Desperate to stop the American advance, the Indians and Tories constructed a line of breastworks along the Chemung River, camouflaging them with tree branches in the futile hope they could spring a trap on the American army. While ambushes might work against small forces (Oriskany, Battle of Lake George--"the Bloody Morning Scout") or larger incautious armies (Braddock at the Monongahela), they would not likely succeed against a larger army well screened by scouts and pickets.

Chemung Co. Rte 60, Lowman

And so it was that the Clinton-Sullivan Army knew of the Indian/Tory's intentions even before their breastworks were completed. While John and Walter waited with their Rangers behind the concealed breastworks, and groups of Indians attempted to lure a column of Continentals to within range of the hidden Tories and Indians, two other columns of Sullivan's army attempted to work their way around in back to envelop them.  It was then Sullivan's artillery opened up on the breastworks, to focus British and Indian attention in front of the barricade, to allow Sullivan's columns to complete their encirclement undetected.  But then the unexpected happened. The exploding shells landing in back of the Indians led them to believe they were already encircled by artillery. The panicked Indians scattered and quickly discovered the encircling columns before Sullivan's army could close the trap. In total disarray Indians, Tories and British regulars bolted through the opening, and escaped. Remarkably less than three dozen Indian and Loyalist troops were killed, wounded or captured, but the Indians were badly rattled. They would never again stand to fight Sullivan's Army during the rest of the entire campaign. Only when Sullivan, after four weeks of destroying Indian fields and villages was preparing to return did a significant skirmish occur.  In the Genessee Valley a large party scouting ahead of the main army was ambushed.
Twenty two scouts were killed and its leaders, Lieutenant Boyd and and Sargent Parker were captured. The Indians poured out their weeks of frustration and impotence into torturing them.  The Butlers, infamously, did nothing to stop them.

Next week-- The Short Violent Life of Walter Butler --part 2

Marker of the Week-- What ever happened to Melancton Lloyd Woolsey?

Cumberland Head Road, Plattsburgh.

 When we last heard of Melancton Lloyd Woolsey (NYSHMs:It Happened Here of 7/19/15) Major Woolsey at the Middle Fort in Schoharie Valley had a failure of nerve and tried to negotiate a surrender with the Indians and Tories. Timothy Murphy had prevented that; Woolsey surrendered his command and the next day had slunk away in disgrace.  Never to be of heard of again?  Right?  No!

It is amazing what an attractive personality and a few high placed friends can do to cover over all sorts of sins and inadequacies.

It appears Mr Woolsey apparently landed on his feet, garnering both a lucrative federal job and a county job in Plattsburgh. Hopefully, if personal courage was not one of his strong points, incorruptibility was.


                            (nice house.) 

It Happened Here --The Professional Locksmith and the Amateur Architect 

Rte 28, Newport

In the fifty years or so since the end of the revolution Herkimer County had begun to fill out with new towns and new people, descendants of the colonists that stuck it out through the difficult days of the revolution, and new comers attracted by the rich farmlands and relative wealth of new communities. Linus Yale's family moved from Connecticut, settling in Stafford township, Herkimer Co., an area of undeveloped wilderness, a generation before. 

Linus, something of a mechanical genius, patented  an invention for dressing (re-cutting) mill stones, two patents for improving saw mill equipment and three patents for improvements to threshing machinery before starting his own lock-smith business, in the village of Newport, about 1840.  The prosperity of New York in the first decades of the 19th century led to the growth and proliferation of banks, and banks needed locks on their safes and vaults to secure their depositors assets. Most existing bank locks, however, were massive crude affairs with keys that turned two or three levers within the mechanism that held a bolt in place. The large keyholes themselves offered access for skilled lock-pickers to manipulate the locks, or for the less sophisticated, the keyholes might be packed with explosives! Making custom-built locks for banks, Yale produced and patented some of the first combination locks that did away with the need for keyholes.

A little later, Yale began to develop the cylinder/pin/tumbler mechanism, the "Yale Lock," that became the world's most popular mechanical locking mechanism. In that mechanism a key was inserted in a cylinder, and turned, that released the bolt. The cylinder, however, would turn only if a row of spring-loaded pins of varying lengths was pushed out the way by a key with the corresponding number and profile of projections. Further security was added designing key slots which would accept only keys of corresponding widths and patterns of slots.

Yale patented his first pin/tumbler safe lock in 1844, producing his first "Yale lock" at his Newport shop in 1847. In 1850, Linus Yale, Jr. joined his father, bringing his considerable artistic/draftsman talents to the business, and producing many improvement to his father's creations.

American prosperity in the mid 19th century created not only a demand for locks to secure people's bank deposits, but also a demand for locks to secure their personal property, whether it was deeds and stocks and bonds in strong boxes, or thoroughbreds or prized heffers in stables and barns.  In 1857 the Yale's received their first patent for the iconic Yale padlock.

In 1848 another innovative thinker and promoter, Orson Squire Fowler, a nationally famous lecturer, writer and publisher of books on Phrenology wrote a book, The Octagon House: a Home for All, or a New Cheap, Convenient and Superior Mode of Building.  Fowler, a proponent of Phrenology, a "science" that purported to be able to assess personality by studying the bumps and concavities of a person's skull had broadened his interests into other areas, becoming what the twentieth first century might call a "life style guru" writing about everything from "Memory and Intellectual Improvement" to "Self Culture and Perfection of Character" to  bearing and nursing children, and "Creative and Sexual Science", etc.  Fowler's octagon house book was received with enthusiasm and perhaps two thousand octagon houses were built from Maine to San Francisco, with the most built in New York State. Fowler, who made a fortune from his lectures, his consulting practice and his Phrenology publishing house, built a four storey 60 room octagonal mansion in his hometown of Fishkill, NY. that became known as Fowler's Folley.

Fowler asserted that octagon houses were a more efficient use of space; that eight sides provided more space for windows and with a central cupola provided better ventilation; that each room typically had only one external wall (unlike conventional houses where all the corner rooms had two)--and thus were warmer in winter; and that they were cheaper to build. Unfortunately, he also advocated that octagonal houses be built of concrete. His own house made of burnt lime and gravel, without the benefit of steel reinforcing rods by 1897 had become a dangerous crumbling ruin that had to be dynamited.

Octagonal and multiple sided buildings had, on occasion, been built before Fowler's time, often as barns for cattle and hay storage. 


1835 13 Sided Barn 
Bronck House Hist.Site
Rte 9W, Coxsackie

Rte. 28, Newport

Around 1850 Linus Yale was looking to build a house for his daughter and her new husband.  No doubt inspired by Fowler and  perhaps impressed by his arguments he built her this handsome limestone block octagon house on property next to his workshop. 

Some other Octagon Houses:

                                                                           

                                                      

Denton Octagon Hse. 1853, Castle St., Geneva

David VanGelder
Octagon House, 1860
Walnut St., Catskill

1854 Octagon House, Rte 30, Fultonham

                                                                                                       
The Markers of the Week --More early NYSHM's from Schuylerville

Rte 4, across from Schuyler House

 
Like last week's Reidesel
Marker, this too has a gold
ball but is cut out of flat
post stock.

A strange scroll motif, Rte 4, S of Schuylerville

One of two or three, in town,
mounted on concrete slabs.



(I guess we can assume a
burial like this was for the 
convenience of the burial party
and didn't have any symbolic
meaning (?!)