It Happened Here--The Palatines

Part 2, the Diaspora

King's Highway, Saugerties

The Palatines generally greeted the news of Governor Hunter's abandonment of the Tar-making project and of them, with excitement, as a release from servitude.  Many of those in the West Camp, who were less involved in tar-making continued on the lands in which they were settled,  eventually buying them. New settlements grew. A few miles west of West Camp the Palatines built, with their Dutch neighbors, a stone church, inscribing their names on a wall of this church at "Katsbaan".

Old Kings Highway, N. of Katsbaan (off of Rte. 32)

Some of the Palatines petitioned the Crown
 for the land bought by Gov. Hunter for
the tar-making project, but apparently their efforts were fruitless.

 

Similarly, they attempted to purchase land from Robert Livingston, but Livingston would not budge, only offering tracts for "three life leases." A few Palatine families accepted his terms.

Inscribed stones from old church in wall of the1867 Church

Rte 9, cor. 9G, north of Rhinebeck

After Robert Livingston rejected their offers to purchase land, about thirty families moved south to the adjoining patent owned by Henry Beekman. Beekman welcomed them and sold them land.  In 1713 they named their village after their homeland (the Rhine) and the landowner who treated them fairly (beck or beek).

Rte. 146 at Wagner Rd., Guilderland Ctr.

Most of the Palatines, however, continued to hope  they could find homes in their "promised land," "Scorie." After Governor Hunter's declaration that the Palatines must "shift for themselves" seven leaders of the villages,  the "list men" who kept records of the people in their jurisdiction, set off for the Schoharie headed by John Conrad Weiser. They hired an Indian guide who led them from Albany to Guilderland, into the Helderberg Mountains, then along the Fox Creek to Schoharie. They found the Indians in the Schoharie valley "hospitable" and readily to gave them permission to settle. After turning the last fifteen miles of the twenty-four mile track from Albany to Scoharie from a narrow Indian trail to a cart road, the first group of fifty families set out. They were followed in March 1713 by a second group of about one hundred and fifty families. The first winter the Palatines survived mainly because of the generosity of the Indians who gave them maize and showed them how to forage for edible native plants, roots and nuts.

Knox-Gallupville Rd., Knox

The Palatines settled in seven villages (dorfs or dorps), overseen by the listmasters.  Weiser's Dorf, and Hartman's Dorf, (named for Hartman Winedecker) were located in what is today Middleburgh. With Brunnen Dorf, named for the springs that flowed from the hillside, and Fuch's Dorf, named for its location where the Fox Creek enters the Schoharie Creek, was Smith's Dorf in the area that became "Schoharie".  North of them was Gerlach Dorf, and on the Cobleskill Creek, Kniskern's Dorf.

Rte 145, Main St., Middleburgh

     As in the camps, they built schools, churches and parsonages

Rte 30, N. of Middleburgh

Rte 30, Schoharie

Rte 30, Schoharie

Rte 30, Scoharie

Parsonage, Warner Hill Rd., Schoharie

The immigrants had barely settled into their new homes when they came under legal attack from none other than Governor Hunter. Though Hunter had "temporarily" released them from servitude and told them they must provide for themselves, he did not expect they would they would form permanent self-sufficient communities and he blamed them for the failure of the tar-making project, which threatened his financial ruin. 

The first assault on the Palatines claim to the valley began with Samuel Bayard's scheme to sell the Palatines titles to their land. Bayard's father Col. Nicholas Bayard had received a patent for almost the entire valley given to him by Governor Benjamin Fletcher (1692-1697), no doubt for a "consideration." (Fletcher was recalled for corruption and association with pirates, and had retired from the governorship an estimated  £300,000 wealthier) But in 1698 the Crown repudiated his "extravagant" land grants.* Though the exact nature of Samuel's scheme remains unclear, the younger Bayard entered the valley with a document he circulated offering title to the Palatine landholders. He was unceremoniously expelled from the valley by the Palatines.

A more serious threat came from Adam Vrooman of Schenectady. Vrooman had claimed to have bought some land from the Schoharie Indians in 1711. In the summer of 1714 Gov. Hunter issued him a patent for much of the land in the upper valley, including Weiser's Dorf. The Palatines were outraged. Enticing the local Indians with alcohol they re-marked their boundary claims, and bought additional land on the hillsides for 300 Spanish dollars. They began a campaign to harry Vrooman from the valley by driving their horses at night over the land Vroman attempted to plant and pulling down a stone house he was attempting to build. His son was pulled from a wagon and beaten, and Vroman's life was threatened. He too left, but his name remains in the valley as the name of a rocky promontory looking down on the fertile fields of the valley south of Middleburgh, "Vroman's Nose."

After failing to peddle his titles to the Palatines, Samuel Bayard assembled five partners to invest in Schoharie lands. Though he appears to have failed to sell them title to the lower Schoharie Valley, they applied directly to Hunter himself and received a patent in November 1714. Three years later  two other partners joined them with interests in the area of the Fox Creek. They informed the Palatines they must buy or lease their lands or leave. The partners appealed to the court in Albany to get the Albany County sheriff to deliver papers requiring the settlers to "pay up" and to surrender John Conrad Weiser, who they identified as their ringleader. At Weiser's Dorf a riot occurred, led by the women of the village. They pulled Sheriff Adams off his horse, beat him up, dragged him through the filth of their barnyards and carried him out of the valley on a fence rail, depositing him, with two broken ribs, on the road back to Albany.

The next year, when the Governor visited Albany.** He ordered a committee of three men from each dorf to come to Albany to explain their people's actions. Angrily he forbade the Palatines from planting crops until they had bought or rented their land.

Johann Conrad Weiser and two others made a bold attempt to go over the Governor's head and seek an audience with George I, Britain's new German king from Hannover.  Sneaking out of the valley, they made their way to Philadelphia and boarded a ship bound for England.  But a short distance from port their ship was taken by French pirates who took everything of value off the ship, including the money raised by the Palatines to support the trio while seeking to get a royal audience. The ship refitted in Boston then sailed on to London.  They arrived penniless and managed to subsist for a while on commercial and personal loans, but the loans came due, and they were no closer to their goal. They were thrown into debtors prison, where one of the petitioners died. Finally, money to pay their debts and free them from prison arrived. Weiser soldiered on alone after his other companion returned to America, where, his health broken, he also died. By then Governor Hunter was back in London seeking reimbursement for the tar making fiasco. Though unable to advance his own cause, he used what influence he had left to sabotage the Palatines' efforts. After five years of fruitless lobbying Weiser, also, returned home. Then, in what could be described as a karmic twist of fate, Hunter got a ruling from the Board of Trade. The Board would consider reimbursing Hunter if (1) he produced receipts for expenditures to Robert Livingston and others, (which he expected) and (2) he produced affidavits from the Palatines that they had been adequately provisioned, supported and compensated for their efforts! (Needless to say, no such affidavits would be forthcoming from the Palatines!) In 1719 Hunter's commission as governor of New York was revoked and he was replaced by William Burnett in 1720.

With the government's support, and the arrest of several Palatine leaders, the seven partners were able to force about 1/3 of the Palatines to buy or rent their land from them.  Another group of thirty three families moved to the Tulpehocken valley in Berks county Pennsylvania where other Palatines and several sects of German religious dissenters had successfully settled.

Early in his tenure as New York's new governor, Burnett addressed the Schoharie problem by granting himself a patent on land in the Mohawk River Valley with several Palatine leaders named as co-patentees.  Before this, the Mohawk clans had vigorously resisted attempts of European settlers to occupy their lands but now they were feeling vulnerable. Disease and war had reduced their numbers from several thousand to about 600. In the last century a large number of their people had been converted to Catholicism by the Jesuits and had decamped for lands around Montreal.  The last war had seen their homelands raided by the French and Algonquin enemies.  Their experience with the Palatines in Scoharie had been generally positive. The Palatines, more than the English and Dutch, seemed to respect Indian peoples and their life-styles and they were generally good neighbors. If the Mohawks could lease land to them it might limit uncontrolled European settlement.  Having Palatine neighbors might increase their security in the next (inevitable) war with the French.
The new governor also saw the benefit of creating buffer communities of non-Britons located between invading French and Indian raiders, and the exposed towns of Schenectady and Albany.

Rte 30, N. of Schoharie (now missing)

             "Gerlach Dorf

    Johan Christian Gerlach
  Palatine Listmaster Settled
      near this site in 1717
Gerlach along with most of this
Dorf's Palatines Removed to the
  Mohawk Valley in 1722-1723
 Schoharie Valley Bicentennial 1995"

The Burnett Patent allowed nearly 92 heads of families, over 300 people, to settle on lands from  Little Falls, 24 miles west along both sides of the Mohawk. The settlements of Palatine, Palatine Bridge, Stone Arabia, Oppenheim, German Flats, Frankfort and others came into being between 1723 and 1726. Their numbers were swelled by the arrival of another ship of Palatines that arrived in 1722.  Included with them was the "Erghtmer" (Herchheimer or Herkimer) family.

For thirty years the Palatines lived in peace and growing prosperity along the Mohawk River until the last French and Indian war when their homes and farms were twice attacked and burned by  the French and their Algonquin allies in 1757, 1758 and again, by their Loyalist neighbors and Iroquois former-friends, twenty years later in the American Revolution.  Nicholas Herkimer, son of Palatine immigrants led the defense of the valley from Fort Herkimer in the last "French War" and turned back a British, Loyalist, Indian invasion in 1777, being mortally wounded in the Battle of Oriskany.  

Rte. 5,  North Illion

Gen. Herkimer Statue, Park Ave. Herkimer

For many years much of this part of the Mohawk Valley remained unoccupied.  After the wars some Palatines returned to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, but many moved elsewhere, completing the last chapter of the Palatine diaspora.

*Another of Fletcher's thirteen "extravagant " grants revoked by the Crown was one used for the West Camp settlements.
**New York City was the seat of the Colony's government, as New Amsterdam had been the seat of New Netherlands in Dutch times.


Addenda--On 5/12/13 I wrote on a piece on "New York's Wooden Roads." Since then I have taken photos at a couple other sites. The newer Pomeroy sign makes an interesting observation about the noise arising from wood planks laid over wooden stringers under the wheels of wagons.

County Rte.110, Broadalbin

     

1315 Township Rd. Altamont



Note--This installment of NYSHMs has been delayed due to technical problems. These have included being unable to download several photos which if corrected, will be shown in the next installment's  Addenda

It Happened Here--The Palatines
Part 1, the Tar makers

Robert Hunter must have felt quite pleased with himself as he left Britain to return to America early in 1710.  He had put together a plan to address two of Britain's most pressing problems, successfully presented it to the Board of Trade and gotten the Queen's approval.  One of his major political supporters in America stood to profit significantly from it and hoped to populate his long nearly-vacant manor with tenant farmers.  And Robert Hunter was returning as the new governor of New York--New Jersey.

The two problems Hunter's plan addressed stemmed from two long wars, the "War of the Grand Alliance" and the "War of Spanish Succession" that spanned the period of 1684 to 1713.  During that period German peasants in the patchwork of tiny duchies and principalities along the lower Rhine (known collectively as the Palatinate) were driven first one way and then another by French armies and alliances of German forces, sometimes aided by the British. Crops and towns were burned, suspected partisans were put to the sword, and once prosperous farmers were impoverished by high taxes and the requisitioning of crops and livestock by occupying armies. The chaotic succession of rulers also demanded the populace follow first, Reformed, then Lutheran religious practises and back again, followed by Roman Catholic rites and beliefs.  To add to their difficulties Europe was then in the grip of what today is recognized as the "little ice age" that caused winters to be long, summers to be wet and cold and livestock to perish and crops to rot or freeze.  By early 1709 many desperate peasants had had enough and were on the move, down the Rhine to Amsterdam. At first the government of the Queen looked favorably on these, their Protestant brethren and with government and private charity enabled them to come to England. But soon the stream of refugees became a torrent! Thirteen thousand of the poorest, sickest people poured into southeast England and tent cities sprang up around London. What to do with all these people? A few thousand were transported to Ireland but many soon returned to the London area. Some were transported to the Carolinas, but it was said agents of some of the patent-holders there were making the situation worse by recruiting peasants in the Palatinate. A small group led by Rev. Joshua Kocherthal directly petitioned the Queen and were successfully settled in a town they called Neuberg (Newburgh) along the Hudson. But transportation to America was expensive.   How to pay for it?

NEW BURGH

SETTLED 1709, BY EXILES FROM

RHINE PALATINATE, OUSTED BY

FRENCH, GRANTED LAND HERE

BY QUEEN ANNE; LED BY PASTOR,

JOSHUA DE KOCKERTHAL

--originally on Rte 32, Newburgh

A second problem emerged from the wars. The British Navy burgeoned as demands to protect a growing mercantile fleet grew. Sturdy English oak could provide the ribbing and planking for new British ships.  But tall, straight, strong, supple pine spars and masts could only be obtained abroad, and with them pine tar and "pitch."  Pine tar was an essential waterproofing product used by shipbuilders and mariners.  Mixed with hemp fibers (oakum) it was hammered into the spaces between hull planks to prevent leaks. Coating standing rigging (shrouds, ratlines), it prevented rotting of these essential support components. (Pine tar could be used to waterproof sailors' clothing and "Taring" and caulking were such essential maintenance tasks that British sailors were often called "tars".)  Pitch was a sticky processed pine tar that hardened into a glossy waterproof shell. Collectively these were known as "naval stores." The pine forests bordering the Baltic Sea had been traditional sources of these naval stores but the wars had dramatically increased their cost, and revealed how vulnerable the supply lines were to these areas.

A third problem confronted Robert Livingston, a Hunter supporter in America*. Livingston had been granted a Royal Patent and "purchased" the land from the local Indians. He had hoped to develop a patroonship like the Van Rensselaers,  populated by tenant farmers, paying annual "quit-rents" to him and his family in perpetuity.  But Livingston got few takers. There were other places in New England,  the Jerseys, and the Carolinas where settlers could buy their land out-right, develop it as they saw fit and sell it with their improvements at its' market value. Livingston was not making money on his investment.

Palatine Park Rd., Germantown

Robert Hunter's plan was to transport some 3000 Palatines to the shores of the Hudson River and settle them in two camps. There they would produce tar for the British government and work off the costs of their transportation to America. (As an inducement each family was promised 30 acres of land after they had worked off the costs of the voyage, but in fact no such land was set aside for this payment.)  Robert Livingston sold the project a parcel of land, the "East Camp" and nearby pine stands. Livingston was contracted to be the victualer for the camps, producing daily quantities of bread and "ship's beer" for the workers. He also hoped that while some of the immigrants would continue to work producing pine tar, others could be induced to sign life-leases on his manor.  (German peasants would become American peasants!)  A second camp on the opposite side of the river, "West Camp" was established on land that the colony's assembly had taken back from its original patentee Capt. John Evans.  Rev. Joshua Kockerthal, from the Newburgh settlement became the spiritual leader and spokesman for the West Campers.

• WEST CAMP (sign missing)
  SETTLED 1710 BY PALATINES
  FROM THE RHINELAND FOR
  PRODUCTION OF NAVAL STORES.
  BUILT CHURCH AND SCHOOL
  DURING FIRST WINTER.
  Location: US 9W AT WEST CAMP

Rte 9W. West Camp

 By coincidence, in 1710, Peter Schuyler, Mayor of Albany and a delegation from New York were in London attempting to appeal to Parliament and the Queen for more support to counter raids by the French and their Indian allies. To garner maximum attention, he brought along three Mohawk and two Mohican sachems (chiefs). Though one died on the voyage, the remaining four, dressed in native costume caused a sensation in London. They were shown around the city, wined and dined, had their portraits painted and got an audience with the Queen. On one of their sight-seeing trips they encountered the "poor Palatines" in one of their tent encampments.  On meeting with the Queen, one of the Mohawk chiefs offered them their hunting grounds in the Schoharie Valley, to which the Queen assented.   The Palatines seized on this as if it were their God-given promised land. Going to "Scorie" became the dream of the first generation of immigrants.**

Rte 30, Middleburgh

About three thousand Palatines set out with Robert Hunter in ten ships. The Palatines, while recovering from the effects of their long, disease-ridden ocean voyage, in which some 470 died, built their settlements--four villages (Dorfs) in the East Camp and three in the West Camp.  They quickly established churches and schools and began learning the trade of tar making.

Rte 9, Germantown

Colony leaders had hired an "expert," John Bridger to teach the Palatines tar-making.  He worked briefly with them, then returned to New England and found excuses not to return to New York, perhaps realizing but not willing to tell authorities that the Hudson pine tar project was likely to fail.

Rte. 9, Germantown

In colonial times, pine tar was made by digging a conical shaped pit, with clay channels at the bottom leading to a collection barrel. It was filled with specially prepared pine trees and branches, stacked to drain into the clay channels. Covered with a layer of soil and mosses, a fire was built on top. Over a period of days, the pine logs would be converted to charcoal and and the pine tar boiled out of them, to be collected in the barrel at the bottom. Too cool or too hot a fire could result in either a disappointing yield, or a flaming disaster. To yield maximum tar,  channels needed to be cut in the logs, through the outer bark into the inner bark, but not into the wood itself, (not unlike traditional techniques for collecting latex from rubber trees.)
Counter intuitively, the most tar could be produced, not from green wood but from trees that had been cut, grooved and seasoned for about two years. Unfortunately,  the Palatine peasants, farmers and vine-dressers knew almost none of this. Disappointments alternated with disasters and after a year almost no pine tar had been produced. Discouragement set in as the Palatines realized what hard, filthy dirty work they were condemned to.  And there was another factor--most pine tar was produced from Pitch Pines and closely related species. The White Pines of Livingston's forests were a poor source for pine tar.

The pine tar project on the Hudson had been almost certainly doomed to failure from its conception. Governor Hunter had to send soldiers to quell the growing dissatisfaction in the camps and to keep the Palatines working. Support dried up with a change of governments from Whig to Tory.  One of Hunter's predecessors, a political enemy who hated Livingston,  Edward Hyde--Lord Cornbury did everything in his power to sabotage the project. Governor Cornbury had been recalled in disgrace to London in 1708,  but after a few years had managed to restore himself to the Queen's favor after inheriting his father's title Earl of Clarendon.  As Secretary of the Treasury he blocked all funding for the Palatine tar making project, denying reimbursement of Hunter's expenses.  By September 1712 Hunter was at the end of his financial resources and was forced to set the Palatines loose to fend for themselves to "accept any employment from farmers and others in this Province or New Jersey, until recalled by Proclamation" to return to the project. (They never were.)

Next week-- The Palatines, Part 2 Diaspora

Addenda--

Back on  12/31/14 I wrote an article It Happened Here -- N.Y.'s Ghost Towns.    Recently I came across another striking example of a "New York Ghost town" a short distance south of Rte  20 in 

   Otsego County.

    




Corner Butternut Rd. and Cemetery Rd.
Richfield Springs

Federal Corners rated not
one, but two NYSHMs 

Federal Corners, today.

*see "It Happened Here--the Tough, Wiley Scotsman and his Diligent Vrouw". New York State Historical Markers:  It Happened Here  6/30/13

**It turns out this Mohawk sachem had absolutely no authority to offer this land.  Domestic issues were the province of the clan mothers, not male warriors and could only be reached by consensus of them all.  Indeed, all matters were reached by consensus/compromise. If an individual/family and the clan were at loggerheads the only recourse was for the dissenters to move away. Throughout Iroquoia there were scattered villages of dissenters, often with peoples from different clans and even different tribes. Onaquaga was one of these. (see "Lost Towns of the Revolution." New York State Historical Markers:  It Happened Here  8/7/16) The Schoharie Valley had at least two. The main one was called Wilder Hook by Dutch settlers and was a village of mainly Mohawk dissenters. Another village was predominantly Mohegan.  Mohawks, Mohegans, Tuscororas, and Delawares could all be found there. The possibly even exists that that the sachem had not even offered Schoharie to the Palatines, but merely cited the Schoharie Valley as an example of how his people dealt with other people who did not fit in. We will probably never know.

        

It Happened Here--The New York-New Jersey Line War 

   

A Hamlet, SE of Rochester, 1/3 mi. S of I-90!

 Boundary disputes were common between the colonies in early American history. Colonial charters were often the origin of these disputes, as the result of poor maps, calculated deceptions, and the indifference of British monarchs who were ignorant of geographic realities but eager to discharge debts and solidify support among their friends and political supporters by granting them lands in the American wilderness, (never mind the rights of Native-American inhabitants.)  Thus, Connecticut would claim a swath of territory from a line roughly extending from its border with Massachusetts, and from islands in Narragansett bay,  excluding the territory settled by the Dutch in New York, to the South Sea--the Pacific Ocean!  She continued to maintain her rights of ownership within this band in Ohio (called the Western Reserve) until the United States incorporated it in the Northwest Territory.   Massachusetts, similarly, claimed the territory within the parallels of her north and south border, beyond New York settlement, west to Lake Erie. The dispute with New York was settled in the Treaty of Hartford, in 1786 when Massachusetts gave up her rights to govern the territory, but secured her "preemption rights"- the right to sell the land to speculators, once they had negotiated a sale with the Iroquois. William Penn's charter was granted to settle a debt owed by Charles II to Penn's father. It  included a  grant of land west of the New York Colony north to the 43d parallel. The Pennsylvania proprietorship maintained its claim to this area until 1774

The problem was exacerbated by the granting/selling of "patents" to individuals by colonial governors.  A patent was the exclusive right to develop/settle a large parcel of land either by sharing it with partners, retailing it to individual farmers (the New England mode) or settling it with tenant farmers, charged annual "quit-rents" (the Hudson Valley/Dutch/New York mode.) Frequently these patents overlapped. On the New York/ Hampshire Grants (Vermont) border the title to lands were sold by New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth, in the same area tenants were being settled on the land by New York's Phillip Schuyler. New England farmers found their properties threatened by New York sheriffs; the New Englanders formed a vigilante force led by Ethan Allen, the "Green Mountain Boys."

The New York/New Jersey border problems originated in the charter given by Charles II to two of his political supporters.  With the cleaving off of east and west New Jersey from New York, a northern border needed to be defined. The King's charter specified a borderline running from where the 41st parallel crosses the Hudson River, to 41 degrees 40 minutes "along said River or Bay (the Delaware) to the northward as far as the northward most branch of the said Bay or River." Unfortunately, there is no northern-most branch of "said River" anywhere near where the 41 degree 40 minute parallel crosses the Delaware.  This gave New Yorkers an excuse to challenge the borderline and for  a succession of New York governors  to aggressively issue patents in the hopes of creating a defacto border favoring New York.

Beginning in 1701 farmers around Mahackemeck (Port Jervis,  today) and the Peenpack valley began increasingly serious squabbles over land.

Rte 209, N end of Port Jervis

In 1719 New York's governor Hunter and the New Jersey legislature agreed to actually survey a line between the Delaware at 41deg. 40min and the Hudson end of the line. After a contentious few months the surveyors reported on their efforts, identifying the western end of the line near the Indian village of Casheightouch (now Cohecton, NY.) but not near any "northward most branch" of any river.

Rte 209 between Huguenot and Port Jervis

Rather than settle the issue, the survey inflamed the situation as competing farmers from New Jersey and New York fought over who had legitimate title to their land.  To make matters worse, farmers found they might be subject to taxes or quitrents from both colonies, and be required to participate in local militias from both Orange County, NY and Sussex County, NJ!  By 1720 the dispute had started to get violent with the families of Thomas and Jacobus Swartwout of New York and John and Nicholis Westfall, of New Jersey regularly getting into fights and burning each other's crops. Men regularly carried arms, and women pitchforks as they went about their daily chores.

Rte 97@line w/Sullivan Co.

Major Jacobus Swartwout, an officer of the Orange County militia, was, according to tradition, a large, bellicose and outspoken man who became a lighting rod for Jerseymen opposition. One night following a period of braggadocios ranting a group of Jerseymen crept up on the Major's house, bodily throwing the major and his family out into the cold while they consumed the Major's beer, spirits and victuals. The Major rallied local Orange County militiamen who retook the house allowing the Major to (literally) kick the intruders out.

Another family legend speaks of a confrontation between Jacobus Swarthwout and  Johannes Westfall in a pumpkin patch. During the escalating argument Swarthwout indignantly turned his back on Westfall.  The Jerseyman grabbed a large pumpkin and sent it crashing down on Swarthwout's head. The surprised and stunned major, lying on the ground, covered in pumpkin "gore" cried out, "I am killed and my brains spilled!"

Rte 209, 1/2 way between Huguenot,Port Jervis

A more serious episode occurred when a large group of armed Jerseymen led by a constable from Sussex County attempted to arrest Harmanus Van Inwegen, brother-in-law of Jacobus Swarthout for his part in the disturbances. An Orange County "spy"among the Jerseymen warned Colonel Swartwout of the armed posse. Swartwout mobilized most of his kin and neighbors forming a battle line near Van Inwegen's house to block the approach of the posse with Van Inwegen commanding the left wing of the line and Jacob Cuddeback commanding the right.  Both the New Yorkers and the Jerseymen had expected to overawe their opponents with their numbers and neither were prepared for deadly combat.  Both sides angrily eyed each other, for an embarrassingly long period of time, with neither side willing to take the first action. Finally a bewildered son of Jacobus Swartwout asked his father, loudly enough so the other side could hear them, should they shoot at them, or over their heads?  The old Colonel bellowed "Kill Them!" The vehemence of his words shocked the Jerseymen whose line broke and they retreated.
Swartwout raced ahead with some of his men, catching the Jerseymen in a ravine. Poorly aimed shots were exchanged with the constable's horse being the only fatal casualty.

Site of the "battle", unmentioned on this sign.
Rte 209, N of Huguenot

For a few years confrontations between neighbors subsided as the French and Indian War descended on the Delware and Peenpack valleys. Half a dozen houses were fortified, some with palisades around them, and designated as places of refuge.

               A Jerseymen's fort in Mahackemeck (Port Jervis)

  The Gumaer Family came to the Peenpack Valley with the Swarthouts, 
 They were neighbors and allies. Rte 209 between Huguenot and Godeffroy






The Westbrooks also came with the Swarthouts
The house is still a private residence. 
Rte 209 @ Westbrook 

Indians attacking the fort in1756 were surprised to find a 
large group of militiamen visiting the house. A vicious hand to hand fight ensued with fatalities on both sides before the Indians fled. Two years later a second skirmish (described) occurred here.
Rte. 209 1/2 way between Huguenot and Port Jervis




As French and Indian fears subsided, tensions between the settler factions increased.  In 1765 the Jersey faction struck the next blow. Their plan was to apprehend Jacobus Swartwout and Capt. Johannes Westbrook as they emerged from church to deliver them to the authorities in Sussex. (Church had become something of a tense ordeal with New Yorkers in some pews, suspiciously eyeing Jersymen in other pews across the aisle.)  The Jerseymen, out of  respect for the Sabbath  carried no arms, hoping their strength in numbers would persuade Swartwout and  Westbrook         that resistance was futile.  When church adjourned for the noonday meal break, they attempted to arrest Swartwout and Westbrook.  A wild melee broke out in the church yard, with no fatalities but much blood shed. Swartwout and Westbrook were eventually arrested and taken to Sussex only to be released a few weeks later.
                                                                                           Maghaghkamik Church, built
                                                                                           1743 on this site, was
                                                                                           burned in raid by Joseph
                                                                                           Brant’s Mohawks and Tories,
                                                                                           July 20, 1779.

                                                                                           E. Main St., by St. Mary's Cemetery
   
News of the donnybrook on the church lawn, on the Sabbath, quickly reached the capitals of both colonies and shocked the legislatures into finally agreeing to settle the dispute. Though more pressing business side-lined the issue until 1767,  joint commissions that included Benjamin Franklin and John Jay, were appointed. Political wrangling, other business and problems in travel would delay the commission's final settlement until 1773 when a new compromise border was established, beginning at the 41 degree line on the Hudson and ending where the Neversink creek enters the Delaware, south east of Port Jervis.
                                                                                        

Maj.Jacobus Swartout marker--mentions the "infamous kodnapping"  
Rte. 209. Deer Park, near town hall

Uncle Sam Park, River St., Troy

Marker of the Week-- Labor day 2018.  For some reason there appear to be few NY historic markers whose subject is historic Labor Leaders or milestones in Labor Progress.  Perhaps this is because of the tendency for Labor history to be made mainly in big cities, where NYSHMs are rare, or made mainly in the 20th century, not commonly the time period focus of NYSHMs, or perhaps it reflects the biases of the creators of historic markers and traditional popularizers of history that relegate "Labor history" to a subordinate role in history.  Whatever the case, "Labor NYSHMs" are pretty hard to come by. So I will bend the "rules", today, to include a monument, not a sign, for a man, a labor leader, a socialist, and an Irish revolutionary who lived briefly in Troy.

references: wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_–_New_Jersey_Line_War
                   Swartwout, Charles H.  "Keynote Speech, Swarthout 2000 Family Reunion".   swarthoutfamily.org/Reunion/speech2001.htm.   The shortage of readily available information on the "NY/NJ Line Wars"combined with some fascinating detail relayed by someone who has some familiarity with the topic leads me to believe their must be more interesting stories to research and tell, beyond the scope of a weekly blog written many miles away. What, for example, could the 18th century Westfalls tell us about their side of the "war"?

It Happened Here -- Carding and Fulling

(and Linen Mills, too)

It has been asserted that every self sufficient "rural town" in New York had at least one of these by 1800, or certainly by 1850.  But today if you asked New Yorkers--even rural New Yorkers what carding and fulling mills were, probably not one in twenty could tell you.

          Near the end of the Berne-Altamont Rd., Berne

 Mills were an early part of the American colonial experience. Mills took over some of the most tedious and laborious work in colonial times. Usually within two to ten years of a town's settlement water-or-wind-powered grist mills were grinding a community's grain and many communities soon built sawmills, as well, to turn rough squared timber into uniform planks for everything from house siding, roofing and flooring, to furniture, to ship hull planking, bulkheads and decks.

  3 years before Catskill was bought from the Indians
                         Catskill had its first mill

           Main St. Catskill, at the Hans Vosen Kill (creek)

Rte. 9W, N. of Saugerties, "the Sawmills

Undershot wheel in the wheelhouse of an old mill
(probably 19th Century) at the Sawyer kill

Rte 375 at Tannery Brook, Woodstock

 Before cotton became widely available in the colonial North, wool and linen were staple fabrics. Most farms in colonial New York had a few sheep and a ready supply of wool but there were several laborious steps to turning raw wool into wool fabric.  The first of these was carding--combing bunches of wool into a wide belt of wool with the fibres (hair) roughly aligned and much of the dirt, manure, thorns and twigs combed from it.  To do this, pairs of flat paddles with rows of sharp teeth were employed to hold and tease out the wool.  Carding mills were developed to do the same with rotating drums studded with teeth, and rollers, rotating at slightly different speeds to tease the wool into relatively clean wool strips.

For many years spinning and weaving remained hand (and foot-driven) processes.  With Englishman James Hargeaves 1767 spinning "Jenny"cotton fibers could be machine spun. Improved upon by Thomas High and Richard Arkwright spinning became a mill process. But the British government considered these innovations as something of a state secret forbidding the export of any textile machine or plans for one. Finally, in 1789 Englishman Samuel Slater, apprenticed on the Arkwright machine, memorized the plans of the machine and secretly sailed to America.  Partnering with an American merchant in Pawtucket, Rhode Island he built the first cotton spinning factory.*  Again, in England, Rev. Edmund Cartwright built the first power loom.  In 1811, American Francis Cabot Lowell, after visiting England, designed the first American power loom.  By the late 1830's modifications of these machines made woolen spinning and weaving widespread.

Woven wool cloth was both greasy and stiff. (The natural lanolin in sheep's skin made it so.) To make it usable, the cloth had to be soaked in a detergent and worked/ beaten.  Urine made a cheap, if unaesthetic, detergent and soaking in it was followed by a scrubbing in very hot, soapy water.  Before mechanized fulling mills, in the British Isles, wool cloth was "waulked" by parties of women. An early woodcut shows a party of Scots peasant women seated side by side with legs out stretched pounding woolen cloth with their heels, singing a "waulking song" to maintain a rhythmic tempo.  "Waulking" helped compact the fibres making the cloth soft but stronger and water resistant. Fuller's earth, a fine grained absorbent clay with detergent properties began replacing urine early in America and fulling mill wheels used heavy wooden hammers or pestles to thump the cloth. Oliver Evans** in 1795 developed mill machinery that mechanically advanced the cloth as well. 

The washed cloth was stretched over "tenter" frames on sunny hillsides and held in place on "tenterhooks" to dry and shrink evenly. 

 A last process involved raising the nap on the wool by brushing it with teasel seed pods. Teasel pods*** are covered with fine hooked barbs used to raise individual hairs from the yarn, tangling them together and making the fabric both stronger and "fuzzy".  At fulling mills teasels were attached to rotating drums and used to brush the wool cloth.

Rte 4 Schuylerville at Fish Creek

Linen, like wool is an ancient fabric and like wool required extensive preparation, beyond spinning and weaving. Linen is made from fibers in the flax plant. (Biologically, they are part of the Phloem, long capillary-like fibers that bring water and nutrients from the plant's roots.) These fibers, however, are bonded to both the plant's core and outer bark and must be broken down by "retting" (literally rotting) by laying the harvested flax on the field, subjecting it to heavy dews or rain, or submerging it in bundles in a pond or stream for several weeks. Once retted, the flax was dried out and the brittle core and epidermis broken up on a hand operated flax break.  The pieces were then beaten/combed out with a wooden flax knife. "Scrutchening"was an extremely tedious process that might yield 15 lbs. a day! Finally, the flax was combed/heckled by running it through a card of "heckels", sharp-toothed nails, that removed the smallest woody pieces and and bits of fibers, and separated and polished the long fibers before they were spun. It is easy to imagine how the machinery developed for carding and fulling could be adapted for flax preparation, even before machines took over spinning and weaving.




*A few years later, in 1793,  Eli Whitney invented the hand cranked "cotton gin" which mechanized the slow process of separating the tightly held cotton fibers from their seeds, making cotton raising profitable (and increasing the use of slaves, in the South.)

**see "It Happened Here--Welcome to a Tech Valley, 1830's Style"  3/24/14

***Teasel was introduced to the America in 1733 for fulling. Descendants of these plants can often be found growing on well drained sunny hillsides. 

References.  

 "Berne Carding and Fulling Mills".  www.albanyhilltowns.com/wikiBerne /index.php?title=Berne_Carding_and_Fulling_Mills 

"How Linen is Made --Deck Towel". www.decktowel.com/pages/how-linen-is-made-from-flax-to-fabric 
                           
Tunis, Edwin. Colonial Craftsmen and the Beginnings of American Industry. Cleveland, 1965.

             

Rte. 376, Augusta

Addenda--  Quite unexpectedly I came across this marker, southwest of Rome and Fort Stanwix.  The Treaty of 1768 gave George Croghan and his mentor, Sir William Johnson opportunity to complete several land deals and take possession of Iroquois land promised to Sir William. see my post of 2/5/14
"King of the (Indian) Traders"