It Happened Here--  Steuben:  the Man and the Markers 

                                                          Part I, the Man

                

                                                   Reconstruction of Steuben's home, State Memorial Park, Remsen NY

Friedrich Wilhelm Steuben of Magdeburg, Prussia was born into the lower nobility of the Prussian Junker military class. Like his father before him, there was little doubt he would pursue the career of a military officer.  (All Prussian boys were required to enlist in the army, but for him it would be his profession.)  At age 16 he was enlisted as an officer candidate, learning the life of a common soldier, gradually working his way up over ten years as an ensign, lieutenant, captain.  As a garrison officer, as a field infantry officer

(he was wounded twice, in two horrific battles), as a staff officer at the company and battalion levels and as a staff intelligence officer Steuben received about the best practical education an officer could get in tactics, strategy and caring for and running of an 18th century army.  Steuben taught himself  mathematics and French--the language used by sophisticated  Europeans in general, and the European nobility specifically.  He was befriended by Prince Henry, King  Frederick the Great's brother  and would befriend Karl Peter Ulrich of Schleswig-Holstein Gottorp. [1] With the Russian Czarina Elizabeth's death, Karl Peter  suddenly became  Czar Peter III, Czar of Russia.  Because of his friendship with Karl Peter, Steuben  could report to his King the new Czar's intention to seek peace.  Steuben was on a fast track for promotion. King Frederick selected him as one of thirteen promising young officers to be schooled in strategy and high command to be taught by the king, himself!  

And then, abruptly, it was all over!  The candidate for high command was suddenly assigned a small garrison post on the frontier and soon after he was downsized out of the army. [2]  Steuben became a courtier in a small German principality of Hohenzoleren-Hechinggen, in effect managing the social calendar of the prince and managing the affairs of the household, while he scrambled to find to find a suitable military position in one of the other armies of Europe. Rebuffed in attempts to secure commissions in armies of Austria,  France, Britain and Baden he was near the end of his rope when he met an agent of Benjamin Franklin.  The American diplomats Franklin and Dean could offer him neither a promise of a commission in the American Army nor any money to travel to America. After initially rejecting the Americans non-offer Steuben returned to Baden only to realize how truly limited his options had become , He returned to Paris where he and the American diplomats padded his "resume" and with the help of a couple of French businessmen/diplomats/ military acquaintances secured for him a personal loan and cobbled together a small retinue of aides and interpreters.  Franklin and Dean  coached him on who he should get to know and what he should say to appeal to the Americans.  In a few weeks the impoverished, minor nobleman, a Prussian captain who once had come to attention of Frederick the Great was now a  "Lieutenant-General of the Prussian Army",  and "advisor to the great warrior king", professing a desire to aid the cause of Liberty and democratic-republican government; a man of "substance",  a man wealthy enough, though unemployed,  to travel with a retinue of servants and translators.  (To Congress, this suggested he could be hired cheaply!) 

In America, the Baron played his part superbly.  Gregarious, affable, down-to-earth yet courtly and refined,  he was adored by Boston society and likewise, he sailed through the scrutiny of Congress, in exile, now meeting inYork, Pennsylvania,  General Washington was a bit more reserved as he was just recovering from the "Conway Cabal," a conspiracy to throw Washington from office led by Thomas Conway and Horatio Gates.  (In York, Steuben had met and dined with Gates several times and they appeared to have "hit it off",)  Yet at the Continental Army's winter camp at Valley Forge Steuben worked his way into Washington's favor, by serving as an observer/critic of the Army's operations, sending Washington frank, astute, insightful reports/recommendations.  After Conway resigned the army, Washington was able to appoint Steuben Inspector General.  (Conway's plotters in Congress had previously gotten Conway appointed as Inspector General to enable him to build a case for Washington's dismissal.) 

 Steuben's most important task was to train Washington's Army to fight effectively as a modern 18th century army. It was not so difficult to train up a dozen or so men to form a compact line of battle; to load and fire their muskets in a tight devastating volley and to do it again, quickly!  (Once every fifteen seconds was the objective.) But it was more difficult  to train the same dozen or so men to  go from  a column along a line of march to form a line of battle or to advance or withdraw, or  advance or withdraw at a 45 degree angle or to wheel in a straight line around an end soldier to turn the line of battle 90 degrees.  And be ready and in position at all times to deliver the compact devastating  volley at a moment's command which could turn the tide of battle.  But of course, 18th century battles were not fought with squads of  a dozen soldiers, but  with regiments each with four to ten dozen men which needed to move as one, and brigades composed of several regiments.  To accomplish his training, Steuben trained a model regiment composed of the best leaders from each of the regiments and when they were trained sent them back to train their regiments, under Steuben and his aides watchful eyes. Then the General organized regular brigade and even army-wide maneuvers. Besides his training role, Steuben was 'Inspector' General, in charge of overseeing the daily operations of Valley Forge, a camp that had become the third largest city in America!  Though he could only recommend changes to Washington, the Commander rarely failed to act promptly on them. From the distribution of rations and supplies, to the placement and construction of redoubts and other defenses, to improvements of an important bridge into camp, to the relocation of latrines-(and enforced use of them), to standardization of regiment sizes, to the assessment of penalties for soldiers infractions Steuben's direct influence was felt. 

    Rt52, west of Rt 84  between Beacon and Fishkill  

In June British General Clinton decided to move his army from Philadelphia to New York. Washington had now enough confidence in his trained army to send them against a British main army in open battle.  They struck against the rear of Clinton's column at Monmouth Courthouse, NJ.  When  the British counter-attacked Washington's general commanding the operation, Charles Lee, lost his nerve, ordering a general retreat.  A furious Washington, with Steuben's help turned the retreat around driving the British from the field but the British were able to complete their withdrawal to New York.  Washington's army joined  General Heath's army north of the City and forming a wide arc into New Jersey with a main concentration of forces at Middlebrook and a winter encampment at Morristown. Though constantly on the move, as Inspector General, Steuben established quarters at the main supply and repair depot in Fishkill, New York.

Steuben had trained the Valley Forge Army but the army in the North and the Continental forces operating in the South had still not been trained and with the short term enlistments, new solders were arriving and old ones leaving constantly. Under Washington's authority he would write a drill manual and book of army regulations covering virtually every aspect of army life. Providing consistency and uniformity throughout the Army, it would be used, unrevised  until 1814.  Next he turned his attention to the problem of supply and accountability.  There was no system. The problems of loss, misallocation and graft were serious.  Soldiers whose enlistments had expired often took their government issued uniforms, muskets and ammunition home with them when they left the army, leaving nothing for their replacements!  Steuben required all officers to maintain account books detailing when, where and from whom they had received supplies and when where and to whom they were issued. And even individual soldiers were required to keep records of when supplies/equipment was acquired and used/ disposed of.

In the months that followed, while Steuben still ran the inspector general's office, and acted as Washington's personal representative for crucial issues before Congress, the Commander-in-chief  several times appointed Steuben as a divisional commander  for an upcoming operation or to head an advance guard, so respected and trusted was he that Washington  no longer worried that his other generals might feel slighted by the assignment of this foreign officer. Following the surrender of Lincoln's army at Charleston and the disastrous defeat of Horatio Gates at the battle of Camden in South Carolina, Washington sent Nathanial Greene to try to rebuild the southern army. He sent Steuben as his second in command.  While Greene mobilized the remnants of the shattered southern army to wage guerrilla  war on the British Cornwallis, leading him on an exhausting chase throughout the Carolinas, gradually degrading his forces, the Baron in Virginia, focused on recruiting, training  and suppling new soldiers for Greene's army.  It was frustrating work for the Virginia legislature, short-sidedly continued to maintain small poorly trained, poorly equipped militias hoping these would be enough to turn away British attacks on their doorstep and did little  to supported Steuben's effort to build the Continental army to defeat the British.  Several times large British raids penetrated deep into Virginia, sweeping aside militia attempts to stop them.  One result was that Steuben's supply depot and equipment shops were burned.  Suddenly, fortune turned in favor of the Americans. Cornwallis, partly to escape Greene's troublesome attacks plunged into Virginia and established himself the port city of Yorktown, to rest and refit his army.  But then a large French fleet defeated a smaller British fleet and temporarily seized control of Chesapeake Bay.  Meanwhile the French expeditionary force, landed at Providence, Rhode Island met up with  Washington's Continentals on the Hudson and the two armies raced to Virginia to turn Cornwallis' temporary haven into a steel trap.  As the armies marched, Washington gave Steuben command of one of his three divisions.  After a few days, and some serious cannonading by the French and Americans, Cornwallis surrendered his 7000 man army.

                              Rt.9D Beacon

Following Cornwallis' surrender,  Washington's army returned to its lines on the Hudson to continue a watchful eye on the British Army occupying New York. Across the river from the main cantonment  near Newburgh, Steuben set up his headquarters in Beacon.  From there he continued his work as Inspector General and  consulted with Washington on his recommendations to Congress for a peacetime army. (Both envisioned a small professional army to maintain posts on the frontier and larger professionally trained state militias that could be activated for emergencies.)

As peace loomed Steuben worked to form a fraternity of Revolutionary War officers, the Society of Cincinnati [3] but came under criticism for advocating that sons of members could become members, as the public rejected any notion of an organization that might result in a new class of nobility. 

After the war's end both Pennsylvania and NewYork granted Steuben citizenship.  Worn out by long years of arduous service Steuben retired, living in New York where he could petition Congress for compensation for his past services that had been vaguely promised him. His supporters encouraged him to ask for awards of from $8000 to $45000. Finally, he received $2000.  The General leased a large house for entertaining, spending extravagantly on renovations but had to let it go as he continued to live beyond his means. In 1786 he became president of the German Society a support  organization for German immigrants, a post he held to his death in 1794.  New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York all gave him grants of undeveloped land.  The Baron sold off his New Jersey and Pennsylvania properties but moved to his 16,000 acre tract north of the Mohawk River to become  a tenant farm landowner.  Intending to build a large estate in the future, Steuben built a several room log cabin until his finances improved.  But with land  so cheap and accessible following the revolution, most tenants did not stay long and others bought their farms from him.  Steuben's enterprise did not prosper.  

      Rt. 20, Duanesburg, cor. of Duanesburg Churches Rd.

Two of the Baron's most trusted aides, Benjamin Walker and William "Billy" North regularly stayed with him, assisting him through much of his retirement. Steuben expressed great affection for his "kids" though both left his regular service to pursue careers and have families.  He formally  adopted both, leaving most of his property and assets to them.  A  new secretary/companion  John Mulligan  would be with him when the Baron died in 1794.

Benjamin Walker has a NYSHM near his grave in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Utica.

[1]  Prince Henry was widely recognized as a homosexual.  Czar Peter III was "polyamorous" and had a strained relationship with his Czarina Catherine.  After a reign of only 186 days he would be overthrown by plotters led by her.  She would reign as "Catherine the Great" and he would die mysteriously with the cause reported by the royal court as "hemorrhoids".

[2]In the hot bed of court intrigue, rumors including allegations of pederasty swirled about the name Steuben.  His chances for advancement on the continent rapidly dimmed.  The Baron never denied his homosexuality, but not pedophilia.  He lived discretely, never marrying and developing close emotional (paternalistic? romantic?) friendships  to several younger adjutants and aides throughout his life.

[3] Cincinnatus was a roman farmer/soldier who when Rome was under attack accept the position of Commander/dictator. then surrendered the position once the emergency was over, returning voluntarily to his farm.

   Next Time--   Steuben: Part II, the Markers ( or, as  important as Steuben was to the American Revolution,Why were there at least eight New York State Historical  Markers directing motorists to his home in retirement and at least eighteen more detailing his life in retirement,  his gravesite and his tomb!?)                                                                                                             

 

                     It Happened Here--Knifetown, N.Y., U.S.A

In the United States many towns and cities got their identities from the predominate products manufactured in them.  In New York State there are many examples of this.  Schenectady became the "electric city" because of the electrical generation and distribution equipment, not to mention early electrical appliances manufactured there. For Corning it was glass; For Glens Falls it was paper;  For Amsterdam it was carpets;  For Gloversville, well....    (Cooperstown doesn't fit--It was founded by William Cooper and had no special connection to barrel production.)

In Orange County, New York,  little Walden became known as "Knifetown".  Walden began as so many other towns in the Northeast began, as a textile mill town with its founder,  Jacob T. Walden being attracted to the area by power of the Wallkill river as it surged through the Wallkill gorge.  By the early 1820's Walden had dammed the Wallkill and several woolen and cotton mills were in business.  But, by the end of the 1840's the mills were struggling and closing.  Leaders in the community, however, had heard of a group of cutlers, originally from Sheffield England, who were dissatisfied with their situation  in Mattaewan, (Beacon) New York and looking to relocate.  The skilled knife makers had been recruited with the promise of higher wages to form the core of the workforce of the Waterville (Connecticut) Knife Factory but when told they would have to buy/maintain their own tools sixteen of them revolted, each chipping in $200 of their own money and moving to Mattaewan to form the New York Cooperative Knife Company in 1852.  The Walden community leaders were able to offer them a modern factory with ample water power to run belts and pulleys to power saws, turn grinders and polishers, operate trip hammers and lathes--turning what for centuries had been a handicraft operation into a machine shop business. To seal the deal, the leaders, themselves, offered to transport the business across the Hudson  to Walden in1856.  

                                                                               34 North Montgomery St., Walden

                                                                                                                                         W. Main  St. cor. Orchard, Walden

The business thrived. After a few years, in order to meet demand and expand, the partners decided to turn the company into a joint stock company.  New York Knife Company became the major cutler for the Union Army, making forks as well as table knives. Their pocket knife/jack knife business burgeoned.  In the 19th century, every man (not just craftsmen, tradesmen, and farmers) carried a pocket knife.  Even middle class businessmen, merchants, lawyers, teachers carried pocket knives.  It probably started when quill pens needed to be routinely trimmed to write legibly, before they were replaced by steel pens; and  continued as fingernails needed to be trimmed, packages and letters opened, pencils sharpened and     twisted cigar ends cut off so they could be smoked.  Starting in 1911 New York Knife became the official supplier of scout knives for the Boy Scouts of America, a contract they held for over a decade. [1]   At the peak of their production  by 1900  they occupied twenty eight buildings, employed 400 people and produced  1 1/2 million   knives in a year.  One of their buildings, built up from the Wallkill gorge was seven floors tall, and had its main entrance at street level, on the seventh floor!

                                 Oak St. at the Bridge, Walden

The Walden Knife Company was said to  have been initiated by a dispute over a baseball game!  For several years knife-makers at New York Knife held baseball games between workers from different floors during lunchtime.  At one game, an argument between players turned into a general row.  The new plant manager, Thomas Bradley Jr. stepped in to breakup the fight declaring anyone playing baseball henceforth at lunch would be fired!  Several workers walked off the job, declaring they would start their own company.  Beneath the surface of the dispute, of course, were underlying strains. Bradley was trying to turn a machine assisted craft business into an assembly plant where lower skilled workers , responsible for only one or two operations,  worked together to assemble  a completed product, employing more complex machines to take over more of the production.  In 1874 the  Walden Cooperative Knife Company would open, a short distance from New York Knife. 

                                                                                                                E. Main St.  Walden

                                               

In 1892 George Shrade patented a pocket knife, the blade of which could be conveniently opened with one hand by pressing a button. Shrade went to the New York Knife Company to manufacture his knives (known today as the somewhat infamous "switch blade") before making improvements to its mechanism,  and striking out on his own in 1904, in Walden

                                                                                   

                                                                    

                       Orange Ave, cor, Main St., Walden

                                                                                                     

The growth of the American market for pocket knives attracted the attention of European manufactures who began to make serious inroads in the American market.  Thomas Bradley, Jr., a Congressman at the time and friend of President McKinley convinced him to include protections from imported knives in the 1897 Dingley Tariff Act.  The people of Walden erected a statue of McKinley in 1924 with money donated by Bradley. 

 By 1913, 19% of Walden's entire population worked in one of Walden's knife factories.

World War I saw a further increase in sales but after the war,  sales slumped as Winchester and Remington Arms entered the cutlery business in desperate attempts to augment their declining ammunition sales.  Walden Knife closed in 1926. The stock market crash in 1929 followed by the Depression, led to New York Knife's closure in 1931 

Shrade Cutlery managed to hang on until it moved to Ellenville in 1952. [2]

Marker of the Week  Fortnight (!)  --William Floyd ?

William Floyd, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris, John Hart, Abraham Clark, John Morton, George Clymer, William Paca, Thomas M'kean, Jason Smith, George Taylor, George Ross, Thomas Stone, Josiah Bartlett, Mathew Thornton, Thomas Nelson,Jr., George Wythe, William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn, Thomas Heyward, Thomas Lynch, Jr.,  Arthur Middleton, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.   These are exactly half of the people who signed one of America's most important documents.  Can you guess which one?  Let me give you some additional names to jog your  memory.

      John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson.

Oh! That Document!  As we celebrate another Independence Day and remember our Founding Fathers and the genius of our democracy, that was given its philosophical rationale in the Declaration of Independence, and its structure  in the U.S. Constitution, perhaps, we should pause to remember the common politicians;  the men who put aside  their generally successful personal and business lives to come together to represent the hopes and prejudices, grievances, shared fears and aspirations of their communities and their sections of their states, to provide  input and the momentum for the  documents that would become the frameworks of our Democracy.  (In the stories we tell ourselves about our military history we have done a pretty good job of upholding the stories of our common soldiers, perhaps we should do the same for our common politicians-qua-public servants!)

NYS Rte 64, Floyd, Oneida County

William Floyd had a prosperous farm he ran in Brookhaven, later established as Mastic on Long Island. He abandoned a formal classical education to take on a practical education when his father died at an early age and he had to manage the extensive farm. Socially and politically Floyd was tied more closely to his Yankee friends and relatives across Long Island Sound, in Connecticut  than to the more loyalist leaning inhabitants of New York City.  He served three times as a trustee of the Town before being elected to the Provincial Council and then in 1774 to the first Continental Congress.  With the rest of the New York delegation he refused to sign the first draft of the Declaration of Independence until he heard the sentiments of his constituents, signing the final document.  Soon afterwards,  Washington and army were forced from New York.  Floyd and his family sought refuge  with relatives in Middletown, Ct., his farm taken over by a regiment of British cavalry. During the war,  Floyd was given the rank of Major General of New York Militia but served in administrative posts seeing that local militias were properly provisioned, and coordinated with the Continental Army while also serving as a delegate in the Continental Congress.. Seven years later Floyd returned to his house and farm, finding both in ruins.  In 1794 he bought a large tract of land outside of Rome, New York and built a house closely resembling his house in Mastic.  A colleague once described Floyd as "one of the good men who never quit their chairs ", in other words, not a speech-maker, not a public orator but one through private conversations made their  positions known, representing their constituents and doing the hard work of democracy.   

 

[1]  The Scout knife was a part of the Boy Scout official uniform, not carried in a pocket but hung prominently via a snap hook from the belt of the uniform, earned after showing proficiency in its proper care and safe use. (Boys might carry toys, but a (young) man carried  tools. --a minor but meaningful symbolic step on the path to manhood.

[2] In this article I have not tried to document all the mergers and changes in ownership of these companies, only to mention a few of the developments and some interesting (I hope) facts about them.

--Beside the usual "Internet Suspects" rounded up I found these particularly informative: the summary and analysis sections of  Joseph Sepko. New York Knife Company , Cultural Resources Site Examination of New York State Museum Site 10935 .  2002

--Fred W. Pyne Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence,. " William Floyd"

  dsd1776.com/signer/swilliam-floyd/