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Pursuit of Johnson. Incursion of Ross and Butler. Action of Willett. Battle at Johnstown. Adventures of the Sammonses.

Governor Clinton was at Kingston, Ulster county, when intelligence of this invasion reached him. He repaired immediately to Albany, and sent such forces, composed of militia and volunteers, as he could raise, to overtake and intercept the invaders. One division, commanded by the governor in person, pushed forward to Lakes George and Champlain, and at Ticonderoga was joined by a body of militia from the New Hampshire Grants. At the same time Colonel Van Schaick, with eight hundred militia, pursued the enemy by way of Johnstown. But Sir John was far beyond the reach of pursuers, and too cautious to take a route so well known as that of the lakes. He kept upon the Indian paths through the wilderness west of the Adirondack Mountains, and escaped. This was the last visit made by Johnson to the Mohawk Valley during the war, but his friends invaded the settlement the following year, and near Johnson Hall a pretty severe battle took place.

On the 24th of October, 1781, Major Ross and Walter Butler, at the head of about one thousand troops, consisting of regulars, Indians, and Tories, approached the settlement so stealthily that they reached Warren Bush (not far from the place where Sir Peter Warren made his first settlement, and the place of residence of Sir William Johnson on his arriva. in America) without their approach being suspected. The settlement was broken into sɔ suddenly that the people had no chance for escape. Many were killed, and their houses plundered and destroyed. As soon as Colonel Willett, then stationed at Fort Rensselaer, was informed of this incursion, he marched with about four hundred men for Fort Hunter, on the Mohawk. Colonel Rowley, of Massachusetts, with a part of his force, consisting of Tryon county militia, was sent round to fall upon the enemy in the rear, while Willett should attack them in front. The belligerents met a short distance above Johnson Hall, and a battle immediately ensued. The militia under Willett soon gave way, and fled in great confusion to the stone church in the village; and the enemy would have had an easy victory,

self to save your person from injury. And how am I requited? Your Indians have murdered and scalped old Mr. Fonda, at the age of eighty years, a man who, I have heard your father say, was like a father to him when he settled in Johnstown and Kingsborough. You can not succeed, Sir John, in such a warfare, and you will never enjoy your property more!" The appeal had its effect. The baronet made no reply, but the old gentleman was set at liberty, and a span of his horses was restored to him. A Tory, named Doxstader (whom we shall soon meet again at Currytown), was seen upon one of the old man's horses, and refused to give him up. After the war he returned to the neighborhood, when Mr. Sammons had him arrested, and he was obliged to pay the full value of the animal.

The two elder sons of Mr. Sammons, Frederic and Jacob, were taken to Canada. At Chambly they concerted a plan for escape by the prisoners rising upon the garrison, but the majority of them were too weak-hearted to attempt it. The brothers, however, succeeded in making their escape a few days afterward, and the narrative of their separate adventures, before they reached their homes, forms a wonderful page in the volume of romance. It may be found in detail in the second volume of Stone's Life of Brant. Jacob, after a toilsome journey from St. John's to Pittstown, in Vermont, through the trackless wilderness, reached Schenectady in safety, a few weeks after his capture, where he found his wife and children. But Frederic was recaptured, and it was nearly two years before he returned. His adventures in making his escape from an island among the St. Lawrence rapids, above Montreal, and his subsequent travel through the wilderness from the St. Lawrence to the Mohawk, with a fellow-prisoner, partake of all the stirring character of the most exciting legendary fiction. Almost naked, and with matted hair, they entered the streets of Schenectady, a wonder and a terror to the inhabitants at first, but, when known, they were the objects of profound regard. A strange but well-attested fact is related in connection with the return of Frederic. After the destruction of his property upon the Mohawk, the elder Sammons and his family returned to Marbletown, in Ulster county, whence they had emigrated. On the morning after his arrival at Schenectady, Frederic dispatched a letter to his father, by the hand of an officer on his way to Philadelphia. He left it at the house of Mr. Levi De Witt, five miles distant from Mr. Sammons's. On the night when the letter was left there, Jacob dreamed that his brother Frederic was living, and that a letter, announcing the fact, was at Mr. De Witt's. The dream was twice repeated, and the next morning he related it to the family. They had long given Frederic up as lost, and laughed at Jacob for his belief in the teachings of dreams. Jacob firmly believed that such a letter was at De Witt's, and thither he repaired and inquired for it. He was told that no such letter was there, but urged a more thorough search, when it was found behind a barrel, where it had accidentally fallen. Jacob requested Mr. De Witt to open the letter and examine it, while he should recite its contents. It was done, and the dreamer repeated it word for word! Frederic lived to a good old age, enjoying the esteem and confidence of his fellow-citizens. He was chosen an elector of President and Vice-president in 1837.

Retreat of Ross and Butler.

Fight on West Canada Creek. Death of Walter Butler.

Last Battle near the Mohawk.

October 29.

Sam

had not Rowley emerged from the woods at that moment, and fallen upon their rear. It was then nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, and the fight was kept up with bravery on both sides until dark, when the enemy retreated, or rather fled, in great disorder, to the woods. During the engagement, and while Rowley was keeping the enemy at bay, Willett succeeded in rallying the militia, who returned to the fight. The Americans lost about forty killed and wounded. The enemy had about the same number killed, and fifty made prisoners. The enemy continued their retreat westward nearly all the night after the battle, and early in the morning Willett started in pursuit. He halted at Stone Arabia, and sent forward a detachment of troops to make forced marches to Oneida Lake, where, he was informed, the enemy had left their boats, for the purpose of destroying them. In the mean while he pressed onward with the main force to the German Flats, where he learned that the advanced party had returned without accomplishing their errand. From a scouting party he also learned that the enemy had taken a northerly course, along the West Canada Creek. With about four hundred of his choicest men, he started in pursuit, in the face of a driving snow-storm. He encamped that night in a thick wood upon the Royal Grant,' and sent out a scouting party, under Jacob Sammons, to search for the enemy. mons discovered their forces a few miles in advance of the Americans, and, after reconnoitering their camp, communicated the fact to Willett that they were well armed with bayonets. That officer deferred his meditated night attack upon them, and continued his pursuit early in the morning, but the enemy were as quick on foot as he. In the afternoon he came up with a lagging party of Indians, and a brisk but short skirmish ensued. Some of the Indians were killed, some taken prisoners, and others escaped. Willett kept upon the enemy's trail along the creek, and toward evening came up with the main body at a place called Jerseyfield, on the northeastern side of Canada Creek. A running fight ensued; the Indians became terrified, and retreated across the stream at a ford, where Walter Butler, who was their leader, attempted to rally them. A brisk fire was kept up across the creek by both parties for some time, and Butler, who was watching the fight from behind a tree, was shot in the head by an Oneida, who knew him and took deliberate aim. His troops thereupon fled in confusion. The Oneida bounded across the creek, and found his victim not dead, but writhing in great agony. The Tory cried out, "Save me! Save me! Give me quarters!" while the tomahawk of the warrior glittered over his head. "Me give you Sherry Falley quarters!" shouted the Indian, and buried his hatchet in the head of his eneHe took his scalp, and, with the rest of the Oneidas, continued the pursuit of the flying host. The body of Butler was left to the beasts and birds, without burial, for charity toward one so blood-stained had no dwelling-place in the bosoms of his foes. The place where he fell is still called Butler's Ford. The pursuit was kept up until evening, when Willett, completely successful by entirely routing and dispersing the enemy, wheeled his victorious little army, and returned to Fort Dayton in triumph.' This was the closing scene of the bloody drama performed in the Valley of the Mohawk during the Revolution, a tragedy terrible in every aspect; and we, who are dwelling in the midst of peace and abundance, and so far removed, in point of time, from the events, that hardly an actor is living to tell us of scenes that seem almost fabulous, can not properly estimate the degree of moral and physical courage, long suffering, patient endurance, and hopeful vigilance which the people of that day exhibited. It was a terrible ordeal for the patriots. Like the three holy men of Babylon, they passed through a " fiery furnace heated one seven times more than it was wont to

my.

The Royal Grant, it will be remembered, was the tract of land which Sir William Johnson shrewdly procured from Hendrick, the Mohawk sachem, by outwitting him in a game of dreaming.-See page 106. The sufferings of the retreating army must have been many and acute. The weather was cold, and in their hasty flight many of them had cast away their blankets, to make their progress more speedy. The loss of the Americans in this pursuit was only one man; that of the enemy is not known. It must have been very great. Colonel Willett, in his dispatch to Governor Clinton, observed, "The fields of Johnstown the brooks and rivers, the hills and mountains, the deep and gloomy marshes through which they had to pass. they only could tell; and perhaps the officers who detached them on the expedition."

Return to Fultonville.

The Sammons House.

Local Historians.

The departed Heroes.

The Kane House.

be," yet they came out unscathed-" neither were their coats changed nor the smell of fire had passed on them." We are yet to visit Currytown, Sharon Springs, and Cherry Valley, and note some incidents of the civil war, reserved for record here, and then we shall leave old Tryon county, with the pleasant anticipations of the "homeward-bound."

We returned to Fultonville, from our excursion to Johnstown, by the western road, and passed the premises formerly owned by Sampson Sammons, near the winding Cayadutta. The house, which was built upon the foundation of the one destroyed by the miscreants under Johnson, has a venerable appearance; but the trailing vines that cover its porch, and the air of comfort that surrounds it, hide all indications of the desolation of former times. We arrived at Fultonville in time to dine, and there I spent an hour pleasantly and profitably with Jeptha R. Simms, Esq., the author of a "History of Schoharie County and the Border Wars of New York," a work of much local and general interest, and a valuable companion to Campbell's "Annals of Tryon County." It is greatly to be lamented that men like Campbell and Simms, and Miner, of Wyoming, who gathered a large proportion of the facts concerning the Revolution from the lips of those who participated in its trials, have not been found in every section of our old thirteen states equally industrious and patriotic. It is now too late, for the men of the Revolution are mostly in the grave. I have found but few, very few, still alive and sufficiently vigorous to tell the tales of their experience with perspicuity; and a hundred times, in the course of my pilgrimage to the grounds where

Discord raised its trumpet notes

And carnage beat its horrid drum,

have my inquiries for living patriots of that war been answered with "Five years ago Captain A. was living;" or "three years ago Major B. died;" or "last autumn Mother C. was buried;" all of whom were full of the unwritten history of the Revolution. But they are gone, and much of the story of our struggle for independence is buried with them. They are gone, but not forgotten:

แ They need

No statue or inscription to reveal

Their greatness. It is round them; and the joy
With which their children tread the hallow'd ground

That holds their venerated bones, the peace

That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth

That clothes the land they rescued-these, though mute,

As feeling ever is when deepest-these

Are monuments more lasting than the fanes
Rear'd to the kings and demi-gods of old."

PERCIVAL.

I returned to Fort Plain, by rail-road, toward evening, and the next morning, accompa nied by the friend with whom we were sojourning, I started for Currytown.' We went by the way of Canajoharie, a pleasant little village on the canal, opposite Palatine, and thence over the rugged hills southward. A little below Canajoharie we sketched an old stone house which was erected before the Revolution, and was used soon afterward by the brothers Kane, then the most extensive traders west of Albany. An anecdote is related in connection with the Kanes, which illustrates the proverbial shrewdness of Yankees, and the confiding nature of the old stock of Mohawk Valley Dutchmen. A peddler (who was, of course, a Yankee) was arrested for the offense of traveling on the Sabbath, contrary to law, and taken before a Dutch justice near Caughna waga. The peddler pleaded the urgency of his business. At first the Dutchman was inexorable, but at length, on the payment to him of a small sum, agreed to furnish the Yankee with a writ ten permit to travel on. The justice, not being expert with the pen, requested the peddler He wrote a draft upon the Kanes for fifty dollars, which the unsus

[graphic]

to write the " 'pass."

THE KANE HOUSE.

1 The name is derived from William Curry, the patentee of the lands in that settlement.

Latch Magistrate and Yankee Peddler.

Currytown.

Jacob Dievendorff.

Indian Method of Scalping.

pecting Dutchman signed. The draft was presented and duly honored, and the Yankee went on his way rejoicing. A few days afterward the justice was called upon to pay the amount of the draft. The thing was a mystery, and it was a long time before he could comprehend it. All at once light broke in upon the matter, and the victim exclaimed, vehemently, in broken English, "Eh, yah! I understhands it now. Tish mine writin', and dat ish de tam Yankee pass!" He paid the money and resigned his office, feeling that it was safer to deal in corn and butter with honest neighbors, than in law with Yankee interlopers. We reached Currytown, a small village nearly four miles south of Canajoharie, at about noon. The principal object of my visit there was to see the venerable Jacob Dievendorff, who, with his family, was among the sufferers when that settlement was destroyed by Indians and Tories in July, 1781. Accompanied by his son-in-law (Dr. Snow, of Currytown), we found the old patriot busily engaged in his barn, threshing grain; and, al though nearly eighty years of age, he seemed almost

as vigorous and active as most men are
at sixty. His sight and hearing are some-
what defective, but his intellect, as exhibit-
ed by his clear remembrance of the circum-o
stances of his early life, had lost but little
of its strength. He is one
of the largest land-holders
in Montgomery county,
owning one thousand
fertile acres, lying in
a single tract where
the scenes of his suf-
ferings in early life
occurred. In an or-
chard, a short dis-
tance from his dwell-

ing, the house August, 1848. was still stand

ing which was stockaded and used as a fort. It is fast decaying, but the venerable owner allows time alone to work its destruction, and will not suffer a board to be taken from it. The occurrences here have already been recorded, by Campbell and Simms, as related to them long ago by Mr. Dievendorff and others, and from these details I gather the following facts, adding such matters of interest as were communicated to me by Mr. Dievendorff himself and his near neighbor, the venerable John Keller.

On the 9th of July, 1781, nearly five hundred Indians, and a few Loyalists, commanded by a Tory named Doxstader, attacked and destroyed the settlement of Currytown, murdered several of the inhabitants, and carried others away prisoners. The house of Henry Lewis (represented in the engraving) was

[graphic]
[graphic]

Joel Dieversdorff aged 79 picketed and used

a

The

1 I here present a portrait of Mr. Dievendorff, which he kindly allowed me to make while he sat upon a half bushel in his barn. Also, a sketch of the back of his head, showing its appearance where the scalp was taken off. The building is a view of the one referred to in the text as the Currytown fort, now standing in Mr. Dievendorff's orchard. The method used by the Indians in scalping is probably not generally known. I was told by Mr. Dievendorff and others familiar with the horrid practice that the scalping-knife was a weapon not unlike, in appearance, the bowie-knife of the present day. The victim was usually stunned or killed by a blow from the tomahawk. Sometimes only a portion of the scalp (as was the case with Mr. Dievendorff) was taken from the crown and back part of the head, but more frequently the whole scalp was removed. With the dexterity of a surgeon, the Indian placed the point of his knife at the roots of the hair on the forehead, and made a circular incision around the head. If the hair was short, he would raise a lappet of the skin, take hold with his teeth, and tear it instantly from the skull. If long, such as the hair of females, he would twist it around his hand, and, by a sudden jerk, bare the skull. The scalps were then tanned with the hair on, and often marked in such a manner that the owners could tell when and where they were severally obtained, and whether they belonged to men or women. When Major Rogers, in 1759, destroyed the chief village of the St. Francis Indians, he found there a vast quantity of scalps, many of them comically painted in hieroglyphics. They were all stretched on small hoops.

2 Mr. Dievendorff told me that on one occasion the fort was attacked by a party of Indians. There were

Attack on Currytown. The Captives. Expedition under Captain Gross. Battle at New Dorlach, now Sharon Springs. settlers, unsuspicious of danger, were generally at work in their fields when the enemy fell upon them. It was toward noon when they emerged stealthily from the forest, and with torch and tomahawk commenced the work of destruction. Among the sufferers were the Dievendorffs, Kellers, Myerses, Bellingers, Tanners, and Lewises. On the first alarm, those nearest the fort fled thitherward, and those more remote sought shelter in the woods. Jacob Dievendorff, the father of the subject of our sketch, escaped. His son Frederic was overtaken, tomahawked, and scalped, on his way to the fort,' and Frederic's brother Jacob, then a lad eleven years old, was made prisoner. A negro named Jacob, two lads named Bellinger, Mary Miller, a little girl ten or twelve years old, Jacob Myers and his son, and two others, were captured. The Indians then plundered and burned all the dwellings but the fort and one belonging to a Tory, in all about twelve, and either killed or drove away most of the cattle and horses in the neighborhood. When the work of destruction was finished, the enemy started off in the direction of New Dorlach, or Turlock (now Sharon) with their prisoners and booty.

Colonel Willett was at Fort Plain when Currytown was attacked. On the previous day he had sent out a scout of thirty or forty men, under Captain Gross, to patrol the country for the two-fold purpose of procuring forage and watching the movements of the enemy. They went in the direction of New Dorlach, and, when near the present Sharon Springs, discovered a portion of the camp of the enemy in a cedar swamp. Intelligence of this fact reached Willett at the moment when a dense smoke, indicating the firing of a village, was seen from Fort Plain, in the direction of Currytown. Captain Robert M Kean, with sixteen levies, was ordered to that place, with instructions to assemble as many of the militia on the way as possible. With his usual celerity, that officer arrived at the settlement in time to assist in extinguishing the flames of some of the buildings yet unconsumed. onel Willett, in the mean time, was active in collecting the militia. Presuming that the enemy would оссиру the same encampment that night, and being joined during the day by the forces under M'Kean and Gross, he determined to make an attack upon them at midnight, while they were asleep. His whole strength did not exceed one hundred and fifty effective men, while the enemy's force, as he afterward learned, consisted of more than double that number. The night was dark and lowering, and the dense forest that surrounded the swamp encampment of the enemy was penetrated only by a bridle path. His guide became bewildered, and it was six o'clock in the morning before he came in sight of the enemy, who, warned of his approach, had taken a more advantageous position. From this position it was desirable to draw them, and for that purpose Willett sent forward a detachment from the main body, which he had stationed in crescent form on a ridge now seen on the south side of the turnpike, opposite the swamp, who fired upon the Indians and then retreated. The stratagem succeeded, for the Indians pursued them, and were met by Willett, advancing with one hundred men. McKean was left with a reserve in the rear, and fell furiously upon the flank of the enemy. A desperate fight for a short time ensued, when the Indians broke and fled, but kept up a fire from behind trees and rocks. Willett and his men, understanding their desultory warfare, pursued them with bullet and bayonet, until they relinquished the fight, and fled precipitately down their war-path toward the Susquehanna, leaving their camp and all their plunder behind. They left forty dead upon the field. American loss was five killed, and nine wounded and missing. The brave M Kean was

The

several women, but only one man, in the fort. The savages approached stealthily along a ravine, a little north of the fort, and were about to make an assault upon the frail fortification, when they were saluted with a warm fire from it. There were several muskets in it, which the women loaded as fast as the man could fire; and so rapid were the discharges, that the Indians, supposing quite a large garrison to be present, fled to the woods. The remains of the building are still scarred by many bullet marks.

He was not killed, but lay several hours insensible, when he was picked up by his uncle, Mr. Keller, who carried him into the fort. He recovered, and lived several years, when he was killed by the falling of a tree.

A part of this swamp may still be seen on the north side of the western turnpike, about two miles east of the springs.

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