THE COMING OF THE WHITE MEN
Within six years after Hendrik Hudson sailed up the river which bears
his name, and some five years before the Pilgrim fathers landed at
Plymouth, the first white men looked upon Otsego Lake, and saw the
wooded shore upon which Cooperstown now stands. It was in 1614, or in
the year following, that two Dutchmen set out from Fort Orange (Albany)
to explore the fur country, and crossing from the Mohawk to Otsego Lake,
proceeded down the Susquehanna.[16] From this time, first under the
Dutch, then under English rule, traders came frequently to the foot of
Otsego Lake. Soon after the traders, Christian missionaries ventured
into the wilderness, ministering at first chiefly to the Indians. Later
came the first settlers.
That the influence of traders was not always helpful to Christian
missionaries is illustrated by an incident in the missionary journey of
the Rev. Gideon Hawley, a Presbyterian divine, who, with some zealous
companions, came from New England to preach to the Indians of the
Susquehanna in 1753. They reached the river at a point where was a
small Indian settlement near the present village of Colliers, seventeen
miles below Cooperstown. Here they were joined by a trader named George
Winedecker, who had come down from Otsego Lake with a boat-load of
goods, including rum, to supply the Indian villages down the river.
During the night the red men, full of Winedecker's rum, became embroiled
in a murderous orgy. The missionaries were awakened by the howling of
the Indians over their dead, and in the morning saw Indian women
skulking in the bushes, hiding guns and hatchets, for fear of the
intoxicated Indians who were drinking deeper. "Here, in one party, were
missionaries with the Bible and a trader with the rum--the two gifts of
the white man to the Indian."[17]
Susquehanna lands were first conveyed to white men by the Indians in
1684 as a part of a treaty of alliance with the English, although the
Indians retained the right to live and hunt on the river. The granting
of land titles by the Provincial government began not long
afterward.[18] The first recorded patent on Otsego Lake was obtained in
1740 by John J. Petrie at the northern end. John Groesbeck, an officer
of the court of chancery, acquired in 1741 a patent lying northeast of
the lake, including what afterward became the Clarke property and the
site of Hyde Hall. Nearly the whole east side of the lake, with the
present Lakelands tract just east of the Susquehanna at its source, was
covered by the patent which Godfrey Miller obtained in 1761, and upon
which, according to the journal of Richard Smith, twelve persons were
resident eight years later.[19]
Early in the eighteenth century it is probable that traders were from
time to time resident at the foot of Otsego, but the first attempt
toward a permanent settlement on the present site of Cooperstown was
made by John Christopher Hartwick in 1761. In that year Hartwick
obtained from the Provincial government a patent to the lands which,
southwest of Cooperstown, still perpetuate his name, and began a
settlement at the foot of Otsego Lake under the misapprehension that the
site was included in his patent. It was not long before Hartwick
discovered his error, and withdrew to the proper limits of his tract,
but this attempt to found a village upon the spot which William Cooper
afterward selected connects with the history of Cooperstown a unique
character and memorable name.
Hartwick, who was born in Germany in 1714, came to America at about
thirty years of age as a missionary preacher, and in his time was as
famous for his eccentricities, as he afterward became for his pious
benefactions. He held some settled charges, but, except for twelve years
at Rhinebeck, he seems for the most part to have been a wandering
preacher, and the records of his pastorates extend from Philadelphia to
Boston, and from Virginia and Maryland to the distant coast of Maine.
If Hartwick would not be long tied down to a settled pastorate, he was
even more fearful of matrimonial bondage, and shunned women as a plague.
It was not an uncommon thing for him, if he saw that he was about to
meet a woman in the road, to cross over, or even to leap a fence, in
order to avoid her. On one occasion when he was disturbed in preaching
by the presence of a dog, he exclaimed with much earnestness that dogs
and children had better be kept at home, and it would not be much
matter, he added, if the women were kept there too![20] Seeking shelter
one night at a log hut not far from the present Hartwick village, he was
cheerfully received by the occupants, a man and his wife, who gave up to
their guest the one bed in the only bedroom, and stretched themselves
for the night upon the floor before the kitchen fire. The night grew
bitter cold, and the wife, awaking, bethought her of the guest, whether
he might not be too lightly covered. She went silently to his room, and
spread upon his bed a part of her simple wardrobe. Hartwick promptly
arose, dressed himself, made his way out of the house to the stable,
saddled his horse, and rode away in the darkness.
His contemporaries agree in representing Hartwick as slovenly in his
habits, often preaching in his blanket coat, and not always with the
cleanest linen; eccentric in his manners, curt, and at times irritable
in his intercourse with others--an exceedingly undesirable addition to
the social and domestic circle, so that his hosts were accustomed to
tell him plainly, at the beginning of a visit, "You may stay here so
many days, and then you must go."[21] In some quarters his visits were
dreaded because of his excessively long prayers at family worship.[22]
One may dwell without malice upon the eccentricities of this singular
man, for they are qualities that set him forth from his more staid
contemporaries, without detracting from the virtues which gave
permanence to his work. Hartwick was a lover of God and men. Although
rough and unpolished, he was a man of learning, being well versed in
theology, and as familiar with the Latin language as with his own.
The great purpose of Hartwick's career was the founding of a community
for the promotion of religion and education, the building in the
wilderness of a Christian city whose halls of learning should influence
the coming ages. The roving life that brought Hartwick into contact with
the Indians awakened his desire to Christianize and educate them, and
the influence which he gained among them opened the way, through the
acquirement of land, for the carrying out of his favorite project. The
patent that he obtained from the Provincial government in 1761 covered a
tract of land, substantially the present town of Hartwick, which he had
purchased from the Indians for one hundred pounds in 1754. In settling
the land Hartwick required each tenant to agree to a condition in the
lease by which the tenant became Hartwick's parishioner, and
acknowledged the authority of Hartwick, or his substitute, as "pastor,
teacher, and spiritual counsellor." Owing to his desultory business
methods and the weight of advancing years, Hartwick after a time found
himself unequal to the management of this estate, and in 1791 William
Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, became his agent, with authority to
dispose of the property to tenants. By this arrangement Hartwick was cut
off from his original design of being the spiritual director of his
tenants, and came to the end of his life without building the city of
which he dreamed.
Hartwick's last will and testament, however, shows that he never
abandoned his design, but determined that it should be carried out after
his death. The will is one of the most curious documents ever penned, a
mixture of autobiography, piety, and contempt of legal form. A lawyer to
whom he submitted it pronounced it "legally defective in every page, and
almost in every sentence." But Hartwick's only amendment of it was to
add a perplexing codicil to seven other codicils which already had been
appended.[23] The will provides for the laying out of a regular town,
closely built, to be called the New Jerusalem, with buildings and hall
for a seminary.
Hartwick died in 1796, in his eighty-third year. The task of
administering the estate according to the will was found to be almost
hopeless. The executors, aided by a special act of legislature, set
about to carry out its evident spirit. Preliminary to the establishment
of a seminary, the executors sent the Rev. John Frederick Ernst, a
Lutheran minister, to Hartwick patent, to preach to the inhabitants, and
to assist in the education of their youth. In connection with this work
Mr. Ernst came to Cooperstown in 1799, held religious services in the
old Academy, on the present site of the Universalist church, and had
some youngsters of the village under his instruction. His descendants
lived in Cooperstown for more than a century after him.
The main building of Hartwick Seminary was erected in 1812, at the
present site, near the bank of the Susquehanna River, about five miles
southward of Cooperstown, and some four miles eastward from Hartwick
village. The school was opened in 1815, and received from the
legislature a charter in 1816. It is the oldest theological school in
the State of New York, and the oldest Lutheran theological seminary in
America. In addition to being a theological school, Hartwick Seminary is
now devoted to general education, and includes among its pupils not only
boys, but, in spite of the prejudice of its founder, young women.
Among the original trustees named in the charter of Hartwick Seminary
was the Rev. Daniel Nash, the first rector of Christ Church,
Cooperstown. Judge Samuel Nelson, and Col. John H. Prentiss, of
Cooperstown, were afterward trustees for many years, and in their time
there was among the people of this village a lively interest in Hartwick
Seminary, the literary exercises at the end of each scholastic year
being largely attended by visitors from Cooperstown. It is significant
of the close relation which formerly existed between the two villages
that the street which runs westward from the Presbyterian church in
Cooperstown, now called Elm Street, was at one time known to the
inhabitants as "the Hartwick Road."
Local history has wronged[24] the memory of John Christopher Hartwick by
the oft repeated statement that he committed suicide. It is true that a
man named Christianus Hartwick took his own life in 1800, and that his
grave lies in Hinman Hollow, only a few miles from Hartwick Seminary.
But John Christopher Hartwick, after whom the town and seminary are
named, died a natural death at Clermont, N. Y., four years before the
suicide.
A wanderer in life, Hartwick after his death was long in quest of a
peaceful grave. His remains were first buried in the graveyard of the
Lutheran church in East Camp. Two years later, in accordance with the
wish expressed in Hartwick's will, the body was removed and entombed
beneath the pulpit of Ebenezer church, at the corner of Pine and Lodge
streets, in Albany, deposited in a stone coffin, secured by brickwork,
and covered with an inscribed slab of marble. In 1869, when the church
was rebuilt, the body was removed to the public cemetery in Albany. When
this cemetery was converted into Washington Park, Hartwick's body was
transferred to the lot of the First Lutheran church in the Albany Rural
Cemetery on the Troy road, where his dust is now contained in an unknown
and forgotten grave. The board of trustees of Hartwick Seminary
afterward ordered that Hartwick's remains should be disinterred and
brought for burial to the town to which he gave his name, but the
remains could not be found.
The marble slab that once covered the body of Hartwick in Ebenezer
church lay for many years beneath the basement floor of the First
Lutheran church, which succeeded the older building. In 1913 this relic
of Hartwick's sepulchre was sent to the seminary which he founded, where
it occupies once more a place of honor. Besides Hartwick's name, and the
record of his birth and death, the marble bears, inscribed in German,
this sentiment:
Man's life, in its appointed limit,
Is seventy, is eighty years;
But care and grief and anguish dim it,
However joyous it appears.
The winged moments swiftly flee,
And bear us to eternity.
The village of Hartwick is distantly connected with another religious
movement which the founder of Hartwick Seminary would have viewed with
the utmost abhorrence. In 1820, and for several years thereafter, first
in the house of John Davison, and afterward in Jerome Clark's attic, lay
an old trunk containing the closely handwritten pages of a romance
entitled _The Manuscript Found_, by the Rev. Solomon Spaulding. This was
written in 1812, in Conneaut, Ashtabula county, Ohio, where the
exploration of earth mounds containing skeletons and other relics fired
Spaulding's imagination, and suggested the character of his tale. It was
written in Biblical style, and for the purpose of the romance was
presented as a translation from hieroglyphical writing upon metal plates
exhumed from a mound, to which the author had been guided by a vision.
It purported to be a history of the peopling of America by the lost
tribes of Israel. Spaulding frequently read the manuscript to circles of
admiring friends, and afterward carried it to Pittsburgh, leaving it, in
the hope of having it published, in the care of a printer named
Patterson. The manuscript was finally rejected. Spaulding died, and in
1820 his widow married John Davison of Hartwick, to which place the old
trunk containing her first husband's manuscript was sent.
In 1823 Joseph Smith gave out that he had been directed in a vision to a
hill near Palmyra, New York, where he discovered some gold plates
curiously inscribed, and containing a new revelation. This supposed
revelation he published in 1830 as the "Book of Mormon."
Mormonism flourished and moved westward. In the course of time a Mormon
meeting was held in Conneaut, Ohio, and out of curiosity was largely
attended by the townspeople. Some readings were given from the Book of
Mormon, and certain of the hearers were astonished at the similarity
between Joseph Smith's book and _The Manuscript Found_, which Solomon
Spaulding had read aloud to friends in the same town many years before.
They recognized the same peculiar names, unheard of elsewhere, such as
Mormon, Maroni, Lamenite, and Nephi. It was learned, it is said, that
Smith had closely followed Spaulding's story, adding only his own
peculiar tenets about marriage, and inventing the theory of the great
spectacles by means of which he professed to have deciphered the
mysterious characters.
Spaulding's friends raised a question which has never been cleared up
and was at last forgotten. It was pointed out that Sidney Rigdon, who
figured as a preacher and as an adviser of Smith among the first of the
"Latter Day Saints," happened to have been an employé in Patterson's
printing office in Pittsburgh during the very period when Spaulding's
manuscript was there awaiting approval or rejection. But the matter was
never brought to a definite issue, and nothing more came of it except a
rather curious episode. Mrs. Davison removed from Hartwick about 1828,
leaving the trunk in charge of Jerome Clark. In 1834 a man named
Hurlburt sought Mrs. Davison, and said that he had been sent by a
committee to procure _The Manuscript Found_, written by Solomon
Spaulding, so as to compare it with the Mormon Bible. He presented a
letter from her brother, William H. Sabine, of Onondaga Valley, upon
whose farm Joseph Smith had been an employé, requesting her to lend the
manuscript to Hurlburt, in order "to uproot this Mormon fraud." Hurlburt
represented that he himself had been a convert to Mormonism, but had
given it up, and wished to expose its wickedness. On Hurlburt's repeated
promise to return the work, Mrs. Davison gave him a note addressed to
Jerome Clark of Hartwick, requesting him to open the old trunk and
deliver the manuscript. This was done. Hurlburt took the manuscript, and
not only did he never return it, but he never replied to any of the many
letters requesting its return. The Spaulding manuscript has utterly
disappeared.[25]
The year 1768 brings another unique personage into the field of our
local history. In that year the English met the Indians at Fort Stanwix
(Rome, Oneida county) in a conference which resulted in establishing a
formally acknowledged boundary between the territory of the red men and
the land which the colonists had begun to make their own. The lands of
the upper Susquehanna thus became, prior to the Revolution, the extreme
western frontier of old New York, and Otsego Lake was included within
English territory by a margin, at the west, of about twenty miles. Sir
William Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, conducted the
negotiations, and the securing of the Fort Stanwix deed was one of the
most astute accomplishments of his long career.
An interested party to these proceedings was Sir William's deputy agent
for Indian affairs, Colonel George Croghan, who had accompanied him to
the conference. Nearly twenty years before, Croghan had obtained from
the Indians a tract of land near Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh), in
Pennsylvania. During this Fort Stanwix conference which established the
new frontier Croghan succeeded in getting confirmation of the former
grant, with the privilege of making an exchange for a tract of equal
extent in the region now ceded to the English. Under this agreement
Croghan and certain associates afterward took up 100,000 acres of land
in what are now Otsego, Burlington, and New Lisbon townships, Otsego
county.[26] And so it came about that in the next year, 1769, Colonel
George Croghan came to the foot of Otsego Lake, built him a hut, and was
the first settler on the present site of Cooperstown.
The story of the fortune and failure of Croghan, who was a remarkable
and picturesque character, reads like a romance. He so far surpassed all
men of his time in genius for commerce with the Indians, and in skillful
marketing of Indian products, that Hanna calls him "The King of the
Traders." Lavish in his expenditures, big in his ventures, he made and
lost fortunes with equal facility. He alternated between the height of
opulence and the verge of bankruptcy. Like Sir William Johnson, Croghan
had a special aptitude for making friendships with the Indians, so that,
according to his own statement, "he was in such favor and confidence
with the councils of the Six Nations that he was, in the year 1746,
admitted by them as a Councillor into the Onondaga Councill, which is
the Supreme Councill of the Six Nations. He understands the Language of
the Six Nations and of several other of the Indian nations."[27]
Long before the sojourn in Otsego, Croghan had become, during his fits
of prosperity, a power in the Pennsylvania region, and probably deserved
the pungently qualified praise of Hassler, who, in his _Old
Westmoreland_, declares that "the man of most influence in this
community [Fort Pitt, or Pittsburgh] was the fat old Trader and
Indian-Agent, Colonel George Croghan, who lived on a pretentious
plantation about four miles up the Allegheny River--an Irishman by birth
and an Episcopalian by religion, when he permitted religion to trouble
him."
Two documents relating to Croghan illustrate his extremes of fortune;
the one a petition to protect him against imprisonment for debt, the
other a complaint against him as a monopolist of the fur trade. It seems
that in 1755 Croghan had been compelled by impending bankruptcy and fear
of the debtor's prison to remove from settled parts of Pennsylvania, and
to take refuge in the Indian country. Here he was in great danger from
the French and their Indians, but wrote to the Governor of Pennsylvania
that he was more afraid of imprisonment for debt than of losing his
scalp. At a meeting of the Pennsylvania Assembly in November, 1755,
fifteen creditors of Croghan presented a petition that Croghan and his
partner, William Trent, be rendered free from debt for a space of ten
years. The petition recited that there should be taken into
consideration "the great knowledge of said George Croghan in Indian
affairs, his extensive influence among them, and the service and public
utility he may be of to this Province in these respects."[28] In
accordance with this petition a bill was passed by which Croghan was
freed from the danger of arrest for debt, and, although the act was
vetoed by King George II three years later, Croghan evidently made
profitable use of his liberty.
On July 9, 1759, less than four years after Croghan so narrowly escaped
the debtor's prison, a complaint from Philadelphia was addressed to the
Governor of Pennsylvania protesting against Croghan's policy of crushing
competitors in the trade with Indians by a control of prices in skins
and peltry.[29] The complaint was signed by the eight Provincial
Commissioners for the Indian Trade newly appointed by the Assembly,
including Edward Pennington, the celebrated Quaker merchant of
Philadelphia; Thomas Willing, afterward a member of the Continental
Congress, and the first president of the Bank of North America, the
earliest chartered in the country; and William Fisher, who was mayor of
Philadelphia just before the Revolution. Such formidable opposition
shows that Croghan, from being an object of pity to his creditors, had
risen to affluence as the head of a "trust."
Owing to his business methods, some of the Quakers were not well
disposed toward Croghan. At a conference with the Delawares and Six
Nations held at Easton, in 1758, one of the Quakers present wrote home
an account of the proceedings in a tone not favorable to Croghan. "He
treats them [the Indians] with liquor," wrote the Quaker, "and gives out
that he himself is an Indian.... At the close of the conference one
Nichos, a Mohawk, made a speech.... This Nichos is G. Croghan's
father-in-law."
If Croghan is to be believed, however, he was opposed to giving liquor
to the Indians. While arranging for this very conference he had written
to Secretary Richard Peters of Pennsylvania, "You'll excuse boath
writing and peper, and guess at my maining, fer I have at this minnitt
20 drunken Indians about me. I shall be ruined if ye taps are not
stopt."
Although Croghan had come to America in 1741, this letter, with its
"guess at my maining," and another in which he has "lase" for "lease,"
suggest that, if his pronunciation may be judged from his spelling, he
retained a rich Irish brogue. Certainly his Irish wit and good nature
served him well in his dealing with the Indians. He was frequently
useful in outwitting the French Indian-agents, and in maintaining the
friendship of the red men for the English as against the French. General
Bouquet, who seems to have detested Croghan, wrote to General Gage, at a
time when new powers had been conferred upon Indian-agents, "It is to be
regretted that powers of such importance should be trusted to a man
illiterate, impudent, and ill-bred." Nevertheless, within a few months,
Bouquet wrote to Gage recommending Croghan as the person most competent
to negotiate with the Western Indians for British control of the French
posts in the Illinois country--a mission upon which Croghan was wounded,
captured, and pillaged by the Indians. In 1768 the General Assembly in
Philadelphia put upon record, in a message to the Governor, a high
opinion of Croghan, referring to "the eminent services he has rendered
to the Nation and its Colonies in conciliating the affections of the
Indians to the British interest."
At the end of a stormy voyage from America, being shipwrecked on the
Norman coast, Croghan reached England in February, 1764, bearing an
important letter on Indian affairs from Sir William Johnson to the Lords
of Trade. One might expect to find Croghan gratified by the comforts of
London life as compared with the rough hardships of America. A scout
under Washington's command, a captain of Indians under Braddock, a
border ranger upon the western frontier, a trader upon the banks of the
Ohio, a pioneer in many a wilderness, Croghan had seen all kinds of
hard service in the twenty-three years since he left Ireland. But in the
midst of metropolitan splendors he grew homesick for the wild life of
the New World. Writing in March, and again in April, to American
friends, he expressed his disgust with the city's pride and pomp,
declared that he was sick of London and its vanities, and set forth as
his chief ambition a desire to live on a little farm in America. In the
autumn of the same year Croghan shipped for the long journey across the
Atlantic. It is five years later that he appears at the foot of Otsego
Lake, apparently in fulfillment of his desire to make a home and to be
the founder of a settlement.
In 1769 Richard Smith came to the Susquehanna region from Burlington,
New Jersey. The immediate purpose of his tour was to make a survey of
the Otsego patent in which he, as one of the proprietors, was
interested. Smith traveled up the Hudson River to Albany, thence along
the Mohawk to Canajoharie, from which point his carefully kept
journal[30] abounds in interesting allusions to Otsego:
"13th. May. ... Pursuing a S. W. Course for Cherry Valley
[from Canajoharie]. We met, on their Return, Four Waggons,
which had carried some of Col. Croghan's Goods to his Seat at
the Foot of Lake Otsego.... Capt. Prevost ... is now improving
his Estate at the Head of the Lake; the Capt. married
Croghan's Daughter....
"14th. ... Distance from Cherry Valley to Capt. Prevost's is 9
miles.
"15th. ... We arrived at Capt. Prevost's in 4 Hours, the Road
not well cleared, but full of Stumps and rugged, thro' deep
blac Mould all the Way.... Mr. Prevost has built a Log House,
lined with rough Boards, of one story, on a Cove, which forms
the Head of Lake Otsego. He has cleared 16 or 18 acres round
his House and erected a Saw Mill. He began to settle only in
May last.... The Capt. treated us elegantly. He has several
Families seated near him....
"16th. We proceeded in Col. Croghan's Batteau, large and sharp
at each end, down the Lake,... The Water of greenish cast,
denoting probable Limestone bottom; the Lake is skirted on
either side with Hills covered by White Pines and the Spruce
called Hemloc chiefly. We saw a Number of Ducks, some Loons,
Sea-gulls, and Whitish coloured Swallows, the Water very clear
so that we descried the gravelly Bottom in one Part 10 or 12
Feet down. The rest of the Lake seemed to be very deep; very
little low Land is to be seen round the Lake. Mr. Croghan,
Deputy to Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent for Indian
Affairs, is now here, and has Carpenters and other Men at Work
preparing to build Two Dwelling Houses and 5 or 6 Out Houses.
His Situation [on the site of the Cooper Grounds, within the
present village of Cooperstown] commands a view of the whole
Lake, and is in that Respect superior to Prevost's. The site
is a gravelly, stiff clay, covered with towering white Pines,
just where the River Susquehannah, no more than 10 or 12 yards
broad, runs downward out of the Lake with a strong
Current.[31] Here we found a Body of Indians, mostly from
Ahquhaga,[32] come to pay their Devoirs to the Col.; some of
them speak a little English.... We lodged at Col. Croghan's.
"23rd. ... At Col. Croghan's ... being rainy, we staid here
all day.
"24th. It rained again. The Elevated Hills of this country
seem to intercept the flying vapors and draw down more
moisture than more humble places.... With 3 carpenters felled
a white Pine Tree and began a Canoe.... Some Trout were caught
this Morng. 22 Inches long; they are spotted like ours with
Yellow Bellies, yellow flesh when boiled & wide mouths. There
are Two species, the Common & the Salmon Trout. Some Chubs
were likewise taken, above a Foot in length. The other Fish
common in the Lake & other Waters, according to Information,
are Pickerel, large and shaped like a Pike, Red Perch, Catfish
reported to be upwards of Two feet long, Eels, Suckers, Pike,
a few shad and some other Sorts not as yet perfectly known.
The Bait now used is Pidgeon's Flesh or Guts, for Worms are
scarce. The Land Frogs or Toads are very large, spotted with
green and yellow, Bears and Deer are Common.... Muscetoes &
Gnats are now troublesome. We observed a natural Strawberry
Patch before Croghan's Door which is at present in bloom, we
found the Ground Squirrels and small red squirrels very
numerous and I approached near to one Rabbit whose Face
appeared of a blac Colour.
"25th. We finished and launched our Canoe into the Lake. She
is 32 feet 7 inches in Length and 2 Feet 4 inches broad....
"27th. ... We engaged Joseph Brant, the Mohawk, to go down
with us to Aquahga. Last night a drunken Indian came and
kissed Col. Croghan and me very joyously. Here are Natives of
different Nations almost continually. They visit the Deputy
Superintendent as Dogs to the Bone, for what they can get....
"We found many petrified Shells in these Parts, & sometimes on
the Tops of High Hills.... Col. Croghan showed us a piece of
Copper Ore, as supposed. The Indian who gave it to him said he
found it on our Tract.... Col. C says that some of his Cows
were out in the Woods all last Winter without Hay, and they
now look well....
"The Col. had a Cargo of Goods arrived to-day, such as Hogs,
Poultry, Crockery ware, and Glass. The settled Indian Wages
here are 4s a Day, York Currency, being Half a Dollar.
"28th. Sunday. I had an Opportunity of inspecting the Bark
Canoes often used by the Natives; these Boats are constructed
of a single sheet of Bark, stripped from the Elm, Hiccory, or
Chesnut, 12 or 14 Feet long, and 3 or 4 Feet broad, and sharp
at each End, and these sewed with thongs of the same Bark. In
Lieu of a Gunnel, they have a small Pole fastned with Thongs,
sticks across & Ribs of Bark, and they deposit Sheets of Bark
in her Bottom to prevent Breaches there. These vessels are
very light, each broken and often patched with Pieces of Bark
as well as corked with Oakum composed of pounded Bark.
"The Col. talks of building a Saw Mill and Grist Mill here on
the Susquehannah, near his House, and has had a Millwright to
view the Spot.
"29th. Myself, with Joseph Brant, his wife and Child, and
another Young Mohawk named James, went down in the new Canoe
to our upper Corner.... This River ... is full of Logs and
Trees, and short, crooked Turns, and the Navigation for Canoes
and Batteaux requires dexterity."
The household which Smith visited at the foot of Otsego Lake was an
interesting one, and had some remarkable connections. There was not only
"the fat old trader, and Indian-agent, Colonel George Croghan," but
also his Indian wife, daughter of the Mohawk chief Nichos, or Nickas, of
Canajoharie. Catherine,[33] the Colonel's little daughter, then ten
years old, helped her Indian mother with the household tasks, or danced
in her play about the cabin door, little dreaming that she was afterward
to become the third wife of Joseph Brant, the famous chieftain who had
just guided Richard Smith down the Susquehanna.
Croghan's elder daughter, Susannah, who had married Captain Augustine
Prevost, was the child of Croghan's first wife, a white woman. Capt. and
Mrs. Prevost lived at the head of Otsego Lake, in a house where
Swanswick now stands. Before the coming of Prevost, a settlement had
been made here as early as 1762,[34] the earliest permanent settlement
on Otsego Lake. Captain Augustine Prevost, or Major Prevost, as he
afterward became, was born at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1744, and died at
the age of 77 years, at Greenville, N. Y., where the Prevost mansion
still stands. He was twice married, and had twenty-two children. Prevost
was beloved as a bosom friend and companion by Joseph Brant, and their
intimacy was interrupted, much to the Mohawk's sorrow, only when Prevost
was ordered to join his regiment in Jamaica in 1772. This friendship
with Croghan's son-in-law seems to have brought the famous Mohawk
chieftain as a frequent visitor to Otsego Lake, and may account for his
attachment and subsequent marriage to Croghan's younger daughter. Thus
is completed the circle of intimates that gathered at Croghan's hut, on
the present site of Cooperstown, in 1769--the Irish trader; his Indian
squaw; the British officer and his wife; the young half-Indian girl; and
the Mohawk warrior whose name was to become a terror to settlers
throughout the Susquehanna Valley--the same who afterward was received
at court in London, who dined with Fox, Burke, and Sheridan, was
lionized by Boswell, and had his portrait painted by Romney.[35]
Croghan's attempted settlement was not a success. He began to show signs
of failing health and waning fortune. On July 18, 1769, he wrote from
Lake Otsego to Thomas Wharton of Philadelphia, "Eight days ago I was
favored with yours. I should have answered it before now, but was then
lying in a violent fit of the gout, for ye first time, wh. has confin'd
me to bed for 18 days, & now am only able to sit up on ye bedside."
During the next winter Croghan was in New York and Philadelphia, but in
March and April, 1770, he was again at Otsego, whence he wrote to Sir
William Johnson concerning financial difficulties. In May he wrote of a
proposed journey southward for his health and business interests.
But Croghan was never in business for his health. In October he was once
more on his old plantation near Fort Pitt, where Washington, on an
exploring expedition, visited him and dined with him. It seems that he
was trying to persuade Washington to buy land of him in the West, and,
according to Washington's surveyor, Captain William Crawford, was using
Washington's prospective purchases as an inducement to others, at the
same time not being very sure of his title, "selling any land that any
person will buy of him, inside or outside of his line."
Croghan never returned to Otsego. He mortgaged his tract of land to
William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin, and lost it under
foreclosure in 1773. The title later passed to William Cooper and Andrew
Craig, both of Burlington, New Jersey, which was also the home of
Richard Smith, who had visited Croghan at Otsego.
Appended to one of Croghan's deeds is a map purporting to show the
improvements which he had made at the foot of the lake, but, says
Fenimore Cooper, "it is supposed that this map was made for effect."
When William Cooper first visited the spot, in 1785, the only building
was one of hewn logs, about fifteen feet square, probably Croghan's hut,
deserted and dismantled, standing in the space now included in the
Cooper Grounds, near the site of the present Clark Estate office. Except
for the visit of Clinton's troops in 1779, the place had been abandoned
for fifteen years. The only signs of "improvements" were seen in a few
places cleared of underbrush, with felled and girdled trees, and in the
remains of some log fences already falling into ruin. Silence and
desolation had fallen upon "the little farm in America" upon which
Croghan had dreamed of passing his declining years.
In an inventory of the estate of Alexander Ross of Pittsburgh, 1784,
appears in the record of effects a promissory note made by George
Croghan, with this appended remark: "Dead, and no Property."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 16: _The Old New York Frontier_, 32.]
[Footnote 17: _The Old New York Frontier_, 61.]
[Footnote 18: _Four Great Rivers_, Halsey, lvii.]
[Footnote 19: _Four Great Rivers_, 35.]
[Footnote 20: Henry M. Pohlman, D.D., _Hartwick Seminary Memorial
Volume_, 1867, p. 21.]
[Footnote 21: Pohlman, 23.]
[Footnote 22: James Pitcher, D.D., _Centennial Address_, 1897, p. 7.]
[Footnote 23: _Hartwick Sem. Mem._, 27.]
[Footnote 24: _History of Cooperstown_, Livermore, 11.]
[Footnote 25: "The Book of Mormon," _Scribner's Magazine_, August,
1880.]
[Footnote 26: _The Wilderness Trail_, Chas. A. Hanna, II, 59, 60.]
[Footnote 27: _The Wilderness Trail_, II, 30.]
[Footnote 28: _The Wilderness Trail_, II, 8.]
[Footnote 29: do., II, 20.]
[Footnote 30: Published in _Four Great Rivers_.]
[Footnote 31: This current is now sluggish, owing to the dam of the
water works lower down the river.]
[Footnote 32: The largest Indian village in the Susquehanna Valley,
about 50 miles in an air line from Otsego, twice as far by water,
situated on the river at a point where the present village of Windsor
stands, some 14 miles easterly from Binghamton.]
[Footnote 33: _The Wilderness Trail_, II, 84.]
[Footnote 34: _The Old New York Frontier_, 125.]
[Footnote 35: _The Old New York Frontier_, 320.]