August 6th marks the anniversary of the 1777 Battle of Oriskany. Fought as an American relief column marched to aid the besieged Fort Stanwix, about 800 Tryon County militiamen and 60 allied Oneida warriors under Brigadier General Nicholas Herkimer were ambushed by British, Loyalist, and Indigenous forces (including Mohawk and Seneca warriors). [Read more…] about August 6th Marks 1777 Battle of Oriskany Anniversary
German Flatts
The 1780s Settling of Clinton in Oneida County
The Revolutionary War led settlers beyond the confines of the Palatine settlements in the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys into what is today the Herkimer village area.
As early as 1776, seven pairs of brothers, from as many different families in Plymonth, in western Connecticut, enlisted under the command of Captain David Smith and were marched west into the Mohawk Valley. [Read more…] about The 1780s Settling of Clinton in Oneida County
New York State’s Canal Heritage: An Engineering Family Tree
The canal system of New York State is a complex network of natural and man-made waterways that connect two of the Great Lakes that border the state with the Atlantic Ocean. The canals also incorporate Lake Champlain and the Finger Lakes. The development of this system bridges several generations and gives the canal system a genealogy of its own. [Read more…] about New York State’s Canal Heritage: An Engineering Family Tree
The Old Mohawk Turnpike: New York’s Road West
The old Mohawk Turnpike between what are now Albany and Rome, NY, was originally an Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) trail used frequently by Mohawk and Oneida people in particular, but many others as well.
For the first two hundred years of European settlement it was the only major link between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes. It became an important national transportation connection. [Read more…] about The Old Mohawk Turnpike: New York’s Road West
3rd Volume of History of Herkimer County’s Village of Ilion Published
The area in and around the village of Ilion at the northern edge of the town of German Flatts in Herkimer County, NY, has welcomed settlers for three hundred years. Over these centuries of time, the few cabins built on the flat lands adjacent to Steele’s Creek and just south of the Mohawk River grew into a town whose population topped 10,000 in the 1960 census. [Read more…] about 3rd Volume of History of Herkimer County’s Village of Ilion Published
Mohawk Valley Preparations for the American Revolution
Samuel Adams, using the pseudonym “Valerius Poplicola,” wrote to the Boston Gazette on October 5, 1772: “Let Associations & Combinations be everywhere set up to consult and recover our just Rights.”
A few weeks later he presented his plan to oppose Britain’s “Plan of Slavery” at a meeting in Boston organized for that purpose. This was the birth of the “Committees of Correspondence” or “Committees of Safety” which spread throughout the colonies in early 1773. [Read more…] about Mohawk Valley Preparations for the American Revolution
New York’s Forgotten Aeronaut & Diver: William Warren Rulison
When seventy-eight-year-old William Rulison passed away in August of 1931, the only newspaper in Upstate New York that carried the news was Cooperstown’s Otsego Farmer. In this obituary, he was noted only as a “pioneer in balloon flying in this part of the country,” and a man who went by the title of Professor. This report of his passing left much untold, and in the material that follows I hope to give a complete account of his full and varied life. [Read more…] about New York’s Forgotten Aeronaut & Diver: William Warren Rulison
When The Yeggs Hit Upstate New York
It was late on Wednesday, January 19th, 1910, and Police Chief W. R. Bronner was making his evening rounds through the quiet village of Mohawk, in the town of German Flatts, Herkimer County, NY, making sure all was safe for both business and residents.
Somewhere near the intersection of Main and Washington streets, he encountered four men who engaged him in conversation as they all walked along. Before he could resist, he was relieved of his pistol, gagged, and brought into the Masonic Hall billiard room that the Yeggs had broken into earlier in the evening. Once inside, Bronner was bound with wire taken from pictures on the wall. [Read more…] about When The Yeggs Hit Upstate New York
Revolutionary Albany: Supplying Ticonderoga, Dealing With Loyalists & Iroquois Relations
In early May, 1775 the Revolutionary War was underway on largely local scale. The attack on the British forces leaving Lexington and Concord had happened less than a month earlier, and 4,500 British troops had landed in Boston.
The lightly defended Fort Ticonderoga was taken on the morning of May 10, 1775, in a surprise attack by the Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, with the help of Benedict Arnold. The fort had been held by the British for 16 years, since it was taken from the French in 1759. [Read more…] about Revolutionary Albany: Supplying Ticonderoga, Dealing With Loyalists & Iroquois Relations