Author: Cuyler Reynolds

Publisher:

Published: 2015-08-05

Total Pages: 646

ISBN-13: 9781332310494

Excerpt from Hudson-Mohawk Genealogical and Family Memoirs, Vol. 1 That many hundreds of persons have shown their personal interest in the publication of these volumes is sufficient evidence that it is a deserving field in historical literature. But this is by no means the limitation, for these family sketches will be a matter of daily reference by persons throughout this country, and thus they will lie rendering a proper service, warranting the painstaking labor expended in their preparation. As time goes on, a work of this nature will be considered as a godsend. But aside from individual interest in family matters and the consequent inclusion of historical information, there is a special and pertinent value in this work, for instead of being an affair which some would heedlessly consider lightly, the effect on the student of these matters is known to be an inspiration, because through understanding the hardships and the successes of our ancestors, and reading of worthy feats, one certainly becomes imbued with an esprit de corps which builds character, and good results invariably follow. In the times when the French and Indian wars were engaging the attention of every colonist from Maine to Florida, who never was able to rest easily at home lest the savage pillage his house within the high palisade, the settlements near Albany, although protected in the crude fashion of that day, were the subject of attack time and time again. This was, in part, because the vicinity of. Albany was the seat of settlement of several tribes of continually warring Indians, principally the Mohawks and Mohicans. Not only were the bergs of Albany and Schenectady surrounded in entirety by stockadoes, and the villagers warned not to build outside of them, but the residents erected their dwellings for defense, much in the manner of individual forts, by providing their walls, massive in those days, with portholes through which the musket could be directed at the enemy; and such houses, although rare, are still standing there. Notable among these conflicts with the aborigines and French was the frightful massacre at Schenectady in the winter of 1690, when few in the peaceful village were permitted to escape the tomahawk, and later on the Beukendaal massacre shocked the settlers, fraught with as high a percentage of brutal murders. When the French wished to possess the land in. America, their armies came by way of the Adirondack lakes, as a facile passage from Canada, and Albany had to be the resisting point to save the other sections of the country. The orders issued in Europe by the higher officials who directed operations, were generally to the effect that Albany must first be taken; but it never was a place which suffered conquest. Its citizenship was composed of such men as would extract the lead from their windows in order to have it cast into bullets, and naturally such valor was indomitable. Some fifty years after the massacre mentioned, the French were once more decidedly active, and it was necessary to check them before they came further south than Ticonderoga, or, at worst, Fort William Henry, on Lake George's southern end. The region in and about Albany was then given over to the massing of troops, and under General Abercrombie, in 1758, a large army was gathered and the raw recruits drilled. It was then that "Yankee Doodle" was composed by the surgeon in his army, while in the camp at Greenbush. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com