CHAPTER XIII.

TRYON COUNTY.

"Still in your prostrate land there shall be some
Proud hearts, the shrines of Freedom's vestal flame.
Long trains of ill may pass unheeded dumb,

But Vengeance is behind and Justice is to come."

I.

BOUNDARIES.

In the crowded annals of the state of New York there floats another almost mythical name which, like La Famine, for nearly a century has had no "local habitation." That name is Tryon county, whose story during the long and weary twelve years of its actual existence, is a story that is written in characters of blood.

For a long period previous to the year 1772, which was the birth year of Tryon county, the whole northern and western part of what is now the state of New York, that lay to the north and west of the county of Ulster, was included in the county of Albany. In the spring of that year the county of Albany was divided by the Colonial Government. In the first place they set off the county of Tryon, naming it in honor of William Tryon, who was then Governor of the province. They then set off the county. of Charlotte, which was named in honor of the Princess Charlotte, the eldest daughter of George III.

The bounds of Tryon county were fixed as follows: The easterly line began at a point on the Canadian border, near the Indian mission of St. Regis, and ran due south through the Upper Saranac Lake, and along the westerly

bounds of what are now Essex, Warren and Saratoga counties, until it struck the Mohawk river about ten miles west of the city of Schenectady. From the Mohawk it turned south-westerly around what is now Schenectady county, and then again southerly through the center of what is now Schoharie county to the Mohawk branch of the Delaware River. Thence down that stream to the north-east corner of Pennsylvania. Tryon county included the whole of the province of New York that lay to the west of this line. It was two hundred miles wide along this eastern border, and stretched out westward three hundred miles to Lake Erie. Better had it been called an empire.

The county of Charlotte included all the northern part of the state of New York that lies easterly of the Tryon county line, and northerly of what are now Saratoga and Rensselaer counties. Charlotte county also included the westerly half of the disputed territory which is now in the state of Vermont, then known as the New Hampshire Grants.

II.

SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON.

The shire-town of this immense county of Tryon was Johnstown, near the Mohawk, the residence of Sir William Johnson, Bart.

Sir William was then living in baronial splendor at Johnson Hall, with the Mohawk Princess, Molly Brandt, who was his Indian wife, and their eight dusky children. He was then His Brittanic Majesty's Superintendent General of Indian affairs in North America, Colonel of the Six Nations, and a Major General in the British service.

Thirty-five years before this, he had come over from Ireland a poor young man, and settled in the Mohawk valley, then a wilderness, to take care of a large tract of land that was located there and owned by his uncle, Sir Peter Warren. Sir Peter Warren was an Admiral of the British navy, who while a commodore distinguished himself by the capture of Louisburgh from the French in 1745. Sir Peter married a daughter of Etienne De Lancey of New York, and with her received as a dowry this large tract of land in the Mohawk valley. It was situated in the eastern angle between the Mohawk River and the Schoharie Creek.

Sir William Johnson, upon his first taking up his residence in the Mohawk valley became a fur trader with the Indians, and kept for many years a country store for the accommodation of the scattered settlers of the region. Rising by degrees, through dint of industry and fair dealing, and by the faithful performance of the public trusts imposed upon him, he had become the proprietor of immense landed estates, the acknowledged lord of a princely manor, and high in the confidence of his sovereign. His victory over the French and Indians under Baron Dieskau, at Lake George in 1755, had won for him his title of nobility. His wonderful influence, the most remarkable on record, over the Indian tribes, had given him an importance in the affairs of state second to no American then living. He was surrounded by a numerous tenantry and by followers that were loyal to him and his family even unto death.

Sir William married in the more humble days of his early life a poor, modest gentle-hearted German girl, whom he found living with her parents in the Mohawk valley, whose maiden name was Catherine Weisenberg. She died young,