were abandoned of course, to the disposal and tender mercies of the enemy. There were many among them in whose recollections the scenes of 1757 and 1758 were vividly fresh, and the apprehension of the ruin that awaited them must have been painfully severe.

Brant, at the head of three hundred tories and one hundred and fifty-two Indians, approached the confines of the settlements just at nightfall, but the weather being unpropitious and the night dark, he made a halt near Shoemaker's, his tory friend, and remained there with his forces until morning, unconscious that his approach had been notified to the inhabitants in time to allow them to escape. The untiring vigilance of the chief set him early afoot, and in the gray of the morning the whole valley was illuminated by an almost simultaneous blaze of houses, barns, stacks and barracks of hay and grain and other combustible materials. A sorrowful sight, to the people in the forts, who saw their houses and other buildings, with the produce of the season's labor, entirely consumed by fire. But this was not all, nor did the destroyer here stay his hand. As soon as it was light enough to discern objects at a distance, the tories and Indians collected all the stock that could be found, and every thing that could be gathered was driven or carried

away.

Almon's Remembrancer states that there were 63 dwelling houses, 57 barns, 3 grist-mills and 2 saw-mills burnt, with most of the furniture and grain kept therein; 235 horses, 229 horned-cattle, 269 sheep and 93 oxen taken and carried away. Only two persons lost their lives in this affair. The Indians were compelled to be content with their plunder, such as it was; they got neither scalps nor prisoners this time, nor did they make any attack upon the forts. Soon after the enemy left the valley with their booty, a party of between three and four hundred militia followed in pursuit as far as the Unadilla, but this expedition was fruitless, except in finding and burying the bodies of the three scouts

who went out with Helmer to watch the movements of Brant.

Shortly after the events above narrated, William Dygert, who had been taken prisoner by Brant on Fall hill some time in July or August, was recaptured by the Oneida and Tuscarora Indians and restored to his friends. This aggression at the German Flats did not long go unpunished, and a severe retribution soon overtook the Indians by the invasion. and destruction of two of their chief towns, Unadilla and Oghwkaga, the particulars of which do not come within the scope of this work.

Mavor, vicar of Hurley, in Berkshire, England, said there was no race of people on earth save the Anglo-Saxon, who to maintain and carry out a principle of civil government, would submit to the ravages, devastations and destruction of property, and bear the consequent destitution of all the necessities of life, inflicted by the British armies during the revolutionary war.

Is not the fate of the Palatines somewhat remarkable? Twice during the latter half of the seventeenth century the houses of their ancestors, on another continent, had been visited by the severest calamities of cruel and exterminating war, when the whole surviving population were driven by a ruthless soldiery into the fields and forests to perish by want or exposure; and when a few thousand of the survivors landed in this country most of them were compelled to endure twelve years of serfdom under a corrupt and peculating colonial government, and finally when seated by the kind hearted and benevolent Burnet at the German Flats, their land of promise, and the ultima thule of all their hopes, they were twice doomed in the last half of the eighteenth century to see their fair fields laid waste, their dwellings and crops destroyed, their flocks and herds driven away to slaughter and themselves reduced to destitution and want. And on one of these occasions many of them were slain, but more were dragged into captivity. Surely this last visitation

must have been extremely severe; but severe as it was no thought of submission to the crown obtruded itself upon their minds.

Although the lower portions of the Mohawk valley, and the white settlements south and east, were repeatedly visited by the enemy subsequent to the destruction of the German Flats in September, 1778, and the year 1779, the Palatine or German Flats settlements in the upper section of the valley seem to have been exempted from invasion for more than eighteen months, and the whole valley proper was comparatively quiet during the winter of 1780.

On the 3d of April, 1780, a party of about sixty tories and Indians fell upon the settlements in Rheimensynder's bush, a few miles north of the Little Falls, and burnt a grist-mill in that place. A tory by the name of Cassleman was with this party. They came and returned by the way of Jerseyfield. They took John Garter and his son John prisoners at the mill, and captured three men in the road, one of whom was Joseph Newman; at the same time, or on the same day, John Windecker, Henry Shaver, George Adle, Cobus Van Slyke and one Youker or Uker, with several others, were taken at Windecker's father's house, some distance north of the mill. The enemy carried off nineteen prisoners, twelve of whom, collected in one house, surrendered to less than half their number of straggling Indians without making any resistance or an effort to escape. All of these prisoners returned at the close of the war, except John Garter, who died in Canada, and George Adle, who escaped either on the way out or soon after he got to Canada and returned before. John Garter and a man named Espley, another prisoner, preferring colonial freedom, beset as it then was with privations and dangers, to a Canadian prison, agreed to make an effort to escape, and hired an Indian to pilot them through the wilderness; but understanding they intended to blow up the magazine before they left, or making that a pretense for his conduct, he dis

closed their intentions to the British officers, when Garter and Espley were punished severely for their temerity. Espley got back, but Garter died in consequence of the severity of the punishment inflicted upon him.

There was a blockhouse in this settlement called Rheimensnyder's Fort, to which the inhabitants resorted at night for safety and protection. When the Indians made their appearance on this occasion many of the inhabitants fled to the woods, or otherwise secreted themselves. The objects of this expedition seem to have been accomplished by burning the mill and the capture of a few prisoners.

After this visit in April, the inhabitants in that part of the county, except two or three tory families in Salisbury, abandoned their farms and retired into the lower valley. Except the retreat of Sir John Johnson through the county, near the close of the year, after the battle at Klock's field, and the arrival of Gen. Van Rensselaer at Fort Herkimer soon after, in pursuit of the Greens and Rangers, whom he was very careful not to overtake, there is no other event worthy of notice. Johson's sable allies having deserted him and taken to their heels, and the gallant knight having left his Greens and Rangers to take care of themselves as they best could, he did not feel that it would be very prudent to mark the progress of his retreat with the usual burnings and slaughter which had hitherto betokened his visits to the valley.

The events of 1781 now claim the reader's attention. The destruction of Fort Schuyler by flood and fire, in the month of May, led to the abandonment of that post and the withdrawal of the garrison to the German Flats. The works had been materially injured by a heavy flow of water produced by long and incessant rains, and on the 13th of May a fire broke out at mid-day, which rendered the place indefensible. The fire was attributed to design and that suspicion was never removed.

While great Britain held her sway over the provinces, controlled the western Indians and desired to command

the fur trade, defensive positions at the carrying place from the Mohawk river to Wood creek were no doubt important. Old Fort Stanwix when first built was almost in the heart of the Indian country, and commanded the approaches by water from Canada by the way of Oswego; but during the revolutionary war it was too far advanced into the wilderness to afford any protection to the white settlements below, against the predatory system of warfare carried on by the enemy. That post was easily avoided whenever the enemy came over by the way of Oswego, by passing to the south of it from the Onondaga and Oneida lakes. Most of the expeditions, however, sent against the Mohawk valley, came by the way of the Unadilla, that being the most available point to strike the settlements in that valley, the Schoharie creek, or on the west banks of the Hudson. Several small parties, however, approached the settlements on the Mohawk by the way of Black river.

Mr. Solomon Woodworth, commissioned May 11th, 1780, a lieutenant in Col. John Harper's regiment of New York levies, was afterwards, on the 8th March, 1781, appointed 1st lieutenant in Col. Fisher's regiment of Tryon county militia, "in the place of William Lard taken by or deserted to the enemy." I do not find any record of Mr. Woodworth's appointment as a captain. Acting under one of the above appointments, he, with a company of forty rangers, was stationed at Fort Dayton, for the purpose of scouring and traversing the wilderness country north of the German Flats. Woodworth was a brave man. Once during the war he was taken prisoner, but made his escape, and returned suffering very considerable hardships; at another time he defended a blockhouse north of Johnstown, and singlehanded drove away the enemy. Lieut. Woodworth left Fort Dayton with his company to reconnoitre the Royal Grant. Having proceeded a few hours on the march, an Indian was discovered who was immediately fired upon, when the rangers found themselves involved in an inextrica