when Governor Jay met them, and after giving them sound and judicous advice sent them home. One can not help thinking that the worthy governor was somewhat annoyed, during the conference, with the reflection "that he, not long before, had been in arms against his king and the mother country on account of stamps and stamped paper."

In March or April, 1804, the county clerk's office was consumed by fire with all the records and papers it contained. Mr. Joab Griswold had held the office of county clerk from March 19th, 1798, and Mr. Elihu Griswold was appointed in his place April 6th, 1804. The office was burned in the night, and it had been arranged previously that the new incumbent should take possession of the office the day after the fire occurred.

"In the war with Great Britain, declared by the United States on the 18th day of June, 1812," the militia of Herkimer county behaved nobly. They claimed no exemption from service when the governor ordered them to the frontier to protect and defend the state from hostile aggression or foreign invasion. It is no disparagement to the militia of any other county, to say the Herkimer militia met these calls and suffered the privations of the camp with a patriotic devotion and zeal not excelled by any of them.

A detached regiment under Col. C. P. Bellinger, had been ordered to Sacketts Harbor before war was declared, under a six months' draft. Others followed soon after, and in 1813 and 1814, volunteers, detached, and the militia en mass, were on the lake and St. Lawrence frontier nearly the whole time. Companies and regiments succeeding others, whose terms of service had expired. The pay granted by the United States was no compensation to the farmer and mechanic, and substituted service could only be afforded by the wealthy. If the sacrifice was great, each man could well console himself with the reflection that he had done his duty to his country. Governer Tompkins bestowed high

praise upon the citizen soldiers of Herkimer county, and it was well deserved.

It is now more than forty years since these events happened, and many farms have been and are being located under the operation of the bounty land laws of 1850 and 1855, by the descendants and relatives of those who performed the military service. Although a land recipient under the former law, I can not admire a policy which is dictated by a present expediency and not by a rule of equal and exact justice. There are thousands who are excluded, whose husbands and fathers performed service as meritorious as any now living; and there are other thousands, long since laid in their graves, to whom this little pittance would have been grateful; whose hunger it would have assuaged, and whose cold and palsied limbs it would have warmed. But these can not vote now. They are tenants of the graveyard, under an eternal lease; an immovable fixture, and can not swell the population of the illimitable west.

The restoration of peace with Great Britain in 1815, found our population in a state of universal embarrassment, which they did not recover from fully in ten years. The merchants with large stocks of goods on hand, found themselves undersold by more than one-half on the new importations. A series of cold and unproductive seasons, from 1816 to 1820, had cut off the surplus of agricultural products. Farming lands during the war had been sold at very high prices, and were eagerly sought for at nearly four times the value they bore from 1817 to 1825. The county did not produce exportable commodities sufficient to balance the mercantile imports, and shinplasters were the circulating medium. Cheesman's plasters were a more sure remedy for the public ailments than his balsams. Lands sold during the war at such prices that the purchaser, who paid one-third of the consideration money at the sale, and kept the interest on the balance paid up, could not the first ten years after the peace

sell them for a price sufficient to pay the balance of principal due. In other words he could not give them away and get indemnity against his bond. The state expenditures in constructing the Erie canal gave some relief; but the completion and opening of that great work brought the graingrowing regions of the west into direct competition with the then staple agricultural product of the county, wheat. The Mohawk valley had more than seventy-five years enjoyed, without competition from the west, the advantages of the Albany and eastern markets. The county recovered slowly from its depressed and embarrassed condition. It lost, however, very considerable of its German population between 1818 and 1830.

The Asiatic cholera has never prevailed in the county to much extent. On its first appearance in this country in 1832, when fright and apprehension nearly paralyzed the whole community, a few cases occurred in several of the villages, most of them fatal, and along the canal. Since that time, however, the county has been nearly exempt from that dreadful pestilence.

In the years 1833, 1834 and 1835, the legislature authorized the supervisors of the county to contract loans to the amount of $10,300 to erect a new jail and purchase a site for it. An annual tax was also levied to reimburse the principal of these loans by installments and pay the interest. The building is of stone, procured at Little Falls, strong and permanent. The interior arrangements are such as to afford comfort to and insure the safety of offenders. Martin Easterbrooks contracted to complete the mason work, and Edmund Varney, Cornelius T. E. Van Horn, Isaac S. Ford, Jacob F. Christman, Warner Folts, Frederick P. Bellinger and Charles Gray, were the commissioners appointed to superintend the erection of the jail.

On the night of January 25th, 1834, the old court house and jail was destroyed by fire. This was an old two-story structure of wood, and had been standing many years.

The jail on the ground floor had been found unsafe, and besides the public buildings at that time did not reflect much credit upon the county. On the 31st of March, 1834, the legislature authorized the supervisors to borrow from the common school fund, on the credit of the county, four thousand six hundred dollars to build a new court house, and directed a tax of five hundred dollars a year to be levied on the county to refund the loan and pay the interest. Francis E. Spinner, Arphaxed Loomis and Prentice Yeomans were named in the act as commissioners to superintend the erection of the building.

The court house is a handsome structure of brick, standing nearly in the center of the village of Herkimer. The jail is on the opposite side of the street. The rooms on the first floor of the court house are arranged to suit the public convenience, but the interior arrangements of the court room may be easily improved. Owing to some defect or oversight in the construction, the long side walls of the house began to give way and swell out, not long after the house was completed. They were however soon secured by iron rods extending across the building. These rods or bars were inserted in their place when red with heat, and being secured with proper fastenings at the ends on the outside of the walls the contraction of the iron brought them quite into place. The citizens of Little Falls did not fail to make an effort at this time, to change the county seat and bring it to them; but with two-thirds or perhaps three-fourths of the population of the county against them, they "hardly made a ripple."

A new fire proof clerk's office, of brick, was erected in 1847. Mr. Aaron Hall, builder.

CHAPTER VII.

Forfeited Estates - Act of 1779-- Persons Attainted under George III - Treaty of 1783-Attainder of the Johnsons and Butler justified-Rules of Evidence laid down-British Parliament-Further Provisions of the Act-Royal Grant-Extent of Same-Guy Johnson Tract - Herkimer Estates-Motives of the Johnsons Sir William Johnson-Events of Revolution still Remembered - Reception of Sir John in Canada - Guy Johnson's Conduct as Indian Agent - Judicial Tribunals always open- The Fifth Article of the Treaty of 1782-The 9th Article of the Treaty of 1794 - Motives of the Loyalists in Embracing the Cause of the Crown - Congress Fulfilled Treaty Stipulations-Its Messages not Well Received by the States-Present Law of Treason. At the risk of repeating some of the facts contained in the preceding chapter, and of being considered tedious, I venture to submit some further remarks in reference to the "forfeited estates" of British subjects, confiscated during the war of the revolution. The subject is within the scope of an historical research into the annals of the county, because the title to large tracts of land within its limits has been affected by the action of the legislature of the state. Now, when more liberal sentiments seem not only to be entertained by some governments, but by enlightened individuals, in respect to the mode of conducting war, and of inflicting punishment upon individuals, for acts of hostile aggression in cases where, by the public law, no allegiance was due to the injured state, the opinion has been expressed' that the confiscated estates of individuals should have been restored at the peace of 1783. This is a very grave question, and will not meet with an affirmative response from any considerable number of enlightened Americans, even at this day, and