organization, and judging from the known characters of the principal officers elected, there must have been some very hard political contests in the town between the federalists and republicans in olden times. Success depended very much upon the vigilance of the parties, and it was alike important to both to carry the county town. The history of the county from 1725 to the close of the revolution, comprises but few incidents which did not take place in this, or the present town of German Flats. When these two towns however, or since, doubted the fact, although there might not have been legal evidence to convict of murder. He was arrested and tried for that offense at Johnstown, but acquitted. Whoever killed the Indian was not instigated thereto for the sake of plunder. In all Hartman's after conversation in regard to this affair, he distinctly and minutely described the tobacco pouch made of human skin, and the nails attached to the finger's end. He survived the close of the revolutionary war more than fifty-three years. He may have lived so far secluded from refined society as not to have seen a glove, and he may have been so ignorant as not to know what constituted a covering for delicate and genteel hands; and if he was at fault in this respect, he was not so great a dunce as not to know the skin of the human arm and hand, nor so blind that he could not see a finger nail. Besides, who that is familiar with Indian customs and habiliments, can believe that an Indian would use a common hand glove for a pouch? How and where would he secure it? He could not fasten it to his belt, and in those days these primitive people did not wear pockets in their garments; their pouches served that purpose, and were made sufficiently long to be secured by winding two or three times round the outside waist belt. The assertion, in Stone's Life of Brant, that this pouch was probably a leather glove, which the Indian had found," seems to be wholly unsupported by fact or the appearance of truth. I have no desire to make any apology for Hartman, or that he should appear different from what he actually was, a plain, unlettered, unpretending man. He was not " very ignorant," unless the term is strictly applied to his school acquirements. He probably never attended school a single day in his life. Other and more imperative calls upon his time and service were in store for him, after he landed upon our western shores. “A very ignorant man, and thought it no harm to kill an Indian at any time." Is this statement borne out by the facts of the relation as here given? If Hartman killed the Indian, and was so very ignorant" as to think it no harm to kill one at any time, why did he not do it in the face of witnesses? Why did he seek and wait for an opportunity to do the deed when he and his late open enemy were alone? Why, if so "very ignorant,' as to be only a lump of stultified humanity, did not the slayer appropriate the goods of his victim, of considerable value, to his own use? Col. Stone was either misinformed in respect to

were erected, Herkimer had been known by no other name for sixty-three years than the German Flats, and it was not intended to make any change, but to give the name of Herkimer to the territory on the south side of the river, where the Herkimer family were first seated, where most of those who remained in the country then lived, and where the general himself was born. The committee, having the matter in charge, not knowing the localities, inquired of some person who did, whether the German Flats lay on the right or left bank of the river, expecting to be answered according to the known rule of designation, which is to start at the source of the stream and pass down, noting the objects and places on the right hand bank and on the left hand bank. Being told the German Flats was on the right bank, the answer misled the committee, and hence arose the mistake and change. The committee acted upon a settled rule of definition, which their informant did not understand.

this case, or his memory very indistinct when he wrote the history of it. I hope his partiality for the hero of his work did not produce an unfavorable bias on his mind towards those who had been America's most ardent and effective, though humble, defenders. Unless more than one Indian was found prowling through the valley soon after the revolution, exhibiting the skin of a human arm and hand for a tobacco pouch, and boasting of the achievement, the truth of history has been falsified in another quarter.

Hartman from some exposure and by personal conflicts with the Indians had become disabled for life so that he could not labor. He was placed on the invalid pension roll, but, shame to my country, the gratuity bestowed was not enough to sustain the shattered remnant of a frame which had been hacked, lacerated and wounded in the service of his adopted country, without additional assistance from the local overseer of the poor. He died at Herkimer and the head stone at the spot where rests his remains, erected in grateful remembrance of his services, is seen in the burial ground surrounding the Brick church at Herkimer, and in full view from the Court house steps, with the inscription cut upon it:

JOHN ADAM HARTMAN,

Born at

Edenkoben in Germany,

A great Patriot in our War for Independence,

Died April 5th, 1836,

Aged 92 years and 7 months.

Fort Dayton was a small stockaded fort, erected in the northerly part of the present village of Herkimer, by Col. Dayton, of the continental service, in the year 1776, for the protection of the inhabitants on the north side of the river; Fort Herkimer, on the south side, being too far off, and too difficult to reach to secure that object as effectively as was desired. A small force of continental troops or state levies, was retained at this post during the war, and it afforded safe protection to the surrounding inhabitants who sought safety within its pickets, against the marauding parties of the enemy. This spot was for many years before and after the revolution the most populous of any in this part of the country; the public buildings of the county have always remained at the village, and for several years it enjoyed a commercial prosperity unrivaled by any locality in the county; but the opening of the Erie canal damaged its pros

JACOB SMALL. This zealous partisan of American independence deserves more than the passing notice I can give to his memory. He was a native of Germany, and came to this country when quite young. He was appointed by the governor and council captain in the regiment of Tryon county militia, under the command of Col. Peter Bellinger, on the 25th of June, 1778. He had previously served as subaltern in the militia and was a brave, active and energetic partisan officer. At whatever point between the Little Falls and Forts Herkimer and Dayton an alarm might be given, Capt. Small with such members of his company as could be collected at the moment were afoot and hastening to repel the attack of the enemy and rescue the stockaded post from assault. The beat of his company was on the north side of the Mohawk river and east of the West Canada creek. His duties as a militia officer were so incessant and required him to be absent from his family so much, that he placed them in Fort Herkimer for protection in the fall of 1777, where they remained until the war closed. His son Jacob, who at that time was about six years old, still survives, and retains a distinct recollection of this fact. The successful stratagem practiced by John Christian Shell, in 1781, when his home was assaulted by Donald McDonald at the head of a party of Indians and tories, shows that Capt. Small's name must have been familiar to the assailants, and that they did not like to await his approach within gun shot. When Capt. Small removed the wounded refugee to Fort Dayton to have his wounds dressed, he performed the act with all the care and humanity he was capable of exerting on that occasion. The welfare of Shell's two little sons carried into captivity by the enemy may have influenced the Americans

perity a good deal. The old church, a wooden structure and a venerable relic of the past, was consumed by fire in January, 1834, when the Court house was burnt. It was soon after replaced by a handsome edifice of brick, which stands on the main street of the village, near the Court house.

Herkimer village is pleasantly situated on a plain near the junction of the Mohawk and West Canada creek, the surrounding country, except in the river and creek valleys, is a little elevated, presenting rich, varied and delightful prospects, not surpassed in the whole Mohawk valley. The large and pretty extended alluvial flat or bottom lands in this town, containing hundreds of acres, have been under cultivation more than 130 years, and still yield abundant crops in requital of the husbandman's toil, and seem to be inexhaustible. The extensive water power of the West Canada creek, which had been long unimproved, was brought into use about the year 1835, by a company of enterprising citizens of the town, and although the results of this experiment may not have fully met the expectation of some of its most sanguine projectors, there can be no doubt of the very beneficial effects to the village, by the construction and operation of mills and machinery and the use of the water power brought out by the company. That the project has not been more remunerative to the proprietors may right

in their treatment of the disabled foe; but no matter what the motive may have been, the humane conduct of Capt. Small and his party contrasts favorably with that of their relentless and savage enemies.

Although there was but little active warfare on this frontier during the summer and autumn of 1782, and although Capt. Small had more than five successive years taken his life in his hand and gone forth with his men to beat off and chastise the skulking and savage enemy, and escaped unharmed, he was shot in the apple orchard where he and one or two of his neighbors had gone to gather apples, in the fall of 1783, three days after the definitive articles of peace were signed at Paris between the United States and Great Britain. The formal agreement for the cessation of hostilities between the two powers was not signed until January 20th, 1783, but there had been a virtual cessation after the surrender of Cornwallis, except as to the petty warfare carried on by the Indians, who seemed to have but little respect for a power that would acknowledge itself beaten by its rebellious subjects.

fully be attributed to a nonuse of the property, and not to other causes. Why do not the capitalists in the vicinity devote their means to the erection of manufacturing establishments? They have wealth enough for that purpose. Why do the manufacturing towns in the Eastern states spring up as if by magic? By using capital. No greater facilities of transport can be required than they now have.

§7. LITTLE FALLS

Contains all that part of the county set off from the towns of Herkimer, Fairfield and German Flats, comprehended within the following boundaries, viz: beginning on the middle or base line of Glen's purchase, at a point where the line between lots number five and six in said purchase unites with said base or middle line, and running thence south along said line to its southern termination; thence on the same course continued to the south bounds of the town of German Flats; thence along the south bounds of said town to the southeast corner thereof; and thence along the eastern bounds of the towns of German Flats and Herkimer, to the southeast corner of the town of Fairfield; and from thence by a straight line to the place of beginning.

The town covers parts of Glen's purchase, Staley's first tract, Guy Johnson's tract, Vaughn's and Fall hill patent, six lots in Burnetsfield, and small triangular pieces of L' Hommedieu's and Lindsey's patents.

I have in the general history of the county brought out some facts peculiarly applicable to this town, and the village which bears the same name, and I now refer to them in this