vers, Klacks, Adles and Garters, all of whom drank deeply of the bitter cup of the revolutionary struggle.

Palatine, Oppenheim and Manheim, are names significant of the origin of the people who were the first settlers in these towns. Manheim constituted a part of the Palatine district in Tryon county, and the town of that name until 1797, when it was organized into a separate town. The town remains as it was when annexed to the county in the year 1817. The East Canada creek affords a large supply of water at most seasons of the year, and being intersected with many falls has been used to some extent for manufacturing and mechanical purposes. This water power has been brought into use at a village called Ingham's Mills, where there is a tannery, recently erected, and mills and other machinery in operation. The most important village in the town has the post office designation of Brackett's Bridge, and is sometimes known as Wintonville. Mr. D. B. Winton erected a tannery at this place previous to 1840.

one hundred acre lot west of the creek, and adjoining the site of the bridge, for which he paid £300, New York currency, in March, 1794. After the bridge was completed, he erected the mills, which were finished and in operation in 1795. This was at the flood tide of emigration to the Royal grant and Western New York; the mills attracted attention, and population gathered to his place: by the year 1800, quite a little village, dignified by the name of the City, had sprung up, counting two stores, two taverns, a blacksmith shop, nail factory, a cooperage and a brewery, afterwards came the lawyers, doctors, school masters, and the distillery.

It could also boast having one man drink himself to death on a bet, and the presence of a state prison graduate, frequent performances of Punch and the Babes in the Woods, by Sickles, and daily amusements in the way of turkey shooting, pitched battles with fists, clubs and teeth, and launching batteaux, for the Mohawk river service. At this time there was more business done at Beardsley's Mills, than at Little Falls. In 1801 and 1802, the Mohawk turnpike was completed, and being located south half a mile of the little village, by diverting the travel on this then great thoroughfare, completely used up the City, to the serious loss of the founder. With the view of making good his losses, and fixing himself on the line of travel, where business could be done, he purchased, in 1810, 350 acres of land, laying on both sides of the creek, and between his first purchase and the river, for which he paid $11,500,

This establishment was afterwards purchased by an eminent house in the city of New York, engaged in the leather business, by whom it was enlarged and improved, and is now the most extensive manufactory of the kind in the county or in this part of the country. The village is unincorporated. It contains two churches, two stores, several mechanics' shops, also a saw and grist mill, and a stave and barrel manufactory. There are five houses for religious worship in the town, but I am not able to classify the denominations to which they belong.

I should not do justice to the subject in hand, if I omitted all reference to the name of Major Andrew Fink, who settled in this town soon after the close of the war. He was of German descent, and a native of the lower Mohawk valley. He was well educated, and at the commencement of the revolution, although then a young man, had acquired a very considerable knowledge of military science, unusual for a mere provincial of that day.

a high price, it would seem, at that day. The prospects of business on the turnpike justified this purchase. But our increasing commercial difficulties with great Britain and France, followed by the war of 1812, caused him to postpone carrying out his intentions, when this new purchase was made.

When the peace was proclaimed, in 1815, the project of the Erie canal on the south side of the river was brought forward, and finally consummated. The immediate local effect of opening the canal, was a great depreciation of agricultural lands in the Mohawk valley, the almost certain destruction of such small business places as the East Creek, Palatine and Caughnawaga, on the north side of the river, and the building up of villages on the line of the canal. A greater change than that effected by the canal in the Mohawk valley, has seldom been witnessed in any country. Nearly the whole business was transferred from the north to the south side of the river. The turnpike became almost a solitude, and the villages through which it run, as a desert waste of waters.

It has been claimed, and with much apparent reason, that Mr. Beardslee was seriously injured in consequence of the construction, by the state, of the Minden dam across the Mohawk, at St. Johnsville. The ordinary flow of the river is from three to five miles an hour. This dam was made and used as an auxiliary to the canal, and the top line was so high as to overcome all the natural descent between it and the mouth of the East creek, about three and a half miles, and hence the river surface was nearly a level the whole dis

Mr. Fink was appointed first lieutenant of Capt. Christopher P. Yates's company, raised for special service. The warrants bear date July 15th, 1775. This was the commencement of a military career to which he was attached during the whole revolutionary contest. His constitution was firm, resolution indomitable, and courage undoubted. Major Fink died at a pretty advanced age, and the stone that marks his final resting place may be seen upon a rising ground a little north of the Mohawk turnpike, in full view of the spot where rest the remains of the brave and patriotic Herkimer. I should take great pleasure in noting down the particulars of Major Fink's services in the great struggle for colonial rights and Anglo-Saxon freedom, but on inquiring of the surviving members of his family whether he had left any papers, I was told he once had many letters and papers relating to revolutionary transactions, but they were now all gone. The family say, sometimes one person and then another would desire to look them over to ascertain

tance, presenting, as was claimed, an effectual obstruction to the free flow and discharge of the ice from the creek and river above, during the winter and spring floods.

Mr. Beardslee, by strict attention to business, hard hand work and the application of a sound, inventive mind, twenty-seven years, had accumulated a handsome estate, and which, but for the adversities and losses he met with, in no respect attributable to misconduct or want of sound, discriminating judgment, would have been almost princely in this country and in his day.

He was a tall man, free from obesity, with large black eyes, which he inherited from his father, and a fine figure, bestowed on him by his low Dutch mother. Natural and easy in his address, pleasant and companionable in his intercourse with others, generous and hospitable. He used to say, with much satisfaction, that in all the heavy and difficult structures he had raised, or superintended the construction of, not a man in his employment, or of the motley crowds of people collected on such occasions, as was the custom of that early day, was killed or injured in the least. In the decline of life, he indulged himself a good deal in reading, a gratification he did not enjoy in his youthful days. He died of a scirrhous stomach, from which he had suffered many years. This sketch has been considerably elaborated, because it shows, not only how much a young man of indomitable perseverance and firm resolution can achieve, single handed and alone, but what young Americans have heretofore been in the habit of performing.

some fact or indulge an idle curiosity, and in the end all the papers of any consequence were gone before they were fully aware of it.

All that portion of the town lying between the south end of lots number 17, 18 and 19, Glen's purchase, and the southerly bounds of the first allotment, Royal grant, and the river, except the Snell and Timmerman and a small point of the Peter Van Driesen patents, was ungranted by the crown at the revolution. The state sold small parcels of this tract to Isaac Vrooman, John Van Driesen and others, soon after the close of the war. So late as 1777, Capt. Joseph Brant, the Mohawk chief, claimed the lands more recently known as the Christy place, long occupied by Nathan Christy, Esq., and the lands adjacent, which lay nearly opposite to the Indian castle church, on the south side of the river. The Christy place was an improved farm before the revolution, and Brant rented it to a German for one hundred dollars a year. It is not an idle speculation to assume that these lands had never been sold by the Indians, but were held appurtenant to the upper Mohawk castle.

§ 10. NEWPORT

Contains that part of the county lying within the following bounds viz.: beginning at the southeast corner of great lot number eighteen, in Hasenclever's patent, and running thence on the line of said lot, a northerly course to the Steuben road; then on a direct course to the centre of lot number thirteen, in Walton's patent; then through the centre of lot number sixteen, in Walton's patent, to the west bounds of the county; then on a direct line to the southwest corner of lot number twenty-eight, in the third allotment of the Royal grant; then easterly, along the line of lots to the northeast corner of lot number twenty-three, in said allotment; then south, along the line of lots to the southeast corner of lot number forty-two, in the second allotment of said grant; then on a southerly course to the Canada creek, at the bridge, near the house heretofore or late of Obadiah Kniffin; then west, to the middle of the creek; then down the middle of the same, until a west course will meet the place of beginning; and then west to the place of beginning.

As will be noticed in the above boundaries, a part of Hasenclever's and Walton's patents, and portions of the second and third allotments of the Royal grant, are in this town.

No part of the territory of this town was settled before the revolution, and probably not before 1790. I will pause a moment to record again the Indian name of this creek, as laid down on an outline map of the Mohawk river and Wood creek, showing the relative positions of Fort Bull, Fort Williams and German Flats. This is the name, Teughtaghrarow. It is marked on Southier's map of the province of New York, published in 1779, Canada river; and it is so called on a map made by Guy Johnson, in 1771. This

CHRISTOPHER HAWKINS, was the first permanent settler of this town and its first supervisor after its erection. In April, 1834, Mr. Hawkins had prepared a sketch of his juvenile adventures, and at his death he left the manuscript with his family. The volume has been recently placed in my hands, and from it I propose to make condensed abstracts of its contents. This I deem no departure from my general plan. I should willingly give all the space required for a literal copy of the narrative touching the escape of Mr. Hawkins from the Jersey prison ship, and his sufferings before he reached home, if I had it.

Referring to the manuscript, young Hawkins, then in the thirteenth year of his age, and an indented apprentice to Aaron Mason of Providence, R. I., in May, 1777, went to New Bedford, Mass., and shipped on board the privateer schooner Eagle, mounting twelve small carriage guus, commanded by Capt. Moury Potter. This small craft was bound on a cruise for such British vessels as could be captured. The Eagle made her offing and as the officers alleged or supposed, cruised in the track of vessels sailing between New York and England. She crossed the broad Atlantic, however, without seeing or speaking with a single vessel. In due time the privatecr made the English coast, where she remained a short time when the captain and crew concluded to "bout ship" and return home in no pleasant mood, as they had promised themselves on the start, as many prizes as they could man, on the outward cruise. On the return passage, the Eagle spoke an unarmed schooner which proved to be a French vessel from the West Indies bound to Halifax, when some dispute arose between the officers and crew of the Eagle in regard to the national character of the schooner, the latter insisting that she was English, and could be made a lawful prize. To settle this point the first lieutenant of the privateer, John Paine, boarded the French vessel and examined her papers, who returned and reported her a French vessel loaded with flour. John Ward, the boatswain, and a large majority of the crew were dissatisfied with this report, but their grumblings did not avail any thing; the officers of the Eagle did not deem it prudent to superadd piracy to the crime of rebellion.

The next vessel overhauled by the Eagle was an English merchant brig, deeply laden, bound to New York, and here, according to Hawkins's relation,