NOTE.

The emigration of the Palatines to the province of New York in 1709, was an interesting event in the history of the colony. John Conrad Weiser, a man of note and influence among these people, and who went to England to solicit relief for them, in his memorial to the government, of August 2d, 1720, states their numbers when they left England, near the close of 1709, at about 4000, and that 1700 of them died on the passage or at their landing in New York. His son Conrad Weiser, as appears from the Collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, states that the number at leaving was 4000. They came over with Gov. Hunter and under his charge. They were sent out at the expense of the British government, not only for their passage but for their subsistence one year after they arrived. In all published documents, colonial and imperial, their numbers are stated at 3000 and no more.

Mr. Cast, who was placed over them as a superintendent, reported the whole number on both sides of the Hudson river, May 1, 1711, at 1761, and Secretary Clark, to the lords of trade, states there were 1803 in June 1711, still remaining on Livingston manor, and on the west side of the river where they had been planted by Gov. Hunter. And again, the number reported for subsistence in the seven towns on the 24th of June, 1711, is 1874. A six months' voyage across the Atlantic at that early day was a severe task upon human endurance, but a loss of more than 2100 lives in eighteen months, or about 1100 out of the 3000, shows a want of care on their part, or excessive remissness on the part of those who had charge of them.

Gov. Hunter, as late as 1713, reported that all the Palatines were within the province, and for the most part on the lands where he had planted them; and in May following, that " many have gone of their own heads to settle at Scoharie and on the frontiers. In October, 1712, the governor told the managers of the Palatines they must of themselves seek employment for the winter, and upon this intimation some hundreds went to Scoharie, and that he was the more easy under it because he could not prevent it. In 1715, he says these people were dispersed by his orders.

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It is quite evident the Earl of Clarendon, formerly Lord Cornbury, colonial governor, understood his subject when he told Lord Dartmouth that Livingston was an ill man," who would peculate upon the public by his subsistence contract, and that Hunter should have planted the Palatines on the Mohacks river.

Mr. John Cast wrote Gov. Hunter in March, 1711, that five of the Palatines said to him, "We came to America to establish our families-to secure lands for our children on which they will support themselves after we die; and that we can not do here." In December, 1709, the board of trade reported to queen Anne in favor of settling 3000 Palatines on the Hudsons or Mohaques rivers, or on the Score creek, each family to have forty acres of land as a reward; to be employed in making naval stores for a limited time, and to be naturalized in the province free of charge; and the attorney-general in Eng

land reported a contract which was executed by them and by which they were to have granted to them forty acres of land for each person forever, free from taxes and quit rents for seven years. It was the non-fulfillment of this contract, and planting them on lands where they were employed in improving other men's estates, that caused their disquiet, and what was called unruly conduct.

It was not until 1724, after Governor Burnett's arrival, that the 6000 acres purchased by Gov. Hunter of Mr. Livingston fourteen years before, was secured by patent to the Palatines remaining on Livingston's manor. Justice, though slow, came with a liberal hand at last, for each of the sixty-three families took what they had in possession improved, and the residue of the 6000 acres in common.

Johannus Wilhelm Schess, one of the agents of the Palatines in London, on the 1st November, 1720, presented a petition to the lords commissioners of trade and plantations, in which he asks to have the lands possessed by the Palatines in Schorie confirmed to them, and also that grants may be made to those people residing in other parts of the province. He asks to have Weiser's petition, presented the previous August, for a grant of land in Pennsylvania dismissed, as being contrary to the wishes of the people who sent them to England. Weiser stated there were 3000 Germans in the Schoharie valley. Schess rated them at about 1000 souls and 3000 more dispersed in different parts of the province.

As all the colonial governments surrounding New York and New Jersey were at this time proprietary and not royal, these agents understood very well the policy of placing their numbers at a high figure. The whole number reported to be in the province in 1718, exclusive of widows and orphans, was only 1601. It was the object of the crown, as expressed by Gov. Hunter, to retain these people in New York or New Jersey. Apprehending a failure on this head by a further effort to carry out Hunter's plans, the whole policy was changed when Governor Burnet came out. Although several of the Schoharie settlers, and among them Captain Weiser, were parties to the petition to the governor and council in 1721, for a license to purchase the Indian title, and also grantees named in the Indian deed made in 1722, they were not, it seems, parties to the act of confirmation which took place January 17, 1723. Captain Weiser went to England in 1718, and did not return until 1723, and in the spring of that year he, with most of the Germans at Schoharie, went to Pennsylvania. Some of them remained at Schoharie and others came over to the Mohawk river.

Governor Burnet at one time contemplated removing the whole mass of the German population then under his government to the center of the state, for in his letter of October 16, 1721, to the lords of trade, he says: "I did intend to settle the Palatines as far as I could in the middle of our Indians, but finding they could not be brought to that, I have granted their own request, which was to have a license to purchase of the nearest Indians which

are on the Mohocks, which I have granted them with this condition, that they be not nearer than a fall in the Mohocks river, which is forty miles from Fort Hunter, and four score from Albany, by which the frontier will be so much extended, and those people seem very well pleased and satisfied with what I have done."

The governor's first idea was, in conformity with instructions from the home government, to plant all the Palatines together on one large tract, the Indian title to which he had then obtained at a late purchase, but he found them divided into parties, the cunningest among them fomenting divisions in order to induce the most of them to leave the province, and they expressing an unwillingness to take these lands, he abandoned that project also; and in his letter to the lords of trade, of November 21, 1722, as about sixty families desired to be in a distinct tract from the rest," he gave them leave to purchase from the Indians on the Canada creek, where they would be more immediately a barrier against the sudden incursions of the French. The act of confirmation, January 17, 1723, as may be seen, required that the names and number of all the persons to be concerned in the grant should be certified to the surveyor-general before the survey was made, and as appears by the patent issued, there were only thirty-nine families and ninety-four persons reported, or who came forward and accepted the bounty of the government.