(S974.748S241)
from Reminiscences of Saratoga (pages 424-433)
by William L. Stone – 1875
(S974.748S241)
The Gonzalez Tragedy.
Although the country now forming the county of Saratoga was discovered as early as 1609, and although in the succeeding century its eastern and southern borders were sparingly settled along the borders of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys – yet the interior of the county remained a comparative wilderness, subject to the domain of the Iroquois and the incursions of wild beasts, until after the Revolutionary War. Before that event, however, there were several settlements in old Ballston (south of the present village), and a few daring pioneers had settled in the interior. Such a person was Joseph Gonzalez, who, in 1770, took up his abode in the extreme south-western corner of Saratoga County, in what is now known as the town of Charlton.
Joseph Gonzalez was the son of Emanuel Gonzalez, and in 1775 married Margaret, a daughter of David Dutcher of Dutchess County, who was a direct descendant in the fourth generation from Anneke Jansen.1 Emanuel Gonzalez was immediately descended from a Spanish Huguenot of that name who came from Holland to New York in his own ship about 1690. The first permanent white inhabitant in Sullivan County, New York, is said to have settled there in the year 1700. His name was Don Manuel Gonzalez, and he is supposed to be the same person.2 His grandson Joseph, with his family, then consisting of his wife and four sons, with one hired man, was quietly residing upon his farm when the tragedy now to be related occurred.
Previous to the Revolution, Joseph had lived on the friendliest terms with the Indians. On the breaking out of the war, however, the Gonzalez family – almost the only one in that section that had espoused the cause of the colonies – became objects of special hate to the Tories, and particularly to the Scotch residents of Charlton, who were generally on the side of the Crown. Indeed, the Tories were more hostile to this one family than the savages themselves; and neglected no opportunity of stirring up the jealousy of the latter against it. In addition to this circumstance, one or two incidents had recently occurred which added intensity to this domestic strife. Emanuel Gonzalez, the oldest son of Joseph, was a man of twenty-two years of age, of great stature and strength, and one who could easily master any two Indians in the country. This had been shown on several occasions; but once, in particular, when attacked in a field by a dozen Indians, he defended himself with a rail torn from a fence so vigorously that his assailants were glad to beat a retreat. In the contest he was severely wounded by twisting his neck around nearly to breaking. From this, however, he recovered. This great feat excited still more the hostility of the Indians toward him; and when they appeared the second time, they came with firearms.
Another incident also tended to make the feelings of the Tories still more embittered. A few months previous to the events about to be narrated, Captain Clute, of Schenectady, came up one evening with a few soldiers to arrest one of the Tories, and by the latter was invited to stay all night, under the pretence that Clute had been misinformed, as he was really a stanch friend of the American cause. As soon as his visitors were asleep upon the floor, the Tory left the house and notified Gonzalez and his sons that a party of Tories were at his residence on some nefarious errand, desiring them, at the same time, to come with him and assist in killing them. Supposing his story to be true, they returned with him; but when Gonzalez, who was a humane man, saw them asleep, he refused to harm the sleepers, and insisted on keeping guard during the night, and arresting them in the morning. The surprise of Gonzalez was great when the dawn revealed to him in the leader of the party the features of his old and tried friend Clute, whose life he had come so near taking. The tables were at once turned, and the treacherous Tory was arrested, taken to Schenectady, tried, and condemned to be hung. At the intercession of Gonzalez, however, he was pardoned.
It was never ascertained whether the Indians, in the dreadful tragedy soon to take place, were prompted by this Tory element or by the remembrance of the rough handling received by them in their contest with the young Gonzalez giant. It was evident, however, that the Indians, who were the St. Regis, after their winter hunting and fishing in the Adirondacks, came nearly one hundred miles south on purpose to capture or destroy the family before their return to Canada.
At the time of the attack, which happened in April, 1782, the elder Gonzalez, the farm hand, the eldest and two youngest sons were burning a summer fallow in a field, while the mother, with her daughter and second son, David, a lad of eighteen, were at the house. As the party came up, Joseph Gonzalez recognized the leader of the band, and extended his hand in his usual friendly manner. In reply to this kindly salutation the Indian, drawing his tomahawk, struck the old man dead at his feet. At the same time the savages seized the other two sons, Emanuel and John, and the hired man. Emanuel, by main strength broke away from his captors and fled towards a piece of woods near at hand; but as he was in the act of scaling the first fence he was again seized. Turning upon his pursuer, he easily threw him to the ground, notwithstanding he had received a shot through the hand in ascending the fence. Resuming his flight, he had well-nigh effected his escape; but as he leaped the last fence that separated him from the wood, he was instantly killed by a shot fired by his pursuers. Joseph, the youngest child, aged twelve years, was more fortunate; for while the attention of the party was distracted by the pursuit and the necessity of guarding John, of the Indians, who had received many kindnesses from the Gonzalez, beckoned to him to run to the house. This he succeeded in doing without attracting the attention of the rest, and gave the alarm to the other members of the family. David, the youth of eighteen, fortunately happened to be at home. At once harnessing a horse which stood near to a wagon, he conveyed his mother, Joseph, and the daughter over a rough road through the wilderness to Crane’s Village on the Mohawk, three miles distant.
A few miles east of Crane’s Village, Capt. Tunis Swart then resided. On hearing the doleful tale, he lost no time in ordering out his company, but upon their refusing through fear to march, Swart, with young David, returned the same night as far back as the house. This they found undisturbed, but ascertained that the Indians had hastily retreated, bearing with them John and the servant and the scalps of two victims – the latter being stuck upon two poles and carried in sight of the son. The next morning Swart carried the bodies into the log-house and tenderly covered them with blankets until the rites of sepulture could be properly performed. By this time, the country had been roused, and the settlers and militia, coming up from the Mohawk Valley, followed the retreating Indians as far as the Fish House; but losing the trail at this point, the pursuit was abandoned.3
The trip to Canada was made on foot and by forced marches. Fearful of pursuit, the Indians hurried along so fast that they could not tarry either to eat or to kill game. Their youthful prisoner, John, was two days without a morsel of food; and when he lagged behind from exhaustion, his life was threatened and the manner in which his scalp would be taken was kindly explained to him. The first sustenance offered to the captives was the entrails of a cooked squirrel, which they must eat or starve; nor was it until their arrival in Canada that they obtained anything at all palatable. This consisted of a piece of corn bread spread with lard that was given them by a friendly squaw at St. John’s. When they laid down for the night, the captives were secured by a long strap placed on their prostrate bodies; several Indians lying upon each end of the strap ready to awake and tomahawk them upon the least movement looking toward an escape. Frequently, also, his hair would be frozen to the ground when he awoke. Once John secured one of the guns of his captors, and would have attempted an escape had he not been dissuaded from it by his companion. On arriving at the Indian town – the capital of the St. Regis nation – his head was shaved and his face painted. He was forced, likewise, to submit to the terrible ordeals which the Indians inflict upon their prisoners, among other things being compelled to carry the scalps of his father and brother upon a pole through the camp. On reaching the British army, although but fifteen years old, he was forced into that. During his stay in the English camp he was an unwilling witness to many cruelties practiced upon American prisoners, one of which was the "running of the gauntlet" between two rows of Indians, who were allowed to beat them at every step. Of those who were subjected to this terrible ordeal every one died from its effects, with the exception of one spry Yankee boy, who adroitly dodged most of the blows. Although thus forced into the service, young Gonzalez was not allowed to participate actively in any campaign, from the fear that he would seize the opportunity to escape. He was accordingly confined in the garrison and employed in the manufacture of cartridges, doing, perhaps, in this way more for the American cause than if he had been fighting actively on their side; for he took good care to make them all simply of powdered charcoal. "I was resolved," he said, "that none made by me should ever harm my countrymen." Brave words and worthy of one whose every act was characterized by great and heroic daring!
Although peace was declared about a year after his capture, he was forced to remain two years longer in the service of those he detested, obtaining his release in the spring of 1785. Being a youth of great courage, and unusual intelligence and energy of character, he became a favorite with his officers. With a view to encourage settlers, and perhaps also to make a partial atonement for the sufferings which he had undergone, the British authorities offered land to each soldier who chose to remain under the English rule. The land thus offered to young Gonzalez was upon the site of the present city of Kingston. But although only eighteen years of age, he had seen too much of the Tories to cast in his lot with them. He accordingly rejected their offer with contempt, saying: "All I want of your land is enough to walk on until I get off from it!" and, as good as his word, he straightway returned, yet a mere boy, to the Mohawk valley.4 The first relative he found was his sister, Mrs. DeGraff, whose descendants yet reside on the same farm near Amsterdam.
His father, who met with so tragic an end, had previously contracted for about fifteen hundred acres of the best land in the county of Saratoga, but not having, at the time of his death, made sufficient payment to secure the title, the estate was lost. John, however, on arriving at his majority, bought a portion of the land, where he and his descendants have since resided. He built the first frame building in the south-west portion of the county. In 1791, he married Dorcas Hogan of Albany, by whom he had twelve children, and died October 7, 1823. He was succeeded in the homestead – near the scene of the tragedy – by his son Emanuel, who died January 31, 1872.5
1 Anneke Jansen, the first ancestor of Mrs. General Bullard, came to New Amsterdam about 1612, at the age of seventeen. At that time the Patroon of Rensselaerwyck (now a part of Albany) had a young superintendent of the affairs of the "Colonie," named Roeloff Jansen who was called to New Amsterdam occasionally on business, finally removing thither. On one of his visits during the administration of Van Twiller, he met Anneke, who, not long after, became his wife. They were both members of the Church in New Amsterdam, presided over by Dominie Everardus Bogardus, the first minister who filled a pulpit in the new Dutch city. He was a faithful, outspoken bachelor of thirty when he came, and baptized the four children of Roeloff and Anneke in regular order. At his death Roeloff left to his young widow, among considerable other property, a small farm funning on Broadway, from Warren to Duane Street – sixty-two acres "more or less." The widow had no one to look after her property and assist in training her children, and the dominie had no one to look after his clothes. Mutual sympathy in their destitution begat affection between the dominie and the widow, and they were married. Then the dame bore the honors of the double name of Anneke Jansen Bogardus. Thenceforth her landed property was known as "the Dominie’s Bowerie" or farm. They lived happily together until 1647, when Bogardus was lost at sea on his passage home from Holland in September of that year. He left his widow with four more children. The farm had been granted to Jansen by Van Twiller, and it was confirmed to Anneke by Stuyvesant in 1654. After the death of her husband Mrs. Bogardus went to Albany to live, where she died in 1663. Her will is among the public records there, dated January 29, 1663, by which she left her children and grandchildren all her real estate in equal shares, with a prior charge of one thousand guilders in favor of the children of the first marriage, "out of the proceeds of their father’s place, viz, a certain farm on Manhattan Island bounded on the North River." The title to this farm was confirmed to these heirs by Richard Nicolls, the first English governor after New Netherland and New Amsterdam both became New York. This is the property (now worth many millions) concerning which there is so much litigation by Anneke Jansen’s heirs. The curious reader will find other interesting particulars in relation to this matter in "Humbert vs. Trinity Church," 24 Wendell, page 587. Mrs. Waldo M. Potter (the wife of the late long time-honored editor of the Saratogian) is also a descendant of Anneke Jansen.
2 See French’s New York Gazetteer, page 642, ed. 1860. The names of Emanuel Gonzales and his son are found in a list of the freeholders of Ulster County in the year 1728, when they were living in the town of Kingston. – The Documentary History of New York, vol III, page 970
About 1763 a proclamation was issued offering a reward for the apprehension of Jacobus Gonzales and six others, all of Dutchess County, charged with high treason (Dunlap’s History of New York, Appendix cxciii.) This Jacobus was no doubt grandson of the first Don Manuel and a brother of Joseph, and this proclamation may have induced the removal of Joseph from Dutchess County into the wilderness north of the Mohawk.
3 This massacre broke up the Gonzalez family. Rebecca, the oldest daughter, had previously, February 25, 1776, married Emanuel De Graff, who lived two miles east of Amsterdam. The mother and the surviving children removed to Schenectady, and left the farm in the wilderness temporarily abandoned. The younger children continued to reside in Schenectady for many year, but the mother died soon after, broken-hearted on account of the uncertain fate of her son John. The granddaughter of David is now the wife of Commander Constable of the United States Navy, and yet resides at Schenectady. A granddaughter of Rebecca is the wife of Hon. P. R. Toll of Glenville, Schenectady County, N.Y.
4 His name was entered on the rolls of the British army as Consalus; and it has been so spelled by his descendants ever since.
5 Mrs. E. F. Bullard, of Saratoga Springs, is a daughter of this Emanuel.
|
