The legends and traditions of a northern county

Front matter

I f i taftlf • tMiliivt vv.t'.l''f''' ■■■'

4>

< o

Foreword

This is not a history nor, strictly speaking, merely Legends and Traditions ; it is less than the former and perhaps more than the latter. The facts are correctly stated where given, the anecdotes and legends are repeated as told to me by members of an older generation, and my own experience and impressions are truly set forth.

The whole was written with the hope of preserving for future generations of my family the life and the thoughts of people living under conditions which are gone forever, and of creating in the minds of its readers the atmosphere in which they lived, struggled, died, and were buried.

It is written in compliance with repeated requests of my four sons, in fulfillment of my promise to each of them, and with the hope that it may foster in those of my descendants who may read it a love of the beautiful country with which their ancestors have been so closely associated for generations. If it does this, and perhaps induces them to familiarize themselves to a greater extent with the history of the town and county and State, I shall feel that it is well done.

J. F. C.

COOPERSTOWN,

May, ig2o vu

AN INTRODUCTION

In i6i2, three years after Hendrick Hudson came to Albany, and eight years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, two Dutch explorers came up the Mohawk from Albany (Fort Orange), crossed over the hills to Otsego Lake, and went down the Susquehanna Valley. They undoubtedly stopped at the Indian village which then occupied the site of Cooperstown, and were the first white men known to visit this country. They filed a map of their wanderings in Amsterdam, where it was found a few years ago.

Probably an occasional white man, priest or trader, visited Otsego Lake during the next century, but no settlement was attempted until Rev. John Christopher Hartwick, a Lutheran minister, thinking the lake was on his patent, started one about 1761. He abandoned it on finding that his line ran a mile or two further south. A little later, in 1770, came George Croghan, Sir Wm. Johnson's successor as Indian agent, and one of the patentees of the tract of 109,000 acres on which the lake and town are situated, and built a log house and outbuildings, and lived here with his family until just before the Revolution.

X ^n 39introbuctton

During the war the red Indians under Brant and the more brutal blue-eyed ones under Butler made this lonely spot unsafe for settlers, and it was abandoned to the wilderness.

In 1779 Gen. Clinton with his troops, on their expedition to punish the Six Nations, camped here for several weeks, built a dam at the source of the Susquehanna, broke it, and went down on the flood.

Again the wilderness closed in on the vestiges of the settlement, until, in 1785, William Cooper arrived on horseback with his gun and fishing rod. He camped on the spot, returned to his home in Burlington, and bought about 50,000 acres, including the present village site. The next year he started a settlement and a few years later brought his family and servants from Burlington, N. J., and lived here until his death in 1809.

The town, known first as "Foot of the Lake," then as "Cooperton, " and "Coopers Town, " and for a short period as "Otsego," finally settled down to the "Cooperstown" of to-day.