Chapter 2 – Settling the Land

Fur trade and pursuit of other riches. Trappers and fur traders are likely to have been the first of the few white visitors to pass through the valley of the Charlotte.  In the spring of 1723 thirty-three German Palatines passed through, stopping at Davenport’s “canoe place” (chapter 1) on their way to Pennsylvania.  “The next known appearance of white men in the area,” according to Delaware County Historian John D. Monroe, was not until 1734 when a party came to what is now Hancock in search of mines.[1] The third group to enter what was to become Delaware County, again according to Monroe, was a party of surveyors in 1738, and more surveyors certainly followed over the next three to four decades.  Further Palatine migrations followed from the Mohawk region, some passing through the future Stamford and down the West Branch of the Delaware.

In later years, the attraction of Europeans to this area was less about fur trading and mining (no valuable minerals were ever found in Delaware County) than about occupying the land itself with a chance to earn an independent living from the wilderness.  Around 1741, Cherry Valley began to be occupied by families from a Scotch-Irish background, including in 1754 John Harper, Sr., and family from Winsor, Connecticut.  (The term “Scotch-Irish” was invented mainly to describe Scotch emigrants who stopped in Ireland, mostly in Ulster and sometimes for more than one generation, on their way to America.)  The Dutchman Joachim Van Valkenberg occupied an older Indian farm at the mouth of Schenevus Creek in 1765.[2] Other small settlements grew elsewhere, but by 1769, the date of the seminal Fort Stanwix treaty, there were no more “than about 100 families in these scattered settlements on the upper Susquehanna.”[3]

 On the Charlotte River and its subsidiaries there would have been at most a small handful of families.  It is doubtful that the first group of Palatines stayed for any length of time other than to make maple sugar and to prepare their canoes.  In 1771, following the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, John Harper, Jr. moved his family from Cherry Valley to the new Harper Patent.  Others from Cherry Valley followed.  In January 1772 Christopher Servoss[4] and his two sons exchanged a farm and improvements in the Mohawk Valley for 1,500 acres of Sir William Johnson’s land in the Charlotte River Patent.  The location was above what is now Simpsonville and near or in South Worcester.  Above Servoss on the Charlotte there was a 1,000-acre tract occupied by the five Bartholomew brothers, Benjamin, Thomas, Joseph, James, and John.[5]

These pioneer families made a subsistence living from the soil and the forests.  They gradually cleared the heavily wooded land, growing Indian corn, some wheat, rye, beans, and squash.  Their few livestock went largely unfenced, and they earned small amounts of cash and store-goods from the sale of maple sugar and of ashes from their cleared trees.[10] 

Hazel C. Mathews quotes “a leading economist of the time,” Tenche Coxe, writing in the early 1800s, as follows:[11]

The settler in making his clearing must take care to burn the brush and wood in such manner to preserve the ashes.  Out of the wood ashes, thus saved, he should make as much pot ash or pearl ash, as he can, and he should dispose of this for ready money…It is believed that the pot ash or pearl ash will procure him as much value as all the expense and labour of clearing, during the season, would be worth in cash…In this way it is plain that he will derive money enough from the clearing and pot ashes of every year, to do much the same in the year following.[12]

Potash, for which there was a steady commercial and even an export market, was made by first processing wood ashes into lye.  The lye was evaporated and then purified into white “pearl ash.”  The final product, potash, was used for the manufacture of soap and glass.  Christopher Servoss on the Charlotte River was reported to have had a potash works equipped with three large kettles.  Such “asheries” were a common manufacturing activity in early settlements.  Two men could make a ton of pearl ash per month, worth, in 1769, 40 pounds sterling.

After land and trees, waterpower was the next most important natural resource.  A lumber mill was reported just below Utsayantha Lake in 1777.[13]  Initially the Charlotte Valley settlers took their grain to the Schoharie Valley for milling, but a 1778 sketch-map by Capt. William Gray shows gristmills near present South Worcester (Christopher Servoss) and on Banyar’s Brook (now Wright’s Brook) above the present Bloomville.[14] John Harper built a gristmill in 1775 on Center Creek, a tributary to the Charlotte.[15]

In what is now Davenport proper, given the sparseness of the population and the primitiveness of farming, it appears that neither grist nor lumber mills existed before the Revolution.  The first framed house did not appear (at West Davenport) until the 1820s.  Daniel Prentice built Davenport’s first milldam, according to lawyer-historian Walter Scott, across Middle Brook about 1793.[16] 

The town may have missed an opportunity during the 1990s to celebrate two hundred years of recorded history.  Certainly, as detailed in Chapter 1, human occupation began much earlier, but 1799 may be the first year for which the town today has an actual document that pertains to an early settler.  As shown in the original citation below, in March of that year Daniel Prentice (also Prentis) posted a recognizance for fifty pounds—a very large sum in those days—before Justice James Wetmore of Kortright on behalf of the State of New York.  This bond was to serve as a surety against allowing gaming (including “shuffel board”) at his tavern or on his premises.  (See photo of the original document.)  By 1817, the tavern bonds were $125, rising to $250 between 1863 and at least 1895.[17]

The 1799 tavern was presumably near Daniel Prentice’s mill, located on Middle Brook in today’s Hoseaville at the end of Yurdon (Yerdon) Pond Road, off Buck Road.  This would also have been close to but across the creek from the main east-west trail of those days.  This trail ran west along the north side of Middle Brook and thence further westward along the north side of the Charlotte River.  At the close of the 1800s, the Daniel Prentice dam powered both a gristmill and a sawmill.[18]  It was known at the time and up to the 1920s as Yerdon’s Mill.[19] 

Davenport’s first known settlers.  Who were the early Davenport inhabitants?  As with Delaware County in general, settlers came to Davenport from three distinct backgrounds. 

Some Palatine Germans (“High Dutch”) came to stay, if not from the time of the 1723 migration then from later migrations out of the Mohawk and Schoharie valleys.[20]  Other “Low Dutch” settlers (that is, those from today’s Netherlands) had much earlier worked their way up from New Amsterdam and settled the East Branch of the Delaware.[21]

 Another group was made up of New Englanders, many of them second and third generation Scotch-Irish.  These included the several Harper brothers (Col. John Jr., Joseph and Alexander as well as their sister Abigail and her husband, William McFarland ) and others of their neighbors who relocated from Cherry Valley to the future Harpersfield. 

Grantees in the deed of 1763 for New Stamford, east of what was to become Harpersfield, were also New Englanders.  They came from Stamford, Connecticut, and many of these were probably newly prosperous men of means looking to expand their fortunes.  At least half of the first 20 New Stamford landholders seem to have been attracted by the speculative possibilities of land and to have never lived in the fledgling town.[22]  (The same was true of many patentees such as wealthy businessman Lawrence Kortright, of Dutch background, who never lived in his Kortright Patent.)

Sir William Johnson was more inclined to encourage land settlement rather than to engage in speculation.  He wished to sell or lease his more distant lands to independent farmers.[23]  The Servoss family and the Bartholomews were examples of the more self-sufficient individuals he sought for his Charlotte River holdings.

Finally, the families who first settled the area that became East Davenport and Kortright came from a rich historical Scottish background.  They were part of a group of Highlanders who left their native land in 1773 during the ongoing Highland Clearances.  Their story is of sufficient interest to the history of Davenport to warrant telling in more detail.

Scotch Highlanders in the Charlotte Valley.  Our interest arises for several reasons.  Three of these Scotch Highlanders were among the earliest known Davenport settlers and the earliest for whom we have hard details about their actual lives.  Paradoxically (more below) this was because they all chose the Loyalist side in the war that shortly followed their arrival.  Finally, despite their Tory actions and later escape to Canada, some relatives or descendents probably returned to the area after the war, contributed to the growth of the new town, and gave rise to one of Davenport’s most distinguished men of the mid-1800s.  This was William “Uncle Billy” McDonald.  (See Chapter 8.)

First, some background.[24]  Times were extraordinarily difficult in Scotland in the year 1773.  Families were being forced off their lands, replaced by more profitable sheep.  Poverty and unemployment were widespread.  Intensive emigration, often to the lands of the New World, was continuing.  Near their Invergarry Castle stronghold on Loch Oich, “four Macdonells[25] of Glen Garry, three brothers and a cousin, were organizing a large company” to depart from Scotland.  The MacDonells, from an extensive and numerous clan, were often known by the names of their properties.  The three brothers were John of Leek, Alexander of Aberchalder, and Allan McDonell of Collachie.  The cousin, John of Scotus, was from the Isle of Skye.

The company, containing 260 McDonells and perhaps 20 other emigrants, chartered a ship, the Pearl, and proceeded to New York.  They explored land possibilities with their kinsman, Sir William Johnson, with the wealthy New York businessman and landowner Lawrence Kortright, and undoubtedly with that ubiquitous fixer and expediter, Goldsbrow Banyar.  Alexander McDonell of Aberchalder along with his fellow voyagers, Hugh Fraser and John Cameron, proceeded to Albany and later to the Johnson and Kortright lands lying along the Charlotte and also along the nearby tributaries flowing into the West Branch of the Delaware River. There they undoubtedly met Hugh McKay, who two years earlier had migrated from Scotland to the Kortright Patent.  The lands reminded them of Scotland, and the advance party reported back favorably on the prospective country.

Soon at least five of the Scotch families from the Pearl moved to the lands of Lawrence Kortright.  Another two or three families came by a different ship and arrived in the same year of 1773.  Still another five settled on the Kortright Patent in the following year to bring the total to at least eleven.

Three of the original McDonells acquired lands along the Charlotte: John of Scotus, also known as “Spanish” John, purchased the north side of lots 12, 13, and 14; Alexander of Aberchalder, leased the north side of adjoining lot 15; and Roderick “Rory” McDonell leased the south part of lot 17.[26]  Roderick was a friend and follower of John McDonell.  He could possibly have been a brother or a cousin of the three organizers of the expedition but was not mentioned as such by later authors.[27]

Spanish John’s outright purchase of his 491 acres was unusual; most of his Scotch neighbors were only able to lease.  The four lots of John of Scotus and Alexander McDonell included much of what later became Fergusonville.  Rory McDonell’s 150 acres included the intersection of the present Route 23 and the road to Fergusonville (County Route 9) in Butts Corners.

Most of the Scots settling on the upper Charlotte and its nearby tributaries were Catholics, followers of Sir William Johnson and, like Sir William and his heirs, strong adherents to the British monarchy.  They rallied to the loyalist cause at the start of the American Revolution and subsequently lost all of their lands and possessions, sequestered by the Patriots.  They later claimed reimbursement from the British Parliament, and it is from these 1783-1789 claims that we learn more of these Scotch loyalists than of any other settlers from Davenport’s earliest days.

Alexander McDonell had cleared nine of his 150 acres in lot 15 by the time of his departure.  He had in three or four years erected a house, barn, and stables.  He sowed wheat, rye, oats, barley, “pease,” and buckwheat.  His livestock consisted of a bull, two oxen, a heifer, a mare, and two sheep.  The value of his lost property, including household furnishings, cowbells and harrow teeth, totaled 136 pounds.  Roderick McDonell had also managed to clear nine acres.  He had one less ox than did Alexander but one more heifer and four pigs.  Other holdings were about the same, and his claim totaled 137 pounds.

John McDonell of Scotus, by then a Tory Captain, in sharp contrast had cleared 60 of his 491 “choice” acres.  His buildings included a “barracks,” perhaps built for hired hands.  His livestock came to six horses, seven cows, ten sheep, eight hogs, and poultry.  Three hundred bushels of his grain and 330 of potatoes were seized by the Americans along with a pleasure sleigh, a work sleigh, plough, harrow, log chain, saddle, bridle, silver watch, and “14 pounds cash taken from his wife.”[28]

From the evidence of his claims and from the fact that he purchased rather than leased a large acreage, it appears that Spanish John was a relatively wealthy man.  We know that he had owned land in Scotland and had been able to “protect” Rory McDonell when the latter had been suspected of having been an English informer while in prison after Culloden (1746).  John McDonell’s wealth is also verified by his having opened up sixty acres of land, a feat that would only have been possible with hired labor.

Loyalists, rebels and Indians in the American Revolution.  John McDonell was one of only three yeomen (landowners) among the Scotch loyalists on the Charlotte and head of the Delaware.  He was a natural leader, and his military background thrust him into command of the loyalist troops raised in Kortright, Davenport, and Stamford. The exact number of these troops is not known[29] but was probably in the 100-200 range.  Most of the settlers, except for those in Harpersfield, either joined the Loyalist cause or, under coercion, swore neutrality.  For Delaware County, as a whole, “It is believed that a majority of the inhabitants…took the part of the Tories during the struggle.”[30]

Dr. James Stuart, a Scotch loyalist from Stamford and one of three landowners in the area, claimed to have induced fifty men to join Captain John McDonell, twenty-four Scotch and twenty-six Dutch.[31]  The “Dutch” were likely Palatine Germans and probably included two sons from the Stamford area’s Stoneburner (Steenbrander) family.  The “High Dutch” may have been largely from Schoharie, Stamford, and the West Branch of the Delaware, though the total group also may have included New Amsterdam “Low Dutch” from the East Branch.  The High Dutch presence reflects the underlying loyalty of the Palatine community to their monarchist and somewhat feudal-minded patrons, Sir William Johnson and his sons.

A small number of the Kortright Scots did not join the Loyalists cause.  After the war Alexander Leal, Alexander Mills, and “other Presbyterians” were able to return to their lands.[32] Another Scot, Hugh Rose, was the brother of Loyalists and suspected of Tory sympathies.  He, nevertheless, in his mill on Rose’s creek was able to survive the border wars and was perhaps “the only settler on the West Branch of the Delaware to continue there throughout the Revolution.”[33]

The Loyalist group recruited by Captain John McDonell looked to Sir John Johnson as their highest local authority, and they mostly joined his “King’s Royal Regiment of New York.”  Usually accompanied by Indians they took part in many actions in the subsequent border warfare, helping to make New York the scene of the bloodiest of the war’s border conflicts. 

Scalps and more scalps until it was all over.  Burning, massacres and scalp-taking are the principal charges against the Indians, but the Patriots were equally guilty of destroying “[Iroquois] village after village, field after field, and orchard after orchard.”[38]  There is controversy about the extent to which the British paid for scalps, but there is no doubt about the practice itself.  Hazel C. Mathews, no special friend of the American rebels, cites a March 1782 letter telling of intercepting eight large packages of scalps intended as a gift from the Senecas to the Governor of Canada for transmission to England.  The Senecas were allied with the British, and scalps belonged to their enemies, both other Indians and “rebel” colonists.  (Some of these scalps may have been from Cherry Valley.)  The eight gift packages contained 1,038 scalps, “cured, dried” and “stretched on black hoops.”  Each scalp was color coded to show sex, occupation and manner of death.  Eighteen scalps in package number 4, for instance, were “marked with a little yellow flame, to denote their being of prisoners burnt alive, after being scalped, their nails pulled out by the roots, and other torment.”[39]

 None of the border battles and skirmishes apparently took place in the area of Davenport itself, though the various armed groups at times undoubtedly marched up and down the Charlotte.  The Harpers’ settlement was hard hit and at one time burned.  Kortright, home to so many Loyalists, was generally spared though the Americans confiscated the Tory properties there.  Almost all settler families in the area, both Tory and rebel, left during the border clashes to avoid the bloodshed.

Eventually the war ended.  The United States gained its independence, the days of the Indians, both foe and friend, were numbered, and most of the loyalist Scots resettled in Canada.  The Scotch influence, however, by no means disappeared from the Charlotte Valley.  The Scots who had sided with the Americans, largely Presbyterians and often longer-term residents in the new lands, returned and reclaimed holdings abandoned earlier.  Even some McDonells reemerged.  Although it has not yet been possible to establish a direct genealogical connection between the pre-war McDonells and the later illustrious McDonald family of Davenport (of which more in a later chapter), the Davenport-Kortright census of 1810 showed the presence of the John, Cathrina, and Alexander McDonald households.  The 1790 census had shown ten families whose last names coincided with those of known Loyalists: Chisolm, two Clarks, McDonald, McKee, Mills, and four Stuarts.[40]  The 1820 census of Davenport, that town having been newly “extracted” from Kortright (and Maryland) in 1817, lists six McDonald households, including a William, a Hugh, a John, and an Alexander.

One of these last households likely occupied the old Butts Corners property of the long-departed Roderick Rory McDonell.  The Canadian Francis Ross McDonald, a descendent of Roderick Rory, suggested in a 1991 letter to the Davenport Historical Society that Davenport’s later William McDonald (1835-1930), son of Duncan McDonald, could have been related to Rory McDonell through one of Rory’s seven children, Duncan, final whereabouts unknown.  (Rory and his family had been captured just south of Albany and imprisoned for five year.)

Perhaps it was Rory’s son Duncan who later returned to the earlier family homestead on Lot 17, South, of the Charlotte River Patent.  (The genealogical problem, as suggested earlier, is not helped by the large numbers of McDonalds in the United States and Canada and by their sharply limited choice of first names in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.)