William Elliot Griffis

“ As soon as spring warmed the ground, the remnant of the survivors were back to seed their farms, to rebuild among the ashes their homes, and on the old site to uprear the palisades and start the town again. At intervals they welcomed back from captivity the captives, often grown from boyhood to man’s estate. ”

“ Between danger from Canada and the Leisler troubles, the villagers were already in the shadow of a great peril from without and in danger of anarchy from within. During the previous summer of 1689, the haughty Mohawks of the Mohawk Valley, allies of the Dutch and English, had destroyed Montreal. For this proceeding, the French were bound to take vengeance. The Leisler troubles divided the people, and the “Commonality” were ready to take up arms against the partisans of Andros, the flour monopolists, and the Jacobites. ”

“ Sixty corpses lay on the level waste of ashes. Twenty-five persons had escaped. Most of the dead who were not killed at once, but who in mortal wounds perished in their nightclothes, were found frozen on what was later called “Martyrs Street.” ”

“ Eencluys’s hill, “the brook which bounds through Union’s grounds,” still bears his name on its murmuring waters, he made over to the Church, for the benefit of the poor at Schenectady, his plantation, on condition that he should be kept in his old age and weakness. The deacons took good care of him until his death in 1683. Then they buried him with honors, and administered on his estate. The Arme weg, or “ poor pasture,” furnished fodder for the villagers’ cows for nearly two centuries. ”

“ He was the famous young man, who, his life spared in the massacre of 1690, went to Canada, was adopted into the tribe, lived as an Indian, but returned to his home, and died in old age as a Christian, a deacon, and a Dorpian. ”

“ Until the Peace of Ryswijk, in 1697, there was no safety in the Mohawk Valley except behind fortifications. The farmer worked with a musket at his side. There were many funerals of men found in the fields without hair and with lead inside their bodies. ”