When the large contingent of Palatines moved to the Schoharie Valley, there were no white men living there, nor had any claim been made to the land by the Europeans. The Palatines thought that they had purchased the land from the Indians. Gov. Hunter was very put out that the Palatines had left the Hudson River where he was hoping that the naval stores project could be resumed and he could recover his own money that he had put into the project. Perhaps as an inducement for the Palatines to move back, he encouraged other Europeans to claim the land in the Schoharie Valley which fell into the hands of a group of seven men. Hunter, in his reports to London, said that the land had been granted to certain gentleman of Albany before the Palatines arrived there.
A struggle between the patentees and the Palatines followed with amusing and pathetic stories to enter the folklore of the region. The struggle went on for ten years until a new governor, Burnet, arrived in 1720. He set about to resolve the crisis.
During this ten years, another episode was unfolding which was to have far ranging future implications. One of the leaders of the community of Palatines in the Schoharie Valley was Johann Conrad Weiser, who had a young son of the same name. The younger Conrad lived for several years with the Indians. In the process, he learned their language and gained their respect. He looked upon the Indians as friends and treated them as such. For decades after this time, he was considered by the Indians as their one true friend. He acted as an interpreter at most of the Indian conferences in the middle Colonies. (A daughter also became the wife of Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutheran faith in America.)
Gov. Burnet had a difficult task to resolve the claims of the patentees and the sense of righteousness of the Palatines. One part of the solution was to grant the Palatines a new patent in a different region which would be clearly theirs. This was twenty miles along the Mohawk River. At about this same time, there was a great conference between the governors of New York, Pennsylvania, [and Virginia with Gov. Spotswood]. Gov. Keith of Pennsylvania, learning of the difficulties of the Palatines, offered them land and security in Pennsylvania. [Pennsylvania had by this time received many hundreds of Palatines, so Gov. Keith had some sense of the kind of citizens they would be.]
The Palatines in New York were of three or four minds. Some made terms with the landowners along the Hudson, some made leases or purchases in the Schoharie Valley, some moved to the Mohawk Valley, and some moved to Pennsylvania to the Tulpehocken region. During the Schoharie struggles Conrad Weiser, Sr., had gone to England to present the Palatine’s case to the Crown. He remained five years and returned a broken man. His son, Conrad, Jr., succeeded him as the leader in the Pennsylvania group.
(17 Oct 06)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.