1712

January - Governor Hunter’s Financing

1st Governor Hunter wrote to the Lords of Trade about the base way he was betrayed by Mr. Bridger and insinuated that his betrayal was instigated by someone else who did not want the project to succeed to begin with. Nevertheless, Governor Hunter pushed forward. He wanted it to work. And now he was financing the entire operation out of his own pocket. It was winter again and there was no chance of any more progress until spring. Seventy cattle were slaughtered for the Palatine’s larders.

March

1st It was getting expensive.

“Your Lordships may guess at my uneasiness having heard nothing from your Lordships since last summer neither have I advice of the Paym’t of any of my Bills on account of the Palatines, but I go on with the work as if I had, having as your Lordships well know her Majesty’s Commands to that Effect. I wait with great impatience for your Lordships commands…”- Governor Hunter.

April

1. The footbridge to the manor house gave way from heavy ice and pulled away part of the dam causing a flood that destroyed the sawmill and the grain mill.
2. The Livingstons had to haul grain from a little mill in Catskill, and they complained about the cost.
3. The Livingstons activated their Palatine guards in fear of an Indian attack after two of their black slaves escaped to Canada and told the French that eight more were looking for a chance to run away.
4. The Palatines stood guard over them for about a week.

Poor Mrs. Livingston, if only God knew what she had to go through and put up with. It must have just been awful for her.

“After you left Mr. Kas came here accusing you of being a traitor and that you baked corn bread and gave it out without his order. Also that you have stirred up the people. I think he will approve the list but not before writing the governor. There are 300 loaves of 5 lbs. each but he does not want them used without the governor’s order. The people want to take the bread, but they can not, so you will have to talk to the governor. I think it is to his advantage not to quarrel with us.”

“They are baking white bread again to be a nuisance and to prevent you from getting your money…” - Alida Livingston.

The gall of those people.

Barking up the Wrong Tree

Oh, well. Meanwhile back in London, the report was finally in describing the:

“Method of Preparing Tar in Muscovy”

And the report described - a somewhat different method - to bark trees than Mr. Sackett had done. He had instructed and supervised the Palatines to bark the trees the wrong way. In addition, not only were the trees barked the wrong way, but they also did it in the wrong season. Moreover, not only were the trees barked the wrong way and in the wrong season, but they were the wrong kind of pine trees. They should have been barking Pitch Pine Trees. They had barked White Pine Trees instead. One hundred thousand trees were now useless. The tar making operation was finished.

A suspicion is that Mr. Bridger knew it all along and that is why he refused to return. Bridger had wanted to set up the tar operation in New England as you recall and the government discarded the New England site in favor of Governor Hunter’s plan.

And Governor Hunter finally got some answers to his payment reimbursement inquiries. It went something like this:

“Sorry, the Lord Treasurer was not in. He will have to get back to you.”

That meant exactly what it sounded like. Governor Hunter was being left out on a limb. But for some reason, he just didn’t get it. He drew up new plans for the coming season to speed up production. There were 10 new rules to use a military guard to enforce work and punish negligence. The Palatine listmasters were to have absolutely no control over the punishment. Now it was to be run like a slave labor camp.


June

Governor Hunter wrote to the Lords of Trade that the Palatines were greatly encouraged and that he heard no complaints. The Lords were probably thrilled at the good news.


July

Governor Hunter wrote that the beer must be much reduced and only given to workers and not to the families. It was real expensive now.

It is impossible to know what the Christmanns were feeling. We can only imagine. They probably had no idea what was happening behind the scene. All they could do is pray and hope that all of the provision problems would end and life would get more comfortable. Little did they know that their prayers had been answered in a greater way. Nothing is coincidence. The sequence and links of all the politics and all of the plans and all of the personalities had meshed together for a greater reason. The purpose for Livingston Manor was over. It was time to sort and distribute people again, for the coming exchange of the guard.

September - The Order to Stop Work

6th Governor Hunter gave orders to Jean Cast to cease the entire operation.

“I have, at length, exhausted all the money and credit I was master of for the support of the Palatines, and have, thereby, I assure you, embarrassed myself with difficulties which I know not how to surmount if my bills of exchange be not paid. If, however, I were able to go on, that would not discourage me, having such ample order from Her Majesty to subsist them that I doubt not her goodness to reimburse me.”

“Therefore, I have no desire that the people quit their establishments, now the work has arrived at such a point of perfection. To prevent their perishing and the total abandonment of the work, I have devised this expedient which you will communicate to them, and then execute.” – Governor Hunter.

Cast read the order to stop work to the Palatines. He told them to fend for themselves and seek employment only in New York or New Jersey. He read the contract to them again, he told them to keep their whereabouts registered at all times, and to be ready to return to work at a future date. Then he wished them good luck - and rode away.

All of the sudden - Freedom.

Freedom & Schoharie

The first thing the Palatines did was to send scouts to Schoharie. When they returned, the Palatines as an overall group, made some interesting choices regarding where they directed the focus of their faith. Most of them decided to accept the security that they knew, and accepted an offer to stay at the camps from Robert Livingston. The rest decided to pursue the dream of freedom and life in the Schoharie Valley.

However, about 50 families decided to go right away without any preparation for winter, the rest decided it was more practical to go slow now and go fast later. They went to Albany and Schenectady seeking the charity of Dutch families, and made preparations to go to Schoharie in the spring. That group included the Christman family.

The Palatines testified, about what happened next, in a paper they wrote dated 1720:

“This was at the latter end of the year and winter just at hand, which is very severe, there being no provision to be had, and the people bare of clothes, which occasioned a terrible consternation amongst them – and particularly from the women and children the most pitiful and dolorous cries and lamentations that have, perhaps, ever been heard from any persons under the most wretched and miserable circumstances – so that they were at last, much against their wills, put under the hard necessity of seeking relief from the Indians, upon which some of their chiefs [Palatine men] were suddenly dispatched away to the Indians [of Schoharie] by whom they were kindly received, and to whom they opened their miserable condition; and that being wholly cast off by the said Governor, and left destitute of the means of living elsewhere, they intreated them to give ‘em permission to settle on the tract of land called Schorie, which they immediately granted, saying they had formerly given that said land to Queen Anne for them to posess, and that nobody else should hinder them of it, and they would assist them as far as they were able; whereupon the chiefs [Palatine men] returned to the people, aquainting them of the Indians favorable disposition.”

“This put the people in some heart, and finding it absolutely necessary to embrace that opportunity so providently bestowed upon them, all hands fell to work, and in two weeks time cleared a way through the woods 15 miles long, with the utmost toil and labor, though almost starved and without bread; which being effected, 50 families were immediately sent to Schorie. When being arrived and almost settled, they there received orders from the Governor not to go upon the land, and he who did so should be declared a rebel.”
—Grievances of the Palatines in New York, received in London August 20, 1722.

October

17th Governor Hunter wrote to Jean Cast:

“I only pray to God to turn away the vengeance that menaces them & which they have richly deserved.” —Governor Hunter.

“In the end some two hundred barrels of tar (made out of knots gathered by the children) was all that this gigantic experiment yielded – not enough to pay for the special rum ration issued to keep unwilling Palatines at work.”

31st To the Lord Treasurer of England:

“My Lord, were I not persuaded that the complaints of the distressed are only grievous to your Lordship when you have no redress in your power, I would not, at this time, presume to trouble you with mine, consisting with these three heads. The bills of the expedition to Canada not answered, all the bills for the subsistence of the Palatine’s unpaid, and an expensive government without a support…”

“Some hundreds of them took a resolution of possessing the lands of Scoharee, and are accordingly marched thither, having been busy in cutting a road from Schenectady to that place; and have purchased or procured a quantity of Indian corn toward their winter subsistence; it being impossible for me to prevent this, I have been the easier under it upon these conditions, that, by these means, the body of that people is kept together within the province, that when it shall please Her Majesty to resume the design of prosecuting that work, that body at Scoharee may be employed in working in that vast pine woods near to Albany, which they must be obliged to do, having no manner of pretense to ye possession of any lands but by performing their part of the contract relating to that manufacture; and that in that situation they serve in some measure as a frontier to, or, at least, an increase to, the strength of Albany and Schenectady, etc.”
– Governor Hunter.

How did the Palatines respond?

“This message of the Governor sounded like thunder in their ears, and surprised them beyond expression, but having seriously weighed matters amongst themselves, and finding no manner of likelihood of subsisting elsewhere, but a certainty of perishing with hunger, cold, etc., if they returned, they found themselves under the fatal necessity of hazarding the Governor’s resentments, that being to all more eligible than starving.”
- Grievances of the Palatines in New York, received in London August 20, 1722.

The Scouts are believed to have been the Palatine listmasters, and principle men, of the Livingston Manor villages, headed by John Weiser. Evidently, they immediately went to Albany to meet with the Dutch contacts they made during either the Canadian expedition, or when they were working on Fort Hunter.

“An Indian piloted the delegation of Palatines from the camps over the Helleberg from Albany, said Brown, to find the land of promise in 1712…”

“It must have been a mellow September sunlight, when the messengers gained from a commanding eminence a view, which took in the estuary of Foxescreek and the Schoharie, from whence their eyes rested upon the most delightful scene they had ever beheld.”

“The Schoharie Flatts were spread out before them like a neglected garden, while opposite the mouth of Foxescreek their view was obstructed by a romantic mountain. I was unable to learn its Indian name…”

“They only remained long enough in the valley to confer with its native warriors, who looked with favor on their aspirations, and promised them a welcome; when they hastened back to their anxious brethren.” – Jeptha Simms.

“…When the above mentioned deputies had returned from the Maqua country to lewenstein Manor the people moved the same Autumn to Albany and Shonechtady so as to be able to move in the spring to schochary bread was excessively dear.”

“The people worked hard For Their daily bread and the Inhabitants were very kind and did Much good to the german newcomers, though for that matter there were some ill-disposed persons too, my Father reached Shenechady the same fall where he remained with his family over winter with a man named Johannes Meyndert.” - Conrad Weiser.

The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives. Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established. The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil. Proverbs 16:1-4

Conrad Weiser and the Maqua

While that was happening, King Hendrick and some other Mohawk sachems went through Schenectady to Albany to meet the new missionary for Fort Hunter named Reverend William Andrews from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. After a meeting with him they were delayed from returning by a heavy snowstorm but by

November 20: The Indians began making their way back to the castles through Schenectady. They stopped at Johannes Meydert’s house.

“A chief of the Maqua Nation Named Qua-y-nant visited my father they agreed that I should go with qua-y-nant to his country to learn the Maqua language I went with him and reached the Maqua country towards the end of November…”
- Conrad Weiser.

Conrad Weiser was 16 years old when he undertook this task and isn’t it odd that he was the exact right person undergoing the right circumstances to put him at the right place at the right time. And to better understand and illustrate what young Conrad was in for, and his gifted intellect, Mr. Andrews wrote about his own Dutch interpreter and learning the Maqua language:

“The Interpreter is a dutch man and it is certaine it would be better if he was an English man but there was not one Englishman to be found in all the province that understands the Indian Language nor never another Dutchman besides this understands it well enough to be an Interpreter. The Dutch Traders with the Indians can speak Indian enough for their Trading and but little more. The Mohocks Language is Extreame hard to be learnt and the Interpreter says that he thinks it is almost impossible for any to learn it perfectly except they begin with it when children.”

December 16th: Governor Hunter writing to the Lords of Trade:

“The Palatines continue upon the grounds where I have planted them, so that we have them at hand when Her majesty shall think to re-assume the design, and require the performance of their contract.” – Governor Hunter.

The Christman family is found on a subsistence list from their arrival in 1710 through 1712, which reads:

Christman, Hans 3-3, 5-3.

In 1710, the family had 3 people over 10 years old and 3 people less than 10 years old. They apparently had another unknown child by then, probably another daughter. However, from this point forward there are only records for the three boys: Hans Nicholas, Jacob, and Frederick.

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