Note 3 — Chapter II · JOHNSON AS AN INDIAN TRADER.

Mr. E. F. De Lancey, the well-known writer on American history and genealogy, knew personally the grandchildren of Sir William Johnson, and has embodied valuable information about him and them in his notes to Jones’s “History of New York during the Revolutionary War.” In his letter to the writer, dated March 28, 1891, he kindly sent a transcript from a letter in Mrs. Bowes’s own handwriting—“Information my father gave me when with him. Catharine Wisenberg, a native of Germany, married to Sir W. Johnson, Bart. in the U. States of America, died in 1759.” Mrs. Bowes was a daughter of Sir John Johnson, who was a son of Sir William Johnson. It is probable that the spelling Wisenberg is only the phonetic form of Weissenburg. The local gossip and groundless traditions, like those set down by J. R. Simms, are in all probability worthless.