The Old New York Frontier, ITS WARS WITH INDIANS AND TORIES. ITS MISSIONARY SCHOOLS. PIONEERS AND LAND TITLES, 1614-1800.

By FRANCIS WHITING HALSEY.

This volume, by the author of “The Pioneers of Unadilla Village,” deals with that territory which for more than a hundred years was the frontier between the white men and the Indians in New York State. The record has never before been printed in a book in its entirety from the first settlement. Even the Revolutionary part, embracing the Border Wars, has not been dealt with in any regularly published history since Stone, Simms, Jay Gould and Campbell wrote their now very scarce volumes fifty and sixty years ago.

Meanwhile, a large mass of new material has come to light in State publications, local histories and collections of manuscripts that seem not to have been accessible to any earlier writers. They shed floods of new light on an important subject and comprise about 160 large folio volumes. The author began his researches eleven years ago and completed “The Old New York Frontier” in the summer of 1900 after a personal examination of the Joseph Brant manuscripts in Wisconsin.

The Border Wars were integral parts of British campaigns in America. They bore the same, if a less important, relation to the struggle for control of the Hudson Valley that Burgoyne’s campaign and Arnold’s treason bore. What made them more barbarous, was the unarmed and defenseless state of the settlements attacked. Before the Tory and Indian invasions came to an end, more than 12,000 farms on this frontier had ceased to be cultivated, some hundreds of women had become widows and thousands of children orphans.

The volume relates almost wholly to the headwaters of the Susquehanna from Otsego Lake to Old Oghwaga (Windsor) and to the valley of the upper Mohawk—a region to which Fenimore Cooper has given enduring interest as containing the home of himself and his father and the scenes of some of his most famous works of fiction.

CONTENTS. [DIVIDED INTO 43 CHAPTERS.]

INTRODUCTION: Why This History?

PART I. (In 3 Chapters.) Indians and Fur Traders. PART II. (In 7 Chapters.) Missionaries and the French War. 1650-1774.

PART III. (In 5 Chapters.) Land Titles and Pioneers. 1679-1774. PART IV. (In 5 Chapters.) The Border Wars Begun. 1776-1777.

PART V. (In 5 Chapters.) Overthrow of the Frontier. 1777-1778. PART VI. (In 4 Chapters.) The Sullivan Expedition. 1779.

PART VII. (In 5 Chapters.) Last Years of the War. 1780-1783. PART VIII. (In 8 Chapters.) The Restoration of the Frontier. 1782-1800.

FOURTEEN FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

Portrait of Joseph Brant

Council Rock, Otsego Lake

Portrait of Sir Wm. Johnson

Fort Oswego

Portraits of Four Eminent New York Indians

Monument at Oriskany

Portrait of Fenimore Cooper

Monument at Cherry Valley

Portrait of Col. Marinus Willett

The Susquehanna at Unadilla Village

Portrait of Gen. James Clinton

An Iroquois Fort in Central New York

Otsego Hall, Cooperstown

Confluence of the Susquehanna and Unadilla Rivers

TWO MAPS.

The Frontier of New York in the Revolution.

Early Land Patents on the Frontier, with dates and owners’ names.

Charles Scribner’s Sons, Publishers 153-157 Fifth Avenue, New York. 8vo, $2.50 net.