Author: Mike Messner

“Schuyler” is one of those names in New York history that pops up quite frequently, partly because they were a prominent family. But it’s also one of those names that you may suddenly realize you’ve heard many times. “Schermerhorn” is another one (no kidding).

So is “Burr,” for that matter, as in Aaron and family. Several Burrs are buried very close to the Long Island town where I grew up. I have childhood memories of passing a cemetery in Smithtown and seeing BURR on a few of the tombstones. It wasn’t until later that I learned it was the same family.

As far as the Schuylers, they were originally from the Albany area but after his father died he was raised in the New Rochelle area. Most of his military experience derived from fighting on the side of the British in the French and Indian War. Later in his life he lived on his estate in Saratoga, just north of Albany. He spent some time as a member of Congress and is also known for being Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law.

In 1775, New York didn’t have a Times Square, nor a Statue of Liberty, nor even a Brooklyn Bridge. Bagels hadn’t made it to the new world, and pizza wasn’t a thing yet.

So why did George Washington feel it necessary to stop in New York City on his way to Boston?

Short answer: he knew that some of the locals were nervous about his taking command of the army.

Longer answer: oh no, you don’t. You’re going to have to listen to Mike tell you.

There are lots of times when historians have to pull a lot of small pieces together to get a decent picture of events. They use oddball clues such as artifacts in paintings to determine someone’s state of health, for instance. They have to take into account that published reports could be propaganda in nature.

But once in a while, something turns up that was written more or less at the time it happened, and what’s more it was written by someone who doesn’t necessarily have an agenda.

And in this case, nobody even knew it existed until a hundred years later. Exactly a hundred years later, in fact. A young soldier named Peter Brown wrote a letter to his mother just a few days after the Bunker Hill battle to tell her what happened. He spared few details and told a rather complete story of a couple of days’ worth of activity. And while he did mail the letter, and his mother did receive it, it mostly lay in family archives until 1875, when a descendant found it and realized that it might be important.

With the war in full swing and a Commander-in-Chief on his way to Boston, the Continental Congress took the next step of finding a way to organize the troops.

So naturally they formed a committee. The Committee of Seven (maybe all the good names were taken?) worked diligently for about three weeks to put together a plan that would indicate just who could fight and how they would be organized. There were still some details to iron out, but in the meantime the disaggregated militias were getting the job done. All that remained was to aggregate them into a single fighting force.

While the Green Mountain Boys were very successful so far in their military exploits, they were still just some unaffiliated militia group. At best they were considered Patriot-sympathetic, but not much else.

After the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Crown Point, two of their leaders decided that it was time to get official recognition. So they headed down to Philadelphia to bring their case to the Continental Congress.

Here’s a hard economic reality: if you want to break away from a parent nation, you need to stop using their currency.

Here’s another one: if you’re going to issue currency, you certainly need to have the capital to back it up.

And you also don’t want to make it easy to counterfeit.

New Jersey’s Provincial Congress first convened in May, but by now they’d gotten a bunch of stuff done. They’d already made arrangements to remove the Royal Governor from power, and resolved to do it like gentlemen (it didn’t work out that way, unfortunately).

At this point the colony had only one delegate to the Continental Congress: a couple had resigned, one never showed up, and that left exactly one man holding down the fort. So the Provincial Congress appointed new delegates, with a specific mission.

Mike has already mentioned the location of the historical marker in today’s art. It’s tough to read even when you’re standing there, so here’s the text:

At or near this place
ever since known as
“Liberty Point”
was promulgated in
June 1775,
by patriots of the Cape Fear
A Declaration of Independence
of the British Crown.

This was an extremely historic neighborhood, should you choose to visit. There are at least eight other historical markers within a short walking distance of this one, not all of them are connected to the American Revolution. In fact, one of them dates back to living memory of some of the locals.

Sometimes when you’re watching a movie or listening to music, you find yourself in the awkward position of separating the artist from the work, because it turns out that the artist has some shady stuff going on in the past, or even in the present. But the song/movie/book is just so good that you need to temporarily overlook that.

Such is the case, we think, with Vardry Echols McBee, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who basically invented the town of Greenville, South Carolina. He was also a slave owner who sided with the Union but provided material assistance to the Confederacy.

Mixed messages! Conflict of loyalty!

But it’s also clear that he was instrumental in making the town of Greenville what it is today, even more than 150 years later. What’s more, by all contemporary accounts he did it “without pride, pretense or ostentation.”

It’s Cake and Candles today for a future State Representative of a future state.

Orsamus Cook Merrill was born in Connecticut but moved to Vermont coincidentally the same year that the Vermont Republic was admitted to the Union as our fourteenth state. He spent the rest of his life in the Bennington area, working in jobs as diverse as newspaper editor or publisher, postmaster, attorney and Engrossing Clerk for the Vermont House of Representatives before becoming a Representative himself.

(For those not in the know: an Engrossing Clerk is responsible for preparing prints of intermediate drafts of bills that a governing body is considering before they vote at the next stage.)

By most accounts, he represented his constituents well, and he was largely done in by shifts in the political winds. He died in 1865 and is buried in Bennington Centre Cemetery.