Happy 4th of July!
- Thread starter sweatmachine
- Start date
B06Tang
Cafe Racer
As my good friend from Brummie tells me...across the pond they are celebrating the 4th as well seeing that is the day they got rid of those yanks!
Sal Paradise
Hooligan
What the hell - I will throw some...... This is absolutely true. In October 1777 the British shelled my town on their way up the Hudson to burn the capital in Kingston. The cannon balls are in our town hall, and there are books, poems and oral history galore. This was part of the three point plan to cut NY and Boston off. In the Mohawk valley the patriots retreated but slowed the British. In The North Fort Ticonderoga Fell and on my river, the Hudson, the rebels duked it out with the British on both shores the whole way up. One evening the most powerful Navy in the world anchored off and shelled our landing, barely a mile from where my house is. I try and imagine what it was like. It must have seemed like the apocolypse. We know that women and children were sent to the mountain holding their family bibles and their silver...the militia ran along the cliffs and down to the landing with muskets and fired at the ships to let them know there would be no friendly reception here. With the townspeople hiding, I can guess there were no political discussions among those men who held muskets, shared powder and waited to see if the British would come ashore. My house is on the base of the mountain where everyone else fled and on a huge ancient boulder in my yard is carved, just barely visible, an ancient "1777". I have to think it's connected to this.
The Brits departed to burn Kingston the next morning without challenging the militia and the town was spared further destruction, except for a few well placed cannon balls. The delay of the British coming up the river was credited with causing enough delay of reinforcements that the battle of Saratoga weeks later was an American Victory and the turning point of the war. Ben Franklin was given news of this victory in France where he was negotiating an alliance with the French and the first official recognition of American sovereignty. Last night just about everyone in town sat down at the old landing and watched fireworks launched from a barge in the river. But the first fireworks there were pure terror.
Back to my boulder and 1777. Where was the turning point of the turning point? Could it all come down to one or two well placed musket balls? Could it have been witnessed by the very man who carved that rock or one of his family? I will never know but sometimes I stand on the boulder in my back yard and read the number and I think about it.
The Brits departed to burn Kingston the next morning without challenging the militia and the town was spared further destruction, except for a few well placed cannon balls. The delay of the British coming up the river was credited with causing enough delay of reinforcements that the battle of Saratoga weeks later was an American Victory and the turning point of the war. Ben Franklin was given news of this victory in France where he was negotiating an alliance with the French and the first official recognition of American sovereignty. Last night just about everyone in town sat down at the old landing and watched fireworks launched from a barge in the river. But the first fireworks there were pure terror.
Back to my boulder and 1777. Where was the turning point of the turning point? Could it all come down to one or two well placed musket balls? Could it have been witnessed by the very man who carved that rock or one of his family? I will never know but sometimes I stand on the boulder in my back yard and read the number and I think about it.
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sweatmachine
moped
+1. Thanks for sharing, Sal. Now, pics!
strokerlmt
Moderator
Very cool story....Thx Sal.....
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Sal Paradise
Hooligan
Pictures of the rock. Sorry crappy cell phone pics... but the rock is 7- 8' high and about 12' long and the date--- well the date is 1776 so my story is a little bit fucked but its still true. Look how weathered that date is in that hard limestone.
Background for the battle-
The river front in Highland became known as New Paltz Landing, and was humming with activity as early as any place in the east end of the the Paltz Township. Many homes were built along the river and the 1835 census listed about 200 people living at the landing. In the 1880's the construction of the West Shore Railroad with its 100' foot right of way took many of these houses.
In October of 1777, a British Navy ship fired upon the New Paltz Landing. Two cannonballs were recovered in the area now occupied by the oil tanks mentioned earlier. The cannonballs, fired by British Navel Officer Vaughn, are in the Town of Lloyd Historical collection. The late historian Warren Sherwood's poem, The Mountain, describes the inhabitants of the Landing hiding at the Rock House, a natural cavern formed by rock falling from the cliffs on Illinois Mountain:
...And old Henry Perkins
Along in his eighties
Still clearly remembered
The time that his mother
Took all of her children
Her Bible and silver
And walked through the Gap
With the Perkinsville women
To hide in the Rock House
Until Vaughn had retreated
Background for the battle-
The river front in Highland became known as New Paltz Landing, and was humming with activity as early as any place in the east end of the the Paltz Township. Many homes were built along the river and the 1835 census listed about 200 people living at the landing. In the 1880's the construction of the West Shore Railroad with its 100' foot right of way took many of these houses.
In October of 1777, a British Navy ship fired upon the New Paltz Landing. Two cannonballs were recovered in the area now occupied by the oil tanks mentioned earlier. The cannonballs, fired by British Navel Officer Vaughn, are in the Town of Lloyd Historical collection. The late historian Warren Sherwood's poem, The Mountain, describes the inhabitants of the Landing hiding at the Rock House, a natural cavern formed by rock falling from the cliffs on Illinois Mountain:
...And old Henry Perkins
Along in his eighties
Still clearly remembered
The time that his mother
Took all of her children
Her Bible and silver
And walked through the Gap
With the Perkinsville women
To hide in the Rock House
Until Vaughn had retreated
Sal Paradise
Hooligan
The reason I know so much about it is I researched it for a chapter in a book I'm slowly writing , about a motorcycle gang called the Patriots.
Here is the relevant excerpt from my book =
We waited, in his Volkswagen in the fading evening light, listening to the radio as the rush hour traffic ebbed and flowed. The highway was lined on both sides with that cheap back lit corporate shanty town that anyone would recognize instantly, anywhere in America. The signs began to light the sides of the highway; McDonalds, Kmart, a half dozen gas stations with “ fresh express” food. Small strip malls with a dollar store next to a pizza place. Not a bookstore within 30 miles either direction.
Being a professor of archeology, Jophus loved to talk about the landscape and history and I sat back and let him talk. He told me the French Huguenots once owned all this area and they paddled down from the Dutch settlement Kingston to New Paltz and burned the homes and took the land of the Esopus Indians. They then walked East around the mountain and followed the creek down to where they knew the Hudson River lay and built a landing here, just a few hundred yards from where we were sitting. Ever industrious, they realized that between the Walkill River in New Paltz and the Hudson, their land straddled two perfect natural highways and in between lay some of the most fertile farmland in the Valley. They built their houses out of stone, so they couldn't be burned or shot through. They couldn't lose, except for the simple matter that they had to commit genocide to make it all work.
A hundred years later, the river landing had become a village itself, alongside a creek that descended through a notch in the cliffs and created a natural cove. In my time the cove was long gone, it was a landfill with a sewer treatment plant on it, but archeologists had found cannonballs there. Back in 1777 on an October evening very much like this one, the British Navy shelled the landing and hamlet. The residents fled to the mountain where they took shelter in a large cave, but not before they mustered a tiny militia to man the cliffs over the landing and fire back at the most powerful warships in the world. Jophus knew all of this and as he spun the tale my in my mind I pictured it all, the men running along the cliffs over the water, muskets in hand like in the last of the Mohicans. Their loved ones fleeing west into the mountain with just their family bibles and tiny rear guard for protection. A dangerous time, but I looked out at that desolate roadside with dead soul drivers passing on the highway and I thought I'd change places with them in a minute. Musket in hand I’d kiss my family goodbye in the fading evening light and run along the cliffs in buckskins to stand shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors and fire my weapon at the British Navy. They believed in something, the land was still beautiful, you stood by and defended the people of your town. There were no gangs, committees, or false patriotism. You simply put your life on the line for your friends and they did the same for you.
Here is the relevant excerpt from my book =
We waited, in his Volkswagen in the fading evening light, listening to the radio as the rush hour traffic ebbed and flowed. The highway was lined on both sides with that cheap back lit corporate shanty town that anyone would recognize instantly, anywhere in America. The signs began to light the sides of the highway; McDonalds, Kmart, a half dozen gas stations with “ fresh express” food. Small strip malls with a dollar store next to a pizza place. Not a bookstore within 30 miles either direction.
Being a professor of archeology, Jophus loved to talk about the landscape and history and I sat back and let him talk. He told me the French Huguenots once owned all this area and they paddled down from the Dutch settlement Kingston to New Paltz and burned the homes and took the land of the Esopus Indians. They then walked East around the mountain and followed the creek down to where they knew the Hudson River lay and built a landing here, just a few hundred yards from where we were sitting. Ever industrious, they realized that between the Walkill River in New Paltz and the Hudson, their land straddled two perfect natural highways and in between lay some of the most fertile farmland in the Valley. They built their houses out of stone, so they couldn't be burned or shot through. They couldn't lose, except for the simple matter that they had to commit genocide to make it all work.
A hundred years later, the river landing had become a village itself, alongside a creek that descended through a notch in the cliffs and created a natural cove. In my time the cove was long gone, it was a landfill with a sewer treatment plant on it, but archeologists had found cannonballs there. Back in 1777 on an October evening very much like this one, the British Navy shelled the landing and hamlet. The residents fled to the mountain where they took shelter in a large cave, but not before they mustered a tiny militia to man the cliffs over the landing and fire back at the most powerful warships in the world. Jophus knew all of this and as he spun the tale my in my mind I pictured it all, the men running along the cliffs over the water, muskets in hand like in the last of the Mohicans. Their loved ones fleeing west into the mountain with just their family bibles and tiny rear guard for protection. A dangerous time, but I looked out at that desolate roadside with dead soul drivers passing on the highway and I thought I'd change places with them in a minute. Musket in hand I’d kiss my family goodbye in the fading evening light and run along the cliffs in buckskins to stand shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors and fire my weapon at the British Navy. They believed in something, the land was still beautiful, you stood by and defended the people of your town. There were no gangs, committees, or false patriotism. You simply put your life on the line for your friends and they did the same for you.
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B06Tang
Cafe Racer
This statement still holds true today...
Good write up Sal, one of the many great things about the Hudson Valley. Have you ever been down to Washington's headquarters in Newburgh?
strokerlmt
Moderator
Super....thx Sal
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