* The author would like to thank William A. Starna, David L. Preston, Joel Shrock, and an anonymous reviewer for their comprehensive readings of previous versions of this essay, and Kelly Farquhar and the staff of the Montgomery County Archives at Fonda, N.Y., for their interest and research assistance.
1. William B. Hart, "Black 'Go-Betweens' and the Mutability of 'Race,' Status, and Identity on New York's Pre-Revolutionary Frontier," in Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Contact Points: American Frontier from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 106–08. Hart's discussion was picked up by Rhett Jones, "Mulattos, Freejacks, Cape Verdeans, Black Seminoles, and Others: Afrocentrism and Mixed-Race Persons," in James L. Conyers, Jr., ed., Afrocentricity and the Academy: Essays on Theory and Practice (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003), 270, and Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), 214–15. David Preston has also mentioned Eve in regard to land disputes: David L. Preston, "The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities on the Iroquoian Borderlands, 1720–1780" (Ph.D. diss., The College of William and Mary, 2002) and David L. Preston, "George Klock, the Canajoharie Mohawks, and the Good Ship Sir William Johnson: Land, Legitimacy, and Community in the Eighteenth-Century Mohawk Valley," New York History 86:4 (Fall 2005): 473–99. Eve is also found in Daniel J. Hulsebosch, "Imperia in Imperio: The Multiple Constitutions of Empire in New York, 1750–1777," Law and History Review vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 319–79. Contemporary sources spell Pickard in a variety of ways. Except when quoting sources where an alternate spelling is used, this article will use Pickard.
2. Hart, "Black Go-Betweens," 106–08, Jones, "Mulattos, Freejacks, Cape Verdeans, Black Seminoles, and Others," 270, and Wahrman, Making of the Modern Self, 214–15.
3. Two of the most recent works that explore the complicated workings of the Mohawk River Valley include Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006) and the entire Spring 2008 issue of New York History, which includes articles based on papers presented at the 2007 Western Frontier Symposium, Agents of Change in Colonial New York: Sir William Johnson's World. Other works that deal with these land issues include Preston, "The Texture of Contact" and "George Klock"; Timothy J. Shannon, Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire: The Albany Congress of 1754 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000); Mary Lou Lustig, Privilege and Prerogative: New York's Provincial Elite, 1710–1776 (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995); and Georgiana C. Nammack, Fraud, Politics, and the Dispossession of the Indians: The Iroquois Land Frontier in the Colonial Period (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969). Lustig, Privilege and Prerogative, p. 61, explains the procedure the British established to secure land patents in New York; p. 120 notes Johnson's possible desire to own Canajoharie himself. The location of Canajoharie is best described in Philip Lord, Jr., "Taverns, Forts, and Castles: Rediscovering King Hendrick's Village," Northeast Anthropology (Fall 1996): 69–94.
4. Bartholomew and Eve's marriage record is found at Records of the Reformed Dutch Church of Albany, New York, 1683–1809 Marriage, Baptisms, Members, Etc. (part 1, 1683–1700) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co.: 1978), 30. Baptisms are found at: Baptism Record of Schenectady Reformed Church, Schenectady, New York, 1694–1811 (New York: Schenectady Reformed Church, 1987), 3 (son, Bartholomew), 4–5 (son, Nicholas),7 (daughter, Doretha); Records of the Reformed Dutch Church of Albany, New York (part 2, 1700–1724), 42 (daughter, Rachel). The spelling of Eve's name can also vary depending on who translated the church records. Lois M. Feister, "Indian-Dutch Relations in the Upper Hudson Valley: A Study of Baptism Records in the Dutch Reformed Church, Albany, New York," Man in the Northeast (Fall 1982): 89–113, describes the records of the Albany church and its reference to Mohawk baptisms.
5. A history of Bartholomew Pickard is found at Frank C. Pickard, "English Ancestry of Bartholomew Pickard," New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 122:3 (July 1991): 135–42. Other sources which include the Pickards are: Jonathan Pearson, Contributions for the Genealogies of the Descendants of the First Settlers of the Patent and City of Schenectady, from 1662 to 1800 (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co.: 1976; originally published Albany, N. Y., 1873), 142. Jonathan Pearson, A History of the Schenectady Patent in the Dutch and English Times (Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell's Sons Printer, 1883), chap. 12 and note 325–1 as found at www.schenectadyhistory.org/resources/patent/index.html. There is also a biography of Bartholomew Pickard online at the Colonial Albany Social History Project, http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/bios/p/bapickard.html. The descendants of the Pickards are avid genealogists. Some publications include: Anna Waite and Marilyn Anderson, Pickard and Allied Families (New York, publ. by the authors, 1980) and George Christian Schempp, The Schempp Family History (Baltimore, Md.: Gateway Publishers, 1989). Herbert and Erma Schrader, The Pickard Family Lands 1717–1785 (Utica, N.Y., 1990) also recounts Eve's land problems. John Thomas E. Burke, Jr., Mohawk Frontier: The Dutch Community of Schenectady, New York, 1661–1710 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991) is the best starting point for examining colonial Schenectady. For Bartholomew's tavern: J. Munsell, ed., Annals of Albany (Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell, 1856), 7:61. Bartholomew's tavern at Verreberg is probably the Pickard/VanValkenburgh/McMichael tavern noted in Appendix 1, Cultural Resources Overview Survey, of the Transportation Project Report of the Intersection 23 to 24 Reconstruction and Mobility Improvements Report for the expansion of the New York State Thruway as found at http://www.nysthruway.gov/projectsandstudies/projects/i23-i24/deis/appi.pdf. For the Palatine settlement see Philip Otterness, Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004) and Preston, "George Klock, the Canajoharie Mohawks," 473–99. Another detailed view of British land policy and the Palatines is Edith M. Fox, Land Speculation in the Mohawk Country (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1949).
6. For Stone Arabia see Andrew L. Dillenbeck, "Early Stone Arabia," New York History 13:3 (July 1932): 276–83; Robert Kuhn McGregor, "Cultural Adaptation in Colonial New York: The Palatine Germans of the Mohawk Valley," New York History 69:1 (January 1988): 5–34; and Otterness, Becoming German, 142–46. A map of the Stone Arabia patent which details the lots assigned to the Pickards is found in Montgomery County Maps, vol. 4, 1935, located at the Montgomery County Department of History and Archives, Fonda, N. Y.
7.. Carol Berkin, First Generations: Women in Colonial America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996), 79–102. The standard explanation of the deputy husband is found in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (New York: Vintage, 1991), 35–50. Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652–1664 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 187–91. Linda Briggs Biemer, Women and Property in Colonial New York: The Transition from Dutch to English Law, 1643–1727 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1983). Martha Dickinson Shattuck, "Women and Trade in New Netherland," Itinerario, vol. 18, no. 2, 1994: 40–49. Otterness, Becoming German, p. 21, also notes German women " 'were versed in and understood' the business of their husbands." An in-depth examination of taverns in colonial America is found at Sharon V. Salinger, Taverns and Drinking in Early America (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), chap. 5 on licensing, quote on p. 170.
8. Venema, Beverwijck, 302–16. Other descriptions of urban, female tavern owners, again in the eighteenth century, are found at Ellen Hartigen-O'Connor, The Ties that Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
9. Eve's interactions with Rev. Wilhelm Christoph Berkenmeyer are found in John P. Dern, ed., The Albany Protocol: Wilhelm Christoph Berkenmeyer's Chronicle of Lutheran Affairs in New York Colony, 1731–1750 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1971), 96. Berkenmeyer refers to the "wife of Mr. Pickard, Sr.," which would be Eve, but the editor of this volume refers to her daughter-in-law, Anna Catharine, in the footnotes. Anna was the wife of Eve's son Bartholomew, Jr., and would be the wife of Mr. Pickard, Jr. In her telling of Berkenmeyer's trip, author Nancy Wagoner Dixon refers to Eve as "Frau Pickard, a part Indian tavern keeper" and cites the Johnson papers as her source. Nancy Wagoner Dixon, Palatine Roots: The 1710 German Settlement in New York as experienced by Johann Peter Wagner (Camden, Me.: Picton Press, 1994), 218. The petition from two of Eve's great-grandsons for the lands she claimed is found in New York State Indorsed Land Papers, vol. 39, p. 80. The fire which destroyed the tavern is mentioned there. Bartholomew Pickard's death is found at the Colonial Albany website and Pickard, "English Ancestry," 140.
10. The Weiser family history is found in a variety of places including in the extensive work compiled by Henry Z. Jones, Jr., The Palatine Families of New York, 2 vols. (University City: Calif., publ. by the author, 1985) and in Fred Weiser, ed., Weiser Families in America, 2 vols. (New Oxford, Pa.: Penobscot Press, 1997), 1571–84 for Anna Barbara and Nicholas Pickard's family. Paul Wallace, Conrad Weiser, Friend of Colonist and Mohawk (Philadelphia, Pa., 1945). C. Z. Weiser, The Life of (John) Conrad Weiser the German Pioneer, Patriarch and Patron of Two Races (Reading, Pa.: Daniel Mill, 1899). The marriage record of Dorothy Pickard and Jan Peter Mabie is not found, but the baptisms of two of their children are found at Baptism Record of the Schenectady Reformed Church, Schenectady, New York, 1694–1811, 41 (child named Achien) and 42 (Jacobus). This same information is found in Pearson, Genealogies of the Descendants of the First Settlers of the Patent and City of Schenectady, 119. More information on the Mabies (also found as Maybee, Maybe, Mabee, Maibe, and a variety of other spellings) can be found in James O. Schuyler, David Schuyler of Canajoharie, Mohawk Valley, New York, published by James O. Schuyler, as found in the Montgomery County Department of History and Archives, Fonda, N.Y.; the Mabie Family Files folder 30-C for Jacobus Mabie and 74-C for Joseph Mabee as found in the Montgomery County Department of History and Archives, Fonda, N.Y., and at the website for the Maybee Society at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~maysoc/.
11. Correspondence between Weiser and Johnson is found in Papers of Sir William Johnson, (Albany: State University of New York, 1921–63), 1: 317–18, 326–27. John Pickard's payment for serving as an interpreter is found in Papers of Sir William Johnson, 3: 158. Views of the Weiser-Johnson relationship include Paul A.W. Wallace, "Conrad Weiser and His New York Contacts," New York History 28:2 (April 1947): 170–79. Timothy Shannon, Indians and Colonists, 46–47 and "The World that made William Johnson," New York History 89:2 (Spring 2008): 121–24; and Preston, "The Texture of Contact," 75–76 for Nicholas Pickard. Pickard bought this land with David Schuyler, whose daughter married Joseph Mabie, Cobus Mabie's brother. Hence the Pickard family owned land on both sides of the castle. Historians debate what caused the Mohawks to renegotiate these deeds. Timothy Shannon argues economic need, while David Preston argues for a mutually beneficial relationship with Europeans where Mohawks would carefully select with whom to enter these contracts based on mutual accommodation. In Shannon's view, Eve was being pushed away due to economic necessity and in Preston's, Eve's tavern brought that accommodation to an end. See Shannon, Indians and Colonists, pp. 24–30, and Preston, "Texture of Contact," chap. 4.
12. On taking more land see E. B. O'Callaghan and B. Fernow, trans. and eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 1856–87), 6: 783: here many historians have assumed that she is referred to as "Barclay, Pichetts wife." It is not clear if they are referring to two separate people (possibly a Rev. Mr. Barclay and Eve) or if it refers to Eve as "Bartholomew Pickard's wife." Dillenbeck, "Early Stone Arabia," p. 280, interprets the phrase as two different people. Sir William Johnson Papers, 3: 338–39 for Johnson writing to Cadwallader Colden about Eve presenting him with her deed; 4: 890 for the deposition about Eve's land claim.
13. The Livingston Patent and Johnson's desire to own that same land is explained in Lustig, Privileges and Prerogative, 61–62, 90–91, 119–20. Eve's involvement with the Klock affair and the moonlight survey are found in Sir William Johnson Papers, 13: 276–77 for her deposition as "Mrs. Eve Pickerd"; 10: 995–97, which is Eve's possible deposition about Klock; and for other information on Eve and Klock 3: 338–41; 4: 112–15, 141–46; 10: 216–20. If the Livingston patent included the Indian castle, then the land Eve obtained from the Mohawks possibly would have been included in this patent. It was in her interest to testify against it. Sir William Johnson Papers, 4: 280, for the missing letter where Eve is referred to as "Mrs. Eghye Pickerd." These comments in the Johnson papers are the full extent of the knowledge that is available on Eve's activities as an interpreter.
14. Waite and Anderson, Pickard and Allied Families, 9, and Appendix, 6. Nancy L. Hagedorn, "Broker of Understanding: Interpreters as Agents of Cultural Exchange in Colonial New York," New York History, 76:4 (October 1995): 379–408 and Nancy L. Hagedorn, " 'A Friend to Go Between Them': Interpreters Among the Iroquois, 1664–1775," (Ph.D. diss., The College of William and Mary, 1995) for information on Lawrence Claessen summarized on p. 240. A brief history of the family can also be found in John Sanders, Centennial Address relating to the Early History of Schenectady, and Its First Settlers (Albany, N.Y.: Van Benthuysen Printing House, 1879), 104–07. This speculation on Eve's parents is not meant to imply that she was a member of that family but rather to illustrate the difficulty in placing her within any known family group. The author thanks William H. Pickard, Assistant Curator of Archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society, for fruitful emails concerning Eve's family of origin. Dutch naming and godparent practices in Schenectady are described in Edward H. Tebbenhoff, "Tacit Rules and Hidden Family Structures: Naming Practices and Godparentage in Schenectady, New York, 1680–1800," Journal of Social History, vol. 18, no. 4 (Summer 1985): 567–85. Feister, "Indian-Dutch Relations," p. 98, mentions that the sponsors for baptisms were often relatives and the child was often named for one of the sponsors. Bartholomew Pickard's father's name was Bartholomew and his mother's name was Dorothy so they followed Dutch practices by naming the eldest son and daughter for the paternal grandparents. The next oldest son was named Nicholas, presumably for Eve's father. The next daughter, Rachel, would be named for Eve's mother, but no Rachel with a husband Nicholas has been found in the Schenectady records, as an indication they might be Eve's parents.
15. I have attempted to trace Eve's family through her children's baptism records, as the witnesses for the children were often siblings of the parents, but have had no luck. Preston, "Texture of Contact," pp. 193–99, remarks that interracial marriages were not uncommon between Dutch and Mohawk in the seventeenth century. He does not speculate on English and Mohawk unions. See Burke, Mohawk Frontier, p. 119, for English marrying Dutch (and one Mohawk) women and p. 202 for settlers taken captive in 1690.
16. Sir William Johnson Papers, 11: 555–56; 4: 645 (Cobus threatens to burn the castle), 11: 926 (letter to Kemp); 12: 333 (John and William Pickard); 12: 288. Cobus's service at German Flatts, Lou D. MacWethy, The Book of Names (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1981; originally published St. Johnsville, New York, 1933), 10.
17. Abraham Van Horne patent 1764, Maps of the New York Secretary of State, Map #532, at New York State Office of Land Management as found at http://www.fort-plank.com/Canajoharie_Patent_1764.html. The key in the corner of the map pinpoints the location of Joseph Mabie's home and that of his in-laws. Joseph's military career is found at Berthold Fernow, New York in the Revolution, 1887 (original) and the1972 reprint, and at MacWethy, The Book of Names, 10. For Cobus Mabie at Fairfield, Jeptha R. Simms, The Frontiersmen of New York, vol. 2, (Albany, N.Y.: Geo. C. Riggs, 1883), 552–53, 558–59. Simms states that the man who killed John was named Hess and was with a man named Cataroque "who was well known to the Mabee family." Sir William Johnson has been the subject of numerous biographies including Fintan O'Toole, White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).
18. In the Mohawk Valley, most German families fought for the patriot cause against the British. It is assumed that after decades of intense frustration with British land policies the Germans felt they would fare better without them. Herkimer County at 200 (Herkimer, N.Y.: Herkimer County Historical Society, 1992). New York Indorsed Land Papers, 39: 80; 40: 101; 37: 65; New York Letters Patent Book, 17: 145–47. Herbert and Erma Schrader, The Pickard Family Lands 1717–1785 (Utica, N.Y., 1990) gives an account which also uses these records. The Schraders include a map of what is believed to be Mabie's Revolutionary War patent based on the description of the land found in the land warrant. Their map matches an unlabeled section on the "Map of Early Patents on the South Side of Mohawk River Originally Drawn about the Year 1790 by Simeon DeWitt Surveyor General of New York Copied by J. S.G. Edwards June 10, 1877," and is reproduced in J. S. G. Edwards, "Book of Maps," found at the Montgomery County Department of History and Archives at Fonda, N.Y. Tryon County Deeds Book 1, 1772–1788, p. 354, lists a tract of land that had been sold which was "bounded on the lands claimed by Joseph and Jacobus Mabee," implying that they lived together on the land.
========== Morgan, Anita J., Questions of Land Ownership in Colonial New York: The Case of Eve Pickard. New York History 91.1 (2010): 21 pars. 23 Jun. 2011 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/nyh/91.1/morgan.html>.
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Good Ol' Bart and Eve!
ReplyDeleteIs it possible that Eve was in fact called Mulatto because she was of mixed race (Dutch and Mohawk) as the term at the time was any one of mixed race and not just black & white like Mulatto tends to be defined today? Just saying..... I'm one of her great great great great grandsons.......
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed entirely possible. I tend to agree with the article's author when he states: "There seems to be no way to verify her family of origin, making it even more difficult to conclusively determine her ethnicity. The records of the Dutch Reformed Church do not note her ethnicity at a time when Native Americans, slaves, and free blacks were identified by their racial background. Without any documentation from anyone other than Johnson [Sir William Johnson] about her ethnicity, and with her strong ties to Dutch culture, it is possible that Eve was Dutch, Dutch/Mohawk, or possibly Dutch/African. It is a possibility that Johnson, a man who was very sensitive to issues of race and often used them to HIS advantage [emphasis mine], thought that Eve's land claim would be less likely to be upheld by British authorities if he stated she was either Mohawk or African. That no one else ever mentioned her race points to Johnson's probably incorrect assertion (all secondary sources which refer to Eve as a mulatto reference Johnson's statements)...."
Deletethank you for the info on Eve & Bart. They were my 8th great grandparents.
ReplyDelete