THE EXTENDED FAMILY AS SCULPTURE

“Henry run past the door of the house greatly frightened, and at the same time I heard my children scream.”- 93 year old Anna Osterhout Moyers, describing the kidnaping of her husband and son by Brant’s Mohawks in 1779, in deposition-1840 (Dann)

   I imagine kinship as a chemical reaction; a constant “rearrangement of molecular or ionic structure,” defying space and time. To understand yesterday’s meeting or prepare for tomorrow’s parting we have to take relationship in its totality. What Richard, Sally and Mary Ann Jennings were suffering through was no picnic, but paled in comparison to the lifetime of tribulations endured by previous kin dwelling on this plain. Examining these tangential broods gives perspective, and helps put flesh on the bones of the alien organism. Stay with me. 

   Three-year-old Anna Osterhout and her brothers, Frederick and John watched as their parents Gustave and Anna Maria Hess Osterhout, four sisters and little brother, were all scalped and impaled on French swords in Canajoharie, NY in 1757. Because of a severe case of whooping cough, fearing contagion, Frederick was left unharmed, while Anna and her fifteen year old brother John, were taken to live with the French allies, the Wyandot, in “Canda” (Canada). Anna’s deposition states, “She understood and believes that the reason why she and her brother were not killed was that one of the Indians belonging to the party had lost children about the same age and wanted them to adopt.” Three years later eighteen year old John and six-year-old Anna escaped their captors, and somehow got back to Albany in one piece. By this time Anna Osterhout had forgotten what little Dutch, German and English she knew, only speaking a French/Wyandot dialect. Anna and John Osterhout would experience multiple attacks by Indians who were mercenaries for both the French and the English. 

     Abandoned by the Osterhouts, taken in by her grandmother Catherine Hess, Anna married a Palatine German by the name of Henry Moyer at the tender age of fifteen, and immediately started having children. Nine years later, in 1779, as much of New York state was experiencing the last throes of the Six Nations’ resistance to the revolutionary cause, Anna’s family was once more attacked by hostiles. This time the raid was conducted by the English contracted Mohawks, trying in vain to hold onto their ancestral homeland. The house was set on fire, and Anna escaped, baby to her breast. Her husband Henry was not so lucky. Henry and an unnamed son, were taken prisoner hundreds of miles west to the English stronghold at Fort Niagara. Henry would later escape, leaving his son behind to suffer the consequences. Returning to Canajoharie, Henry Moyer divorced Anna, remarried and left town, never to be heard from again.  

      Anna’s brother John Osterhout was nearby at Andrustown when, a year earlier in 1778, his family had also been attacked by Brant’s rangers. The Bell, Crim, Frank, Hoyer (Moyer?), Lepper, Stauring, and Osterhout families all suffered casualties, death, and kidnaping at the hands of the Mohawks and tories. An unnamed Osterhout boy escaped the bloodshed by hiding in the woods, only to get sick and die a week later from exposure. That’s why the Osterhout name is on the “Andrustown Massacre” monument that was erected in 1920 by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The bloody struggles of the Osterhouts make the Jennings affair look like a walk in the park, or more accurately, the leisurely early autumn plowing of a Sugar Loaf cornfield.

Samuel Pitts sworn

By Mr. Wm. Duer, D.A. : 

Q. Are you a constable?

A. I am

Q. Did you on a certain time take old Mr. Jennings on a warrant?

A. I did and brought him before B. Garrahan esq.

Q. What passed between you and him about Conklin?

A. At Chester I told him I must go by way of Conklin's and notify him. Mr. Jennings said if Conklin rode in the wagon he would get out.

By Mr. Fisk (cross):

Q. Did Conklin ever ask you to ask Mr. Jennings to come down and eat dinner with him?

A. Conklin asked Jennings to come and eat dinner with him and he answered he would see him damned first.

Q. When was it you had that warrant?

A. Sometime last summer.

Albert S. Benton sworn

Q. Did you at any time give Richard Jennings a notice of trial to serve on David Conklin?

A.  About 34 or 35 days before the last circuit court I gave notice of trial to serve on David Conklin and James Teed. Conklin said Jennings had made a mistake and he did not want the old devil to serve his papers on him. He told me they had a quarrel and I had used my goad over him. 

Q. Did you understand where Conklin was when Jennings served the notice on him?

A. He was in the field ploughing.