In January, 1847, he married Miss Mary Howard, of Beaufort District, South Carolina, a lady of majestic stature, high toned moral sentiment, dignified polished manners, gifted conversational powers and literary tastes. This marriage has proved a peculiarly fortunate and happy one, as they both highly appreciate and respect each other, and she warmly sympathizes in his literary plans. She also relieves him of all domestic care by her judicious management of his household affairs. Most of her time, however, is spent with him in his study, where she revises and copies his writings for the press. She is the descendant of a family who emigrated to South Carolina from England, in the reign of George the Second, from whom they received a large grant of land, situated near the Broad River. Upon this original grant the family have from generation to generation continued to reside. It is now a flourishing cotton and rice growing plantation, and is at present owned by her brother, Gen. John Howard. Her sister married a grandnephew of Gen. William Moultrie, who was so distinguished in the revolutionary war, and her brother a granddaughter of Judge Thomas Heyward, who was a ripe scholar and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Although one of her brothers was in the battle of San Jacinto, she is herself the first permanent emigrant of her family from South Carolina to the North, having accompanied her husband to Washington, D.C., where he has ever since been engaged in conducting the national work on the history of the Indians. To this work, of which the second part is now in the press, every power of his extensive observation and ripe experience is devoted, and with results which justify the highest anticipations which have been formed of it. Meantime it is understood that the present memoirs is the first volume of a revised series of his complete works, including his travels, reviews, papers on natural history, Indian tales, and miscellanies.
To this rapid sketch of a man rising to distinction without the adventitious aids of hereditary patrimony, wealth, or early friends, it requires little to be added to show the value of self-dependence. Such examples must encourage all whose ambitions are sustained by assiduity, temperance, self-reliance, and a consistent perseverance in well weighed ends.
1. Simms' Schoharie.
2. Chronicles of the Border Warfare in North-western Virginia. By Alex Withers, Clarksbury, Virginia, 1831. 1 vol. 12mo. page 319.
3. This officer was shot in the trenches, which devolved the command on Sir William.
4. Annals of Teyon County.
5. Letter of L.L. Van Kleeck, Esq., to Dr. R.W. Griswold, June 4th, 1851.
PERSONAL MEMOIRS.
CHAPTER I.
Brief reminiscences of scenes from 1809 to 1817--Events preliminary to a knowledge of western life--Embarkation on the source of the Alleghany River--Descent to Pittsburgh--Valley of the Monongahela; its coal and iron--Descent of the Ohio in an ark--Scenes and incidents by the way-- Cincinnati--Some personal incidents which happened there.
Late in the autumn of 1809, being then in my seventeenth year, I quitted the village of Hamilton, Albany County (a county in which my family had lived from an early part of the reign of George II.), and, after a pleasant drive of half a day through the PINE PLAINS, accompanied by some friends, reached the city of Schenectady, and from thence took the western stage line, up the Valley of the Mohawk, to the village of Utica, where we arrived, I think, on the third day, the roads being heavy. The next day I proceeded to Vernon, the site of a busy and thriving village, where my father had recently engaged in the superintendency of extensive manufacturing operations. I was here within a few miles of Oneida Castle, then the residence of the ancient Oneida tribe of Iroquois. There was, also, in this town, a remnant of the old Mohigans, who, under the name of Stockbridges, had, soon after the Revolutionary War, removed from the Valley of the Housatonic, in Massachusetts, to Oneida. Throngs of both tribes were daily in the village, and I was thus first brought to notice their manners and customs; not dreaming, however, that it was to be my lot to pass so many of the subsequent years of my life as an observer of the Indian people.
Early in the spring of 1810, I accompanied Mr. Alexander Bryan Johnson, of Utica, a gentleman of wealth, intelligence, and enterprise, to the area of the Genesee country, for the purpose of superintending a manufactory for a company incorporated by the State Legislature. After visiting Sodus Bay, on Lake Ontario, it was finally resolved to locate this company's works near Geneva, on the banks of Seneca Lake.
During my residence here, the War of 1812 broke out; the events of which fell with severity on this frontier, particularly on the lines included between the Niagara and Lake Champlain, where contending armies and navies operated. While these scenes of alarm and turmoil were enacting, and our trade with Great Britain was cut off, an intense interest arose for manufactures of first necessity, needed by the country, particularly for that indispensable article of new settlements, window glass. In directing the foreign artisans employed in the making of this product of skill, my father, Col. Lawrence Schoolcraft, had, from an early period after the American Revolution, acquired celebrity, by the general superintendency of the noted works of this kind near Albany, and afterwards in Oneida County.
Under his auspices, I directed the erection of similar works in Western New York and in the States of Vermont and New Hampshire.
While in Vermont, I received a salary of eighteen hundred dollars per annum, which enabled me to pursue my studies, ex academia, at Middlebury College. In conversation with President Davis, I learned that this was the highest salary paid in the State, he himself receiving eleven hundred, and the Governor of the State but eight hundred.
The extensive and interesting journeys connected with the manufacturing impulse of these engagements, reaching over a varied surface of several hundred miles, opened up scenes of life and adventure which gave me a foretaste of, and preparedness for, the deeper experiences of the western wilderness; and the war with England was no sooner closed than I made ready to share in the exploration of the FAR WEST. The wonderful accounts brought from the Mississippi valley--its fertility, extent, and resources--inspired a wish to see it for myself, and to this end I made some preliminary explorations in Western New York, in 1816 and 1817. I reached Olean, on the source of the Alleghany River, early in 1818, while the snow was yet upon the ground, and had to wait several weeks for the opening of that stream. I was surprised to see the crowd of persons, from various quarters, who had pressed to this point, waiting the opening of the navigation.
It was a period of general migration from the East to the West. Commerce had been checked for several years by the war with Great Britain. Agriculture had been hindered by the raising of armies, and a harassing warfare both on the seaboard and the frontiers; and manufactures had been stimulated to an unnatural growth, only to be crushed by the peace. Speculation had also been rife in some places, and hurried many gentlemen of property into ruin. Banks exploded, and paper money flooded the country.
The fiscal crisis was indeed very striking. The very elements seemed leagued against the interests of agriculture in the Atlantic States, where a series of early and late frosts, in 1816 and 1817, had created quite a panic, which helped to settle the West.
I mingled in this crowd, and, while listening to the anticipations indulged in, it seemed to me that the war had not, in reality, been fought for "free trade and sailors' rights" where it commenced, but to gain a knowledge of the world beyond the Alleghanies.
Many