On July 22, 1779, the Battle of Minisink occurred in northern Delaware. This skirmish was between British Loyalists and their Native American allies, who were led by Mohawk leader Joseph Brant. A formidable enemy, Brant received an education at Moor’s Charity School for Indians, which later became Dartmouth College. He learned to read and write in English, and he spoke several languages, making him a valuable ally to the British. Brant’s contingent of British Loyalists and Indigenous volunteers had recently raided nearby settlements, destroying homes, killing settlers, and stealing supplies and livestock. Three local militia units were called to intercept the escape of Brant and his men. The colonists outnumbered the British and Indigenous in Brant’s group, but the battle would result in some of the most lethal casualties of the American Revolution due to the contrast between the number of participants versus the number of dead. The accidental discharge of a musket alerted Brant to the location of the militia, and a fierce battle ensued. The colonists lost forty-five to fifty men compared to just seven on the British side, and Brant was able to escape capture. The battle occurred in a remote region, and it was decades before the dead were retrieved and buried.
Among the dead at Minisink were two brothers, Samuel and James Knapp. At 43 years of age, James was the father of ten children, the youngest being just four months old and the oldest eighteen at the time of their father’s death. The baby of the family was Stephen Knapp, and when he was old enough, he cast his lot in Homer, settling here sometime after a preliminary scouting venture to the area in 1798. With the help of his mother, Hester, he purchased several hundred acres in the future Cortland County, and the following year, he brought his mother and his siblings Daniel, James, Nathaniel, Polly, and Sally to the area. They traveled in the winter, as was often the case with settlers to the borderlands of civilization. The traveling conditions were better with snow, and people brought all the tools and provisions they might need to get them started in their new location. They would be starting from scratch—clearing land, building a suitable shelter, and planting crops during a brief window of opportunity. The family moved from Goshen, New York, an area which had seen European settlement as early as 1714. Their new home was in a vast wilderness which beckoned with adventure and the potential for prosperity.
Stephen Knapp married Abigail Treat, and they had nine children, the first of whom was born in 1803. The family lived in a simple log cabin, and H.P. Smith reports in History of Cortland County that in the early years of settlement, the dense forests made water travel easier than navigating the forests. He goes on to say that readers would not be able to understand the depth of “hardships, privations, and inconveniences” endured by early settlers to this region. They gave up everything to start a new life: the security of an established home and farm, the company of family and friends, and the comfort of the known. When they packed their supplies, they had no way of knowing if their food would last until they could plant and harvest crops in their new location.
According to Smith, Stephen Knapp was a man of “prominence and energy,” though there was little evidence presented to back up his claim. An obituary was not available in the files at CCHS, so there were few details to pull together the life of this early Homer settler and his family. Smith revealed three tidbits that give a glimpse into the life of Knapp. He was a cavalry officer in the militia, a charter member of Homer Lodge No. 352, and a judge at horse races in Cortland Village. It seems that Knapp was probably fond of horses since he was in the militia cavalry and a judge at horse racing. As a member of the militia, Knapp was required to take part in regular training, which also provided entertainment for the community. People gathered from all corners of the county to enjoy the diversion from their regular routine. Cider flowed, and gingerbread was the snack of choice for these occasions. The newly organized United States was still in its infancy, and uncertainty about its future was very real. Writing in 1885, H.P. Smith noted, “The new government was looked upon as to a certain extent experimental, doubts being felt of its permanency.”
Without further resources to learn more about Stephen Knapp and his family, we are left with more questions than answers. How did a widow with ten children manage to raise them and to save money to help purchase land in Homer? Perhaps she received a widow’s pension that helped with this endeavor. We also do not know the family’s economic standing when James was killed in the Revolution and if they had close relatives to help Hester with her children. At this time, there is not enough documentation to know more, but perhaps one day in the future, additional resources will come to the archives at CCHS that may provide answers.
Like so many families, the Knapp family left little behind to document the triumphs and tragedies of their lives, but we can rely on other resources to get an idea of what life would have been like for them. Although set a little later than the Knapp family’s arrival and homesteading in Homer, a fascinating book is Through Poverty’s Vale: A Hardscrabble Boyhood in Upstate New York, 1832-1862 by Henry Conklin. In this book, Conklin recounts his early life in Schoharie and Herkimer counties, and the resilience of the people you meet is astounding. If you like memoirs and learning more about life in the United States in the years following the American Revolution, this is a book that will give you a better idea of what people in Homer and the rest of Cortland County experienced when they moved to the “frontier.”
Stephen and Abigail Knapp are at rest at Glenwood Cemetery, along with several of their children, as well as with Stephen’s mother. There is a monument in Goshen to the fallen at the Battle of Minisink, and James Knapp is listed among them. ~Tabitha Scoville, Cortland County Historical Society Director