TheRaidsMountsClearing

Murder at Mounts Clearing - October 1777

Prior to the Revolutionary War, a handful of settlers moved into the wilderness 20 miles north of Little Falls. They traveled the old Indian trails that ran from the Mohawk Valley to the Black River Valley. One of these trails ran north from Little Falls to the Jerseyfield Patent and became known as the Jerseyfield Road. (Not to be confused with the present Jerseyfield Road which leads to Jerseyfield Lake.) The other angled northwest through Salisbury and on to join the Jerseyfield trail near present day Gray. This trail became known as Mount's Road because it led to Mount's Clearing at Mount's Creek.
(From Mount's Clearing the merged trails ran north and then west to cross West Canada Creek near present day Northwood. From there it is only 2 miles to Little Black Creek and the Black River Valley watershed, where the trail continued northwest all the way to Lake Ontario.)
At the time Mount's Clearing was the northernmost settlement in this area. Soon after the war began all but the Mount family had left, some for Canada, some back to the Mohawk Valley proper. It was here that the first "raid" in the upper Mohawk Valley took place following the Battle of Oriskany.

Mount's Road crossed the wilderness from Salisbury to Black Creek where it joined
the Jerseyfield Road. This section near the old Gray Reservoir is much like it was
in 1777 when members of the Mount Family were murdered and scalped by Indians.

Local accounts of the Mount's Clearing Murders---as related to Jeptha R. Simms---tell the story.

"One after another of Mount's neighbors had quitted their forest homes, until for months his had been the only remaining family; and from its retirement more exposed to violence than any other in the Herkimer settlements. Uniformly kind to the sons of the forest, Mount felt comparatively secure, and continued to prosecute his labors until some time in October, 1777, when he had occasion to go to Little Falls to mill, for some unexplained reason. He was accompanied by his wife, leaving at home three sons, their ages ranging from 10 to 15, and a little negro boy younger than they were.

"With their cupidity sharpened by the influence of British gold, two Indians, formerly from the Mohawk, Cataroqua and Hess, who had received numerous favors from the Mount family, improved this opportunity to procure the sons' scalp-locks. The oldest boy was at work in a field and the two younger were threshing peas in a barn, when the Indians, attracted by the sound of their flails, appeared at the door and asked them for milk. They were honestly answered by the lads that they had none. This inability to comply with their wishes, the Indians made a pretext for anger, and instantly shot them down, " when," as the negro lad said afterwards, " they took little axes and struck them into their heads, and then took knives and skinned the top of their heads, and then ran into the woods." The boy engaged elsewhere, rightly conjecturing the import of the firing, became alarmed and fled to the nearest settlement. The reader would know why the colored boy was left unharmed: because his scalp would not command eight dollars in Canada. It is presumed that Mount met his son, and, learning his cause of alarm, was so anxious to learn the fate of his other children, that he left his wife with some settler and proceeded on over the rough road that evening, reaching his dwelling about midnight. Not finding his sons in bed he sought them anxiously at the barn. There they reposed, side by side, on the straw of the grain they had been threshing, in a slumber that knew no waking-while unharmed, the little negro was sleeping soundly between them.

"News of the alarm reached the river settlements, and early on the following day Capt. Hoever went up with a small party of patriots and buried those innocent victims of war's rapacious maw.- This was among the earliest tragedies that crimsoned the border settlements of New York ; and were destined, ere peace was restored, to sunder the dearest ties and break the tender hearts of thousands of happy families. Mr. Mount immediately abandoned his frontier possessions-the fruit of years of hard toil-and with crushed hopes the surviving members of the family, taking their most valuable effects, left their forest abode and returned to New Jersey. A few weeks after they were abandoned, Mount's buildings were, by the enemy, reduced to ashes. Lodowick Moyer said that a son of Mount was in the American army. If so it must have been the one that escaped from the field when his brothers were murdered. John Terry, of Newport, assured the writer he saw peas that were burned in Mount's barn, dug from the ruins, and yet whole, in 1813, thirty six years after they were charred, which prevented their decomposition. I may here observe that Col. Henderson spared no pains to furnish the writer with a true account of the settler, Mount, and death of his boys; as also with other interesting memoranda of that neighborhood."

The Frontiersmen of New York
by Jeptha R. Simms 1883