Friends of the Clyde Blockhouse

Gov. Burnett of the province of New York in 1722 [actually 1721] dispatched an expedition into the interior for the purpose of making a settlement or a trading post on Lake Ontario with the view of opening a fur trade with the western Indians and with instructions to buy a tract of land to be patented by those who should be the first settlers there. The force sent on this perilous mission consisted of Jacob Verplank, lieutenant, Gilleyn Verplank, Johannis Visger, Jr., Harmanus Schuyler, Johannis Van den Bergh, Peter Groenendyck and David Van der Heyden, all men distinguished in the early Dutch period of the colony and some whose names are of local significance in Wayne county. The expedition left Albany in the spring and returned in September, Peter Schuyler as the captain [the expedition actually left Albany in September 1721].

 

In coming they took the usual route via Oswego and Lake Ontario, finally disembarking from their boats in Great Sodus Bay [they first went to Irondequoit Bay, then to Sodus Bay in the spring of 1722]. The main object of their expedition was not accomplished since the location was too far from the English settlements to be protected, the Dutch in those days, and English too, having incurred the enmity of the Seneca Indians, who at this time held full sway in this part of the province. During the summer that Capt. Schuyler's force was located on the bay a detachment of three men and a small force of friendly Onondaga Indians who accompanied the party, were sent south into the great beech and hemlock woods which then screened the country lying in that direction from view from the lake, to reconnoiter.

 

Schuyler had been informed that in a short march south was a broad river that opened the path to the east as far as Ouchougen (Oswego) by which there was communication by canoe between the Seneca (Genesee) country and the Oneidas and Onondagas. Foreseeing the advantage of a post of defence on that river at the most available point for communication between the river and the post he had established at Great Sodus Bay, Capt. Schuyler ordered the party to put up a block house. On the eighth of July the three men, Lieutenant Verplank, Harmanus Schuyler and David Van der Heyden left the post on the bay and following the east shore of the bay "five miles," struck into the woods. They were led by a friendly Onondaga Indian and in a few hours were upon the shore of the stream which the Indians called Muddy waters, called by the earliest pioneers Mud Creek and named by one McNab, local agent for the Pultenay estate nearly a century later, Clyde river. The party spent a week on this detached service presumably mostly employed in putting up the blook house, which of course was constructed of logs. Returning to the Bay they reported their success in finding the river and building a block house.

 

A few days later Capt. Schuyler receiving information of a forthcoming attack on his post by a party of French and Huron Indians abandoned the post at the Bay and marched across to "Mud Creek," where he took possession of the block house and prepared for a defense. He remained here only a week, however, then launching his canoe on the stream departed for the east guided, as before, by the Onondagas. During his stay here he put the building into more permanent shape, and it afterwards served the purpose of defense for many bands of reds and whites that passed across this section.

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NOTE: Subsequent research has confirmed that a report about war parties of French Indians near Cayuga was received in Albany, in August of 1722.