This article Part 4 of 4 celebrates the Chester Zimmer Collection and the ongoing construction of the Chester Zimmer Library at the Old Stone Fort Museum Complex in Schoharie as well as taking note of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.
By Mark Stolzenburg
September 1853. Zimmer sent two more letters to new Commissioner of Pensions, Loren P. Waldo, in Washington, DC, along with requested repeat testimony from Jacob Becker and Christianna Norman. This was in response to a letter from Waldo questioning the duration of George’s service. It was obvious age was affecting his ability to keep up the fight, and he had tapped out his surviving compatriots who could offer cogent testimony. In a shakier hand he wrote, “After a lapse of more than 70 years precision can hardly be expected.”
November 1853 to February 1854. Zimmer somehow enlisted or was offered the assistance of attorney Peter Decker, his grandnephew. Decker had less patience than his great uncle George. He fired off a series of sometimes disjointed letters wherein he made no attempt to hide his feeling that the Federal government’s relentless demand for more testimony in the Zimmer case was simply absurd. No other testimony could be realistically possible. “Mr. Zimmer is the only relict of revolutionary days remaining with us and he is to be relied upon in his statements for reference as far as I am concerned.” Decker, hoping name dropping might help, wrote that he would refer the case to William L. Marcy, who, after an already long and productive political career, was then US Secretary of State. This may have been an idle threat on Decker’s part. There seems to be no record that Secretary Marcy got involved.
February 22, 1854. Decker, in a letter to Commissioner Waldo, laid out the type of war it was in Schoharie, that the governor asked the militia troops to garrison local forts for protection into 1783. To reinforce his point, he included a map he drew of the forts in the Schoharie and Fox valleys, including the Becker Stone House at Fox Creek. “I have furnished this hasty sketch hoping that it may have a tendency to throw some light upon the subject and if consistent be the means of giving to an aged patriot and good old democrat the little pittance he thinks himself entitled to from a country he has served faithfully in the hour of her need.”
December 1856 to March 1857. There are further delays because Isaac Laraway was asked to testify again, Jacob Becker’s identity was questioned, and the veracity of Zimmer’s signature was challenged on some correspondence. Josiah Minot had replaced Waldo as President Pierce’s pension commissioner in 1856.
At the end of an undated brief of several pages, an unnamed pension official wrote, “This old soldier is his own agent, and I would be delighted to be able to inform him of the fact that a small pension has been allowed him.”
On February 23, 1857, George Zimmer Jr. was granted a pension, retroactively from March 4, 1831, at $20 per year.
August 5, 1857. George died at the age of 91.
Last Patriot standing?
Who was the last Schoharie County Revolutionary War veteran to die? That depends on who you consider to be of Schoharie County and how little proof of birth and service you can live with. I see three contenders: 1. George Zimmer Jr., the man detailed above, 2. Isaac Laraway, who testified for George, and, 3. one Daniel Frederick Bakeman.
Zimmer was clearly born in what was to become Schoharie County and died there in 1857. Laraway was born in today’s Green County and outlived Zimmer. He died in 1858 in the Town of Broome, Schoharie County.
Bakeman (also Bachman or Bochman) claimed to have been the last Revolutionary War veteran from anywhere still living in 1866. He died in 1869 in Freedom, NY (Cattaraugus Co.) and claimed to have been born in Schoharie in 1759, but no record to that effect seems to exist. A record that matches Daniel F. Bakeman’s name and his parents’ names shows he was baptized in Schenectady in 1773. His parents were married in 1772. If his birth occurred near this date, then he would have been too young to have served in the Revolution. His pension was denied for insufficient proof of service, then he was granted a “political” Revolutionary War pension by an act of Congress in 1867. Despite this inconsistency, Bakeman is widely credited with being the last Revolutionary War veteran to die. I consider his claim to birth in Schoharie and the date of such birth to be questionable.
Lacking further evidence, George Zimmer was likely the last Patriot to perish of those born in the current bounds of Schoharie County. Hopefully he spent his pension wisely (and quickly). Then there was the date of his death: August 5,1857. It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that this Revolutionary Patriot, had he lived four years more, would have seen the country he risked his life to found torn apart by secession and civil war, yet again.
George Zimmer Jr., probably in the 1850s. Photo located in the Chester Zimmer collection at the Old Stone Fort by David Pelepzuck. Chester noted that the photo came from Alice Ruland, a descendant of Mr. Zimmer.
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