Submitted by Louis G. Myers
From the book: The Blue-Eyed Indians - The Story of Adam Crysler and His Brothers in the Revolutionary War
By Don Chrysler - 1999
Chrysler Books
36920 Lakewood
Zephyrhills, FL 33541
To walk away from your old life, leaving what little you had in possessions, family and friends, familiar surroundings to go boldly across an ocean you have never seen before facing starvation,disease and death for the “ hope “ of a better life is abstract to those born in the long established United States of America today.
To have survived the crossing and hopefully with those whom came with you intact was a blessing. Most whom made these journeys weren’t that lucky.
Upon arrival in the colonies the new arrivals wasted no time. They established homes, found work or set up businesses and worked very hard for a few generations to build a new, better and bountiful life for themselves and their families.
But in the winds of change, in a country that in an upheaval for over a decade decided to follow leaders of different destiny than what it was on , those immigrants whom owed everything they had to the old order would lose it all.
Could you imagine losing everything you worked so hard and so long for to a change you did not want nor fit into?
The Crysler family of the Schoharie Valley is one family of many whom owed everything to the British Crown.
They left their home in Guntersblum, Germany in 1709 headed to England and in the Spring of 1710 with 3,200 other Palatine Germans left England for New Amsterdam, New York Colony on several ships.
The Crysler’s stayed in New Amsterdam for roughly a year before moving upriver to West Camp where many Palatines had settled. This is where Adam Crysler would be born in 1732.
Adam Crysler would spend his first eight years in West Camp with his family and when the Crysler fortunes improved they moved west into the wilderness of that was the Schoharie Valley.
The Crysler Family worked hard to establish themselves in the wilderness.
Over the next four years they purchased over 12,000 acres from the local Native Americans and built their home in Fultonham, just ten miles south of the Village of Schoharie.
Adam grew up on the banks of Breakabeen Creek where it enters the Schoharie River where his father built the house.
The Crysler Family prospered. Adam’s father Jeronimus was a hardworking man and well respected in the small community.
He was an Elder in the Lutheran Church, in time he enlisted in the military to serve the crown that gave him and family everything during King George’s War 1744-48 and was made a Lieutenant.
Jeronimus left the Fultonham property to Adam in 1750. Neighbors such as the Bouck’s and Adam’s own brothers built their Gristmill and ran the farm on
Breakabeen Creek. In time, Adam and his brothers would take wives and start families. They had valued and trusted friends with their Native American neighbors whom they respected and did business with.
The Crysler Family prospered.
Even when news came in April 1775 of local militia firing on the Kings Troops at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts Colony and the very disturbing news of fighting at Breeds Hill in Boston later in June was worrisome but it wasn’t New York Colony.
Dissent was slow to grow in far off Albany but it was thus far not an immediate danger, or so it was thought.
Then when news came that on the 4th day of July in 1776, that a group in Philadelphia had declared their independence from the Crown forced everything anyone or family that believed in supporting the Crown into a tailspin.
More to this Story in Part 2.
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