Settling

Anxious to join the 50 families who had already made it to Schoharie, between 450 and 500 Palatines left their temporary shelters in Albany and Schenectady in late winter. 

“In the same year in March, did the remainder of the people…………proceed on their Journey, and by God’s Assistance, travell’d in fourtnight with sledges thro’ the snow which there Cover’d the ground above 3 foot deep, Cold and hunger, Joyn’d their friends and Countrymen in the promis’d land of Schorie.”

Still they needed assistance to survive, since the fields they would soon cultivate would not produce for many months.  This time their assistance came from the Dutch Reformed Church in New York which sent food to Schenectady for the Palatine settlers in Schoharie.  One shipment from New York consisted of eighty bushels of corn, five hundred pounds of smoked pork, and one hundred pounds of bread.  This arrived in July and helped sustain them until harvest time.

Governor Hunter, still expecting the Palatines to work off their debt, sent orders to Schoharie forbidding them to cultivate the land.  He went so far as to make plans for them to work in pine forests near Albany.  His orders were ignored.

 

Reference:  

“Becoming German” by Phillip Otterness
“Document History of the State of New York”