Schuylerville
(chapter excerpt)
For those who are under the impression that the Battle of Saratoga took place at the racetrack, it will come as a surprise that this decisive clash occurred just south of Schuylerville. Of course, in those days, Schuylerville was called Saratoga, and the present-day city of Saratoga Springs was wilderness.
This little town on the Hudson River is named after General Philip Schuyler. A fourth-generation American born in Albany in 1733, Philip Schuyler was a wealthy man and in every way a gentleman. He had a mansion, lands, and mills along the Hudson here and a fine house in Albany. At the age of forty-three, he cut a fine figure in his uniform, but his military resume seems rather thin to support his appointment as commander of the Northern Department in 1775. He had served as a captain in the French and Indian War and later as a deputy-commissary with the rank of major. Well connected and energetic, he lent his political support to Governor Henry Moore, who made him a colonel of militia.
A Monumental View
2007; gouache on canvas;
16 x 20 in.
There is an old orchard on top of the hill (when heading east
on Route 29) before you come into Schuylerville. Here it is
possible to see the Schuylerville Monument within the context of the landscape. I loved the fact that it is surrounded by
fields of potatoes and by the apple orchard, once owned by
Bullard’s Orchards, where I picked apples as a young teenager
for fifty cents an hour.