On Western Avenue, two miles from the hamlet of West Charlton,in Saratoga County, NY, stands a blue and gold historic marker recalling a tragedy from nearly 250 years ago:
GONZALEZ HOME
HERE, IN 1782, JOSEPH
GONZALEZ AND SON EMANUEL
WERE KILLED AND SCALPED BY
ST REGIS INDIANS, HIS SON
JOHN WAS TAKEN CAPTIVE
Fleeing persecution for their religious beliefs, Don Manuel Gonzalez brought his family to America in 1690 and settled along the Hudson River.
A grandson of this early settler, Joseph Gonzalez left Dutchess County for the wilderness west of Schenectady in the early 1770s. Here he settled with his family in the southwest corner of what is now the Town of Charlton, on a 1500-acre tract in the Kayaderoasseras Patent.
This area, at that time still a part of Albany County, was known to early settlers as the “Woestyne,” or what today would be called “wilderness.” For the next ten years, Joseph Gonzalez and his family carved a farm out of this wilderness.
Living in an area where many settlers were loyal to the British, Joseph Gonzalez was well known for siding with the Patriots.
In early 1782, a group of soldiers were sent from Schenectady to arrest a Loyalist who lived in the vicinity of the Gonzalez homestead. After convincing the soldiers of his innocence, the Tory invited them to stay in his home for the night.
In an act of treachery, the man left his sleeping guests and proceeded to the Gonzalez home where he told Joseph and his sons that the men were Torys and asked for assistance in murdering them while they slept.
Gonzalez refused and the next morning the man was arrested. The prisoner was taken to Schenectady, where he was tried and sentenced to be hung, with Joseph Gonzalez interceding for the man, convincing the court to grant him a pardon.
Only a few months after this incident, a group of St. Regis Mohawk who had spent the winter hunting in Northern New York, raided the home of the Gonzalez family.
On an April morning in 1782, Joseph and his sons Emanuel, John, and a younger son, also named Joseph, along with a hired servant, were burning a field when they approached.
The elder Joseph, assuming that the group was friendly, extended his hand in greeting, only to be immediately cut down by a tomahawk. John and Emanuel were quickly seized, with Emanuel fighting off his attacker and fleeing but was fatally shot while climbing a fence.
While all of this was happening, one of the attackers, allowed Joseph to escape to the house where his mother, sister Dorcas, and eighteen-year-old brother David were hiding.
Before the attackers had time to regroup, David hitched up a wagon and drove the family seven miles to Cranesville on the Mohawk River. From there the family continued their flight to safety and headed east another eight miles along the Mohawk River to Tinker Hill in Glenville, the fortified home of Militia Captain Teunis Swart.
Swart immediately called the militia together to pursue the attackers. Concerned for the safety of their families, the men refused to leave that day but agreed to move out in the morning.
Unwilling to wait, Captain Swart and David Gonzalez immediately returned to the scene of the attack. Here they located the lifeless bodies of Joseph Gonzalez and his son Emanuel in the field where they had fallen and brought them to the family’s log home where they kept vigil for the night.
The next morning the militia arrived, bringing with them Mrs. Gonzalez. Joseph and Dorcas. Together they buried father and son on the family farm.
The pursuit of the attackers was immediately taken up in hopes of releasing John Gonzalez and the family servant who had also been taken captive in the raid.
Unfortunately, after two days the trail was lost somewhere in the vicinity of Fish House on the Sacandaga River when heavy rain erased all evidence of the path the attackers had followed as they headed northward.
Fearful of pursuit, the attackers moved quickly toward Canada. For days, the group went without food, with the threat of death forcing the two captives to keep up the fearful pace.
Once in Canada, John was separated from his father’s hired man, who was never seen or heard from again. On reaching a garrison of the British Army, John was forced into service of the Crown, though he was never made to actively participate in any campaign for fear he might escape.
At that time, his surname was recorded in the military record as Consalus, a name that he continued to use for the rest of his life. As a captive of the British, he was required to make cartridges, though often substituting charcoal for much of the gunpowder to render them ineffective.
In the spring of 1785, two years after the war was over, he was finally released and headed back to the Mohawk Valley.
When he finally made his way back home, John searched for his remaining family, only to find that his mother had passed away only months after his capture. The first family member he located was his older sister, Rebecka, who had married Emanuel DeGraff and was then living in Schenectady.
His brother David had also settled in Schenectady, with his sister Dorcas having married and moved with her husband to Saratoga. As there had been no way to pay on the contract for the Gonzalez homestead, the property had been taken from the family.
In the years after his return, John began buying back pieces of the property on the eastern edge of the tract his family had first settled. In 1792 John married Dorcas Hogan of Albany, and together they raised 12 children. His descendants continued on the property until 1926.
Today Consaul Road off of Route 67 in Charlton marks the location of this early farm.
Photo: Gonzalez Historic Marker (Dave Waite).
This essay is presented by the Saratoga County History Roundtable and the Saratoga County History Center. Follow them on Twitter and Facebook.
