Klock's Field

In New York's Mohawk Valley, an American Revolutionary War clash unfolded that came to be known as the Battle of Klock's Field. On one side stood British and Loyalist troops under Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Johnson, while opposing them were New York militia and levies commanded by Brigadier General Robert Van Rensselaer. The fighting took place on the Mohawk River's north bank, in territory now recognized as St. Johnsville within Montgomery County. Neither combatant could claim decisive success, leaving the outcome unresolved.

Background

By August 1780, Frederick Haldimand, serving as Governor of the Province of Quebec with the rank of Major General, gave his approval for a sweeping raid targeting the Schoharie and Mohawk River valleys in New York. Troops assembled for this campaign came from the 8th Regiment of Foot, the 34th Regiment of Foot, Butler's Rangers, and the King's Royal Regiment of New York, a unit also called the Royal Yorkers. The ranks were further filled out by Brant's Volunteers, Leake's Independent Company, a contingent of Hesse Hanau Jägers, and Seneca fighters under Sayenqueraghta and Cornplanter. Bringing the total to 940 men, this force was rounded out by a coehorn mortar, a 3-pound weapon nicknamed the "grasshopper," and ten men of the Royal Artillery.

Command of the operation fell to Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Johnson, who set out from Oswego on Lake Ontario on October 2. Using bateaux and marching on foot, his men worked their way up the Oswego River toward Lake Onondaga, passing the site of an Onondaga village that Continental forces had wiped out the year before. From there Johnson's troops crossed overland until they struck the Susquehanna River on October 13. Their route then carried them along the Susquehanna and up Charlotte Creek toward high ground west of the Schoharie Valley, where they made camp on October 16.

They pushed into the valley itself early the next day. Warning of their approach had already reached local residents, most of whom had sought shelter in one of the valley's three forts. Johnson chose to skip past Upper Fort and instead laid siege to Middle Fort. His artillery, however, accomplished little, and when the defenders there refused to give up, he called off the siege within a few hours and pressed northward. All the while his troops looted and set fire to the countryside, leveling homes, barns, granaries, churches, and mills. After a brief assault on Lower Fort, Johnson's men settled into camp a few miles south of the Mohawk River along the western bank of Schoharie Creek. Because the road ahead had become nearly unusable, Johnson had his artillerymen bury the coehorn mortar in a nearby swamp.

The next morning Johnson sent Joseph Brant, leading his Volunteers alongside a company from Butler's Rangers, across the Schoharie to lay waste to houses and barns near Fort Hunter. Once his own troops arrived at the Mohawk River, Johnson split his remaining force, sending three companies of Royal Yorkers together with half of his Seneca allies to the opposite bank. Both columns then marched west in tandem, torching whatever buildings earlier raiding parties had left standing, until they finally set up camp at the high ground known as the Noses.

At the same time, a militia force numbering several hundred, drawn from Albany County, had gathered at Schenectady under Brigadier General Robert Van Rensselaer. This group began tracking Johnson's men on October 18. Along the way they picked up reinforcements from militia units in the Schoharie Valley, swelling Van Rensselaer's command to roughly 600 men.

Battle of Stone Arabia

Early on October 19, Colonel John Brown led Massachusetts levies together with New York militia out of Fort Paris at Stone Arabia, hoping to strike the portion of Johnson's command posted on the Mohawk River's north bank. Two men who had deserted the Royal Yorkers had told Brown that this detachment stood alone and numbered fewer than the 360 troops under his command. Unbeknownst to him, though, Johnson had already crossed the Mohawk that same morning, allowing him to confront Brown with the bulk of his force.

The clash that followed did not last long. Brown's advance guard first ran into a party of Brant's Volunteers, prompting Brown to position his men in a poor defensive spot among the trees behind a stone wall. Brant's Volunteers then pressed in from one flank while Butler's Rangers struck from the other. Johnson himself directed detachments from the 8th and 34th Regiments in a charge aimed at the center of Brown's line. Brown died instantly, shot from atop his horse, and his troops broke and scattered. About forty men lost their lives. Many who survived made their way back to Fort Paris or to the smaller Fort Keyser, and a handful escaped by crossing the river. According to Johnson's later account, the losses on his side amounted to a single private from the 8th Regiment and three Iroquois, along with a minor wound suffered by Brant.

Though Johnson chose not to press an assault on either Fort Paris or Fort Keyser, Stone Arabia's homes, barns, and both of its churches were soon consumed by fire. Among the papers discovered on Brown's body was a letter that revealed to Johnson that Van Rensselaer's column had reached Fort Hunter the previous day. With this knowledge, Johnson gathered his men and resumed the march westward.

Klock's Field

On the morning of October 19, as Van Rensselaer drew near Fort Plain, also called Fort Rensselaer, he found himself joined by Colonel Louis Dubois with his New York Levies, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Clyde leading the Tryon County militia, and fifty Oneida fighters under Akiatonharónkwen. Dubois had already made one crossing of the river, only to turn back after running into men fleeing the aftermath of Brown's defeat. Lieutenant Colonel John Harper of the 2nd Regiment of New York Levies urged an immediate crossing, but Van Rensselaer held off, since the Albany militia, worn down after twenty six hours of marching broken only by brief rests, needed time to recover.

Dubois's men were sent back over the river, then spent hours waiting for the Albany militia to catch up and cross as well. Once assembled, Van Rensselaer split his combined force of 950 into three columns and pushed forward after Johnson.

The confrontation unfolded on land owned by the Klock family, east of St Johnsville. Johnson positioned the Jägers and Brant's Volunteers to secure his left, stationed Butler's Rangers on his right, and held the center with his Royal Yorkers, regulars drawn from the 8th and 34th, along with the grasshopper cannon.

Van Rensselaer's two left columns consisted of Albany militia, who moved against Johnson's center but began firing prematurely, well outside effective range, and refused to press forward. Following a series of scattered volleys, they retreated once Johnson's center answered with a full, concentrated volley. Things went differently on the right, where the New York Levies, Tryon militia, and Oneida warriors pushed the Jägers and Brant's Volunteers out of position, putting pressure on Johnson's left flank. When the Royal Yorkers and the 34th tried to counter this advance, they were repelled.

As night fell, thick smoke from gunfire and burning structures threw the battlefield into chaos. With Colonel Dubois's Levies now bearing down on his rear, Johnson decided to pull back, leaving the grasshopper spiked and abandoned on the field. He crossed the Mohawk some miles upstream and pressed on westward, though a portion of his rearguard fell into enemy hands.

Van Rensselaer tried to rally his Albany militia but ultimately judged it wiser to retreat than chase Johnson through the darkness. His troops resumed the pursuit at daybreak, reaching Fort Herkimer across from where West Canada Creek meets the river by the middle of the afternoon. Hours afterward, Van Rensselaer called off the pursuit once it grew clear that Johnson and his men had gotten away.

Aftermath

Separated from the main body of Johnson's men, Captain John McDonell and his Butler's Rangers company sprang an ambush on October 20 against reinforcements from the Tryon County militia moving up as a column. Ten militiamen died in the attack, two were seized, and the survivors fled. Not long afterward, soldiers dispatched from Fort Stanwix with orders to burn the boats Johnson had abandoned near the southern edge of Lake Onondaga instead fell into the hands of Leake's Independent Company, which took the entire detachment prisoner with barely any loss.

By October 26, Johnson and his men had made it back to Oswego. Writing to Governor Haldimand afterward, Johnson listed his losses as nine dead, two wounded, and fifty-two unaccounted for, a group that included Captain George Dane of the Rangers. Dane himself turned up at Oswego days later along with seventeen surviving soldiers. Investigators later concluded that most of those still missing had become prisoners of war rather than casualties.

Governor Clinton, in turn, informed the Continental Congress of the destruction wrought during the campaign, estimating losses at 150,000 tons of grain along with two hundred homes. He warned that the frontier had effectively contracted, remarking that Schenectady could now be considered the western edge of settled territory.

The hesitation Van Rensselaer showed in getting his troops across the river, along with his failure to chase after Johnson right away, prompted an official investigation the next spring. Although that inquiry cleared him of wrongdoing, later historians took a harsher view. Both William Leete Stone and Nelson Greene condemned his conduct, with Greene going so far as to describe the general as displaying cowardice unfitting for anyone holding military command. Van Rensselaer, for his part, understood that his Albany militiamen were worn down and no match in experience for Johnson's seasoned force.