St. Tammany farmer., 1903-04-18
A RELIC OF PIONEER DAYS.
The Old Stone House at Germantown
n. ", and the Romance OF
Its History.

A local newspaper learns that the
old stone house at Germantown is to
have new roof but by neglectlng
to state that it is now more than $50
years since the first roof was put on,
the newspaper missed the making OF
really interesting item, says the New
York Sun.
The old stone house at Germantown
was the very advance guard OF civil
ization on the southern border of New
York at the time of the French and
Indian war, during which and until the
close of the revolutionary war, it was
a fort. 1t is of record that an Indian
trader named Haynes was living at
this fort as early as 1760, and that
daughter of his married Capt. Abram
Westfall, who was quartered there
during the revolution, but the record
does not deal with the romance and
tragedy of the courtship of the cap
tain and the traders daughter.
The story is that the traders daugh-
ter had another lover, one De Witt,
and that she favored him over Capt.
Westfall. One day the girl, accom-
panied by the favored wooer, went
blackberrying upon the thickly grown
fatland that lay between the fort and
the Delaware river. Moved by jeal-
ousy, Capt. Westfall followed them.
When they had come near the river
bank lurking Indian sprang upon
them from thicket. The girls lover
fed. The Indian seized the swooning
girl and bore her hurriedly toward his
canoe.
Capt. Westfall, who had come op-
portunely upon the scene, pursued the
Indian, overlook him as he was push
ing his canoe aaoatt the girl lying un-
conscious in it, and brought back. the
captive and her captor's scalp. Awed-
ding in the fort soon followed. The
traders daughte1 became the captains
bride.
The lover who abandoned the girl
to the Indian turned tory, so the story
goes, and joined the Indian Chief
Brant's bano of Indians and tories that
raided the Minisink settlements year
later. When the news of the Minisink
massacre was received at the fort
Capt. Westfall hurriedly gathered to-
gether all the men he could collect and
went forth to offer resistance to the
| valley toward the fort.
Guided by the recreant lover, Brant
and his marauders sought another
route, avoided Westfall's men and ap-
| preached the fort undiscovered except
by negro slave who had remained
with the captains wife and her new
born baby. The slave had time to give
| his mistress warning and succeeded
in getting her in safety to the noun
tains with her child.
Brant's Indians and tories attacked
the fort, pulled down one end of it, set
fire to the upper story, which was built
of logs, and hastened on up the Della
ware valley, to be overtaken by Gen.
Hathorne's militia ON the Delaware
highlands, where was fought the
bloody battle of Minisink, so disastrous
to the Americans. Among those killed
of Brant's men was the recreant lover
of Capt. Westfall's bride.
The breach made in the old stone
fort by Brant's band was not repaired
until 1898, when the wall was relaid
with the stones that had originally
formed it, and the log upper story was
replaced by stone one. With that
exception the building is the same as
it was when first erected century and
a half ago.
| It has been in turn fort, tavern, store
and dwelling house. The village OF
Port Jeryis has grown up around it
1t is now tenement house.