Nicholas Herkimer: The General Who Led from the Ground

The village of Herkimer is named for Nicholas Herkimer, a German-American farmer and militia general who was born here in the Mohawk Valley in seventeen twenty-eight and who died here in August of seventeen seventy-seven, ten days after one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution.

Herkimer commanded the Tryon County militia, a force drawn from this very valley: farmers, craftsmen, and frontiersmen who had spent their lives working this land. In early August of seventeen seventy-seven, he gathered roughly eight hundred of them to march west and relieve Fort Stanwix, which was under siege by a British force under Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger. St. Leger had sent a combined force of Loyalists and Haudenosaunee warriors into the surrounding forest to intercept the relief column.

On August sixth, near the village of Oriskany about fifteen miles west of here, they sprang the ambush. The column was strung out in a ravine when the firing began. Within minutes it became one of the most ferocious close-quarters engagements of the entire war. Herkimer's horse was shot out from under him early in the fighting. His leg was shattered by a musket ball. Rather than be carried to the rear, he ordered his men to prop him against a tree and continued commanding the battle, reportedly smoking his pipe as the fighting raged around him.

The Americans held. St. Leger's ambush failed to destroy the column, and eventually his siege of Fort Stanwix collapsed. But the casualties at Oriskany were devastating. Somewhere between two hundred and four hundred of Herkimer's men were killed or wounded, a staggering share of the force.

Herkimer was carried home to his farm here. Surgeons amputated his leg, but the wound had done too much damage. He died on August sixteenth, seventeen seventy-seven. His home is preserved nearby as a New York State Historic Site.