Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/105

 DELAWARE COUNTY. 81 ears, were principally those which had been industriously cir- culated by the tories and Indians, and consequently they scru- pled to believe them. And what rendered their situation still more precarious, was the fact that the valley in which they lived, was, during the Revolutionary war, a principal thorough- fare by which warlike parties traversed their way to the Scho- harie settlements on missions of plunder and destruction.* These expeditions were usually accompanied by tories, who were the more unprincipled of the two, and much more given to plundering from those they knew or even suspected guilty of the crime called Democracy and frequently they took upon themselves the responsibility of plunder, unaccompanied by their less- savage allies. One day, when the wife of St. Leger Cowley — a strong, resolute woman, from the Emerald Isle,'' — came into the house, from which she had been absent but a short time, she found a tory blackened, so as to appear as an Indian, contend- ing with her husband about a pair of breeches, which the former had taken from a chest, and was grasping with both hands, while her husband was holding on to another part of the garment with a grasp equally firm. Having learned the' cause of the contention, and thinking it a game which could be better played by three persons — even though the third were a woman — she, by a sudden movement, took the bone of contention'' from their hands, and seizing a wooden poker Cowley, Esq., a highly respectable citizen, and a descendant of St. Leger, mentioned in the context, for most of the above information. He resides in Stamford, Delaware County. f Quoted from the inscription on the tombstone, in the Harpers- field burying-ground, to the memory of Thomas and John Hendry, who sacrificed their lives and property to the common cause of lib- erty. See more fully the capture of Colonel Harper and his party at Harpersfield, April 8th, 1780.
 * I am indebted to the manuscript kindly furnished me by Asahel