Mohawk – Wyandot Ancestry of Lt. John Young's ... - Davidkfaux.org

three years earlier - one of the two July 1789 deeds of sale to the Lower Mohawk lands atFt. Hunter and the Upper Mohawk lands on the Van Horne Patent at Canajoharie, bothsites being situated along the Mohawk River in New York State. These deeds of salewere signed at Niagara by all or most of the principal men and women formerly of boththe Upper and Lower Mohawk “Castles”. Most of those present signed their Nativenames to the Ft. Hunter deed, although in many cases someone else added in theirbaptismal and white surnames. Unfortunately most of those noted in the Canajohariedeed had their names recorded by a clerk (even Joseph Brant’s Native name was addedby someone else who made a hash of his Mohawk name).It is noteworthy that a signator to the Ft. Hunter Lower Mohawk deed of 9 July 1789 is:kayadontyi[p]eggy yanngClick here to see this signature in context and use the magnification feature to see thisentry at the top left. The name appears to be Peggy (a diminutive for Margaret) –although the first letter is just a guess. The second name appears to be “yanng” which issurely just an eccentric way of writing “young”. She signs immediately before thechildren of her proposed uncle Johannes Crine. There are two possibilities here:1) Peggy married a man with the surname Young:There were two men with the surname Young that would best fit time, place andcircumstances; however there were numerous males with the surname Young residing inthe Canajoharie and Ft. Hunter regions. The name of the wife of Lt. Frederick Young(circa 1733-1777) was Catharine Schumacher (widow of Melchior Bell) who he marriedin 1762. A daughter Dorothy was born in 1764 to the couple and at that point there is nofurther information about the family of Frederick other than he had a son who died in1779 without issue. There was no record of his wife being apprehended in 1777 as wasthe case with the wife of John Young, even though the two men left together. It is likelythat Frederick was a widower, or his wife had already left for Canada. Peggy could havebeen a second undocumented wife to either Frederick or John. If the latter then shewould be the woman mentioned in the Campbell Diary. This does seem to be a longstretch in the “maybe department”. She might more likely be the widow of John’s uncleFrederick who died in 1777.2) Peggy young may mean “young peggy”:Peggy appears to have signed the deed with her own full name and in her ownhandwriting (not worrying about capitalization – as was the case with written Mohawk) –although this is not certain. It could be argued that she meant to imply “young peggy”, asamong the Mohawks formerly of Ft. Hunter there was, for example, a “Lydia” and an“Old Lydia” and a “young Brant” as seen in the 1789 deed. In other records from earlieryears there was a Brant Senior, Old Brant; there is also Abraham Major and AbrahamMinor. “Little” and “big” were also used to differentiate individuals with the same first45