In 1866 Stone & Stewart Publishers of Philadelphia published a New Topographical Atlas of the Counties of Albany and Schenectady New York, from actual surveys by S. N. & D. G. Beers and Assistants. The Atlas has a separate map for each of the towns, and detailed maps of some of the hamlets. The maps show geographical features such as creeks and lakes, plus the location of each church, school, sawmill and individual home, along with the name of the head of household. The map of Bern, as it was then spelled, is divided into a half-mile grid with a number in each square formed by the grid.

Several months ago I received the close-up of the map accompanying this article. I wondered why there was no grid shown between Berne and West Berne. For the answer we must look back almost 130 years to when the first settlers squatted in the wilderness of what is now Berne.

The grid on the 1866 map was the same as that created by William Cockburn when he made the first survey in the Helderbergs in 1786 and 1787 for Stephen Van Rensselaer III, who had inherited the land from his father a few years before. His inheritance included most of what are now Albany and Rensselaer Counties. The Rensselaer Manor had been granted to his ancestor, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, in 1629, with the proviso that he bring over Dutch farmers to settle the land. The Van Rensselaers rented the land on long-term leases, but never sold the land. Rent was payable annually in produce and labor, typically four fat fowl, 24 bushels of good winter wheat, and a day's labor with horse and wagon.

The Van Rensselaers lived in a large Manor house in Watervliet. Bleeker's Map of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck with the Homesteads thereon, 1763, indicates that the land along the Hudson River was thickly settled, while the area just below the Helderberg escarpment was sparsely settled. The land above the escarpment is shown as wilderness, all the way to what is now the Schoharie County line. The Van Rensselaers were unaware that several dozen squatters had decades before settled upon their land on the Helderberg plateau.

In 1786 and 1787 Stephen V. R. III hired Cockburn to survey his Helderberg wilderness into rectangular, uniform-sized lots for leasing. Settlers were to be recruited from the over-crowded and already-depleted farms of New England and downstate. Cockburn found almost 100 families already settled in what is now Berne and Knox. Van Rensselaer forced them to either sign leases or abandon their homesteads.

Cockburn surveyed the lots of the squatters along the boundaries of the land that they were actually farming. Each lot, whether already settled or vacant, was assigned a number to identify it for leasing purposes. The grid numbers shown on the 1866 map were the lot numbers assigned by William Cockburn at the time of his 1787 survey. A major difference between the two maps is that the 1787 map shows each irregularly shaped lot already settled, while the 1866 map is an idealized version that does not show the actual lot boundaries.

In studying the 1787 survey map, it is clear that Knox was settled before Berne. The reason for this earlier settlement was its location along the, by then, main route from Albany to Schoharie. (According to early chronicles, the first crude road to the Schoharie Valley was cleared in the fall of 1712, probably beginning near Princetown in Schenectady County.) The map shows along both sides of the road, a broad swath of irregularly shaped lots from Altamont, through what is now the Town of Knox, to the Schoharie County line. From the surnames it is apparent that these early settlers were German immigrants coming from Schoharie to the west, and Dutch settlers coming over the Helderberg escarpment from the east. While there is a crossroad shown at what is now the village of Knox, there is no village, just a farm. The map delineates rectangular 120-acre vacant lots to the north of the Town of Knox.

In what is now the Town of Berne, the map shows the irregularly shaped lots of the squatters scattered along the Helderberg Trail (State Route 443). To reach Schoharie from what is now the Village of Berne one would have had to go east to Turner Road, then north to connect with the Schoharie - Knox - Altamont road.

Since Berne was not on the travel route between Albany and Schoharie, it appears to have been settled later than Knox. To get a feel for when, I studied the dates of baptisms and marriages in the records of the Schoharie churches for families shown on the 1787 map of Berne. Knowing that in those days neighbors married neighbors, and sponsored the baptisms of one another's children, it became apparent that some of these families must have been living next to one another in Berne since about 1740.

The map shows numerous vacant lots between Berne and Knox, as well as along the top of the Helderberg escarpment to the east. The hills to the south of the Helderberg Trail were all in wilderness, and surveyed into uniformly sized 160-acre lots. The size indicated that the land was poorer than in Knox, where a settler could supposedly make a living on 120 acres.

The only residence in what is now the Village of Berne was the large house shared by the families of Jacob Weidman and his son Peter. A New York State Historical Marker says it was the largest house in Berne, with 10 fireplaces. As owners of the first sawmill and gristmill in the Helderbergs, the Weidmans were wealthy compared to their farmer neighbors.

Behind their house, on Fox Creek, was a millpond. Below the millpond dam, and to the west of the wooden bridge across Fox Creek, was Jacob Weidman's saw mill; further downstream was the grist mill run by his son Peter. There was no road north to Knox.

Continuing west along the deeply rutted Helderberg Trail, a traveler would pass no stores or homes. Turning south at the T-Intersection with Switzkill Road would take you to Rensselaerville; going north you would cross Fox Creek, then pass the Reformed Church farm on the left. Beyond, on the knoll on which is now the Beaverdam Cemetery, was the simple, wood-frame building of the Beaverdam Reformed Church. It had been built the previous year to replace the log structure that had been in use since 1765. (Remember that the 1763 Bleeker map of Van Rensselaer holdings showed the Helderbergs as empty wilderness.) Continuing north, and then east, the dirt road finally dead-ended at a farmer's lane on what is now Rock Road.

The 1787 map shows a swamp where the Switzkill flows into Fox Creek. This was the site of a large beaver pond, or at least the remnants of it. This past summer my uncle Maver Becker led my brother Ralph and me on a Sunday morning jaunt to look for the most likely site for the beaver dam. We found it in a narrows along Fox Creek, a short distance west of the knoll on which the Beaverdam Church once stood. At the narrows it would have been relatively easy for beavers to build a dam that would flood the lowlands back past the juncture with the Switzkill. Old timers still refer to the location of the beaver pond as The Old Waters.

The beaver pond would have wrapped around the south side of the knoll where the Beaverdam Reformed Church stood. Its prominence gave the name of Beaverdam not only to the Church and later the Cemetery, but to the whole Berne area, which early Van Rensselaer leases referred to as The Beaver Dam.

If there had been a village in 1786 when the "new" Beaverdam Reformed Church was built, it would have been built in the village. If the village were named Berne, it would have been called the Berne Reformed Church. In fact, there was no usage of the name Berne before the Town of Bern was created in 1795. It can be postulated that the New York State Board of Land Commissioners asked Jacob Weidman, the most prominent man in the area, for his suggestion for a name for the town about to be created. Thinking of his fatherland that he had left over a half century before, Weidman might very well have suggested naming it after Bern, Switzerland.

To answer the question as to why there were no grid lines between Berne and West Berne on the 1866 map, I took a closer look at the 1787 map. It too had no grid lines in this same area. The reason was that this small area was so heavily settled by squatters whose lots were irregularly shaped, that an overlying grid would serve no useful purpose. They built the Beaverdam Reformed Church right in the middle of this heavily populated area; and when people asked where they lived, they said, "At the Beaver Dam."

Harold Miller
Privada Gomez Farias #2
Colonia Centro, CP 68000
Oaxaca, Oax., Mexico
Tel. / fax: 52 (951) 515-1412
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Make your plans now to attend Berne Heritage days. See http://www.bernehistory.org