Fort Hunter, New York

Queen Anne ordered the fort built at the request of the Mohawk, in exchange for their allowing her to settle German Palatines in their territory.

The Fort Hunter land, approximately 80 acres on both sides of the mouth of the Schoharie, was deeded in 1697 to Jan Peterse Mabee.

Copies of the deed are held both in the Albany State Archives and at the shrine of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha in nearby Auriesville, New York.

The future site of Fort Hunter was on Schoharie Creek, near the easternmost of the two primary Mohawk settlements of the time.

In return, she asked Tejonihokarawa for help in settling Palatine Germans, Protestant refugees then working at English camps in the Hudson Valley in present-day Dutchess County.

Through Governor Hunter, the sachem made some Mohawk land available to settlers near Schoharie Creek, where some of the Palatines eventually settled.

It includes the remains of the Schoharie Crossing, a navigable aqueduct over the creek, and part of a lock from the early nineteenth-century development of the Erie Canal along the Mohawk River.