I am researching a family branch by the name of "Pound" The men were basketmakers who finally settled in Phelps, NY, Ontario County. Their basket material came from a place called "Bushwacker's Alley" in a hamlet called "Pine Plains" which no longer exists in Ontario County. All the men in the Pound family were basketmakers. We are looking for a connection between the Taghakanic basketmakers and our family.

Pine Plains in Dutchess Co was formed from Northeast. A Moravian Mission to the Indians was formed there in 1740.Its a few miles south of Taghkanic & Taghkanic Creek.Taghkanic Lake is there someplace too.in Columbia Co NY borders are close to MA & CT.Northeast was a border dispute with CT.

I read a bookseveral years ago about the basketmakers of Columbia County. I don't know if this is the same book; however, members of the Becraft family were mentioned as being basketmakers. Do you know if this mentions that family? Becraft is my maiden name.

I must locate the book and I will email you with an answer. I purchased this small book a couple of years ago. I will send info very soon.

I recently discovered, while using the US Census data on Ancestry.com, that you can find basketmakers listed in the census. I ran across a few when looking up someone else in Taghkanic. You could either page through, looking at the occupation column, or just use the index for the surname you are looking for. I was surprised because I had assumed that basketmaking was a secondary occupation to farming. It appears that some folks at least regarded it as their vocation.

"Bushwhacker" was a term used for people who were of mixed Native American and European descent who remained in the area in the post contact period. In this case, these people were most likely of Mohican ancestry. They were the aboriginal people of the area. Many of their descendants remained in the area and supported themselves by making baskets. I am suspicious of the name "Pine Plains." The Moravians established a mission near Shekomeko AND Pine Plains. There were many Mohicans and Wappingers there. I believe people of native descent still inhabited the Pine Plains area. My folks were Mohican descent and one daughter was born in Pine Plains. Shirley Dunn has written two good books about the Mohicans.

Debbie

There was also a group of basketmakers in Gallatin on a hill near Jackson's Corners in an area known as Stovepipe Alley (apparently they lived in dug out homes, and when you approached the settlement all you saw was stovepipes). As I recall, the families were Houghtalings. All were thought to be of Native American and European descent.

Anyone who can confirm or refute anything I have stated is welcome to do so - my recollection is from an old article in the Hudson Registar Star probably from the 1950s.

Mike

There was a wonderful article on the baskets in Antiques magazine, January 2004. It is available in full text if you google "mohegan, mohican" baskets" (but minus the illustrations.) My ancestors lived in the Nipmuc region of Massachusetts (on the Rhode Island border and there is a good article on the baskets here.
"Native American Technology and Art"
<http://www.nativetech.org/weave/nipmucbask/img00001.gif>;
Nipmuc Splint Basketry

Here is a quote from Antique magazine.
"During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in New England, Indians were making splint baskets in large numbers...In order to survive in the new world of European conquest and settlement,[ they ] were forced to find ways to eke out livings, and for many of them making and selling baskets and related handcrafted objects became a livelihood ...basketmakers were also skilled makers of chair seats, mats, brooms, and scrub brushes as well as wooden trays, bowls, and spoons. Ironically, just when Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) described the local Natick, Massachusetts, Indians in her novel Oldtown Folke as a roving, uncertain class of people, ... hanging like a tattered fringe on the thrifty and well-kept petticoat of New England society, the Indians were actively making and selling the brooms, mats, scrub brushes, and newly woven chair seats that allowed Americans to maintain "well-kept" houses. "

Baskets are commonly listed in early New England probate inventories with some entries suggesting Indian makers. "[These] undecorated Indian baskets would have looked much like Yankee-made baskets to those taking inventories."

This article is accompanied by plates illustrating:
*painted stylized stockade, often found on Nipmuc and Mohegan baskets.

*four-lobed medallion is another symbol

Baskets with the initials J.H.S. are possibly those of Mohegan (Mohican) descent and (JHS) -- an itinerant basketmaker who borrowed designs from a variety Native American groups.

Genealogy: some baskets attributed to members of the Arnold family of the Hassanimisco Nipmuc community, in Grafton, Massachusetts Sarah Cisco Sullivan, a Nipmuc (living on Brigham Hill Road in Grafton, -- her grandmother Sarah Maria Arnold Cisco.

The article has excellent references for those who are interested in more information.

PINE PLAINS, a post-township in the N. part of Dutchess co., New York. Pop., 1416.
Local Names in Dutchess County, New York.
The nine partners patent. The Great or Lower Nine Partners Patent was granted 1697, and consisted of a tract of land eight or ten miles in breadth extending from the Hudson River east to the Oblong Patent to near the Connecticut state line. This tract covered the territory included in Chilton, Pleasant Valley, Washington, Stanford, part of Hyde Park and sections of Amenia and south-east.--territory north of the Great Nine Partners Patent "Little" embraced Milan and Pine PLAINS. By an error in making the survey the two patents lapped slightly, forming a wedge-shaped tract called the "Gore." Neither the Crumb Elbow precinct nor Pleasant Valley were in the Little Nine Partners.

And, near Albany, the gazetteer states: (1860 gazetteer)
PINE PLAINS, about 50 miles S. by E. from Albany. It contains a bank, and has several hundred inhabitants.

Here is a reply from Ruth Piwonka, who asked me to forward. It clarifies some of the misinformation inadvertantly passed on by me from the inaccurate reporting of a local newspaper.

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From: Ruth Piwonka [rpiwonka@nycap.rr.com]

Michael,

I can report a bit more about the Taghkanic basket makers. Between 1855 and 1925, they lived for the most part in the town of Taghkanic (although in one or two censuses one of them lived in Gallatin). This seems to place them in eastern town of Taghkanic near Lake Taghkanic; but some local residents recall being in school with them at West Taghkanic. In view of their association with West Taghkanic Methodist Church, they may actually have resided closer to that hamlet. Further, I have been told that the state purchased at least some if not all of their property, when they acquired the land around Lake Charlotte (historic name of Lake Taghkanic) that would become Taghkanic State Park.

All but one had been born in this neighborhood, occasionally baptized, and a number are buried in the West Taghkanic Methodist Church cemetery. The exception is Henry Houghtaling who had been born in Greene County about 1770 and seemingly moved to Columbia in the early nineteenth century. In the 1855 census all the families who later turn up with members involved in basket making were identified as 'farmers'. At least three extended families living near each other -- Houghtaling, Proper, and Simmons -- were active in the craft, which evidently emerged on a relatively large scale in the early twentieth century. Their baskets were much desired and sold in Hudson as well as in New England communities. But not all members of these families stayed in Taghkanic. By the 1880s, judging from the census records, some move to other towns in the county.

A number died in the 1918 flu epidemic; and then in the 1920s, they were 'discovered' by yellow journalists who wrote scurrilous accounts of them for New York newspapers. I believe this is where the term 'Stovepipe Alley" arose, referring to their houses (shanties they termed by the journalists) being heated by woodstoves. However, a photo of one of their houses has a proper chimney. Unfortunately the newspaper articles put a terrible stigma on these families; and it is only recently, particularly through the work of Martha Wetherbee (a basket scholar), that the baskets and the people who made them have been recognized for the truly accomplished art that was practiced in their making. The baskets are awesomely made and durable. It seems that this work was not the full time occupation of many of them -- rather that the men of younger and middle-age farmed or found other work.

In the censuses, these people are indicated as "white" and not of any mixed origin. Not conclusive, I know -- but perhaps of note.

I have also a typewritten account pertaining to one Jacob Lyle, a "baskit maker" who purchased an acre of land in Milan from Frederick Bathrick in 1821. Then ten years later Bathrick sells another 2 acre parcel, adjoining the Lyle lot, to Nancy Bradford, a cook from Albany County. Jacob and his wife Betsy are in the 1840 census as colored persons over 55 yrs; within a few years they disappear and Nancy Bradford has purchased their lot; she dies in 1865 -- but a subsequent deed pertaining to the property refers to her as Nancy Crow. The writer of the piece (signed / not typed is P .... Thompson) tentatively relates her to Chief Crow, a Mohican who is buried in Milan on Turkey Hill Road near Jackson Corners. So this might have something to do with the basket-making you are aware of near Jackson Corners. Although they may well have mingled (and intermarried, etc etc), it seems to me that the Taghkanic basket makers were (or at least became) a group separate from any basket makers who might continued the work in Milan -- but then again, who knows: maybe they did work together. If so, that really adds an interesting dimension. (I believe that Kathryn Bardwell, another basket scholar, gave me a copy of this brief article.)

I haven't a clue as to how to send an email to the Columbia County list -- so if it seems fitting to you, you are welcome to forward it -- though perhaps it is simply of interest to you.

Ruth Piwonka