History of the Christman Holstery Inn

This is the story about the old Christman Holstery Inn in Ephratah, New York. How it came to be; and how it was passed down in the Christman family for four generations.

The Snells and the Foxes in Stone Arabia

The Snells and the Foxes were in the first group to move from Schoharie to Stone Arabia. The Snells owned several of the lots and were very active in the Stone Arabia log church and later in the bickering between the two churches. The Snells and the Christmans had both lived in Hartman's dorf.

Johannes Snell and Elizabeth Landgraff1 had a son named George Snell2 in 1724. He was just a small child when the family moved from Schoharie to Stone Arabia.

William Fox and Margaret Kast3 were also early residents. They owned lot 19 of the 3rd division4 -- the land on which the Holstery Inn farm was eventually built5. They had a daughter named Mary Fox in 1725.6

George Snell married Mary Fox7 around 1755. They had a daughter named Anna Maria Snell in 1768.8

Jacob Christman Moves to Stone Arabia

Jacob Christman and Nicholas Pickert must have been very good friends and hunted a lot together. According to Conrad Weiser's biographer, Paul AW Wallace, Nicholas Pickert lived within one mile of the Canajoharie castle. However, Nicholas Pickert's dad, Bartholomew Pickert, lived on, or at least owned, lot 12 of the Stone Arabia Patent 3rd division near the Foxes and Snells.

Apparently, Jacob Christman knew the Snells quite well from Hartman's Dorf in Schoharie where both families had lived prior. And apparently the Snells knew that Jacob Christman knew the Indians in Canajoharie quite well. Because in 1754, when Jost Snell and Jacob Zimmermann were looking to buy a large piece of land over in Mannheim from the Indians they hired Jacob Christman and Nicholas Pickert to interpret between them and the Indians.

The 1754 Snell-Zimmermann Indian Deed



One of those Indians was King Hendrick. The property is called Snell's Bush. If you go up Route 5, just over the Caroga Creek is Beardsley Castle. Take a right. That's Snell's Bush Road. Drive to the top and you will come to Snell's Bush Church. Take a look around. That's the Snell-Zimmermann property all the way back down to the river. Just across the river from there was the Canajoharie castle. Jacob and Catherine probably lived near there. That's why the Snells went to him.

Until recently I thought that for Jacob Christman's payment in that negotiation he somehow ended up with Lot 11 of the Stone Arabia Patent's 3rd Division. However, new evidence shows that Jacob lived in Canajoharie until 1763, where he was a "freeholder"; however, that same year George Klock served everybody who was renting in that area with eviction notices. If Jacob Christman was a renter there, and I believe he was, then that was when he moved.

In 1766 Jacob Christman is found living on lot 11 as per the tax list. Therefore he moved the family to Stone Arabia between 1763 and 1766; and most likely in 1763. Apparently the family had lived near the Canajoharie castle all those years renting from the Indians. Click the next link for specific details about Jacob Christman's movements:

Tracking Jacob Christman from Canajoharie to Ephratah

Eventually the family ended up with Lot 93 too. Johann Jacob called it his homestead farm in his Last Will and Testament, 1811. Old Jacob and Johann Jacob and Anna Hall are all buried in a old cemetery on lot 11. They are under a tree in a hillside pasture behind a house on Eaker Road, which can be seen from the road.

Pictures and Lists of the Lot 11 & Lot 93 Cemeteries

Pioneer Life in Ephratah

Jacob was the first Christman in the militia. So was George Snell.

In 1757, Jacob Christman and George Snell went to succor Fort William Henry with the Albany Militia under Sir William Johnson. They got there too late. The battle eventually became the subject battle for James Fenemore Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans". His character Hawkeye is thought to be based on Palatine frontiersmen like Jacob Christman was.

The Revolutionary War Years

When the American Revolution rolled around Jacob Christman was too old for the militia. But his son, Johann Jacob Christman, was in the 2nd regiment of the Tryon County Militia under Colonel Klock. So was George Snell. So was a guy named John Adam Gray. As a matter of fact all of the Christmans and Snells and Grays from that area were in the militia under General Herkimer.

Klock's Indians

According to the Oneida Indian Nation, Hanyery became the arch enemy of Joseph Brant. Hanyery was also allied with a group called "Klocks Indians" .

Since Hanyery was a Palatine/Oneida, and since all of Jacob's kids were half Indian, and since Jacob's son John's wife was Hanyery's cousin, and since Johann Jacob was in Klock's Regiment, it is my view that Klock's Indians probably included the Christmans.

The Oneidas claim that Klock's Indians, Hanyery, and the nasty controversy with George Klock, did a lot to turn Joseph Brant away from the patriot cause. He had also been wooed and nurtured by Sir William Johnson, who lived with Joseph's sister Molly Brant.

When Sir William collapsed and died he had been speaking about the George Klock controversy.

July 1777-August 5, 1777

When Sir William died, his son John Johnson thought he was going to inherit a feudal kingdom. The Palatines disagreed with that notion. So John Johnson and Joseph Brant and the other Mohawk valley loyalists fled to Canada to build a army that was to invade the Mohawk valley for England and meet Burgoyne in Albany who was invading down the Champlain. In the summer of 1777 the invasion began.

Hanyery was the sachem (Cheif) of the Oneida village called Oriska near Fort Stanwix when it came under siege from the British force which included John Johnson and Joseph Brant. General Herkimer mustered the militia to succor the fort. Johann Jacob Christman and all his brothers and male cousins went tothe battle. So did George Snell and his son Johannes Snell the fifer. And so did John Adam Gray. On August 6, 1777, they all marched into an ambush at Oriskany and fought the bloodiest battle of the American Revolution. A thunderstorm became the turning point of the battle and determined the outcome.

The Battle of Oriskany

The British army never advanced further than Oriskany. John Johnson and Joseph Brant returned to Canada with St. Leger. Moses Youngblood testified under oath that some of the Palatine prisoners were murdered and canabilized by the Indians on a Lake Ontario island as the British turned their heads.

I believe that if that British army would have made it to Saratoga, motivated and invigorated by victory, that the Americans would have lost the Battle of Saratoga. Therefore, since Saratoga is considered to be the turning point of the revolution, my opinion is that Oriskany was the real turning point, and the turning point of Oriskany was a thunderstorm.

Be that as it may, the Mohawk valley was never the same.

George Snell was killed at Oriskany9 and so was his son Johannes10 the fifer who was mortally wounded and died in a Indian hut the next day.

Read this about them: George Snell's Two Sons

Old Johannes Snell never got over loosing both his son and grandson11.

None of the Christmans were killed.

Hanyery became the great Oneida hero.

The war dragged on.

At some point Johann Jacob captured some tories who were brought to Fort Paris, which was near the Stone Arabia Churches, and tortured. The Mohawk valley became the most ravaged and war torn area in the United States. The loyalist invasions led by John Johnson and Joseph Brant recoiled from no extreme of cruelty. The Wyoming Valley Massacre. The Cherry Valley Massacre. The Battle of Stone Arabia with it's conflagration and the Battle of Klock's Field.

Fort Paris became a temporary home and refuge for many15. Very few homes were left standing. It wasn't a war of romance by any stretch of the imagination, it was murder and revenge. And somehow, when it was all over, the Christmans, and the Grays had survived it all. Few stuck it out to the end. Many just fled into Albany or other secure places. But the Christmans and the Grays stayed the course. I like that a lot.

John Adam Gray Builds His House

In the fullness of time situations and circumstances cause people to fog in and out of each others lives as the seasons change.

At some point during the war, or not to long after it was over, John Adam Gray married Anna Maria Snell12, George Snell and Mary Fox's daughter. The Christmans lived just down the road a bit. They were all obviously busy rebuilding, and helping each other out.

John Adam Gray built the house that became the Holstery Inn13. Nobody knows exactly when. It might have been before his daughter was born in 1787. It was certainly after the conflagration in 1780 and before he died in 1804.

In 1787, John Adam Gray and Anna Maria Snell had a daughter named Mary Gray14.

In 1783, Johan Jacob Christman and Anna Hall had a son named Jacob I Christman.

020304 Jacob I. Christman (b.1783 d.1866)
Wife - Mary Gray (b.1787 d.1867) Both are buried on Lot 93

Children:
Charles b.1807 d.1839
James b.abt.1810
Jacob b.1814 d.1857
Antone b.1831 d.1906
Hellen Maria b.unknown

The Christman's Get the Farm

Jacob I Christman and Mary Gray got married and inherited the farm from John Adam Gray in 1804 when he died. And for almost two centuries it was owned by Jacob and Mary's Christman descendants. That's how the Christman's got the farm.

Jacob I must have grown up on lot 93 of the Stone Arabia Patent. Johann Jacob calls lot 93 the homestead in his will. Both Jacob I and Mary Gray are buried there under a hickory tree in the woods.

Jacob I & Hunting with Nat Foster

Apparently a man named Nat Foster was an acquaintance of Jacob I, and they went hunting together.

One day Nat told Jacob a story about killing a Indian in the woods after the war. Jeptha Simms gives the following account of it in Trappers of New York:

"Foster reloaded his rifle before he ventured to approach an animal that had been so tenacious of life, although dying (he seldom changed his position in the woods without a charge in his gun) ; and while advancing to it, he was startled to hear a footstep. within pistol shot distance of him, and was possibly- not less surprised to find in the person of his new visitant, the muscular form of the Indian Hess.

Supposing, as is presumed, that Foster's rifle was. unloaded, his recent acquaintance, who now experienced no difficulty in "murdering the King's English," at the end of a whoop that told credibly for his lungs and the absence of balsams, shouted aloud, "Now Foster me got you! me kill you now!" Between Hess and his intended victim there was a marsh, over which was a fallen tree. Mounting the log to approach the white hunter, with uplifted tomahawk and death-boding mien, the report of a rifle again echoed amid the fir-tops of the forest, and up sprang the Indian high in air from the log. A bullet had plowed its way through his heart, and with a gutteral groan, the dark warrior fell dead upon the marsh. Lest Hess might not be unattended in the forest, the eagle-eyed marksman, whose rifle had not only been quickly loaded but quickly discharged, stamped the carcass of his victim deep into the mud.

Dark mystery hung over the fate of this lone hunter for years. Many remembered that his disappearance was sudden and unexpected; and others that they bad heard Foster say, shortly after his interview with him at Little Falls, that he had met him once, and only once after that time. He confidentially communicated, many years after, to Jacob I. Christman, with whom he was hunting, the fate of this unfortunate savage, for whom

No solemn bell's metallic tongue
E'er toll'd its death note on the breeze:
Zephyrs alone his requiem rung,
Where Ivy green her mantle hung
Mid plumed and bowing trees.

The Holstery Inn

02030402 Antone Christman (b.1831 d.1906)
Wife - Elizabeth Abel (b.1834 d.1917) Both in Ephratah Cemetery

Children:
William Edwin b.1855 d.1864
Jacob I b.1857 d.1931
William Frasier b.1866 d.1925
Anna Marie b.1860
Elmira b.1862
Mary b.1866
Alpha b.1873 d.1963

The following excerpt comes from "Our Todays and Yesterdays in the Town of Ephratah":

"An inn known as the Holstery was located on East Turnpike Road which was a main thoroughfare to Albany. Its origin is unknown but the last owner to operate it was Anthony Christman, known as Antone. His wife was Elzabeth Abel from Ephratah. Their daughter Mary, married William Lenz, a son of Charles and Elizabeth Keiner Lenz. A section of the ballroom can be seen. A trap door which has been covered, once led to the bar. One room was referred to as the check room. Sheep herders were known to have stayed there and a certain field is called the sheep pastured know that field well. At present the farm is occupied by Carlton Christman."

- Our Todays and Yesterdays in the Town of Ephratah; vol 1.

"A saloon is on the first floor, together with a dining room and three bedrooms at the front of the building. Al the rear is the kitchen, pantry, lobby and a cloak room. In the saloon is a trap door under the stairway to the second floor which was used to bring up barrels of whiskey from the cellar The second floor consists of four bedrooms and an attic.

Attached to the rear of the Inn was a carriage house. There was also a horse barn located in back of the blacksmith's shop which was to the right of the Inn. The blacksmith's shop was operated by Daniel Gray from 1822-1841. There he would shoe horses, fix plows, and other things required by the farmers. Behind, and to the left of the horse barn, was a barn for housing livestock. Directly above the carriage house was a barroom with a fiddler's bench in the back corner. The carriage house was torn down in 1879 and the horse barn taken down in 1969. The blacksmith's shop is now the garage."

- Our Todays and Yesterdays in the Town of Ephratah; vol 2

Jacob Able was a dairyman and a stock-raiser and helped Antone work the farm.

Apparently, Antone was quite wealthy and owned several farms. Patricia Logan of Palatine related the following about Antone and the Heroth family.

The Heroth Family immigrated from Germany to America sometime in the mid 1800's. Somehow they ended up in Ephratah/Palatine. They were very poor, and had a large family. Antone Christman took the family under his wing and gave them a house off of Eaker Road. Many years later, Faye Heroth, owned lot 93; Johan Jacob Christman's old farm. (My paraphrase)

Another interesting story about Antone was told to me by my father, Donald H. Christman (d.2003), who interviewed Cora Christman Beck in 1999. Cora (d.2003) was the oldest living Christman in the line of Jacob at the time. She was Alpha's youngest daughter.

Cora said that one day when Antone was standing at the water trough across the road from the Holstery, an unidentified woman walked up to him with a baby in her arms. She handed the baby to Antone and said, " Here, this is yours", and walked away.

Antone then carried the baby in the house and said something like, "Oh honey…. I have something for you…"

That baby was Mary, who married William Lentz, as listed above.

Antone's brother Charles died as a young man at 32 years old. So did his brother Jacob at 43 years old.

His older brother James apparently owned Lot 93.

The Great Prosperity

Emma S. Timmerman (born in 1879) wrote of her recollections over at Snell's Bush:

"I remember the bell on Sunday mornings; the horses and wagons; the men in derbies or tall silk hats, tailor-made suits and fine leather boots; and their large gold watches with gold chains. The women wore beautifully decorated small bonnets of woven straw with velvet or satin ties under their chin; silk or satin dresses with tight waists fitted over laced corsets, and long skirts below their ankles, with large bustles and hoop skirts. Their high buttoned shoes were usually black or bronze (brownish) color. Those in mourning wore heavy veils covering their back nearly to the waist and so arranged as to cover the face or to be thrown aside. Women waited in the church hall for their husbands, then walked reverently down the aisles to their pews where they bowed humbly in prayer after their little pew door was closed. It was almost like a family gathering. Nearly all were Snells or Timmermans, or related by marriage.

"Such were the later days of the great prosperity after the Civil War when Little Falls was the greatest cheese market in the world and Herkimer County Cheese was on hotel menus in England and France.

The old log cabins had long since disappeared and salt- box houses were well-nigh a thing of the past as beautiful new homes of brick or wood had been constructed. The days of the scythe, cradle, flail, and homemade cheese were past. The cheese factories, mower, and reaper had come and help could be hired very cheaply. With their well- furnished homes, successful dairying, home grown food, seamstresses going from house to house, it seemed that the physical body had no care in the world.

As late as 1905 a farmer could make a living and add to his savings on five acres of land through good planning and a diversity of crops. one such farmer raised ginseng, hay, cherries, plums, berries, vegetables, poultry and had bees that produced from three to four hundred dollars worth of honey annually. He delivered his produce with a horse and buggy."

The Farming Years

During the farming years Alpha owned the farm.

0203040204 Alpha Christman (b.1873 d.1963) Ephratah Cem
1st Wife - Margaret Spoor b.1876 d.1937

Children:
Howard b.1895 d.1963
Ethel b.1896
John b.1897
James b.1899
Eva b.1900
Edna & Edwin (Twins) b.1906
Cora b.1910
Alpha Jr. b.1911
2nd Wife - Ella Sitterly (Probably not married)
Children:
Carlton

In the early days farming was a self-sustaining business. Hay, grains, fruits and vegetables were raised to furnish food for the family, the horses, cattle, pigs, sheeid and poultry. Any excess was sold, the proceeds of which paid the taxes and upkeep with some left over for a rainy day. Horses provided power for machinery and transportation. Cattle supplied butter, milk, cheese and meat. By-products of cheese and butter mixed with grain fed pigs which were butchered, smoked or put in brine. Lard used for baking was also obtained from pork. Un- wanted grease was mixed with wood ashes and after heating to a certain temperature, lye was added, creating laundry soap.

Buckwheat and corn furnished food for poultry which, in turn, supplied eggs and meat. An over supply of eggs was packed into cases of twenty-four dozen and shipped to a dealer. A twelve dozen carton was taken to town and traded for items not raised on the farm. Extra poultry was sold for cash. Sheep grazed on land unsuitable for the raising of crops and in the spring their wool was sheared and sold. The lambs were also sold.

Rye, wheat and buckwheat was ground into flour for use in baking.

During the winter, wood was cut to heat the home and sometimes a horse- power was used for running the buzz-saw. It was a structure built with an endless tread on a slant so that when a horse or horses were led onto it, the movement of their feet kept the tread in motion and at the same time turned a pully wheel with an attached belt which extended from the horse-power to a buzz-saw. A smaller version operated a butter churn powered by a dog. The dog often sensed when prepa- rations were being made and would be missing when he was needed but much to his sorrow the chore still had to be done upon his return.

With the approach of the first warm days of spring it meant that the time had arrived to make maple syrup. Holes were drilled into hard maple trees, spiles inserted and buckets hung under each one. The sap returning from the roots to upper extremities of the trees sent forth a portion into each bucket. Each day the sap was gathered and taken to the saphouse. This building contained piles of wood for fuel, shelves for storing cans of syrup and a rectangular fireplace made of stone and mortar about three feet high wit a door in one end and a pipe to carry off the smoke at the other end. A metal evaporator covered the fireplace. It was divided into three or four sections with tiny gates at the opposite end of each partition. As sap was poured into the first section, it was heated and gradually ran from one section to the next until it reached the last one where the heat was more intense. It was boiled until it reached a certain temperature adn then drawn off into cans for home use or market. Some of the syrup was taken to the kitchen where it was boiled longer and either poured into molds or stirred until it was granualted. An enjoyable experience was eating jack-wax, the result of boiling syrup to a certain consistency, pouring rivulets over pans containing clean snow and winding them around a fork. At the end of the season, all equip- metn was washed, dried and stored.

The making of syrup today is so mechanized by direct pipe lines and oil burning heaters, that much of the adventure has been removed from the process.

Some farmers specialized in hop raising or were masons, carpenters, shoe- makers or had saw mills to add to their income.

In 1869 over 165 farms were listed in the periphery of the village of Ephratah.

As late as 1905 a farmer could make a living and add to his savings on five acres of land through good planning and a diversity of crops. One such farmer raised ginseng, hay, cherries, plums, berries, vegetables, poultry and had bees that produced from three to four hundred dollars worth of honey annually. He delivered his produce with a horse and buggy.

By the 1900's there began a transition in farming due to restrictions and price fixing. The association between government and agriculture has always been an enigmatic problem never solved to the satisfaction of either. The disparity between the cost of producing and the value of return caused the farmer to become conscious of what industry was offering.

Dairy farmers had to face foreign competition and the inroads of imitation products.

During the war years, due to the lack of labor, larger and more efficient machinery was built, but the cost was so high that to utilize and pay for it, one had to increase acreage and the size of the dairy. The machines were adapted for use on flat land and to make it practical, farmers divided their fields into 100 acre lots more or less. Rather than mortgage the land, farms were either abandoned or sold to City peoplewho maintained attractive homes but usually allowed the land to return to nature. On the plus side, this has improved the ecology by increasing a refuge for wild life and maintaining a higher water level.

In the meantime, those who could not cope with the rising costs of the business moved to surrounding areas where employment was found in factories offering inducements of a 40 hour week, fantastic wages, paid vacations, retirement insurance et cetera. With the leveling off of industry after the war, the influx of returning soldiers and the lowering of tariff on imports, unemployment increased which, in turn thrust a burden on welfare. Inflation along with the energy crisis has caused a further set-back to the economy and a means of solving it is still questionable. -Excerpted from: Our Todays and Yesterdays in the Town of Ephratah; volume 1, Bicentennial Historical Commitee: Leland Rickard, Edythe Christman, Ivan Duesler

I remember hearing a story about the dam on the big pond that was once behind the Holstery Inn. Apparently it was blown up with dynamite and did some flooding.

A couple of years ago my dad, Don Christman, drew a sketch of how the farm was laid out when he was a kid in the 1940's.

Don Christman's Sketches



Notes on the back of the sketch say:

Both springs ran gravity flow. One in back of the barn up on the hill. The other in the Sheep Pasture.

The watering trough in front of the house always ran even in the 50's and after Alpha died in 63.

Well house spring runs also (used to cool milk in vats made)

We used to catch trout and keep them in the well house spring (Brook Trout) water was VERY COLD.

In the next sketch he shows the road (called "The Christman Road") and houses as he remembered them:




Alpha left the farm to his youngest son Carlton in 1963.

020304020410 Carlton Christman
Wife - Ruth Weaver

After Carlton died in the 1980's Ruth lived there alone as I recall. My dad and I bought most of the farm from Carlton before he died and we grew nursery stock on it. After I moved to Atlanta we subdivided it and sold it back to the local Christman cousins in Ephratah.

Uncle Jim's Farm
This film is a real throwback for me about going back "up home" to visit the relatives in Ephratah in the 1950s & 60s. I used to love getting up at dawn and riding on the Milk Truck to Canajoharie.

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End Notes

Picture of Antone Christman is courtesy of Elsie Roberts.
Pictures of Elizabeth Abel, Alpha Christman, Margaret Spoor, Howard Christman, Eva & Cora Christman and Don Christman, are courtesy of Warren Christman.

1. David Kendall Martin; The 18th Century Snell Family of the Mohawk Valley; Snell-Zimmerman-Timmerman Reunion, Inc. (1982) page 15
2. Martin page 43
3. Martin page 43
4. Stone Arabia Patent Named: http://www.fortklock.com/sapatentnamed.htm © 1998, 2002 - Fort Klock Historic Restoration, Indian Castle Church, Berry Enterprises
5. Stone Arabia Patent on a USGS Topographic Map: http://www.geocities.com/christman19/sa_topomap2.jpg © 2001 - Bruce Christman
6. Martin page 43
7. Martin page 43
8. Martin page 45
9. Martin page 43
10. Martin page 44
11. Martin page 18; Johannes Snell's Will
12. Martin page 45
13. Our Todays and Yesterdays in the Town of Ephratah vol 2; Doris E. Walker, Ivan E. Dueslar, Ephratah Deputy Historians, (1982) page 82.
14. Martin page 45
15. Martin page 43; Pension file of Jacob Snell(S23429)(S28608)

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Copyright © Bruce Christman