buried by
Clinton's troops. For ten or twelve years after the settlement of the
place, this cannon, which came to be affectionately known as "the
Cricket," was the only piece of artillery used for the purposes of
salutes and merrymakings in the vicinity of Cooperstown. After about
fifty years of this service it burst in the cause of rejoicing on a
certain Fourth of July. At the time of its final disaster (for it had
met with many vicissitudes), it is said that there was no perceptible
difference in size between its touchhole and its muzzle.[53]

In 1898, a building which stood in the Cooper Grounds next east of the
Clark Estate office was removed, and in grading the land workmen found,
just beneath the surface, the stump of a locust tree about two feet in
diameter. This was about twenty-five feet east of the office building,
and about the same distance from Main Street. The stump was pulled out
by teams of horses, and beneath it, at a depth of about four feet from
the surface, some charred material was found, and a mass of what proved
to be, when cleansed of adhesions, American Army buttons of the
Revolutionary period. The find was made by Charles J. Tuttle, a
well-known mason and contractor of the village, and veteran of the Civil
War. The buttons were of different sizes and shapes, some plated in
silver, others in gold, while many were of brass. Within a short time
the news of the find had spread through the village, and a troop of
relic hunters gathered at the spot, but the hole had been filled up
without further investigation. At the time of Clinton's encampment, in
1779, there must have been a building whose cellar had been used as a
storeroom for military supplies. The charred material suggests that the
building was at some time burned. The locust stump tells of a tree that
sprang up amid the ruins, flourished, and died, within a hundred and
twenty years after the departure of Clinton's troops.

Fenimore Cooper, writing in 1838, said that traces of Clinton's dam were
still to be seen. The last of the logs that remained of the old dam were
removed on October 26, 1825, in connection with a curious local
celebration of the opening of the Erie Canal, which on that day was the
occasion of general rejoicing throughout the State of New York. Cannon,
placed a few miles apart, from Buffalo to Albany, and thence to Sandy
Hook, were proclaiming that Governor DeWitt Clinton, whose influence had
so large a share in this grea