and
deliver the manuscript. This was done. Hurlburt took the manuscript, and
not only did he never return it, but he never replied to any of the many
letters requesting its return. The Spaulding manuscript has utterly
disappeared.[25]

The year 1768 brings another unique personage into the field of our
local history. In that year the English met the Indians at Fort Stanwix
(Rome, Oneida county) in a conference which resulted in establishing a
formally acknowledged boundary between the territory of the red men and
the land which the colonists had begun to make their own. The lands of
the upper Susquehanna thus became, prior to the Revolution, the extreme
western frontier of old New York, and Otsego Lake was included within
English territory by a margin, at the west, of about twenty miles. Sir
William Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, conducted the
negotiations, and the securing of the Fort Stanwix deed was one of the
most astute accomplishments of his long career.

An interested party to these proceedings was Sir William's deputy agent
for Indian affairs, Colonel George Croghan, who had accompanied him to
the conference. Nearly twenty years before, Croghan had obtained from
the Indians a tract of land near Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh), in
Pennsylvania. During this Fort Stanwix conference which established the
new frontier Croghan succeeded in getting confirmation of the former
grant, with the privilege of making an exchange for a tract of equal
extent in the region now ceded to the English. Under this agreement
Croghan and certain associates afterward took up 100,000 acres of land
in what are now Otsego, Burlington, and New Lisbon townships, Otsego
county.[26] And so it came about that in the next year, 1769, Colonel
George Croghan came to the foot of Otsego Lake, built him a hut, and was
the first settler on the present site of Cooperstown.

The story of the fortune and failure of Croghan, who was a remarkable
and picturesque character, reads like a romance. He so far surpassed all
men of his time in genius for commerce with the Indians, and in skillful
marketing of Indian products, that Hanna calls him "The King of the
Traders." Lavish in his expenditures, big in his ventures, he made and
lost fortunes with equal facility. He alternated between the height of
opulence and the verge of bankruptcy. Like Sir William Johnson, Croghan
had a special aptitude for making friendships with the Indians, so that,
according t