"Gross" Hardenburgh
page 3

     During the two years following, outrage followed outrage. Hardenburgh was excited to frenzy, and the blood of the settlers was fully aroused.  The usurper of their lands were looked upon as a common enemy, whose death would prove a public blessing.
     In November, 1808, Gross Hardenburgh passed through the Neversink valley.  He was at that time seventy-five years of age.  Notwithstanding he had led a life of dissolute habits, he was still active and energetic, and controlled his spirited and somewhat perverse horse with skill and boldness.  He was, withal, possessed of a magnificent physique, on which neither time nor dissipation had made perceptible inroads; and he boasted of a weight of two hundred and fifty pounds.  He feared neither man nor beast and appeared to entertain no respect for his Creator.
     Calling on his way along the valley at the house of one of the Grants, he made the emphatic declaration that “he would raise more hell in the next seven years than had ever been on earth before.”
     When passing along what is locally known as the “Dugway,” he noticed that the chimney of a house owned by him, and occupied by a man named  John Coney, was not completed.  Calling Coney from the house he upbraided him in a towering passion, and concluded with the remark that “unless the chimney was topped out when he came back he would throw him out of doors."  Coney immediately employed the services of a neighbor, and the chimney was finished next day.
     Hardenburgh spent that night at the house of his son, and soon after sunrise on the following morning he started to go up the river.  About an hour afterward he was found in the road, helpless and speechless. His horse was caught about a mile above.  Hardenburgh was taken to a neighboring house, where he lingered until about three o'clock the next morning, when he died.  He did not know that he had been shot, and those about him did not think best to acquaint him with the fact.  Before he died he was heard to remark, that his friends had often told him his horse would throw and probably kill him, “and now,” said he, “he has done it.”
     While preparing his body for burial, a bullet-hole was found in his coat, and a wound in his shoulder.  His friends were unwilling to admit he had been murdered, and were on the point of burying him without an inquest.  An old soldier standing by, who had seen many wounds received in battle, declared that nothing but lead could have made the hole in the dead man's shoulder.  A coroner was sent for, and the nearest physicians (one of them Hardenburgh's son Benjamin) were requested to be present.
     A crowd of people surrounded  Van Benscoten's house where the inquest took place, and was attended with scenes and incidents almost too shocking for credence.  Some of them brought jugs of whiskey to make merry over the death of their enemy, and drunkenness became the order of the day.  One, who had just come from butchering hogs, as he beheld the dead man prepared for dissection, exclaimed: “That is fatter pork than I have killed today.”  The speaker bore unfriendly relations to one of the physicians; and, while the dissection was going on, he continued: “That is more than I ever expected to see-my two greatest enemies-one cutting the other up!”  When the body was opened, and the heart exposed, he cried: “My God! that's what I've longed to see for many a day!”



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
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