Early Times and Johnson Town

In the beginning, the land, and especially the northern land, of our present Fulton County evolved from the violent upheaval of the earth in the form of lofty mountains. Then followed the extended glacial period redistributed, and beautiful valleys and riverbeds scoured out by the moving glaciers.

Then came the forest growth and the abundance of wildlife which freely roamed this area. Soon, early Native Americans entered this pristine picture and found our area to their liking for hunting and fishing grounds. Eventually, these early native tribes joined together along the fertile Mohawk Valley just to our south and formed the Iroquois Confederacy. The Mohawk Nation acted
as Confederacy and continued to rely on this northern area as a source for their food and clothing supply.

The first European influence arrived on our shores in the early 1600’s with the arrival of the Dutch who promptly named all of the area to the north New Netherlands. They soon spread their influence up the Hudson River and west along the Mohawk River until 1664 when the British took over the Dutch lands and renamed them New York after the Duke of York.

In the early 1700’s, the German Palatines started to arrive and actually became the first settlers of today’s Fulton County. They and their Dutch neighbors tilled the rich soil of the palatine region in our western regions.

Just prior to 1760, Sir William Johnson, the Crown’s Indian Agent and Baronet, started recruiting immigrants to settle the lands which he had acquired. These mostly Scottish immigrants became the nucleus of today’s city and town of Johnstown near the manor which he had built in 1762 and named Johnson Hall.

Johnson Town, later shortened to Johnstown, was named after himself and the surrounding area, flourished until 1772 at which time Johnson petitioned the provincial Assembly in Albany to have the huge Albany County, which had been formed in 1683, broken up so that Johnstown could become the county seat of a new local county and thereby have it’s own convenient courthouse, jail and local administration. Because of Sir William Johnson’s widespread influence, this was approved and our Fulton County area became a part of the still large but new Tryon County, named after the New York Colonial Governor William Tryon. A smaller Albany County remained and Charlotte County was formed in the Champlain-Vermont area.