n, as the following
minutes from the record of the common council of September 3, of
that year show: "The Church wardens of Shinnechtady doe make
application that two persons be appointed to go around among the
inhabitants of the City to see if they can obtain any
Contributions to make up ye Sellary due their minister." Other
ways of spelling the name were Schanechtade and Schoneghterdie.

In 1690 the young village received a setback which very nearly brought
its early history to an end; on Feb. 9 of that year, the French and
Indians surprised and burned the village, massacred 60 of the
inhabitants and carried 30 into captivity.

An old tradition says that an Indian squaw had been sent to warn
the inhabitants, under cover of selling brooms. In the afternoon
of Feb. 8, 1690, Dominic Tassomacher was being entertained with
chocolate at the home of a charming widow of his parish when the
squaw entered to deliver her message. The widow became indignant
at the sight of snow on her newly scrubbed floor, and rebuked her
unexpected guest. The Indian woman replied angrily, "It shall be
soiled enough before to-morrow," and left the house. The massacre
occurred that night.

Schenectady was rebuilt in the following years, but an outlying
settlement was again the scene of a murderous French and Indian attack
in 1748. In the land along the river, the old part of the town, Indian
skulls and arrow heads are still found.

English settlers arrived in considerable numbers about 1700. About 1774
a number of Shaker settlements were made in the lower Mohawk valley.

The Shakers, a celibate and communistic sect--officially the
United Society of Believers in Christ's Second
Appearance--received their common name from the fact that
originally they writhed and trembled in seeking to free "the soul
from the power of sin and a worldly life." They had trances and
visions, and there was much jumping and dancing. The founder of
the sect was Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784) of Manchester, England,
who came to N.Y. with a number of relatives in 1774 and bought
land in the lower Mohawk Valley. The first Shaker settlement was
at Watervliet, not far from Troy. The settlers established a
communistic organization with branches in Mass., and Conn. As a
matter of practice they do not forbid marriage, but refuse to
recognize it; they consider there ar