Where did Sullivan County come from?
John Sullivan, a Continental Army officer from New Hampshire was not the first choice for a county name. The local politicians wanted a Clinton. Gen. John Clinton was local, married to the Dewitts, part of a legacy that included a Governor brother George, the patriarch Charles, Mary Denniston and her family, and later New York Gov. Dewitt. But the Clinton name was already taken, attached to a county much farther upstate. So, they settled on Sullivan. Afterall the Sullivan/Clinton Expedition was legendary. The 1779 campaign had been tasked with the job of ridding New York of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee, once and for all. It succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
In 1779, at the height of the war for Independence from British rule, a second front opened in New York State and Pennsylvania. Busy with cannon and a “gentleman’s war” along the Hudson and points south, the British enlisted the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) to act as proxies (along with British Tories dressed as Indians in blackface). These special forces were ordered to conduct a “dirty war,” attacking white settlements and forts from Wyoming, Pennsylvania, to Minisink (Port Jervis) and Cherry Valley. It was campaign of chaos and orchestrated terror funded by the British. The small village of Goshen lost 44 (?) ill-trained militiamen in one day along the banks of the Delaware River to Joseph Brant’s Mohawk and the Butlers’ Tory raiders in the Battle of Minisink. Minisink was the last battle that the Mohawk Nation would ever win against their occupiers.
The Sullivan/Clinton Expedition was the Continental Army’s response to these “massacres” in Wyoming, Minisink, Cherry Valley, and other British funded attacks on white rebel settlements by Mohawk and other Six Nation contractors. It was in the British interest to terrorize the rebels and in the Haudenosaunee interest to earn a wage. Killing white intruders was an added benefit.
Ancient apple and peach orchards are burned, trees girdled or cut down. Crop fields are razed, shelters torched. The systematic campaign’s objectives were to make the landscape as uninhabitable as possible. The term “scorched earth” was widely attributed to Sullivan’s and Clinton’s armies as they attacked the Six Nation breadbasket.
Atrocities occurred (on both sides) but it wasn’t a bloodbath. Prisoners? There were none to take. Acting on good intelligence from British authorities , most of the population of the Six Nations, across central New York and into Pennsylvania, fled north and west abandoning ancient territory, hunting ground, farms, and orchards. Both Sullivan and Clinton were hailed as heroes. By the end of the American Revolution the Six Nations had either fled to Canada or were contained on reservations that were a fraction of previous tribal land holdings.
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The Proposal
Chaning the county name
Although a New York county has never changed its name
there is precedent in other states. Like the removal of
Confederate monuments, striking slave holders names
from college campuses, and the toppling of white
supremacist statues, this could also be a redress of a
historical mistake. It is not out of the realm of possibilities.
In a divisive political climate that finds some members of
the community honoring John Sullivan and his legacy with
white supremacist websites, the timing could not be better
to shine a light on the man and his “expedition.”
Upcoming Events
Buy a hat. Call the County Lenape. Spread the word on the ground. We need support to take the next step and position for the name change. With the help of this community, we will.
Email us at lenapecounty@gmail.com or submit a message below
