Guy Park
Encyclopedia
Guy Park, also known as Guy Park State Historic Site, is a house built in 1774 in the Georgian architectural style for Guy Johnson
Guy Johnson
Guy Johnson was an Irish-born military officer and diplomat for the Crown during the American War of Independence. He had migrated to the Province of New York as a young man and worked with his uncle, Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs of the northern colonies. He was...

, nephew and son-in-law to Sir William Johnson
William Johnson
William Johnson may refer to:Arts and Entertainment* William Allen Johnson , organ builder, Johnson Organs* William Gary Johnson , called Bunk Johnson, American jazz musician* William H...

, the British Superintendent for Indian Affairs in colonial New York. He came to New York from Ireland, where he married Mary (also known as Polly), one of the senior Johnson's daughters with his first common-law wife, Catherine Weisenberg. In 1773 the senior Johnson gave his nephew and daughter a square mile of land near the Mohawk River as a wedding present, where they built their first house. The next year it was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.

Guy Johnson commissioned a limestone house in the Georgian architectural style, which was built in 1774. After William Johnson died in 1774, Guy obtained the appointment from the Crown as British Superintendent for Indian Affairs and was determined to keep the powerful Iroquois on the side of the British in the face of increasing colonial tensions. A Loyalist, because of increasing local hostility related to the coming American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

, Johnson risked imprisonment. He gathered allies and friends and left the area in 1775 for Canada. His wife Polly died in Oswego during the journey. Johnson lived from 1776-1778 in British-occupied New York City. By 1779, he directed forces against the rebels in the Mohawk Valley from his headquarters in Niagara, Ontario. After the war, he returned to London, where he died in 1788.

History

In 1779 the new governments of the United States and New York declared Loyalists who had gone to Canada as traitors and confiscated their properties. The state sold Guy Park to . A steady flow of migrants moved along the road in the plain by the Mohawk River; it was a time of wide-scale settlement of former Iroquois lands by thousands of land-hungry migrants from New England.

Guy Park was used for years in the early nineteenth century as a tavern
Tavern
A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food, and in some cases, where travelers receive lodging....

 and stagecoach stop, as it was on the Mohawk Turnpike next to the river, the main transportation routes west. Later, the house served again as a private residence for many years.

In 1907 it was purchased by the state for preservation as a historic site. In the early twenty-first century, it was adapted for use as a local history museum, the Walter Elwood Museum. Elwood, a history teacher, began collecting in the 1930s. The museum has featured exhibits from his large collection of local artifacts, ranging from objects crafted by the Mohawk
Mohawk nation
Mohawk are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. They call themselves Kanien'gehaga, people of the place of the flint...

 and other historic Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...

 tribes of New York, as well as items related to the development and history of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal is a waterway in New York that runs about from Albany, New York, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York, at Lake Erie, completing a navigable water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The canal contains 36 locks and encompasses a total elevation differential of...

, the local carpet industry, and the history of Amsterdam. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

.

In August of 2011, shortly after being occupied by the museum, the house was severely damaged by flooding of the Mohawk River
Mohawk River
The Mohawk River is a river in the U.S. state of New York. It is the largest tributary of the Hudson River. The Mohawk flows into the Hudson in the Capital District, a few miles north of the city of Albany. The river is named for the Mohawk Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy...

 in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. Half of two floors have been destroyed and contents soaked and scattered. The state has struggled to stabilize the building.

External links

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