LOCAL ROOTS: JACOB'S LAND AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

In the fall of 1753, newlyweds Philip Heinrich and Maria Barbara Hold Jappel set out from their native Germany to undertake the perilous crossing to the New World. In his new nonfiction work, Jacob’s Land, Dr. Charles Yaple writes that, like many European countries of the time, Germany enacted strict economic and social systems that made it difficult for commoners to better their station, let alone become landowners. Heinrich Jappel, a clockmaker by trade, could expect to spend his life laboring as a journeyman under the supervision of a master clockmaker, with no prospects for advancing. It was likely because of this - and because his bride had family already settled in America and willing to sponsor them - that he and Maria decided to abandon their homeland in favor of the so-called land of opportunity. As was fairly common in that era, a clerical error recorded the Jappels’ last name as Jepel, which was later Anglicized into Yaple.

A descendant of Heinrich through his son (with second wife Susanna, née Vesqueau), Jacob, Dr. Charles Yaple uses his research into his family history as a jumping-off point for exploring the experience of the American Revolution in the Northeast, particularly Western NY and Pennsylvania. He devotes several chapters to the tense and complicated relationships between the European colonists and the local Native tribes, taking an even-handed approach to the inevitable conflicts. At the time the Yaples settled in northern Pennsylvania, the local Delaware tribes were still seething over an underhanded land deed executed by Thomas Penn in 1737, and they were more than willing to take that ire out on the colonist interlopers. And as political factions became more and more sharply divided in the looming specter of war, Rebel fighters traded atrocity for atrocity with their Tory neighbors and the Iroquois tribes who had allied themselves with the Crown.

Chief among the latter was a Mohawk military and political leader named Thayendanegea, also known by the English name Joseph Brant. Brant had originally honed his skills as a translator, bridging the gap between the Iroquois and the white settlers. After the Mohawk - like the Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga - chose to ally with Great Britain against the Rebels, he served as a strategist and war leader, becoming one of the best-known war chiefs in Colonial New York - and, due to an undeserved reputation for brutality, most notably the Cherry Valley Massacre (during which, ironically, he actually attempted to restrain the attacks on civilians) one of the most feared.

In 1771, the extended Yaple family uprooted and moved to a remote Catskill settlement at Pakatakan (Margaretville), New York. It was there that young Jacob Yaple befriended Teunis, the young son of an Esopus Indian chief, and began to hone his skills as a hunter and trapper. In 1777, he joined the Rebel army and with his Christian Oerter flintlock quickly qualified as a sharpshooter. Yaple follows both Jacob’s military service and the travails of his family as the encroaching warfare drove them from their homestead; what follows is an exhaustively researched military and family history. Through the eyes of Charles Yaple’s ancestors, readers are able to experience an intimate view of life during the Revolutionary War.

While the writing is sometimes dense and Yaple is inclined to meander somewhat in imagining the thoughts and emotional states of his characters, overall this is an engaging book of Revolutionary War history with a local focus. Rather than focus on the well-trodden ground of Revolutionary generals and battles, Yaple hones in on the lesser-known individuals who found themselves caught up in the tide of history, which makes for a unique perspective. Readers with an interest in Revolutionary War history will certainly find something new here, and locals may be inspired to search out their own family histories.

Ultimately, this is a book about the importance of having a sense of place. The landscape of Colonial New York is itself a silent - but immensely important - character in the narrative, and the echoes of its goings-on resonate to the present day.

Charles Yaple is a sixth-generation grandson of Jacob Yaple. Raised near Ithaca, NY, he is a Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland, where he teaches environmental and outdoor education courses. In addition to Jacob’s Land, he is also the author of Foxey Brown: A Story of an Adirondack Outlaw, Hermit and Guide as He Might Have Told It (2011).