In 1777, the darkest and most hopeless period of our revolutionary contest, he led a reinforcement from Albany to Fort Stanwix, up the Mohawk Valley, then alive with hostile Indians and Tories, and escaped them all, and he was in this fort, under Col.  Ganzevoort, during its long and close siege by Col.  St. Leger and his infuriated Indian allies.  The whole embodied militia of the Mohawk Valley marched to its relief, under the bold and patriotic Gen. Herkimer.  They were met by the Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas, and British loyalists, lying in ambush on the banks of the Oriskany, eight miles from the fort.  A dreadful battle ensued.  Gen. Herkimer was soon wounded in the thigh, his leg broken, and his horse shot under him.  With the coolness of a Blucher, he then directed his saddle to be placed on a small knoll, and, drawing out his tobacco-box, lit his pipe and calmly smoked while his brave and unconquerable men fought around him.

This was one of the most stoutly contested battles of the Revolution.  Campbell says:  “This battle made orphans of half the inhabitants of the Mohawk Valley.” [4] It was a desperate struggle between neighbors, who were ranged on opposite sides as Whig and Tory, and it was a triumph, Herkimer remaining master of the field.  During the hottest of the battle, Col.  Willett stepped on to the esplanade of the fort, where the troops were paraded, and requested all who were willing to fight for liberty and join a party for the relief of Herkimer, to step forward one pace.  Schoolcraft was the first to advance.  Two hundred and fifty men followed him.  An immediate sally was made.  They carried the camp of Sir John Johnson; took all his baggage, military-chest, and papers; drove him through the Mohawk River; and then turned upon the howling Mohawks and swept and fired their camp.  The results of this battle were brilliant.  The plunder was immense.  The lines of the besiegers, which had been thinned by the forces sent to Oriskany, were carried, and the noise of firing and rumors of a reinforcement, animated the hearts of the indomitable men of that day.

[Footnote 4:  Annals of Teyon County.]

After the victory, Herkimer was carried by his men, in a litter, thirty or forty miles to his own house, below the present town of Herkimer, where he died, from an unskillful amputation, having just concluded reading to his family the 38th Psalm.

But the most dangerous enemy to the cause of freedom was not to be found in the field, but among neighbors who were lurking at midnight around the scenes of home.  The districts of Albany and Schoharie was infested by Tories, and young Schoolcraft was ever on the qui vive to ferret out this most insidious and cruel of the enemy’s power.  On one occasion he detected a Tory, who had returned from Canada with a lieutenant’s commission in his pocket.  He immediately clapped spurs to his horse, and reported him to Gov.  George Clinton, the Chairman of the Committee of Safety at Albany.  Within three days the lieutenant was seized, tried, condemned and hanged.  Indeed, a volume of anecdotes might be written of Lawrence Schoolcraft’s revolutionary life; suffice it to say, that he was a devoted, enthusiastic, enterprizing soldier and patriot, and came out of the contest with an adjutant’s commission and a high reputation for bravery.