Late in the autumn of 1809, being then in my seventeenth year, I quitted the village of Hamilton, Albany County (a county in which my family had lived from an early part of the reign of George II.), and, after a pleasant drive of half a day through the PINE PLAINS, accompanied by some friends, reached the city of Schenectady, and from thence took the western stage line, up the Valley of the Mohawk, to the village of Utica, where we arrived, I think, on the third day, the roads being heavy.  The next day I proceeded to Vernon, the site of a busy and thriving village, where my father had recently engaged in the superintendency of extensive manufacturing operations.  I was here within a few miles of Oneida Castle, then the residence of the ancient Oneida tribe of Iroquois.  There was, also, in this town, a remnant of the old Mohigans, who, under the name of Stockbridges, had, soon after the Revolutionary War, removed from the Valley of the Housatonic, in Massachusetts, to Oneida.  Throngs of both tribes were daily in the village, and I was thus first brought to notice their manners and customs; not dreaming, however, that it was to be my lot to pass so many of the subsequent years of my life as an observer of the Indian race.

Early in the spring of 1810, I accompanied Mr. Alexander Bryan Johnson, of Utica, a gentleman of wealth, intelligence, and enterprise, to the area of the Genesee country, for the purpose of superintending a manufactory for a company incorporated by the State Legislature.  After visiting Sodus Bay, on Lake Ontario, it was finally resolved to locate this company’s works near Geneva, on the banks of Seneca Lake.

During my residence here, the War of 1812 broke out; the events of which fell with severity on this frontier, particularly on the lines included between the Niagara and Lake Champlain, where contending armies and navies operated.  While these scenes of alarm and turmoil were enacting, and our trade with Great Britain was cut off, an intense interest arose for manufactures of first necessity, needed by the country, particularly for that indispensable article of new settlements, window glass.  In directing the foreign artisans employed in the making of this product of skill, my father, Col.  Lawrence Schoolcraft, had, from an early period after the American Revolution, acquired celebrity, by the general superintendency of the noted works of this kind near Albany, and afterwards in Oneida County.

Under his auspices, I directed the erection of similar works in Western New York and in the States of Vermont and New Hampshire.

While in Vermont, I received a salary of eighteen hundred dollars per annum, which enabled me to pursue my studies, ex academia, at Middlebury College.  In conversation with President Davis, I learned that this was the highest salary paid in the State, he himself receiving eleven hundred, and the Governor of the State but eight hundred.