Budd Tavern, built c 1808
Budd Tavern is located on route US 20 in Brainard, NY (a few miles east of Nassau, NY). This house was built c 1808, perhaps in association with the Toll Bridge (Rensselaer Bridge Company, incorporated in 1808) built by Jeremiah Brainard at the time over the Kinderhook Creek. The house foundation makes use of the foundation of an earlier house which faced east, i.e. overlooked the Kinderhook Creek.
The house is located at the site where David Brainerd stayed for a few month while he preached to the Mohicans at Kaunaumeek, a Mohican village about 1.5 miles away.
An undated photo of the Budd Tavern before the current restoration was started.
This marker is not quite accurate. David Brainerd stayed for a few months at this location with the Scot John McCagg. The Mohican Village Kaunaumeek was located about 1.5 miles away. After a few months, Brainerd built a cabin at Kaunaumeek to avoid daily walks to and from the village.
This house was purchased by Benjamin Budd in 1838 and never sold out of the family until 2014. This photo shows the house in 1890 with Bingham family and others out front.
In 1710 as part of a political effort to gain support of the Mohicans in the war with the French in Canada, 4 Chiefs, including Etow Oh Koam were invited to visit England and meet Queen Anne. While there, portraits were painted such at the one shown here. Ktow Oh Koam is known to have lived along the Kinderhook Creek near the Mohican village Kaunaumeek. This portrait is one of the earliest realistic representations of a Mohican chief.
While the primary reason for inviting these Chiefs to visit England was political, one of the formal reasons was to request the Queen to send a missionary. This request, long delayed and by an indirect route, was part of the reason for David Brainerd arriving in 1743.
Jeremiah Brainard (a distant relative of David Brainerd) came from Conn. and built a toll bridge over the Kinderhook Creek to shorten the east-west road from Albany to Pittsfield. In 1809 Jeremiah Brainard completed his bridge. Jeremiah is listed in the 1810 census for Nassau, with a household of 11 persons. The next adjoining household was that of Thomas McCagg. In 1812 Jeremiah was appointed postmaster of Brainard's Bridge, and in 1813 he was appointed Justice of the Peace. By 1819 he had moved to Rome, New York, where he invented a specialized type of wheelbarrow for use on the Erie Canal. Brainard was major early contractor for the Erie Canal. He probably learned his earth moving skills while filling in to shorten the wooden portion his toll bridge over the Kinderhook. NYS records show he shortened the bridge by hundreds of feet. He may well have obtained the necessary fill from material removed to create the half mile long “factory ditch” a waterway constructed to divert water upstream and used to power a mill located at the eastern end of his bridge. Thanks to Paul Huey for some of this information.
This lidar image shows the “factory ditch” going from upstream of the Kinderhook, under route US20, and to the site of an early cotton mill. Digging this waterway may have been where Jeremiah Brainard learned the craft of digging canals, later used digging the Erie Canal. Thanks to Max Cane for providing the lidar image.
David Brainerd was training at Yale to enter the Church when he is said to have remarked about one of his tutors, Chauncey Whittelsey, 'has no more grace than a chair' for which Yale’s President Clapp had him expelled.
He wanted to continue church work and was employed by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge to preach to the Mohican Indians at their village Kaunaumeek located on the Kinderhook Creek half way between Albany and Stockbridge. He went there on horseback in April of 1743 and stayed for about 1 year. Initially he stayed with a Scot named John McCagg who lived at the location of the present Budd Tavern House. After some months, he build a small cabin at Kaunaumeek in order to avoid the daily walks to and from the Village. He kept a diary during this time.
Brainerd died shortly after leaving Kaunaumeek. He died in the home of Jonathan Edwards in Northhampton MA (and is buried there). Edwards almost immediately published Brainerd’s life history and his diary. His diary has been in print ever since, playing an important role in training missionaries.
Brainerd's life also played a role in the establishment of Princeton University. The 'College of New Jersey' (later Princeton) was founded due to the dissatisfaction of the New York and New Jersey Presbyterian Synods with Yale; their expulsion of Brainerd and subsequent refusal to readmit him.
This 1767 map shows the McCagg house (number 116) located just north of the southern Manor boundary (now county line) at the Kinderhook Creek. This is the location of the Benj. Budd Tavern. The early foundation (i.e. prior to the current house build c 1808) under part of the Budd Tavern is likely the foundation of McCagg’s house which overlooked the Kinderhook
This 1829 map shows both shorter east-west route using “Brainard’s Bridge” and the earlier route that looped north through “Nassau” (now named East Nassau). The present day village of Nassau is the one shown on this map as “Union V.”
Watercolor on paper, 21" by 14", "Making for Camp", Signed LL
Oil on board, 11.5" by 14", Signed LR
Account of Nicholas Schuyler
Does anyone recognize origin of this head?
Oil on board, 16" by 12", "New Westfield, NY, November 1933", Signed LL
This portrait was commissioned by Sear’s business partner, Alpheus Hardy in 1875 who remarked it was an excellent likeness. Thanks to John f. McGuigan (Harpswell, Maine) for identifying the sitter and circumstances of it commissioning.
John Adams Jackson (November 5, 1825 — August 30, 1879) was a noted American sculptor.
Jackson was born in Bath, Maine, and apprenticed to a machinist in Boston, where he gave evidence of talent by modelling a bust of Thomas Buchanan Read. There he studied linear and geometrical drawing and produced crayon portraits. Going abroad in 1853, he visited Florence, where he created several portrait busts in marble, then went to Paris in 1854, where he studied academic life drawing at the Académie Suisse. In 1858 he went to New York City, remaining until 1860, when he moved to Florence, Italy, which was afterward his home.
Jackson's portrait busts include those of Daniel Webster (1851); Adelaide Phillips (1853); Wendell Phillips (1854); "Eve and the Dead Abel" (1862); "Autumn"; "Cupid Stringing his Bow"; "Titania and Nick Bottom"; "The Culprit Fay" (many times repeated); "Dawn" (repeated); "Peace"; "Cupid on a Swan"; "The Morning Glory" (a medallion repeated fourteen times); "Reading Girl" (1869); "Nusidora" (Vienna Exposition, 1873); "Hylas" (1875); and "Il Pastorello," an Abruzzi peasant-boy with his goat. He designed a statue of Dr. Elisha Kane, the arctic explorer, for the Kane monument association (1860); a group intended for the southern gate-house of the former Croton Lower Reservoir in Central Park, New York (1867, not installed);[1] and the Civil War soldiers' monument at Lynn, Massachusetts (1874).
