located in Cuylerville, Leicester, Livingston, New York, USA
The Boyd and Parker Memorial Park in Cuylerville
is maintained by the Town of Leicester.
Anyone wishing to make a contribution to preserve this park may send
a donation to: Boyd & Parker Trust Fund, C/O Town of Leicester,
Leicester, NY 14481
BOYD-PARKER
TORTURE TREE AND BURIAL
MOUND. WESTERN LIMIT
SULLIVAN'S EXPEDITION
1779. SENECA VILLAGE
LITTLE BEARDS TOWN
N.Y. STATE
HISTORICAL MARKER
1926
THIS WAYSIDE SHRINE MARKS THE PLACE
WHERE ON SEPTEMBER 14, 1779
TWO YOUNG SOLDIERS OF THE REVOLUTION
LIEUTENANT THOMAS BOYD AND
SERGEANT MICHAEL PARKER
MET DEATH UNDAUNTED IN THE LINE
OF DUTY AFTER LINGERING TORTURE.
THEY MARKED WITH THEIR BLOOD
THE WESTERN LIMIT IN THE STATE OF
NEW YORK FOR THE GREAT STRUGGLE
FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM
ERECTED BY LIVINGSTON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
AND THE STATE OF NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 14, 1927
GENESEE CASTLE
OR
LITTLE BEARD’S TOWN
DE-O-NUN-DS-GA-A
(WHERE THE HILL IS NEAR)
THIS PRINCIPAL VILLAGE OF THE SENECAS
WAS DESTROYED IN 1779 AND WAS THE
FARTHEST POINT REACHED BY
GENERAL JOHN SULLIVAN
AND AN ARMY OF FOUR THOUSAND MEN
ACTING UNDER DIRECT ORDERS OF
GEORGE WASHINGTON
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
THIS CAMPAIGN LAID WASTE THE INDIAN LANDS
AND SO BROKE THE OFFENSIVE POWERS OF THE
BRITISH-TORY-INDIAN ALLIANCE AGAINST
NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA, EXTENDED THE
BOUNDARIES OF THE UNITED STATES, REVEALED
THE FERTILE COUNTRY OF THE GENESEE AND
RESULTED IN ITS EARLY PIONEER SETTLEMENT
Erected by the State of New York
and the Livingston County Historical
Society, September 14, 1929
LIEUTENANT THOMAS BOYD
SERGEANT MICHAEL PARKER
On September 11, 1779, Gen. Sullivan and his guides argue over the location of their objective, while his men are busy building a bridge for his artillery to cross the Conesus Lake inlet. Sullivan's map said that Genesee Castle, the principal Seneca village in the area, was on the east bank of the river, the guides say the west bank. General Sullivan instructs Lt. Boyd to take four riflemen and an Indian guide and during the night locate the village and report back with the best route to it. Contrary to orders, Boyd took twenty eight men including guides. They march west, and find an abandoned village just east of the river. Boyd decides to wait here for the army to join him, but when he is fired on by a few Indians, he thinks that it would be safer to rejoin the army. Returning back up the same trail they see more Indians, who lure them into an ambush. Mistaking Boyd's men for Sullivan's army the Indians attack, killing 18 members of the out-numbered party. These Indians were part of a much larger force waiting to attack the army as it passed by the ravines where they were concealed. The main party of Indians, hearing the fierce fighting at their rear, believe that they are surrounded and abandon their positions to escape along the river, returning to Genesee Castle. When they finally learn that the fight was with a small scouting party the element of surprise is gone, and it is impossible to reassemble the warriors. A survivor of Boyd's party made his way back to Sullivan, who ordered an immediate advance. The few warriors who did offer resistance were quickly killed and the remainder of the march to the Genesee Castle went unmolested. The sacrifice of Boyd's scouting party most likely saved Sullivan's army. The army entered the village on the 14th and found the bodies of Boyd and Parker.
Lieutenant Thomas Boyd and Sergeant Michael Parker had been taken prisoner and moved to Genesee Castle. There they had been questioned by Joseph Brant, a Mohawk Indian with an English name, John Butler, an American loyal to the crown (both known for savage attacks on American settlements) and Chief Little Beard of the Senecas. According to some reports they did not talk, but Butler's report gave accurate details of Sullivan's troops and their movements. Bryant and Butler then leave, giving the two soldiers to the Indians.
The two were taken to a large oak tree, today called the Torture Tree and stripped naked. They were then whipped until their backs were covered with welts and bruises. Next the nails were pulled from each finger and toe. They cut off their right ears, then their noses, then their tongues. Their right eyes were gouged from their sockets, and left hanging. They mutilated their genitals until they were attached to their bodies by only foot long strands of flesh. In spite of these inhuman and revolting tortures, the design was to keep the victims alive and conscious as long as possible.
The final acts of cruelty came when the two men had their
abdomens cut open and their intestines cut from the stomach. The
severed end was fastened to the tree and the men were driven around
the tree, their intestines being pulled out as they went. Their hearts
were ripped from their chests and, and they were finally beheaded.
Boyd's head was placed on a spear and used to lead a dance around the
tree. The night of torture finally ended with the approach of
Sullivan's army. Lieutenant Boyd's partially skinned head was found on
a log, Sergeant Parker's head was never found. The bodies were buried
at the junction of two small creeks, about 50 feet from the tree.
General Sullivan ordered the complete destruction of Genesee Castle
and all of it's orchards and crops. When the indians returned they
said there was 'not even enough to keep a child one day from perishing
from hunger."
.
This was not the end of Boyd and Parker's story. In 1807 robbers
looted the graves, taking clothing as relics. In 1830 the grave was
opened again and four Revolutionary War, U S Army uniform buttons were
found, authenticating the site. In July of 1841 Professor Samuel Treat
gave a speech saying that it was shameful that there was no monument
to honor these soldiers. On August 19, six canal boats filled with
five military companies, invited guests and journalists went down the
Genesee Valley Canal to Cuylerville to bring the remains back to
Rochester's new Mount Hope Cemetery. Boyd's men, buried in Groveland
were also brought back to be buried in honor on Patriots Hill.
Emotions were so high that the descendants of the 1807 grave robbers
returned what had been taken. With even more ceremony in Rochester the
wooden urn containing Boyd's and Parker's remains, and the wooden
sarcophagus containing the massacre victims were placed next to a
temporary wooden monument in Mount Hope. The very next day the
Democrats accused the Whigs of burying bear bones, instead of the
remains of Boyd and Parker. This controversy raged for years, in spite
of the fact that those at the Cuylerville watched as the grave was
opened. Meanwhile the wooden urn and sarcophagus sat on the ground,
exposed to Rochester's weather, until a cemetery caretaker saw the
bones lying on the ground, and buried then in potter's field in 1864.
Members of the Irondequoit chapter of the Daughter's of the American
Revolution researching the Boyd & Parker story in 1903, found the
remains in potter's field and they were reburied, again. The site
marked with a marked with a granite boulder and a bronze plaque.
General John Sullivan and his army of six thousand men, and twelve hundred packhorses were encamped at the southwest end of Conesus Lake. When they came to this area burning the Indian towns and destroying the crops on their way, the army’s line of march was some six miles long. The Indians called the army, “The long blue snake”. To the southwest was the Seneca town of Conesus that had been led by chief Big Tree, and that Sullivan had destroyed. General Sullivan wanted the area toward Chenussio scouted for any sigh of the enemy preparing for resistance. Sullivan summoned Lieutenant Thomas Boyd to carry this out. Lieutenant Boyd was a twenty two year old, cocky; bend every rule to promote his career character in Denial Morgan’s Riflemen Corp. Lieutenant Boyd’s orders were to take five or six men and either Hanyerry or Jehoiakim, Oneida scouts, and get back with the information by sunrise. Boyd disobeyed orders and picked 28 men including Sergeant Parker, and both Oneida scouts Hanyerry and Jehoiakim, and mounted them all on the best horses available. Boyd and his light company headed northwest along present day west Lake Road (RT 256) to Gay Road, and Groveland Road, and then due west along Jones Bridge Road. In three or four hours they were standing on a knoll studying Chenussio, the largest of the Seneca towns, (Little Beard’s Town). The town was on the west side of the Genesee River, one mile east of the present town of Cylerville, NY, on Rt. 20A. It consisted of some fifteen thousand acres. In the center of the town was the great Seneca Longhouse, an enormous building of logs two stories high, with a gable roof, and painted red. Around it was 128 elegant houses, and the fields in the valley were full of corn and orchards. The inhabitants had fled ahead of the army. Boyd sent Jehoiakim and three men back to Sullivan with the news. There were four Indians spotted in the town packing supplies on horses getting ready to move out, Boyd selected eight men led by Timothy Murphy, a well known rifleman to go and see if they could capture them, if not to kill them. Murphy’s men botched it up, and one Indian was killed, one wounded, and the other two escaped. Lieutenant Boyd and his men headed bock to the army, but after traveling a mile Boyd disobeyed orders again and decided to stay where he was and let the army come to him. He sent two men back to inform General Sullivan of his intentions, but within a short time the men returned with intelligence that they saw the wounded Indians on the trail. Boyd mounted his men and set out after the Indians. Boyd and his men chased the Indians until they reached the crest of a hill on Gray Hill Rd. that descends to the lake valley. The Indians came to the head of a ravine and stopped. Boyd figured that he had them, but instead he and his men had fallen into an ambush of three hundred Indians and Rangers. Boyd tried to break through the lines but couldn’t, so he ordered a retreat. It was too late. Timothy Murphy and seven men escaped through the lines, and plunged into a ravine leaving there horses, and fled on foot back to the army. Boyd and sergeant Parker were the only ones not killed. Fifteen men were killed and scalped, weapons and valuables taken, and their bodies mangled by tomahawks. The greatest mutilation was of the body of Hanyerry, the Oneida scout. They hacked his body with a vengeance beyond recognition. The Indians considered him and the rest of the Oneidas as traitors for siding with the Americans. Boyd had taken a ball in his side, but nothing vital was hit. Boyd and Parker were taken alive as prisoners. The Indians and their Tory allies had special plans for them. The ambush took
place at the head of the first ravine southwest of Grays Corners; there is a
burial ground and monument at the site to memorialize the Americans that were
killed in the battle. On September 15th Sullivan’s entire army was employed in the destruction of “Little Beards Town”. All the houses and the great longhouse were burned to the ground, the corn and orchards destroyed. It is estimated that twenty thousand bushels of corn was burned in piles in the fields and some of it was just thrown into the river. Moses VanCampen and Paul Sanborn of General Clinton’s brigade found the bodies of Lieutenant Thomas Boyd and Sergeant Michael Parker. The sight never left their minds after that, or the minds of any others who saw them. The physical damage done to the pair was practically beyond belief. Immediately upon having viewed the remains, General Sullivan ordered that the two men be buried at once with full military honors. The grave was located just to the side of a clump of wild plums beside Little Beard’s Creek where it was crossed by the main trail. In August 1882 the remains of Boyd and Parker were disinterred and reinterred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York. The Boyd-Parker State Park now marks the place where they died.
Footnote: Reprisals of Sullivan’s raid did not end at The Ambuscade in Groveland. In April of 1780, a Butler-led foray down the Mohawk Valley, Susquehanna Valley to the Hudson and down into the Catskill foothills took bitter toll on American settlements by the Tories and Indians. In May, Sir John Johnson with his Royal Greens, Butlers Rangers, and Indians scoured Johnstown and the vicinity, burning and plundering every home not owned by a Tory. In August, Brant and his Tory and Indian contingents spread murder and ruin through the Canajoharie settlements at Fort Plain, Fort Clyde, and Fort Plank. In September Brant’s painted warriors, together with Chief Cornplanter and his Seneca’s united with Johnson to range through the upper Susquehanna and the Mohawk area again.
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