Croghan never returned to Otsego. He mortgaged his tract of land to William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin, and lost it under foreclosure in 1773. The title later passed to William Cooper and Andrew Craig, both of Burlington, New Jersey, which was also the home of Richard Smith, who had visited Croghan at Otsego. Appended to one of Croghan's deeds is a map purporting to show the improvements which he had made at the foot of the lake, but, says Fenimore Cooper, "it is supposed that this map was made for effect." When William Cooper first visited the spot, in 1785, the only building was one of hewn logs, about fifteen feet square, probably Croghan's hut, deserted and dismantled, standing in the space now included in the Cooper Grounds, near the site of the present Clark Estate office. Except for the visit of Clinton's troops in 1779, the place had been abandoned for fifteen years. The only signs of "improvements" were seen in a few places cleared of underbrush, with felled and girdled trees, and in the remains of some log fences already falling into ruin. Silence and desolation had fallen upon "the little farm in America" upon which Croghan had dreamed of passing his declining years. In an inventory of the estate of Alexander Ross of Pittsburgh, 1784, appears in the record of effects a promissory note made by George Croghan, with this appended remark: "Dead, and no Property." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 16: _The Old New York Frontier_, 32.] [Footnote 17: _The Old New York Frontier_, 61.] [Footnote 18: _Four Great Rivers_, Halsey, lvii.] [Footnote 19: _Four Great Rivers_, 35.] [Footnote 20: Henry M. Pohlman, D.D., _Hartwick Seminary Memorial Volume_, 1867, p. 21.] [Footnote 21: Pohlman, 23.] [Footnote 22: James Pitcher, D.D., _Centennial Address_, 1897, p. 7.] [Footnote 23: _Hartwick Sem. Mem._, 27.] [Footnote 24: _History of Cooperstown_, Livermore, 11.] [Footnote 25: "The Book of Mormon," _Scribner's Magazine_, August, 1880.] [Footnote 26: _The Wilderness Trail_, Chas. A. Hanna, II, 59, 60.] [Footnote 27: _The Wilderness Trail_, II, 30.] [Footnote 28: _The Wilderness Trail_, II, 8.] [Footnote 29: do., II, 20.] [Footnote 30: Published in _Four Great Rivers_.] [Footnote 31: This current is now sluggish, owing to the dam of the water works lower down the river.] [Footnote 32: The largest Indian village in the Susquehanna Valley, about 50 miles in an air line from Otsego, twice as far by water, situated on the river at a point where the present village of Windsor stands, some 14 miles easterly from Binghamton.] [Footnote 33: _The Wilderness Trail_, II, 84.] [Footnote 34: _The Old New York Frontier_, 125.] [Footnote 35: _The Old New York Frontier_, 320.] CHAPTER III A BYPATH OF THE REVOLUTION