Donderburg’s Pumpkin Vine

‘Donderburg’s Pumpkin Vine’ provides a detailed commentary on the frantic preparations made in advance of the long awaited British push, led by the British Navy up the Hudson Valley that occurred in early October of 1777. Other events in Canada had evolved that made the valley’s defense critical; Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne was thrusting down thru the Adirondack wilderness towards Albany. The defenses in the Hudson, or North River as it was called, were essential to keeping the British bottled up in New York City and preventing the juncture of Henry Clinton with Burgoyne. Such a juncture, lending them control of the valley, would have split the colonies in two and effectively ended the war. One individual, of remarkable skill (and somewhat dubious morals), an engineer named Thomas Machin was made responsible for creating and designing these defenses by the Commander in Chief George Washington himself. The outcome of the war in every sense hung by the links of that chain he himself had designed, built and emplaced.

We chart Thomas Machin’s early career from the siege of Boston through his arrival the Hudson Valley pursuant to his assignment to the chain(s) projects and then his part in the Sullivan Expedition of 1779 in damming Lake Otsego and finally through his participation in an artillery bet between Henry Knox and Rochambeau at the siege of Yorktown.

This book is based on exhaustive an original research. It gives a unique insight into the various machinations and agendas that even amidst the fomented panic, fueled and gave shape to the great project of the defenses.

Excerpt from the Prologue: The Corduroy Road was not completed, indeed not started; the weal of the common good not yet raised. Thus it would remain until late in ’79 by which time the war and its clamor had migrated southward along with the honking geese. For now the way would south from New Windsor would remain barred, at least to George Washington and his tired, gaunt troops making their winter trek like ghosts through the snow to their winter quarters in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For now it would remain, like them perhaps, only the fabric and substance of a pipe dream,–the only sound along it, the swishing of the pines and the faint echo of harness traces jangling amidst the damping snow as the indisputably real and solid oxen hustled their cargoes like spoons down the mountain to meet the gaping mouth of war.