George Zimmer Jrs Final Battle of the Revolution - 29 October 2025

This article Part 3 of 4 celebrates the Chester Zimmer Collection and the ongoing construction of the Chester Zimmer Library at the Old Stone Fort Museum Complex in Schoharie as well as taking note of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

Zimmer’s Pension Army

We have now summarized George’s service in the Revolution based on his own pension application testimony, but that is only part of the story. His version of events was not enough to convince the Commissioner of Pensions that he qualified. He needed help. The Commissioner’s pension official would listen to character witnesses as well as support from his compatriots in war, who were hard to find alive in the 1850s. Lawyers were required at times, for, after all, this was a legal struggle as well. In the period beginning in 1851, when he first made application to the Commissioner of Pensions, George Zimmer recruited a veritable army of his own in support of his pension battle with the United States. The documents read like an eloquent who’s who of 1850s Schoharie and Gallupville. All testimony was certified by both a justice and the court clerk or county clerk.

Lyman Baker was the first to offer endorsement to Zimmer’s 1851 testimony, even though as Justice of the Peace he was legally expected to be impartial in Zimmer’s pension process. He called George “a respectable citizen” and said that he did “verily believe his statements to be true in all respects.” Rev. Elen Hammond, the pastor of the Reformed Church of Gallupville, said Zimmer was “a man of unblemished reputation…also of sound mind and good memory.” Gallupville mill owner and respected businessman, Ezra Gallup Jr., called him a man of “stoic truth.”

Despite Zimmer’s claim in his application that “all of his comrades in arms who knew of his service … are all dead,” one was found to testify on his behalf. David Warner, 84, of Cobleskill remembered George from his duty at the Lower Fort and recalled when the raid on the Zimmer farm occurred.

Jacob Houck, Jr. and Charles Goodyear signed on to say that George was “a man of good character, that his statements are entitled to entire credit.” Houck was a Schoharie lawyer who had served in the U.S. Congress 1841-1843. Goodyear was a Schoharie attorney and politician who was a congressman 1845-1847 and again 1865-1867 and founder of the Schoharie County Bank. He also served on the Congressional Committee on Revolutionary Pensions during his second term. One has to wonder whether Zimmer’s predicament sparked his interest in how these pension cases had been handled.

George had apparently enlisted the help of Hiram Walden from the start of his 1851 application. He wrote that General Walden should be the one to receive his return correspondence from Washington, D.C. Walden had been George’s neighbor since 1818 in the place that bears his name, Waldenville, just a couple miles east of Zimmer’s farm. Walden owned a factory there manufacturing axes, had been Major General in the state militia, Schoharie Town Supervisor, Wright’s first Town Supervisor, NYS Assemblyman, and had just three weeks previously finished his term as U.S. Congressman. County Clerk, Loring Andrews, certified that all signatures were genuine.

More testimony followed, but more than a year later on July 26, 1852. Although it is unusual to encounter a woman’s statement in pension documents of this period, Christianna Norman of Wright testified that Zimmer served at the fort in Schoharie at least 8 months and went to the Middle Fort and Cobleskill on occasion. Her statement says of George,” …when the drum beat or the cannon sounded that he was the first to resort to arms…” 

August 2, 1852. Jacob Becker, 81, of Wright recalled George Zimmer standing sentry at “Becker’s Fort” to maintain a “military force” there so local residents could rely on it as a place of refuge. Again, this is a reference to the stone house fort of Major Jost Becker, still standing today, now minus its palisade wall.

October 15, 1852. Hiram Walden wrote to Pensions Commissioner Heath on George’s behalf, apparently not having heard back from Washington in the meantime and perhaps forwarding the above July and August testimony. 

May 27, 1853. Another of Zimmer’s compatriots was tracked down in the Town of Broome, Schoharie County. Isaac Laraway, 93, despite his infirmities, said he recalled serving with George at the Lower Fort. By this time George was ready to take pension matters into his own hands, having received seemingly little response from Washington, D.C. The next letter, June 1, 1853, was indeed in his own hand, and offered the recipient a kindly-mannered schooling on how the War for Independence was fought at the forts on the Schoharie Valley frontier. George was under the impression that those in Washington did not understand that the threat of raids in this civil war on the frontier had been ever-present in 1782: “…had to hold myself in readiness to meet the enemy to my country daily.” Unfortunately, George posted the letter without General Walden’s guidance. He was mistaken about where to send it. Rather than the Dept. of Interior, it was sent to President Franklin Pierce’s U.S. Secretary of War, a man who had no pension authority, but would, a few years later, become familiar to many Americans as the president of the southern confederacy, Jefferson Davis. It was too much to ask for Secretary Davis to appreciate the history lesson from Gallupville, if he ever read it.