Herkimer

Town and seat of Herkimer County, in north-central New York, on the Mohawk River, 21 km/13 mi southeast of Utica; population (1990) 10,400. Founded in around 1725 by German settlers from the Palatinate, and known as German Flats, it was attacked repeatedly during the French and Indian Wars. Later, in the Revolutionary War, troops under General Nicholas Herkimer, garrisoned at Fort Dayton in the town, were ambushed at the Battle of Oriskany (1777). In the 19th century, it boomed as a knitting and paper mill centre, and was the site of the development of paper made from wood pulp (1865).

A celebrated murder trial that took place in Herkimer was the inspiration for Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy (1925). Today Herkimer forms an economic unit with neighbouring Mohawk, Ilion, and Frankfort, producing such goods as clothing, metal products, and office furniture.