HERISAU, the largest town in the entire Swiss canton of Appenzell, built on the Glatt torrent, and by light railway 7 m. south-west of St Gall or 13½ m. north of Appenzell. In 1900 it had 13,497 inhabitants, mainly Protestant and German-speaking. The lower portion of the massive tower of the parish church (Protestant) dates from the 11th century or even earlier. It is a prosperous little industrial town in the Ausser Rhoden half of the canton, especially busied with the manufacture of embroidery by machinery, and of muslins. Near it is the goats’ whey cure establishment of Heinrichsbad, and the two castles of Rosenberg and Rosenburg, ruined in 1403 when the land rose against its lord, the abbot of St Gall. About 5 m. to the south-east is Hundwil, a village of 1523 inhabitants, where the Landsgemeinde of Ausser Rhoden meets In the odd years (in other years at Trogen) on the last Sunday in April.
HERITABLE JURISDICTIONS, in the law of Scotland, grants of jurisdiction made to a man and his heirs. They were a usual accompaniment to feudal tenures, and the power which they conferred on great families, being recognized as a source of danger to the state, led to frequent attempts being made by statute to restrict them, both before and after the Union. They were all abolished in 1746.
HERKIMER, a village and the county-seat of Herkimer county, New York, U.S.A., in the township of the same name, on the Mohawk river, about 15 m. S.E. of Utica. Pop. (1900) 5555 (724 being foreign-born); (1905, state census) 6596; (1910) 7520. It is served by the New York Central & Hudson River railway, a branch of which (the Mohawk & Malone railway) extends through the Adirondacks to Malone, N.Y.; by inter-urban electric railway to Little Falls, Syracuse, Richfield Springs, Cooperstown and Oneonta, and by the Erie canal. The village has a public library, and is the seat of the Folts Mission Institute (opened 1893), a training school for young women, controlled by the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Herkimer is situated in a rich dairying region, and has various manufactures. The municipality owns and operates its water-supply system and electric-lighting plant. Herkimer, named in honour of General Nicholas Herkimer (c. 1728-1777), who was mortally wounded in the Battle of Oriskany, and in whose memory there is a monument (unveiled on the 6th of August 1907) in the village, was settled about 1725 by Palatine Germans, who bought from the Mohawk Indians a large tract of land including the present site of the village and established thereon several settlements which became known collectively as the “German Flats.” In 1756 a stone house, built in 1740 by General Herkimer’s father, John Jost Herkimer (d. 1775)—apparently one of the original group of settlers—a stone church, and other buildings, standing within what is now Herkimer village, were enclosed in a stockade and ditch fortifications by Sir William Johnson, and this post, at first known as Fort Kouari (the Indian name), was subsequently called Fort Herkimer. Another fort (Ft. Dayton) was built within the limits of the present village in 1776 by Colonel Elias Dayton (1737-1807), who later became a brigadier-general (1783) and served in the Confederation Congress in 1787-1788. During the French and Indian War the settlement was attacked (12th November 1757) and practically destroyed, many of the settlers being killed or taken prisoners; and it was again attacked on the 30th of April 1758. In the War of Independence General Herkimer assembled here the force which on the 6th of August 1777 was ambushed near Oriskany on its march from Ft. Dayton to the relief of Ft. Schuyler (see [Oriskany]); and the settlement was attacked by Indians and “Tories” in September 1778 and in June 1782. The township of Herkimer was organized in 1788, and in 1807 the village was incorporated.
See Nathaniel I. Benton, History of Herkimer County (Albany, 1856); and Phoebe S. Cowen, The Herkimers and Schuylers, (1903).
HERKOMER, SIR HUBERT VON (1849- ), British painter, was born at Waal, in Bavaria, and eight years later was brought to England by his father, a wood-carver of great ability. He lived for some time at Southampton and in the school of art there began his art training; but in 1866 he entered upon a more serious course of study at the South Kensington Schools, and in 1869 exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy. By his picture, “The Last Muster,” at the Academy in 1875, he definitely established his position as an artist of high distinction. He was elected an associate of the Academy in 1879, and academician in 1890; an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1893, and a full member in 1894; and in 1885 he was appointed Slade professor at Oxford. He exhibited a very large number of memorable portraits, figure subjects and landscapes, in oil and water colour; he achieved marked success as a worker in enamel, as an etcher, mezzotint engraver and illustrative draughtsman; and he exercised wide influence upon art education by means of the Herkomer School (Incorporated), at Bushey, which he founded in 1883 and directed gratuitously until 1904, when he retired. It was then voluntarily wound up, and is now conducted privately. Two of his pictures, “Found” (1885) and “The Chapel of the Charterhouse” (1889), are in the National Gallery of British Art. In the year 1907 he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. at Oxford, and a knighthood was conferred upon him by the king in addition to the commandership of the Royal Victorian Order with which he was already decorated.
See Hubert von Herkomer, R.A., a Study and a Biography, by A. L. Baldry (London, 1901); Professor Hubert Herkomer, Royal Academician, His Life and Work, by W. L. Courtney (London, 1892).