Johan Jost Herchheimer, a farmer who also engaged in trade and transport on the Mohawk River, settled in the German Flatts District of Albany County in 1725, on the south side of the Mohawk River, within the present-day town of German Flatts, incorporated in 1788. He owned of the land, including a strategic portage around Little Falls on the Mohawk, where his eldest son Nicholas Herkimer established a farmstead. In 1788, the town of Herkimer, on the north side of the river, was incorporated and named after him.