USA > New York > Ontario County > A history of Ontario County, New York and its people, Volume I > Part 3
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In the running of the Preemption line, in 1788, a blunder, or more probably a fraud, was committed which was the occasion of much subsequent controversy and embarrassment, and resulted in the selection by Phelps and Gorham for their headquarters, of "a beautiful situation and good ground for a town plot," west of Can- andaigua lake outlet, instead of at Kanadesaga as first intended. The line which was run from the south was deflected toward the west at a point south of Seneca lake. This was accomplished, at the instigation, it is believed, of unscrupulous lessees, during the tempo- rary absence of Col. Hugh Maxwell, the surveyor representing the Massachusetts purchasers, and when the line was brought back to due north, previous to or at Col. Maxwell's return to the work, it had been shifted enough to the west to pass westward of Geneva. Though it is generally conceded that Col. Maxwell was entirely unconscious of the deviation in the line. it was early suspected. Oliver Phelps, in a letter to William Walker, the agent who had been sent into the new country to open at Canandaigua what is entitled to be known as the first office for the sale of land to settlers ever established in America, wrote, September 19, 1788: "I am still dissatisfied about our east line. I am sure it cannot be right." But it was not corrected and Geneva brought back into Ontario county until 1793.
The "gore" between the true and the fraudulent Preemption lines contained 85.896 acres of land, and as the State of New York had promptly sold or granted the land up to the line which it
17
COMING OF THE WHITE MAN.
supposed marked the limit of the Massachusetts preemption, much trouble followed the discovery of the surveyor's "mistake." The State and Captain Williamson acting for the association of Massa- chusetts purchasers cooperated to extinguish the claims of the owners of the land in question, and later the State settled with the latter by giving them from one and a half to six acres of public lands for each acre surrendered in the "gore.".
In the spring of 1789 Nathan- iel Gorham, Jr., Israel Chapin and a number of other pioneers en- tered the purchase, Agent Walker opened his land office, the survey was under way, and the influx of settlers had fairly begun.
In their letter of instruction to Agent Walker under date of August 21, 1788, the managers of the company wrote that they ex- pected that the townships on the east line of the Purchase would sell at an average of 1s 5d lawful money of Massachusetts per acre, "but," they added, "of that we cannot be quite competent judges NATHANIEL GORHAM. Nathaniel Gorham, the elder, who was the associate of Mr. Phelps in the management of the Phelps and Gorham property, and acted for the company in conferences with the Massachusetts State authorities and in the negotiations for the establishment of the Pre- emption line, was never a resident upon the Purchase. His home was in Charleston. Mass., where he was born in 1738. He died in Boston, Mass., in 1769. His son, Nathaniel Gorham, Jr., of whom unfortunately no por- trait is known to exist, came to Canandaigua in 1789 and acted as the agent of his father in the immediate management of the busi- ness of the company. He was an early Supervisor of the town, was President of the Ontario bank for a number of years, and held . other important positions until the townships are further explored; therefore you are to dispose of them (if any purchasers present) in the best manner you can, provided that the poorest township is not sold under one- sixth of a dollar per acre, referring the purchasers to us for the mode of payment unless they pay the in the community. money down. The lands upon the Genesee river are to be con- sidered as more valuable, and we think that they will undoubtedly average one-third of a dollar per acre; but as those townships will probably differ much in their value, the price will accordingly differ.
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HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY
We suppose the best clear flat will bring one dollar per acre, while some of the adjoining land may be very ordinary, but we cannot entertain an idea but they will average the one-third of a dollar per acre." He wrote that a great number of the best surveyors could be obtained to go into the new country at 9s per day and take their pay in lands, or at 7s 6d in cash.
On October 5 of the same year, Agent Walker reported that he had sold "to Gen'l Chapin & Capt. Dickinson No. 10 first tier at 1s 10d per acre, to Gen'l Chapin & Capt. Noble No. 11 second tier at 1s 10d, and to the same Gentlemen No. 10 second tier at 1s 8d, all N. York currency; have likewise sold to Messrs. Talmage and Bartle in No. 14 in the first tier about half a township, at 1s 7d, all the cash to be paid 1st next May ; a number of other towns are exploring by different gent'm in view of purchasing, in fine the prospects of a rapid settlement is as great as could be reasonably expected."
In the wild land speculations that marked the history of this region ten years later, good farm land brought as high as $5 per acre, an enormous price considering the condition of the country and the lack of all means of transportation except that afforded by ox teams over execrable roads or by bateaux on unreliable water courses.
The speculators knew the land, however. It only needed their gift of imagination, or the exalted faith of a Col. Maxwell, to picture the future realities of this country. To the men from New England's rocky farms, the rich and tillable lands of Western New York had possibilities that warranted the paying of even $5 an acre for them. Col. Maxwell while engaged in the surveys of 1788 had written his wife back in Massachusetts: "I have no doubt that in the course of a very few years there will be many worshipping assemblies of Christians where now the wild beasts howl, and that the time is not far distant when this wildness shall blossom as the rose." Col. Maxwell was a veteran of the Revolution, and 55 years old when he wrote thus enthusiastically.
But before the value of the lands in their purchase came to be widely appreciated, and before, even, they could be advantaged by the wave of speculation referred to, Phelps and Gorham found them- selves unable from the proceeds of the sales to settlers to meet their maturing obligations and proceed with the allotment. They therefore availed themselves of the opportunity that offered in
19
COMING OF THE WHITE MAN.
LAKE ONTARIO
Broddoc Be
Run
Falls
Black C
Goresee River
Niepara Road
A
HERTFORD
2010
GENEVA
Die free
Conesd
No 8
Canzsen
Hope Rum
LAKE
Danwille
SENECA
La Mad L
Bartley
Non Preemption Line
Catherines Town
Gray's
15
Scale of Miles.
Grist Mill .~ 0 Saw Mill_
Canistro R
New Tow
NOI
RANGE
RANGE 6
RANGE
RANGE
RANDE 3
RANGE
2
RANGE
Groups Mills
PENNSYLVANIA LINE
O
OF BATH
No 4
No 3
Rented Post
No 2
432 !
MAP OF THE PHELPS AND GORHAM PURCHASE.
This map shows the Phelps and Gorham purchase as it was between 1802 and 1806. It is a reduced fac-simile of the rare original and is the most correct map extant of the Phelps and Gorham purchase.
No 9
Part of Service Lake
Road to Albany
Canandarque
Mud C
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HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY
August, 1790, to dispose of the unsold part of their land, embracing something more than one-half the purchase, and reserving only two specified townships, No. 10 of the 3d Range and No. 9 of the 7th Range, the two comprising about 47,000 acres, to Robert Morris, the great financier of the Revolution. Mr. Morris paid for the 1,267,569 acres thus acquired at the rate of eight pence half penny per acre, Massachusetts currency, or between eleven and twelve cents per acre in U. S. money. He sent his son, Thomas Morris, to Canandaigua to look after the property, but almost immediately his agent in London sold it entire to an English syndicate, composed of Sir William Pulteney, John Hornby, and Patrick Colquhoun. The latter paid 75.000 pounds sterling (about $333,000) for the land. a price that netted a good profit for Mr. Morris. The new owners placed the control and title of the property in the hands of Charles Williamson, a naturalized citizen, who settled in Bath and to whose wise and energetic management is due much of the credit for the subsequent development of the region. He was a member of the Legislature from Ontario county for three years following 1796, and in 1795 he was appointed a judge of the county.
Almost simultaneously with this sale to the English company, Mr. Morris purchased of the State of Massachusetts all the land west of the Genesee river which was embraced in the original purchase of Phelps and Gorham, but which the latter relinquished. He sold all but about 500,000 acres of the last mentioned tract to the Holland Company in 1792 and '93, conditioned upon the extinguishment of the Indian title. This last was brought about in 1797.
Thus at last the title to all of Western New York had passed from Massachusetts to private ownership, and barring only about 3,500 square miles of reservation, the Indians had surrendered to the same interests their claim upon the land.
The era of the aboriginal in Western New York had finally closed and that of the white man had opened.
21
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.
III. THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.
A Party of Pioneers from Massachusetts Enter the Genesee Country by an All-Water Route-Their Settlement at Canan- daigua-Israel Chapin Appointed Indian Agent by President Washington-A Period of Apprehension-The Pickering Treaty of 1794.
Into the Great Western Wilderness, as Central and Western New York was then called, early in May, in 1789, there came a little party of New Englanders, bent upon spying out the land and making homes and, mayhap, fortunes for themselves and their kin. Loading their goods into bateaux at Schenectady, they paddled and poled their rude craft, against the current, up the Mohawk to Fort Stan- wix (now Rome) ; then carried boats and goods over a portage of a mile to Wood creek; thence floated down this little stream to Oneida lake, and through the lake and down its outlet to the junc- tion with the Oswego river : then up stream again toward Onondaga lake, into and through the Seneca river, Clyde river, and finally into the Canandaigua lake outlet. At Little Falls, the flat-bottomed boats and their contents were carried around by wagons. They were again transported overland at the Fort Stanwix portage, and at Seneca Falls and Manchester there were yet other unloadings and carries.
It was a picturesque and interesting, if an arduous, journey, and we may be sure that those who thus gained entry into the region through which Sullivan's army had ravaged ten years before, found in the forest that bordered the streams, the glades and marshes, tinged with the varying greens of bursting buds, and lighted by the pussy willow and the shad bush, and in the beautiful lake into which they finally floated, a panorama that met their fondest anticipations. Dr. Jabez Campfield, of the Sullivan expedition, had
22
HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY.
.
not overdrawn the attractions of the country when he set down in his journal that it was "equal to any in ye world."
Though this water route was deemed entirely practicable, or boatable, as it was expressed in a letter written at the time, having been explored by General Chapin and Agent Walker the Septem- ber previous, and a road having been cut yet later in the season, through the woods, for a carry around the rapids at Manchester, yet this is believed to have been the only party of immigrants who ever ascended through the outlet into the lake itself. Boats there- after came only as far as Man- chester, and thence their contents were transported overland to Can- andaigua. Augustus Porter, who had contracted with some of the purchasers of land to survey the same, and who came on ten or fifteen days later than the party above described, relates that it was a year of universal scarcity among the Indians. Indeed, he says, they were almost reduced to starvation, owing probably to an unusual fall of snow the winter AUGUSTUS PORTER. previous and the consequent scarcity of game. Perhaps it was the flood following this snow that made the outlet, in the spring of 1789, unusually navigable.
Augustus Porter first entered the Phelps and Gorham purchase in 1789, when he was about 20 years of age, for the purpose of making a survey of Township No. 10 in the Fourth Range (now East Bloomfield). year later he entered the service of Oliver Phelps as agent in making surveys and sales of lands, and in 1792 assisted Andrew Elli- cott, United States Surveyor General, in re- surveying and correcting the Preemption line. Mr. Porter moved to Niagara Falls about the year 1806 and died there in 1864.
The leader of this party of pioneers, which included, also, Nathaniel Gorham, Jr., Frederick Saxton, Benjamin . Gardner, Daniel Gates, and a number of others, was Israel Chapin, of Hat- field, Mass., the man who was destined to become the strong man of the projected capital of the Phelps and Gorham purchase.
Israel Chapin was of Welch ancestry, and belonged to a family that was numerously and prominently represented in Colonial life.
23
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.
There were no less than one hundred and four Chapins who served in the War of the Revolution. Israel Chapin was born in Grafton, Mass., December 4, 1740. He subsequently became a resident of Hatfield, in the same county. As to his earlier years, little can be ascertained, but that they were such as to command the respect and confidence of his townspeople, is evidenced by the fact that from 1762, when he was only 22 years of age, to 1787, when he became interested in the Phelps and Gorham purchase, there was hardly a year but what he was elected to some town office. When Paul Revere carried the news from Lexington on a certain historic night, he was captain of a company of Minute Men who responded to the alarm, and though it does not appear that he stood among the embattled farmers at Concord the next day, it may be presumed that he wished he did.
This irregular service lasted only seven days, but he enlisted in the Patriot army on the 27th of April, 1775. He was at Saratoga at the surrender of Burgoyne, in 1777, and the same year attained the rank of Major. In October of that year he became a Lieutenant Colonel, and, in February of the year following, Colonel in the Massachusetts militia ; then he acted as Brigadier General, was in the campaign against Quebec, and was honorably discharged November 21, 1779.
Turner says that in addition to his services in the field during the Revolution, General Chapin was occasionally a sub-contractor, or agent of Oliver Phelps, in purchasing supplies for the army. On one occasion he was requested by Mr. Phelps to obtain a "fine yoke of fat cattle for General Washington's table."
Following the purchase of western land from the State of Massachusetts, April 1, 1788, General Chapin was appointed by the associates in the enterprise to explore the country, and upon the return of Mr. Phelps from his journey to Kanadesaga and Niagara, in the early summer, and the purchase by Mr. Phelps from the Indians of the tract between the Preemption line and the Genesee river (the so-called Phelps and Gorham purchase), he came into the country for the first time. William Walker, appointed to the office of local agent, was here also, and the two men, in September, explored the practicability of the outlet as a means of communica- tion with the East, began the cutting of a road through the woods from Kanadesaga to Canandaigua and thence to the Genesee, started surveyors upon the work of mapping the tract, located the
24
HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY.
site of what was to become the village of Canandaigua, and erected a small log house there for the storage of supplies. Then, as Agent Walker reported, "the season being so far advanced, and the difficulty of erecting buildings in any degree comfortable for our- selves, and the large number of purchasers who present themselves so great," they decided to return east and wait until the next spring before establishing themselves on The Chosen Spot.
The founding of the settlement at Canandaigua was made at a time of gravest danger. Pressed further and further into the wilderness by the constantly augmenting influx of white settlers, the Indians were naturally restless. As one of the squaws, per- mitted to participate in the Pickering Council, expressed it, they had been "pressed and squeezed together until it gave them a great pain at their hearts." Their passions were inflamed by the rum dealt out to them in the clinching of every bargain and the negotia- tion of every treaty, as well as in the purchase of their peltry. They were confused by the conflicting claims of State and National governments. They were dissatisfied with the amount of money received in payment for their lands. They were urged by the unscrupulous lessees to repudiate their contracts with the whites, and they were made arrogant and unmanageable by news of the uprising of their brothers in the West.
It was at this critical juncture, when council after council had been held without avail, and restlessness might at any time break out into open hostilities, that the Secretary of War, General Knox, selected General Chapin, then the leading citizen of the settlement at Canandaigua, as the man for the hour, and appointed him to the office of Deputy Superintendent of the Six Nations. His commission to this service was dated April, 1792.
The letter from Secretary Knox appointing General Chapin to this highly responsible position urged the latter to impress upon the Indians that it was the "firm determination of the United States that the utmost fairness and kindness should be exhibited to them. That it was not only his desire to be at peace with all the Indian tribes, but to be their guardian and protector against all injustice."
In a subsequent letter of instruction, the Secretary wrote that it was the ardent desire of the President that a "firm peace should be established with the neighboring tribes of Indians, on such pure principles of justice and moderation as will enforce the approbation of the dispassionate and enlightened part of mankind." But, the
10 -
0
C1
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.
TALK WITH THE INDIANS AT BUFFALO CREEK IN 1793.
1. Col. Timothy Pickering. 3. Beverly Randolph. 5. Interpreter. 7, 8, 9. British Officers.
2. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. 4. General Chapin. 6. Indian Orator. 10. Quakers.
On their way to the Conference with hostile Indians northwest of the Ohio, the commissioners appointed by President Washington, Benjamin Lincoln, Beverly Randolph, and Timothy Pickering, had a "talk" on the eleventh of June, 1793, with the Seneca Indians of New York near the present site of the City of Buffalo. General Israel Chapin was present as Government Superintendent of Indian affairs.
The original of this sketch, which was drawn by a young British officer named Pilkington who was present at the talk, is in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society at Boston.
25
26
HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY.
Secretary concluded, "if the hostile Indians should, after having had these intentions of the Government fully laid before them, still persist in their depredations in the frontiers, it will be considered as the dictates of humanity to endeavor to punish with severity so incorrigible a race of men, in order to prevent other tribes in future from a like conduct."
How well the Superintendent carried out the desires of the President, and how successfully he avoided resort to the alter- native so emphatically set forth by the Secretary, may be understood from what follows.
The first duty devolved upon Superintendent Chapin was to induce Joseph Brant, the famous Seneca chieftain, to visit Phila- delphia, then the seat of Government. Brant had refused to accompany a delegation from the Six Nations a short time before, deeming it beneath his dignity to go with a drove of Indians. But he yielded to the urging of the Superintendent, came to Canan- daigua, and from here he was escorted by Israel Chapin, Jr., and other attendants, via Albany and New York, to Philadelphia. The wily Brant, halting between his obligations to the British and his inclination to ally himself with the government of the United States, was careful to make no definite promises, and his visit failed of the purpose to secure his active influence in behalf of peace.
Upon the return of the Brant party, Secretary Knox wrote the Superintendent regretting that he himself did not make the journey to Philadelphia, and adding: "As you at present are regarded favorably, as well for your zeal as your economy, it will be expedient to you that these principles be manifest in all your future conduct, and while you continue to make the public good the rule of your action, you may proceed with confidence as you may depend upon support." That he did continue to make the public good the rule of his action is attested by the fact that he continued to the end of his life to have the support of the Government and that no word of disparagement or criticism of his work is to be found in the public archives.
There followed a long period during which the Genesee country was in a state of constant apprehension. Time and again the settlers were alarmed by the report that the Indians had gone on the war path. Dreams of massacre disturbed the sleep of the people on many a night. Through it all, the calm, imperturbable, strong figure of General Chapin held its way, and the settlement came to
27
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.
rely upon him as its defender, as he had been from the beginning its leading citizen. His energy was unflagging. His sagacity never failed. Through his influence, conference after conference was held with hostile Indians at the West. He kept in closest touch with the Senecas near home, and by diplo- macy, by his thorough understand- ing of their character, by assert- ing on occasion the strength of the Government he represented, by gifts and entertainment, he succeeded in foiling the machina- tions of British agents bent on fomenting trouble. His home in Canandaigua was ever open to Indian deputations. His door yard was the scene of almost daily councils, and his bread and meat and rum were dispensed freely. He acted as arbitrator in every dispute that arose between Indians and white settlers. But through all the anxious days the Superintendent succeeded in re- taining the confidence and respect of the red men. Large sums of CAPTAIN JASPER PARRISH. public money-large for those days-passed through his hands, without suffering from attrition, and for all this and much more the General received the munifi- cent annual salary of $500.
Jasper Parrish, who was the loyal assistant of General Israel Chapin in his work as the agent of the Government, was born near the head waters of the Delaware river in this State in 1767 and died in Canandaigua in 1836. When only eleven years old, while working in a field with his father, he was surprised and captured by a band of Monsce Indians. He spent the succeeding six years as a captive in that tribe and among the Dela- wares and the Mohawks, being finally re- leased in 1784 as the result of a treaty stipu- lation by which the Six Nations gave up all white captives. Returning to his family he renewed his acquaintance with the English language, acted as interpreter at several councils with the Indians, and in April, 1792, was appointed official Government interpreter and instructed to reside at Canandaigua. Was the principal interpreter at the council held in Canandaigua under direction of Colonel Timothy Pickering in 1794, was made sub- agent in 1803, and continued in these offi- cial positions through successive administra- tions until President Jackson's second term.
He wrote the Secretary of War in 1793, giving it as his opinion that the establishment of a prop- erly equipped school for the In- dians west of the Genesee river might be of infinite service "both in conciliating the affections of the Indians and in laying the foun- dations for their civilization." He asked also for directions as to how
28
HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY.
far he should distribute to the Indians, and added: "I am continually surrounded by a crowd of them * *
* They all expect to be fed from my table and made glad from my cellar. Some instances, too, of clothing, I have not been able to deny. I would suggest the idea whether a small store of provisions and goods to be distributed on necessary occasions might not be a saving to the public." This suggestion was favorably acted upon by the Govern- ment, and a depot of supplies established in Canandaigua.
The season of 1794 opened with particularly dark prospects. Upon General Chapin, the Government depended for preserving the endangered peace and the people for their very lives. Had it not been for him, it is probable that there would have been a general desertion of the Genesee country. His apparent confidence quieted the apprehensions of the people, but he better than any one eise appreciated the danger. In April he wrote the Secretary of War that he feared that the Indians, aroused by an inflammatory speech of Lord Dorchester, and by the declaration of another British agent that a second war between England and the United States was inevitable, were ripe for mischief. "The expense of the Indians," he continued, "increases with the importance they suppose their friendship to be to us. However, you may be persuaded that I will endeavor to make use of all the economy I can." The letter closed: "This part of the country, being the frontier of the State of New York, is very much alarmed at the present appearance of war. Destitute of arms and ammunition, the scattered inhabitants of this remote wilderness would fall an easy prey to their savage neighbors, should they think proper to attack them."
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