USA > New York > Ontario County > A history of Ontario County, New York and its people, Volume I > Part 31
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46
The Earliest Comers.
No complete list exists, nor probably can ever be made, of the various persons who were in Geneva for a longer or shorter time during the first formative period (1787-1792), either as temporary residents or permanent settlers, but the following confessedly imperfect list, gathered from Mr. Conover's historical papers, is not without interest and value :
Elark Jennings, at once first inn keeper and first recorded inhabitant; Peter Bartle, Indian trader; Horatio Jones, Indian interpreter; Asa Ransom, maker of Indian trinkets; Gilbert R. Berry, silversmith; John Widner, farmer at the foot of the lake and ferry keeper; Daniel Earl and Solomon Earl, his son, farmers over the outlet ; Captain Timothy Allyn and one Hickox, merchants ; Jacob and Joseph Backenstose, tailors, who by their skill created in time a State-wide ambition to wear clothes made by a "Geneva tailor;" one Butler, the first carpenter ; James Tallmage, a black- smith, and Elisha Tallmage, merchant; Ezra Patterson, inn keeper, presumably on site of the Carrollton; Joshua Fairbanks, inn keeper,
338
HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY.
site not certain; Dr. Caleb Benton, representative of the Lessee company, with headquarters in their tavern and trading establish- ment; Colonel Seth Reed and Peter Ryckman, first holders of important land patents in Geneva ; Major Benjamin Barton, Major Adam Hoops, Jacob Hart, Joseph Annin, William (?) Jenkins, surveyors ; Dr. William Adams, first physician, and a little later Dr. Andrews; and land owners among others as follows: Jerome Loomis, from Lebanon, Connecticut ; Major Sanford Williams : Captain Jonathan Whitney : Roger Noble, from Sheffield, Massachu- setts; James Latta, from New Windsor, New York; Solomon Warner, William Ansley, a Mr. Ringer, a Mr. Crittenden, owner of the farm on which were the Old Castle and the Indian mound ; Phineas Stevens, at the Charles Bean place ; while at Kashong were settled Joseph Poudre and Dominique De Bartzch, the latter a man of great influence at the time in this region. Other names of this period are: Sisson, Van Duzen, Butler, Jackson, Graham, and Scott, the last two being merchants who came in June, 1793. To this list it would be a pleasure to add, were it known, the name of him who during the first formative period introduced into Geneva the manufacture of brick, for Dr. Coventry in his Journal records, under date of July 3rd, 1792, that he went to Geneva and bought 300 bricks at $4 per thousand, a price which precludes the supposi- tion that the bricks he bought were imported bricks.
Besides the taverns or inns already mentioned, there were at least three other early inns, but it is not certain whether they came into existence in the first formative period or somewhat later: the famous McCormick tavern on the southwest corner of North and Exchange streets, the first inn on the Kirkwood site, and Tuttle's tavern just south of the Charles Bean place. But in those early days every man's house was in a way an inn, for no man might refuse rest and refreshment to the wearied traveler, especially for a reasonable consideration; and besides and behind this humane impulse was the ever present and the ever active desire to exchange news, for in Geneva, just waking into life, this was before news- papers and stages and any fixed mail service, and of course before telegraphs or telephones or railroads or steamers or canal packets, still waiting for their predestined inventors. To this first period, but possibly to the beginning of the next period, belongs General H. W. Dobbin, land owner, a soldier of the Revolution who enjoyed. and justly, marked local celebrity.
339
VILLAGE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
Brief Biographies.
Of the permanent settlers of this earliest period. brief biogra- phies of two or three will develop certain facts peculiarly interesting as opening pages of the story of Geneva.
The year 1788 brought to Geneva Jerome Loomis, a soldier of the Revolution, who, settling finally in the Old Castle neighborhood, built there as his permanent residence a house which remained his home till his death in 1840, and since has been the home of his son, Henry Hopkins Loomis, who at the close of a long and successful life still takes an active interest in affairs and ranks as the oldest native born citizen, father and son together bridging in one home the whole period of Geneva's existence. In 1798, Jerome Loomis, married Elizabeth Tippetts, daughter of Stephen Tippetts, of New York city, one of whose ancestors gave to that city the land used for its city hall and park.
The same year, 1788, brought also to Geneva Benjamin Barton, aged seventeen, afterward better known as Major Barton, and the reputed father of that famous place-name, Penn Yan, a prominent man throughout his life in Western New York and Buffalo, whither he removed in 1807. He is memorialized by his granddaughter, Mrs. Agnes Demarest, in the dedicatory tablet of the James F. Demarest library building and the Barton scholarships, founded by her in Hobart college. His marriage to Agnes Latta, in 1792, was the first marriage in Geneva's selectest circle. Removing in 1794 to his great farm of seven hundred acres at Kashong, seven miles up the lake, he a little later opened his new house there with a grand house-warming and ball, believed to be the first event of that kind in Western New York.
The story of this house-warming, as told a half century later by Mr. Barton's son, is full of sparkle and fascination and is of too much historic interest to be omitted. That year Mr. Barton had grown an extraordinary crop of flax, and the beaux of the country round, sighing for a social hour that would fitly companion the crop of flax, lay awake nights till the plan of a house-warming came to them full fledged. They won the consent of Mr. Barton by a promise not only to attend to the business of the ball and to furnish the "fiddlers three" (for the wilderness was innocent of pianos and dulcimers and orchestras), but also to hackle and dress the flax. They turned in, dressed the flax and then, making up seventy-two
340
HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY.
half pound bundles, put them in bags and scattered them for many a mile about amongst the belles, to be converted into skeins of thread and held as cards of invitation. When the appointed night was come, the beaux and belles concentrated at the Barton domicile. some by the sparse roads, in wagons, the rest by the forest trails, either on foot or on horseback, the fortunate horseback cavaliers, each with his maiden fair mounted behind him. The belles came clad in homespun, but bearing each in a bag her ball dress and precious skein of thread. Of Geneva's elite, thirty were numbered in the throng. No sooner were all arrived and the belles had fluttered from their homespun into their winningest array, than the dance was on. Though broken in twain by a royal supper prepared by Mrs. Barton, the night fairly flew, alas! and all too soon was spent, and when the bird of morn woke the sleeping sun and rising Phoebus hasting shot his shafts of roseate light across the lake, the dancers, weary with joy. doffed their Terpsichorean robes and donned again their homespun, and with backward flying thoughts homeward spun through the roads and forest trails, as they had come.
Again, 1788 brought to Geneva John Widner, aged nine, who remained in Geneva until 1823 and finally died in Rochester, aged one hundred and one. His clear recollection of persons, places, houses, events, indeed everything connected with the early history of Geneva, was very remarkable, and his reminiscences, as preserved by Mr. Conover in his noteworthy history, is a valuable mine of information for the investigator of the first days of Geneva.
About this time, but not later than 1790, came to Geneva Dr. William Adams, a somewhat elderly man, greatly respected, the first physician to practice his profession in this immediate part of the Genesee country. He died heroically in the line of his profes- sion in the epidemic of dysentery (Geneva's first recorded epidemic) which swept over the place in 1795, the year of Geneva's first great drought. At the same time, and from the same cause, Dr. Adams's wife also lost her life. Still another victim was Dr. Adams's co- worker, Dr. Andrews, a young physician recently arrived with his bride.
In 1792, Dr. Alexander Coventry, an eminent physician, but as devoted to agriculture as to medicine, came to Geneva and entered upon extensive farming operations across the lake, naming the splendid farm which he developed "Fairhill" after the ancestral
341
VILLAGE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
estate in Scotland. In 1802, Dr. Coventry parted with this farm, and afterwards, with slight additions to the acreage, it became known as "Rose Hill" farm. Dr. Coventry kept during his years here in Geneva and at "Fairhill" a very minute diary which still exists, but not entirely intact, a diary as valuable as it is minute. In it is vividly described among many other things the terrible epidemic and drought of 1795. He mentions a time when in Geneva, small as it was, there were three or four corpses at once, and another time when of the inhabitants of the little hamlet, only one, a woman, was strong enough to be about, and how for several days, like a ministering angel, she went from house to house bestowing on the sick the greatest of all favors, a drink of cold water.
A Boy or a Girl?
The question has been asked, "Was the first baby born in Geneva a boy or a girl, and who was it?" It is not a great question, perhaps, but it is one full of human interest. Seven cities contested the honor of being the birthplace of Homer. Geneva's historic quandary is nearly as bad, if not worse. Three babies contest the honor of having been her first born. No. 1 was born under the shadow of the Factory Bay cliffs just outside Geneva's city limits, in December, 1786, the year before Geneva's first settler appeared upon the scene, and his name was William, William W. Jones, passed into history as the first white child born in the State of New York, west of Utica. No. 2 was born, December 11, 1792, and his name was John, John Backenstose. No. 3 was born two days before John, but No. 3 was, as the historiographer with unbecoming levity stated it, only a girl and of course shouldn't count. Unfortunately her name is irretrievably lost; but if No. 1, William W. Jones, is to be rejected as an outsider both in time and place, it follows with logical irrevocableness that in this matter it is to Geneva, as in her great beginnings it was to Carthage-dux femina.
The Naming of Geneva.
The tradition that Geneva was given its name by a Swiss engineer in the employ .of Captain Williamson, agent of the Pulteneys, has been proved absolutely untenable, as the name was in use locally as early as 1788, three years before Williamson had any interest in this region and four years before he made his first visit to Geneva. Written documents still exist which remove all
342
HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY.
doubt on this point. The really interesting question about the christening of Geneva is: Whose suggestion was it? Was it a random suggestion, or was it deliberately made in the interests of some party or corporation wishing to exploit the place? The lat- ter view commends itself as the reasonable one, and in that case the name must have emanated either from the Massachusetts proprietaries or from the New York Genesee Land Company, previ- ously mentioned and more commonly known as the Lessee com- pany. Probably it emanated from the Lessee company, for of the two companies the Lessee company was the first on the ground, indeed was on the ground before the Phelps and Gorham company was formed, and the earliest written document now known dated from Geneva is a letter written October 14, 1788, by Dr. Caleb Benton, the local representative of the Lessee company, a letter presumably written from that company's trading establishment, erected as we have seen in 1787 at the foot of what is now known as Colt's hill. Perhaps, it was after all, Doctor Caleb Benton him- self who was responsible for the name Geneva, in preference to the old Indian name Kanadesaga, waiting to be adopted; for it is in evidence that Promoter Benton had a fondness, a taste for bestowing names, and that could he have had his way Canandaigua had been Walkersburgh!
The Long Lease.
But the shorter formative period in the history of Geneva was not without dramatic phases. The serpent entered our paradise, when November 30, 1787, at the very beginning of Geneva's his- tory, the Lessee company, at a council at Kanadesaga (Geneva) of the chiefs or sachems of the Six Nations of Indians, secured from them a 999 years' lease of all their lands in New York State west of the "property line," that is, in a general way, west of Utica, except certain reservations for their own use. This move, though suggested by views and practices then more or less current among land speculators, was as adroit as it was bold. In its natural oper- ation, a 999 years' lease of such universal scope practically estopped both New York State and the State of Massachusetts from acquir- ing possession, except through the Lessee company, of any of the lands of the Six Nations, and rendered the provisions of the Hartford Convention of the preceding year, 1786, nugatory; and, although without delay, February 16, 1788, the Legislature of the
343
VILLAGE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
State of New York by resolution declared this long lease and other long leases of more limited scope which the company had negoti- ated, to be purchases and therefore void, the Lessee company was by no means stripped of power to be a disturbing influence in impending land dealings with the Indians in Central and Western New York, by the State of New York and by the State of Massa- chusetts, for in the negotiation of the long leases, the Lessee company had obtained an influence with the Indians which it was difficult to neutralize. So true is this that when in the following year, 1788 (July 8), at the Buffalo Creek council, Mr. Phelps as representative of the State of Massachusetts and the proprietaries it had created, sought to clear title to the "Genesee tract," so- called, by purchase from the Senecas, he found it expedient to secure by grants of land the good offices of representatives of the Lessee company as intermediaries ; and later, in the latter part of 1788 and the earlier part of 1789, the State of New York itself was from the malign ascendency of these same influences seriously hampered in securing necessary cessions from various of the Six Nations, even though pending such negotiations the long leases were surrendered by the Lessee company, February 14, 1789. As further evidence of the public estimation in which this malign ascendency of the Lessees was held, it is to be noted that at the Fort Stanwix negotiations with the Onondagas, September 12, 1788, and with the Oneidas, a week later, September 20, John Livingston and John C. Schuyler, who had appeared on the scene in the interests of the Lessee company, were peremptorily ordered to retire forty miles from the place of meeting.
The Conspiracy.
The trail of the serpent in Geneva's earlier history does not stop here. The machinations of the leading spirits of the Lessee company went further. In the autumn of 1788, a circular was issued signed by John Livingston and Caleb Benton, as officers of a convention purporting to have been held at Geneva, "urging the people to hold town meetings and sign petitions for a new state to be set off from New York," and of the leading spirits of the Lessee company John Livingston and Caleb Benton were easily the two most conspicuous. This conspiracy to disrupt the fair common- wealth of New York, which had not a few promoters in the coun- ties east of the Pre-emption line and in the extreme western part of the State, persisted with more or less activity throughout
344
HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY.
the earlier formative period and even till November 8, 1793, when at a meeting held at Canandaigua, embracing the judges, justices, and inhabitants of the different parts of the county of Ontario, the movement and its instigators were denounced with such eloquent and irresistible force that the project was never heard of more. It is interesting to note here that not many years later a conspiracy on similar lines, but of national import, best known as the Aaron Burr conspiracy, was developed.
The First Pre-emption Line.
Next in the train of ills that make Geneva's earlier formative period memorable was the misfortune, the fatal error, that fol- lowed the running of the Pre-emption line to define the eastern limits of the Massachusetts holding under the convention of 1786. The running of the Pre-emption line began June 13, 1788, and about this time Mr. Phelps, representing the proprietaries, arrived to take possession of their principality, for such in essence it was. Nothing doubting that Kanadesaga, the capital of the Senecas, was within the lands of the Senecas which the proprietaries' purchase was supposed to cover, and full of the pleasing expectation of making it the capital of the proprietaries' princely domain, Mr. Phelps was seized with unspeakable consternation on hearing that the Pre-emption line as being surveyed would run to the west of Kanadesaga, and that his project of making Kanadesaga the cap- ital of the proprietaryship must be abandoned. In this crisis, no other course offering, Mr. Phelps decisively cut the Gordian knot and pushed on to the next lake and made Ganadarque, or Canandaigua, the capital. Hence, later the court house at Canandaigua and an irremediable wrong to Geneva! A re-survey in 1792 showed that Kanadesaga (Geneva) was in the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, but the knowledge came too late.
It has frequently been suggested that the error in the running of the Pre-emption line of 1788, the Old Pre-emption line as it is now called, was made purposely in the interests of the Lessee company, but a careful study of all the circumstances of the case does not seem to justify the charge, as the main thing and practi- cally the only thing that can be said in support of it is that to an extent it jumped with the interests of the Lessee company not to have Kanadesaga (Geneva) included in the Phelps and Gorham Purchase.
345
VILLAGE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
The First Titles.
Quite as interesting, if not as dramatic, as the weightier events in the earlier formative period of Geneva's history already recited, is the fact that in the southern half of Geneva, title to the land could not be acquired or passed till February 25, 1789, and in the northern and northeastern parts till December 10, 1789, for in the eye of the law the Indians of the Six Nations were not owners but simply occupants of the lands within their acknowl- edged domains, and their lands were inalienable by them except to the State by cession after due compensation, and it was not till the dates given above that cessions by the Indians to the State of all land in Geneva were effected. Had it not been for the error developed in the summer of 1788 in running the original or Old Pre-emption line, the lands of Geneva had been covered by the cession made at Buffalo creek, July 8th, 1788, to Mr. Phelps, as representative of the State of Massachusetts and the proprietaries, by the Senecas, of that portion of their lands lying between Seneca lake and the Genesee river, distinctively known as the "Genesee tract." However, at Albany, February 25, 1789, the Cayugas, whose lands ran west to the lands of the Senecas, ceded all their territory, after certain reservations, to the State of New York. To this general cession of their lands they added a special cession or reser- vation through the State to Peter Ryckman of 16,000 acres between the east line of the Massachusetts cession of July 8, 1788, and Seneca lake, the north boundary of said tract as afterward laid out, being a line best known as the Reed and Ryckman line, starting on the shore of Seneca lake, two rods north of the mouth of what is locally known as Cemetery creek, and running west to the Pre- emption line, the Old Pre-emption line, and forming in its course the north boundary of the Pulteney street cemetery.
This cession, it is to be observed, extinguished the Indian claims to the southern portion only of Geneva. But ten months later, December 10, 1789, two Seneca chiefs executed at Kanade- saga (Geneva), in behalf of the Senecas, a letter of renunciation to the State of New York of all claims by them to lands east of the old Massachusetts Pre-emption line, a reasonable compensation therefor to be made to the Cayugas. This cession of the Senecas, by letter of renunciation, completed the extinguishment of any and all Indian claims to the land within Geneva and placed the owner-
346
HISTORY OF ONTARIO COUNTY.
ship of the land in the State of New York. At last the acquisition and passing of legal titles within Geneva had become possible.
The First Land Patents.
Subsequently two notable patents were issued by the State of New York covering the lands in southern and northern Geneva. So notable are these patents and so prominent a part have they played in Geneva's history and life that at least a passing notice of them cannot be omitted. February 15, 1790, the land office of the State of New York ordered to be issued to Colonel Seth Reed for military services in the Revolution a patent of 2000 acres, bounded as follows: on the south, by the Reed and Ryckman line ; on the west, by the (old) Pre-emption line, and on the east, by the Military line (afterwards known as the Old Military line), which, beginning at the eastern point of the Reed and Ryckman line, ran north, 3 degrees, 45 minutes east. And in May of the same year, 1790, the "Seth Reed location," as it was called, was surveyed, plotted, and mapped by Jacob Hart, and the plan then developed and adopted remains with slight changes the plan of the northern part of Geneva today.
November 2, 1790, a patent of greater importance and interest in the history of Geneva, as covering the southern half of the place, was issued by the land office of the State to Peter Ryckman and Seth Reed, as tenants in common of the tract of 16,000 acres of land. ceded by the Cayugas, as before recited, to Peter Ryckman. This patent was issued to Peter Ryckman and Seth Reed as compensa- tion for their services in effecting a meeting between the Cayugas and the commissioners for holding treaties with the Indians within the State.
The northeastern portion of Geneva lying east of the (old) Military line, the original western boundary of the Military tract set apart by the State of New York for soldiers of the Revolution, was within the Military tract and was patented by the State to different parties, the Indian claims having been extinguished by the two cessions that extinguished the Indian claims to the southern and northern portions of Geneva.
Thus slowly, but surely. Geneva was opened up to civilization and made a theater of action for the settler and the land speculator. But, alas, for the inconstancy of things human! The cloud which from the beginning had lowered over the first formative
347
VILLAGE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
period did not rise ; contrariwise, it settled down in darkest gloom, when at the close of the period the Pre-emption line was re-sur- veyed and it was found that Geneva was part and parcel of the "Genesee tract" and that all titles that had been acquired to lands within its borders were void!
Period 1792 to 1801.
The second and longer of the two formative periods indicated as opening Geneva's history embraces the years from 1792 to 1801. To this period belong the real beginnings of Geneva, and from first to last the dominant spirit in it was Captain Charles Williamson, agent of the Pulteney Associates, and one of the most remarkable and picturesque characters in the history of Western New York- a sort of Robin Hood and Medieval baron combined, as one bio- grapher has felicitously described him. It might be interesting to pause here and present briefly the story of Captain Williamson's reign over the great Pulteney purchase, of his earlier life, and of his death at sea in 1808, when returning from the West Indies, whither he had been sent as Governor of one of the islands there, but the limits of this sketch forbid it.
Captain Williamson first came into the Genesee country in February, 1792, coming by the Geneva approach. No sooner had he entered upon duty in his princely domain than throughout it events of interest and import followed thick and fast. When in February, 1792, Captain Williamson passed through Geneva, Geneva according to the Pre-emption line as then established was not, as we have seen, part of the Pulteney purchase; but in November and December of that year the doubt that had existed from the first as to the correctness of the original Pre-emption line was dissolved. A re-survey showed that Geneva was part of the Pulteney purchase and that the true or new Pre-emption line which of course became the true Military line, ran about as much to the east of Geneva as the old or false Pre-emption line ran to the west of it.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.