History of Oswego County, New York, with illustrations and Biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 10

Author: Johnson, Crisfield. cn
Publication date: 1877
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & co.
Number of Pages: 798

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BY the treaty of peace at the close of the Revolution it was provided that the line between the United States and the British dominions should run along the forty-fifth paral- lel and the middle of the St. Lawrence river, Lake Ontario, Niagara river, Lake Erie, etc , and that all posts held by the British south of that line should be given up. But when the next summer General Washington sent Baron Steuben to receive actual possession of those posts, he was astonished by a peremptory refusal on the part of the English authori- ties in Canada. Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, etc., were all held on to with a firm grasp, in direct violation of the treaty, and were so retained for over thirteen years. The excuse was that some action was expected or taken by some of the States unfavorable to English creditors.

But while the English were thus eager to hold on to American soil, they had utterly neglected to make any pro- vision in the treaty for their Iroquois allies. These were left entirely to the mercy of the victors. By the same rules of confiscation applied to the Tories, and usually en- forced by conquerors at that period, all the lands of the Six Nations, except those of a portion of the Oneidas and Tus- caroras, could have been appropriated by the victorious Americans. Prudence, however, as well as humanity for- bade the excessive exasperation of a people who, even though defeated, crushed, and driven from their homes, could yet inflict a terrible retribution on their more power- ful but also more vulnerable enemies.

It is said, also, that General Washington interposed in their behalf, and that the Iroquois have therefore made a place for him in the Indian heaven, where no other white man is ever allowed to enter. Just within the gate of the happy hunting-grounds they have located a walled inclosure,

HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.

laid out with spacious avenues and shaded walks, filled with every object to make it delightful, and containing at its centre a splendid mansion built after the fashion of a fort- ress. Each good Indian, as he passes on to the regions where deer and buffalo furnish objects of eternal chase, sees the tall, dignified figure of Washington, ever clad in his Continental uniform of buff and blue, pacing to and fro in front of his fortress-mansion, uttering no word, but exist- ing in a state of perfect and silent bliss.

Whether it be true that Washington interposed in favor of the Six Nations or not, it is certain that neither the gen- eral government nor the State of New York made any law appropriating the lands they had owned before the Revolu- tion.

In October, 1784, a treaty was made at Fort Stanwix with the Six Nations, by commissioners on the part of the United States, by which the Oneidas and Tuscaroras were secured in the possession of the lands on which they were settled. The Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas surrendered all their lands west of the present location of Buffalo, and were confirmed in possession of that which they had held east and north of that point, reserving six miles square "around the fort of Oswego" to the United States for the support of that post. This reservation, how- ever, was never claimed by the general government as against the State.

Up to this time all western New York had remained nominally a part of Tryon county, being also comprised within the indefinite and far-reaching boundaries of " Kingsland district," now the town of Herkimer. In 1784 the name of Tryon county was changed to Mont- gomery, in honor of the American hero who fell at Quebec.

For several years the condition of the Indian lands remained uncertain, and many intrigues were entered into to control it. In the winter of 1787-88 two companies were formed for that purpose,-one called the " New York and Genesee Land Company," headed by John Livingston, a resident on the Hudson, and one termed the "Niagara Genesee Company," composed mostly of Canadians, and controlled by the notorious Colonel John Butler. The latter-retaining much of his old influence over the Six Nations, and being aided by Brant-obtained for his com- pany in November, 1787, a lease from the principal chiefs of the Six Nations, and another from those of the Oneidas alone, which covered all the Iroquois lands in New York, except some small reservations. The consideration was to be a payment of twenty thousand dollars down, and an an- nual rent of two thousand dollars, and the term was to be nine hundred and ninety-nine years! The object of this was to evade the laws of New York, which forbade the sale of lands by Indians to any one out of the State.

In the succeeding winter the two companies, having united their forces, boldly demanded a confirmation of their lease from the legislature. That body, however, promptly declared that a lease for nine hundred and ninety-nine years was in effeet a deed, pronounced the lease of Butler and company void, and authorized the governor to use the military force of the State to prevent intrusion on the lands in question.

In March, 1788, an aet was passed appointing commis-

sioners to treat with the Indians relative to the purchase of their lands by the State. The lessees made another effort, this time to get half of the Indian land and surrender the other half to the State. This attempt, too, was without avail, and in July a grand council was held at Fort Stan- wix by Governor George Clinton and the State commis- sioners with the chiefs of the Onondagas, Oneidas, and . Cayugas.

The Onondagas then ceded all their lands to the State, retaining the Onondaga reservation and the privilege of making salt at the salt springs. In consideration therefor the State agreed to pay a thousand French crowns in money, two hundred pounds (New York currency, -- equivalent to five hundred dollars) in clothing, and five hundred pounds annually forever. It may be interesting to the advocates of women's rights to know that this treaty, which is the foundation of the title of a large part of the land of Oswego County, was signed not only by Governor Clinton and the State Commissioners, not only by the chiefs of the Bear, Deer, Eel, Turtle, Beaver, and Wolf clans, of the Onon- dagas, but by two " governesses," or principal women, of that tribe. It was witnessed also by several prominent whites and Indians, and by Kayendatyona, " chicf governess of the Senecas."

The Cayugas made a similar cession at the same time.

In September the Oneidas also granted all their lands to the State except some reservations. The greater part of the reserved land was outside of Oswego County, but there was a half-mile square reserved every six miles along the north shore of Oneida lake, and " a convenient piece at the fishing-place on Onondaga river, three miles below where it issues from Oneida lake." The consideration was two thousand dollars in cash, three thousand dollars in goods, provisions, cte., five hundred dollars towards building mills, and six hundred dollars in silver every year thereafter. This treaty, too, after the signatures of numerous chiefs, bore those of Konwagalot, Konawgalet, Hannah Sodolk, and Hononwayele, leading women of the tribe.

The next year an act was passed by the legislature pro- viding for the laying out of a large part of the newly- acquired lands as bounties for Revolutionary services. This was in accordance with numerous previous enactments passed from 1781 to 1788. Three regiments had been raised in New York in the former year, intended chiefly for the protection of the frontier, to whom large bounties in land had been offered. In 1782 the legislature had desig- nated a tract in the centre of the State running south ward from the mouth of the Oswego. In 1783 they had con- firmed this grant, and provided for bounties for general officers who were citizens of New York, and for various other classes of officers, and also provided for giving an extra hundred acres to each private (with proportionate sums to the officers) who would relinquish the hundred acres in the west which he was entitled to under a law of Congress. The object of this last provision seems to have been to induce New York men to remain in New York. By a law of 1784 two square miles of land at the mouth of the Oswego (a square mile on each side) had been re- served by the State. It is worth noticing that even at that late day it was set down in all descriptions that the "Onon

HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.

daga," as it was then called, ran westward, and that the shore of Lake Ontario ran north and south. The description in question provides very precisely that the lines of the reservation shall run " from the mouth of said river, and on both sides thereof, as the same runs, one mile, then cx- tending northerly and southerly one mile, with a line per- pendicular to the general course of the river within the said mile, thence westerly with the said general course to Lake Ontario; thence northerly and southerly to the places of beginning."

Another reservation was provided for at " the falls, eom- monly called Oswego falls, on the Onondaga river," with the somewhat indefinite boundary of beginning "twenty chains above where the bateaux were usually taken out of the said river to be carried across the portage, and extending down the said river twenty chains below where the bateaux were usually put into the said river, after having been trans- ported over the said portage, and extending northeasterly in every part between the said two places ten chains from the said river."

By the same law of 1784 the governor, lieutenant-gov- ernor, and four other State officers were appointed commis- sioners to convey the lands to the soldiers or their assigns. All this time the land itself-at least that part in Central New York-had remained in possession of the Indians, and the fort at Oswego, around which the State designated the lines of its reservation, was firmly held by the British. There were lands on which bounty warrants could be located in the northern part of the State, but most of the holders of those warrants preferred to wait for the opening of the rich tract lying south of Oswego.

At length, as before stated, those lands were purchased, and the law of February 28, 1789, was passed. By that act, modified by the law of April 6, 1790, the commissioners of the land-office were authorized to direct the surveyor- general to lay out as many townships as might be necessary to satisfy the lawful claims for bounty, each township to contain sixty thousand acres, and to be as near square as practicable. This would make them nearly ten miles square, -or, to be precise, a trifle over nine and two-thirds miles square. The commissioners were required to number the townships, and were for some reason commanded to put township No. 1 on the west side of the Oswego falls. They were also required to give to each township an indi- vidual name. Each township was then to be subdivided into a hundred lots, as near square as might be, each con- taining six hundred acres. This was the amount allowed to a private soldier, including the tract received in lieu of western land.

All who claimed under the bounty laws were required to present their claims before the first day of July, 1790. Then the commissioners were directed to have each man's name written on a ballot, with extra ones for the officers, and all put in a box. The lots in each township were then to be numbered, and the number of each with its township written on a ballot, and all those ballots to be put in another box. A person appointed by the commissioners was to draw a man's name from the box of names and then a lot- number from the box of lots. That lot was to belong to that man. But there were six lots not to be allotted in

each township. Two of these were reserved respectively for the support of schools and of the gospel, and the rest to fill out the shares of commissioned officers which might not make exact multiples of six hundred. Most of then did, however ; a lieutenant receiving twelve hundred acres, a captain eighteen hundred, a major twenty-four hundred, etc. There was a further provision that a settlement must be made on every six-hundred-acre tract within seven years after the issuing of a patent, on penalty of the lands revert- ing to the State; an easy condition, which was probably complied with.

This was the origin of the celebrated " Military Tract," within the bounds of which are comprised all that part of Oswego County west of the Oswego river.

Besides certain small fees in money, fifty acres in one of the corners of each six-hundred-acre lot were made subject to a charge of forty-eight shillings (six dollars) to pay the expenses of surveying. If the owner of the lot paid that sum in two years after receiving a patent, the whole title vested in him ; if not, the surveyor-general was required to sell the " survey fifty" to the highest bidder for the benefit of the State.

The people were evidently in great haste to occupy the fertile lands from which they had so long been shut out. In the spring of 1790 the commissioners advertised for the appearance of claimants, and on the 3d of July in that year, only two days after the time allowed by law, they met to distribute the land. Twenty-five townships had been laid out under the direction of the surveyor-general, Simeon De Witt. According to law, the designation of No. 1 was affixed to the township adjoining the falls on the west. The one north of it was marked as No. 2; No. 3 was south of No. 1, and then the numbers ran up as they went south, where most of the tract lay. The commission- ers were very classical. They named township No. 1 Ly- sander; No. 2 Hannibal; and gave the names of distin- guished ancients to all the other townships but three, who were called after equally distinguished Englishmen. Ly- sander and Hannibal were the only ones of which any portion is now comprised within the county of Oswego, and therefore the only ones it is needful for us to mention. Readers must always bear in mind the difference between a survey township and a political town. The survey town- ship of Hannibal comprised the present towns of Hannibal and Oswego, and a small part of Granby, in Oswego County, and the town of Sterling, in Cayuga county. Lysander embraced the greater part of Granby, in Oswego County, the present town of Lysander, and part of another in Onondaga county.

On the same day above mentioned the commissioners proceeded to allot that immense quantity of land-a mil- lion and a half of aeres-in the manner prescribed by law. Patents were soon issued, but in very few cases did these go to the soldiers who did the fighting. Out of fifty-eight names of officers and soldiers on a page of the old " hallot- ing-book" belonging to B. B. Burt, Esq., from which we have gleaned most of the facts regarding the Military Tract, only three received their land in person. All the rest had sold their claims.

The oldest deed on record in the Oswego County clerk's

HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.

office is from Dennis MeCarthy and William Whalen, of lots 42 and 53, in the survey-township of Hannibal, to parties who immediately transferred the same to William Cockburn.

Settlement immediately began on the Military Tract, but not at first on the northern portion, in what is now Oswego County. Meanwhile we will cross the river, and see what is going on there.

The first white resident of Oswego County was Oliver · Stevens, who located at Fort Brewerton in 1789, began trading with the Indians, and kept a rude tavern for the accommodation of boatmen. In 1791, Major Ryal Bing- ham settled in the vicinity of the fort, on land leased of a Mr. Kaats, who had procured the title. He, however, remained but two years, while Stevens became a permanent resident.

That year (1791), also, another man made his home in Oneida county with his family, whose residence there has been the theme of many a romantic tale. This was the hero of the celebrated episode of "Frenchman's island." He has usually been metamorphosed into Count St. Hi- lary, and he and his young bride are generally supposed to have fled from the Reign of Terror in France ; but, ac- cording to his own account, he left that country long before the period in question. Other published accounts have been still more faneiful. Indeed, the story has been writ- ten and told with so many variations, with so evident a desire to make the most of the romance, that some have doubted the truth of the whole account, and have looked on the noble Gaul and his fair bride as a mere myth of an imaginative brain. But this is a mistake; there really was such a couple, and their adventures were sufficiently ro- mantic to make the aid of fiction entirely unnecessary.

There are at least three authentic records, by personal witnesses, regarding them. The first is found in the letters of Francis Adrian Vanderkemp, regarding a voyage through Oneida lake in 1792, published in 1876 in the Centennial address of John F. Seymour, at Trenton, Oneida county. The second is the " Castorland Journal," a very interesting account of the voyage of certain Frenchmen to the Black river by way of Oswego, in 1793. The " Journal" has not been published, but has been translated from the French and annotated by Dr. Franklin B. Hough, the well-known historian, to whom we are indebted for the privilege of using it. The third is the published travels of the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, who saw the exiles in 1795. From these three accounts, which agree in all substantial respects, it is easy to learn the truth regarding the story of Frenchman's island.

The man's name was De Vatine or Desvatines ; the latter is the form used by most of the witnesses, and will be adopted in this narrative. He claimed to have been a seigneur near Lisle, France, and that his father had squandered a large part of the estate. The young man sold the remainder for a sum variously estimated at from five thousand to forty thousand dollars, and came to America with his newly- wedded wife in 1786, several years before the French revo- lution. Unused to the country, and of a volatile dispo- sition, he wasted half his fortune in traveling and buying worthless land, and then, to recuperate, engaged in trade in

New York with a partner who ran away with nearly all their joint property. Desvatines gathered up the remaining pittanee, and, disgusted with civilization, determined to make his home in the wilderness. He sold the most of his furniture, but retained his library and a little silver for the table.

It was in the spring or summer of 1791 that the exiles with their two children first located on " Frenchman's island," where Desvatines began to make a clearing with his own hands. He was unable to complete a building in which it was possible to pass the winter, and when that season approached he took his family to live with the Oneida Indians at the east end of the lake, while he spent his time hunting with the warriors. The Oneidas treated the unfortunate family very kindly, and Desvatines always spoke of them with grateful warmth.

In the spring of 1792 they returned to the island, where Madame Desvatines gave birth to a child, Camille Desva- tines, probably the first white child born in Oswego County outside the military establishments. Notwithstanding his somewhat frivolous disposition, Desvatines seems to have done a good deal of hard work for a man who had been reared in ease. Unaided, and without a team, he cleared a tract of some six acres, planted it with corn, built a cabin in which his family could live, and a still ruder one which served as a kitchen.

The nearest neighbor of the Desvatines was a Mr. Bruce, previously a Connecticut merchant, who built him a cabin in 1791 or 1792 on the site of Constantia village, main- taining himself by hunting, fisbing, and raising potatoes. Leaving Bruee, Desvatines, Bingham, and Stevens, as the white occupants of Oswego County outside of Fort Ontario, we must go back a little to look up the title to the land and the municipal organizations. And first, regarding the latter.

In the spring of 1791 the county of Herkimer was set off from Montgomery, embracing the whole country from the west line of the latter county to the east line of Ontario and from Tioga north to St. Lawrence. On the 10th of April, 1792, the first town was ereeted, of which the name is still retained, in Oswego County. This was Mexico. Its eastern boundary, as defined by law, was a line drawn north and south through the mouth of Chittenango creek, on the south shore of Oneida lake, striking through the west part of Constantia, the east part of Parish, and so on north ward, leaving the eastern part of Oswego County in Whitestown. Its western boundary was the west line of the survey- townships of Lysander and Hannibal. North and south it was near a hundred miles long. The old town records are all lost, and as the town was afterwards reorganized, same have doubted whether it was organized at all under the law of 1792. There is every reason, however, to believe that it was, for there was already a considerable population in what is now Onondaga county.

On the 22d of June, 1791, Alexander Macomb, of New York city, father of the celebrated general of the war of 1812, on behalf of a company, supposed to consist of him- self, Daniel McCormick, and William Constable, applied to the State commissioners of the land-office to purchase a tract of nearly four million acres in the present counties of

HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.

St. Lawrence, Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis, and Oswego. The southwestern boundary of the tract ran southeasterly from the mouth of Salmon river to the present southwest corner of Lewis county, thus inclosing the present towns of Redfield, Boylston, Orwell, Sandy Creek, and part of Richland. The price offered was eightpence (which, in New York currency, was about the same as eight cents) per acre. The proposition was accepted, and on the 10th of January, 1792, nearly two million acres, including the part of Oswego County above described, was conveyed to Macomb by patent.

Macomb seems to have been very much embarrassed, and in June following conveyed the whole tract to Consta- ble. The latter immediately went to Paris to sell the land. An association was formed there, called the Castorland Com- pany, to purchase a large tract in Jefferson and Lewis counties. The agents of that company were the authors of the " Castorland Journal" before referred to, and which will be again drawn upon for information.

Constable, that same year, sold over a million acres, in- cluding the Oswego lands, to Samuel Ward, who imme- diately transferred to Thomas Boylston, of Boston, a tract of eight hundred thousand acres, of which those lands were a part. Thence came the name of the Boylston tract. Boylston held the Oswego County portion three or four years, but finally it was reconveyed to Constable, doubtless for in- ability to complete the payment. While in Boylston's hands, or held by trustees for him, it was surveyed into townships, of which all the names but one have been dropped from usc. Township No. 12 of that traet was called Redfield, and now constitutes the south part of the town of that name. No. 7, being now the north part of Redfield, was called Arcadia. No. 6, now Boylston, was Campania; No. 11, now Orwell, was Longinus; while No. 10, comprising the present town of Sandy Creek, the north part of Richland, and the corner of Albion, then bore the terrible appellation of " Rhadamant." Minos, the companion judge of Rhadamanthus, was honored by his name being given to the present town of Ellisburg, Jefferson county. These two last names, not to be found in any of the gazettecrs, were procured from a curious old map, in the possession of the Seriba family, showing all the survey-townships of northern and central New York, seventy years ago.

A few weeks after Macomb made his application, John and Nicholas Roosevelt, likewise of New York city, applied to the commissioners to purchase a tract of a little over five hundred thousand acres, lying between Oneida lake, Oswego river, Lake Ontario, Macomb's purchase, and "Orthout's patent." The price offered was three shillings and one penny (nearly thirty-nine cents) per aere. Onc-sixth of the purchase money was to be paid in six months, one-half of the remainder in one year, and the rest in two years. These terms were accepted by the commissioners, and there is in the possession of the Scriba family a certificate of such acceptance, under the broad seal of the State, signed by Governor George Clinton.

On the 7th day of April, 1792, the Roosevelts sold their contract to the person whose, name has ever since been as- sociated with that immense tract of land. This was George Frederick William Augustus Scriba, who usually signed him

self simply George Scriba, a native of Holland, and then a mer- chant of New York city. To ascertain the number of acres for which Scriba was to pay, the outer boundaries of the tract were run and the contents estimated, in 1792, for the Roose- velts, by James Cockburn, under the general direction of his brother William, an eminent surveyor, of Kingston, New York. With the necessary assistants, James Cock- burn passed down the north shore of Oneida lake, and fol- lowed all the windings of the Oneida and Oswego rivers, constantly measuring distances and taking angles. Arriv- . ing at Oswego, he applied to the commander to let him run his line to the mouth of the river. But the officer refused to allow him to come within range of the guns of the fort. So he was obliged to make an offset and strike the lake east of the fort, though he managed to take several observations by means of the flagstaff. The fort, which then mounted only four carriage-guns, was garrisoned by a company of Royal Americans and a few artillerists. There were no inhabitants outside the fort, and a British custom-house officer exercised his functions as coolly as if the territory belonged to King George III.

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History of Oswego County, New York, with illustrations and Biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 10

Author: Johnson, Crisfield. cn Publication date: 1877 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & co. Number of Pages: 798

Author: Johnson, Crisfield. cn
Publication date: 1877
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & co.
Number of Pages: 798