History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 10

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Lewis, Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 826

USA > New York > Steuben County > History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 10

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We close our chapter on the Indian treaties with the following extract from Mr. Turner's excellent History of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase :

" The whole history of the early Indian treaties in this

State is a complex one. There was a disjointed state of things existing among our own people. The treaties began without any clear and definite understanding of what were the respective rights of the State and the general govern- ment. The Indians, after they had heard of ' one big fire being lighted for all the thirteen States,' could not under- stand why they should be invited to attend 'so many little fires,' or councils. The almost interminable mischief, the lessees' movement, was thrust in to add to the embarrass- ment. The close of the Revolution had left them with distracted councils. Cut up into factions themselves, no wonder that when they were pulled and hauled about from one treaty to another, beset by State commissioners, lessee companies, speculators, and their 'old friends at Niagara,' they should on several occasions have complained that their ' heads were confused.'

" But the crowning curse, and the source of nearly all other evils that beset them, and nearly all that embarrassed our relations and intercourse with their race, was the use of spirituous liquors. In the absence of them, the advent of our race to this continent would have been a blessing to theirs, instead of what it has proved to be,-the cause of their ruin and gradnal extermination. Nowhere in a long career of discovery have Europeans found natives of the soil with as many of the noblest attributes of humanity,- moral and physical elements which, if they could not have been blended with ours, could have maintained a separate existence, and been fostered by a proximity of civilization and the arts. Everywhere, when first approached by our race, they welcomed it, and made demonstrations of friend- ship and peace. . . . Whatever of savage character they may have possessed, so far as our race was concerned, it was dormant till aroused to action by assaults or treachery of intruders upon their soil, whom they had met as friends.

" This was the beginning of trouble. The cupidity of our race perpetuated it by the introduction of ' fire-water,' which, vitiating their appetites, cost them their native inde- pendence of character, made them dependents upon the trader and the agents of rival governments, mixed them up with factions and contending aspirants for dominion, and from time to time impelled themu to the fields of blood and slaughter or to the stealthy assault with the tomahawk and scalping-knife. . . . From the hour that Hudson lured the Indians on board his vessel on the river that bears his name, and gave them the first taste of spirituons liquors, the whole history of British intercourse with them is marked by the use of this accursed agent as a principal means of success. . . . The early French traders upon the St. Lawrence and in all that region commenced the traffic not until they had ascertained that they could in no other way compete with the English traders than by using the same means. The early Jesuit missionaries checked them in their work of evil, but the English trader was left unre- strained, even encouraged by English colonial authority. . .. It was with his keg of rum that the Englishman could alone succeed, and with a morbid, sordid perseverance he plied it in trade as well as in diplomacy.

" At a later period, when the storm of the Revolution was gathering, . . . the aspect of the quarrel between England and the colonies was not suited to their tastes or

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

inclinations, and they resolved upon standing aloof,-the Senecas at least. Invited to Oswego by the English refu- gees from the Mohawk, they were promised that the ' fire- water' of England's king should be ' as free to them as the waters of Lake Ontario.' Their intentions were changed, and their tomahawks and scalping - knives were turned against the border settlers. A series of events ensued, the review of which creates a shudder and a wonder that the offenses were so easily forgiven,-that we had not taken their country, after subduing them with our arms, instead of treating for it. But well and humanely did the Father of his Country consider how they had been wiled to the unfortunate choice of friends which they made. English rum was not only freely dealt out at Oswego, but at Niagara, where it paid for many a reeking sealp, and helped to arouse the fiercest passions of the Indian allies and send them back upon their bloody track.

" When peace came, and our State authorities began to cultivate an acquaintance with the Indians, they found them deserted by their late British employers, with nothing to show for the sanguine aid they had given them but appe- tites vitiated by the English rum-cask, and a moral and physical degeneracy, the progress of which could not have been arrested ; and lingering yet among them in all their principal localities, was the English or Tory trader, pro- longing his destructive traffic. It was American New York legislation that made the first statutes against the traffic in spirituous liquors among the Indians."

CHAPTER VIIL. THE PHELPS AND GORHAM PURCHASE.

Original Grants to the Colonies of Massachusetts and New York-Mas- sachusetts Pre-emption Lands-Purchase of these Lands by Phelps and Gorham-Treaty with the Seneca Indians-Survey of the Lands-Sale to Robert Morris.

AN inquiry into the title of lands in Steuben County will carry us back to those original patents granted by the Kings of England, iu right of discovery, to their subjects who established colonies on the Eastern shores of this Con- tinent near the beginning of the seventeenth century.

In the year 1620, the King of Great Britain granted to the Plymouth Company a tract of country denominated New England, extending several degrees of latitude north and south, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, east and west. A charter for the government of a portion of this territory, granted by Charles I., in 1628, was vacated in 1684, but a second charter was granted by William and Mary, in 1691. The territory comprised in this second charter extended on the Atlantic Ocean from north latitude 42° 2' to 44º 15', and from the Atlantic to the Pacifie Ocean. Charles I., in 1663, granted to the Duke of York and Albany, the Province of New York, including the present State of New Jersey. The tract thus granted ex- tended from a line twenty miles east of the Hudson River westward, rather indefinitely, and from the Atlantic Ocean north to the south line of Canada, then a French Colony.

By this collision of deseription each of these colonies laid

claim to the jurisdiction as well as the pre-emption right of the same land, being a traet sufficiently large to form several States. The State of New York, however, in 1781, and Massachu- setts, in 1785, ceded to the United States all their right either of jurisdiction or ownership, to all the territory lying west of a meridian line run south from the westerly bend of Lake Ontario. Although the nominal amount in con- troversy, by these acts, was much diminished, it still left some nineteen thousand square miles of territory in dispute. But this controversy was finally settled by a convention of commissioners appointed by the parties, held at Hartford, Conu., on the 16th of December, 1786. According to the stipulation entered into by the convention, Massachusetts ceded to the State of New York all her claim to the govern- ment, sovereignty, and jurisdiction of all the territory lying west of the present east line of the State of New York ; and New York ceded to Massachusetts the pre-emption right or fee of the land, subject to the title of the Indians, of all that part of the State of New York lying west of a line, beginning at a point in the north line of Pennsylvania, eighty-two miles west of the northeast corner of said State, and running from thence due north through Seneca Lake to Lake Ontario, excepting and reserving to the State of New York a strip of land east of, and adjoining the eastern bank of Niagara River, one mile wide, and extending its whole length, and inclusive of the islands in the Niagara River. This land, the pre-emptiou right of which was thus ceded to Massachusetts, amounted to about six millions of acres.

Soon after Massachusetts became possessed of this pre- emption right, a company was formed in that State to pur- chase a large tract of the land. The company consisted of Oliver Phelps, Judge Sullivan, Messrs. Skinner and Chapin, William Walker and others, chiefly residents of Berkshire County. Before they had matured their plans, Nathaniel Gorham had made proposals to the Legislature to purchase a portion of the Genesee lands. Mr. Phelps had a confer- ence with Mr. Gorham, and, to secure unanimity of action, they mutually agreed that Mr. Gorham should become a member of the association and consider his proposition made for their common benefit. Mr. Gorham had proposed the purchase of one million acres, at one and sixpence cur- rency per acre, payable in the public paper of the common- wealth. The House of Representatives acceded to the proposition, but the non-concurrence of the Senate delayed the consummation of the bargain till the Legislature again convened in April, 1788, when others, who in the mean time had made propositions of purchase to the State, were included in the company. Messrs. Phelps and Gorham were constituted the representatives of the association, and in that capacity made a proposal to the Legislature for the purchase of all the lands embraced in the Massachusetts cession. This was accepted, the stipulated consideration being one hundred thousand dollars, payable in the publie paper of Massachusetts.

We have already remarked, in connection with our his- tory of the extinction of the Indian title, that the paper of Massachusetts was at that time depreciated to about fifty cents on a dollar.

At the first meeting of the shareholders, preliminary

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

steps were taken to hold a treaty with the Indians,-the Senecas, in whose portion of the State the lands were situ- ated. Mr. Phelps made a trip to Geneva, then Kanade- saga, and failing, with the aid of Mr. Livingston, to con- vene a council of the Indians at that point, hastened by the old Indian trail to Buffalo Creek, where he found the Indians had been assembled by the Niagara Lessee Com- pany, and through the aid of the latter, in July, 1788, he effected a purchase of the Senecas of the traet of land known as Phelps and Gorham's Purchase. This treaty was not held at Canandaigua, as some suppose, but at Buffalo Creek .* Mr. Phelps during this first trip made his head- quarters at Geneva, not at Canandaigua. Before leaving the county he set surveyors at work under the direction of Col. Hugh Maxwell, to divide the newly-acquired country into townships, and, having fixed upon Canandaigua as the focus of intended enterprise, returned to Suffield, Mass. All retired as winter approached, and left the whole region, except the small settlement at Geneva, in the possession of its ancient owners.

Mr. Walker, after having remained in the country till nearly the setting in of winter, returned, and was present at a meeting of the associates, in January. He reported that he had sold and contracted about thirty townships. At this meeting a division of the land took place, the lar- gest portions falling into the hands of Phelps and Gorham and a few other leading associates, who purchased the interests of the smaller shareholders. The most of the early sales of townships were to those who held shares, which will account for the very low price, the shareholders paying about what the lands cost the association.

Mr. Phelps, although his residence in all the earliest years of settlement was still in Massachusetts, spent most of his time in Canandaigua, and was the active and liberal patron and helper in all the public enterprises of the region which he had opened for settlement. He may appropri- ately be called the Father of the Genesee country. Of ardent temperament, active, able, and ambitious in all that related to the new country, the pioneers found in him a

# I find in an article by Judge Goldsmith Denniston, on the source of land title in Steuben County, the statement that "the chiefs and warriors of the Six Nations were assembled, and Mr. Phelps met them in conference near the Canandaigua Lake. After a negotiation of two days, and after every preliminary was about being arranged, the celebrated Red Jacket arose : drawing his blanket around him and surveying the assemblage, he addressedl them in a language and style peculiar to himself. He represented to them the effect of giving the pale-faces any further foothold within their territories; depictel to them their former simplicity and happiness and the wrongs they had suffered from the whites, until his Indian auditors were rousel and excited almost to vengeance." This is an error. Red Jacket himself, in his speech at the Tioga Council (1790), alludes to the treaty be - tween Mr. Phelps and the Senecas as having been hell at Buffalo Creek, and that he and his friends took him (Phelps) by the han 1 and led him thither from Kanan lesaga (Geneva). Mr. Phelps, also in the same year, in a speech to the In lians in answer to their com- plaints, refers to the treaty as follows : " I wish in a friendly manner to state to you the particulars of our bargain. When I arrived at Buffalo Creek, O'Bail (Cornplanter) had leased all your country to Livingston and Benton." He says, " Brothers, you remember we sat np all night. It was almost morning before we agreed on the boundaries. After breakfast we returned to agree on the priec you should have."-Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, Appendix, p. 176. 6

friend indeed, and when disease, privation, Indian alarms, created despondeney, he had a word of encouragement and a prophecy of a " better time coming." He was useful to a degree that no one ean realize who has not seeu how much one man can do in helping to smooth the always rugged path of backwoods life.

Oliver Phelps was born at Windsor, Conn., and was a young man at the breaking out of the Revolution. He was among those who gathered at Lexington and made the first military demonstration of intended separation and in- dependence ; and, although but a youth, was enrolled in the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. Upon the or- ganization of the Connecticut troops, he became a con- tractor in the army, and was soon advanced to the com- missary department, in which he did faithful service till the elose of the Revolution. Settling in Suffield, Mass., he was sent to the Assembly, and then to the Senate, and was also a member of the Governor's Council. During the Revolution he became intimate with Robert Morris, the great financier of that eventful period, and whose name is indissolubly associated with his in the extensive and beneficent land operations in Western New York, of which we shall speak more particularly hereafter.

A considerable shareholder in the original purchase from Massachusetts, Mr. Phelps became, eventually, the chief owner, by the purchase of shares, reversions, and other means ; so that in a few years after the settlement of the Genesee country was fairly under way, he was reputed oue of the most successful and wealthy of all the founders of new settlements of that period. In 1795 he was regarded as worth a million dollars.

A mania of land speculation prevailed in this country during the year 1796 and about that period, which ex- tended through all the then settled parts of the Union. Philadelphia was its principal foens, its leading capitalists, among whom was Mr. Morris, being the principal opera- tors. Among the devices of the times was a gigantic " American Land Company." Elected to Congress, elated with his success in the Genesee country, Mr. Phelps was thrown into the vortex of rash adventure, and became deeply involved. One of his adventures was in connection with the " Georgia Land Company," a well-known speeu- lation of that period. He was obliged to borrow largely, and execute mortgages upon his Genesee lands. The titles under him became involved and created distrust, which brought upon him a great deal of eensure. These troubles, it is supposed, undermined his health, so that he gradually declined, and died in 1809, at the age of sixty years. He had removed to Canandaigua in 1802; was the first judge of Ontario County, upon the primitive organization of its courts, and an early representative in Congress for the then Western District of the State.

Nathaniel Gorham, who was an associate of Mr. Phelps, never was a resident upon the purchase with which his name stands identified. He was a prominent merchant of Boston, and resided in Charlestown, Mass. His sou and representative, Nathaniel Gorham, Jr., settled in Canan- daigua in 1789, among the earliest settlers. He was an carly supervisor of Canandaigua, a judge of the county courts, and president of the Ontario Bank from its first

IIISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

organization until his death. He died in 1826, aged sixty- two years, leaving several sons and daughters.

Phelps and Gorham being unable to extinguish the Indian title to the western portion of their lands, as stipu- lated in their contract with Massachusetts, surrendered to that State that part to which the Indian title remained, in consideration of which the State relinquished two-thirds of the contract price. In 1796, Massachusetts sold these lands to Robert Morris, who extinguished the Indian title thereto, sold some, and mortgaged the residue to William Willink, of Amsterdam, and eleven associates, denominated the " Holland Land Company." This mortgage was fore- closed, and the lands bought in by said company. Thus the " Holland Company" acquired a full title to all the lands surrendered by Phelps and Gorham to Massachusetts, and lying west of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase.

Robert Morris in those days was a large speculator in lands, and a man of nulimited financial resources. He was a native of Liverpool, Eng., and came with his parents to this country when a youth. He entered the service of Charles Willing, the eminent merchant of Philadelphia, as clerk, and subsequently became a partner of his son and successor. At the breaking out of the Revolution he be- came at once an active partisan in the struggle. In 1776 he was a member of Congress from Pennsylvania, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Invested with the office of secretary of an empty treasury, he became the financier of the poorest country that ever kept an army in the field or armed ships upon the ocean ; his own means were put in requisition, and his almost unbounded credit freely used.

" When the rich bankers of Amsterdam knew no such new creation as the United States, or as Congress, or, knowing them, had no confidence in their engagements, they trusted him, on his private responsibility, with mil- lions, which he used in the public service. And when the great struggle was drawing to a close,-when a last and desperate blow was to be struck, and the army that was to do it was in New Jersey, without pay and destitute of com- fortable clothing,-when its stout-hearted commander-in- chief was almost yielding to the embarrassments by which he was surrounded, and upon the point of leading his army the wrong way, because he could not command the means of leading it where it should go,-the active, patriotic financier hastened to his camp, and by assuring him that he would supply all immediate wants, encouraged him to put his army in motion. The destination was Yorktown ; -the defeat of Cornwallis, the crowning aet of the Revolu- tion, was the result." *

Mr. Morris was eventually reimbursed by Congress, though not for the sacrifice of time and abstraction from his private business which his publie services had made neces- sary. He was, however, eminently successful in his com- mercial affairs, and at one time was by far the wealthiest man in the United States. He met with many reverses, however, and died poor in New Jersey, in May, 1806.

Mr. Phelps, during the Revolution, having been con-

. The money, in specie, that he had promised was borrowed and paid to the army but a few days before the attack upon Cornwallis.

nected with the commissary department, and Mr. Gorham being a prominent merchant in Boston, Mr. Morris had made their acquaintance, and when they songht a purchaser for their unsold lands in the Genesee country, they applied to him. Little was known in the commercial cities of all this region, other than what had been gathered from maps and from those who had accompanied Sullivan's expedition.t Mr. Morris, however, sought the means of further informa- tion. Ebenezer (or Indian) Allen was then located as an Indian trader at what is now Mount Morris, and was in the habit of making yearly visits to Philadelphia for the pur- chase of goods. Samuel Street, who resided at Niagara Falls on the Canadian side, had also visited Philadelphia. From them Mr. Morris obtained the information which in- dueed him to accede to the proposition of Messrs. Phelps and Gorham.

Their deed of conveyance bears date Nov. 17, 1790, and was executed by Nathaniel Gorham and Rebecca his wife, and Oliver Phelps and Mary his wife. It embraced their entire final purchase of Massachusetts, with the exception of such townships and parts of townships as they had sold, being in all one million two hundred and sixty-four thou- sand five hundred and sixty-nine acres. The consideration and actual price paid by Mr. Morris, was thirty thousand pounds, New York currency.

At an early period after the purchase, Mr. Morris em- ployed Maj. Adam Hoops to explore the country, who re- ported that " in respect to soil, climate, and advantages of navigation," it was equal to any portion of the United States. Maj. Hoops was then residing near Philadelphia. HIe had been in the army throughout the Revolution, was in Sulhvan's campaign, and at one period belonged to the staff of Gen. Washington. He was one of the aids of Gen. Sullivan in his expedition to the Genesee country, and was one of the earliest surveyors of all this region, being employed first by Phelps and Gorham, and afterwards by Mr. Morris. In 1804 he purchased part of the township of Olean, and was the founder of the village which now bears that name. He died in Westchester, Pa., about 1836.

SURVEYS-PRE-EMPTION LINE.

The first survey undertaken of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase was the establishment of the " Old Pre-emption Line," its casteru boundary. The survey originated in this way : the State of New York ceded to Massachusetts all the territory within her boundaries west of a line to be drawn due north and south from the eighty-second mile- stone on the northern line of Pennsylvania. Before the running of this line, it could of course be but a mere con- jecture where it would fall as far north from the starting- point as Seneca Lake. Seth Reed and Peter Ryckman, both of whom had been Indian traders, applied to the State of New York for remuneration for services rendered in

+ It is a somewhat remarkable fact that in most instances in our early history. the fertility and resources of our new countries were first brought to the knowledge of the public by the marching of armies and expeditions in various directions. Such was the case in the valley of the Mohawk, the Susquehanna, the Genesce, and Ohio valleys. The rich and inviting territory lying between Chicago and the Mississippi River was made known by the march of Gen. Scott's army to the Black Hawk war in 1832.

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

some previous negotiations with the castern portion of the Six Nations, and proposed to take a patent for a tract the boundaries of which should "begin at a tree on the bank of Seneca Lake, and run along the bank of said lake to the south, until they should have sixteen thousand acres between the lake and the east bounds of the land ceded to Massa- chusetts." Their request was granted, and a patent issued. The patentees proposed to Messrs. Phelps and Gorham to join them in running the pre-emption line, each party fur- nishing a surveyor. A " Mr. Jenkins," according to some authorities, was selected by Reed and Ryckman, and Col. Maxwell by Phelps and Gorham. Meanwhile, the lessees, assuming that their transactions were valid, took an interest in the matter, and as Messrs. Reed and Ryckman were both shareholders in their company, the matter was mutually accommodated between them. The line was run-which is known as the " Old Pre-emption Line."

In running this line the surveyors managed to bear to the west of the " due north" course required by the terms of cession. Messrs. Phelps and Gorham were much disap- pointed in the result,* suspected error or fraud, but made no movement for a resurvey. Their suspicions had been first excited by an offer from a prominent member of the lessee company for " all lands they owned east of the line that had been run." They were so well assured of it that in the deed to Mr. Morris they specified a tract in a gore between the line then run and the west bounds of Mont- gomery and Tioga Counties, those counties then extending to the true pre-eruption line. The resurvey was not made while Mr. Morris owned the lands, but having stipulated in his conveyance to the English purchasers an accurate survey of all he conveyed, he instructed Maj. Hoops to correct the line. The two brothers-Joseph and Benjamin Ellicott-who had just completed the survey of the city of Washington, were employed to superintend the work, using for the first time in this country the transit instrument which had then been recently invented in Germany. Upon their arrival from England they were joined by Judge Por- ter, who was then a surveyor in the employ of Phelps and Gorham. " A corps of axemen was employed, and a vista of thirty feet wide opened before the transit instrument until the line had reached the head of Seneca Lake, when night-signals were employed to run down and over the lake. So much pains were taken to insure correctness that the survey was never disputed, and thus the ' New Pre-emption Line' was established as the true division between the lands of the State of New York and those which had been ceded to Massachusetts."

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History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 10

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford) Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Philadelphia, Lewis, Peck & co. Number of Pages: 826

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Lewis, Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 826