USA > New York > Monroe County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 61
USA > New York > Allegany County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming > Part 61
USA > New York > Livingston County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 61
USA > New York > Yates County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 61
USA > New York > Ontario County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 61
USA > New York > Wyoming County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 61
USA > New York > Steuben County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 61
USA > New York > Genesee County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 61
USA > New York > Wayne County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 61
USA > New York > Orleans County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 61
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* The communication was by water, and yet not by the Niagara river and Lake Ontario. Strange as it may now seem, batteaux ascended the Tonawanda, were car- ried over a short portage into the Tonawanda swamp, and descended by the waters of Black creek to the Genesee river ! That there had once been such an internal navigation, Mr. Ellicott was in some way apprized, and that suggested to him his fa- vorite route for the Erie Canal, a partial survey of which was made.
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and entered the Genesee River, the first craft of European architec- ture, in all probability, that ever disturbed its waters. The Baron La Hontan, who accompanied the expedition of De Nonville, gave some account of the River, and laid it down upon the map that accompanied the first publication of his "Voyages to North Amer- ica," in London, 1703. There are other maps in which the River is recognized, of even earlier date. Views of the upper and lower Falls were published in London in 1768. Upon them, the river is called, "Casconchiagon, or Little Senecas' River." [The term little, must have been in comparison with Niagara river.] Joncaire, who is introduced in the body of the work, was familiar with the whole region, and gave to Charlevoiz, in 1723, a very intelligible description of the Genesee River. English occupancy of western New York, was comparatively of but short duration, and there seems to have been no occupancy of the immediate valley of the Genesee. In Governor Burnett's time, there was an English trading house, and a few soldier's at the " Bay of Tyrondequoit," but little is said of it. It was probably soon abandoned, as the Senecas were far more jealous of English than of French occupaney. The Rev. Mr. Kirkland visited this region in 1765, and during all the period of English occupancy, there were English traders on Seneca Lake, the Genesee and the Niagara rivers. When the Revolutionary war commenced, the Genesee valley, as will be observed, began soon to be the temporary abiding place of refugees from the Mo- hawk, the Susquehannah and New Jersey ; the chief among them, the ruling spirit, the "Jord of the valley," being Ebenezer, or Indian Allan; the solitary occupant upon the River, below the mouth of Allan's creek, one of his liege subjects, Jacob Walker.
TIIE FALLS OF THE GENESEE AND THEIR IMMEDIATE VICINITY - DELAY IN SETTLEMENT AND IMPROVEMENT -- THE IMMEDIATE AND REMOTE CAUSES.
Truly it may be observed, that with reference to the pioneer his- tory of all this region, a reversal of the ordinary arrangement is in- dicated by the course of events, and the first becomes last. The site of the "CITY OF THE VALLEY OF THE GENESEE,"- the com- mercial and general business emporium, of all the region that we have been travelling over -- was a wilderness, almost unbroken, a bye place, in homely phrase, for long years after settlements were founded in almost the entire Genesee country. When Buffalo, Batavia, Canandaigua, Geneva, Palmyra, Penn Yan, Bath, Gen- eseo, Caledonia and Le Roy, had became considerable villages, and local business had began to centre at Pittsford, Penfield, Victor,
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Lyons, Vienna, Manchester, East Bloomfield, Lima, Avon, Dans- ville, Angelica, Warsaw, Attica, Lewiston, Oak Orchard, Gaines, Clarkson, Parma, Charlotte, Handford's Landing and Scottsville, sufficient to form little clusters of stores, machine shops and dwell- ings - there was at "Genesee Falls," now Rochester, but a rude mill and a few rude dwellings, less than twenty acres of the forest cleared away, and less than a half dozen families.
The reader whose interest and patience have both held out thus far, to keep along with the narrative, has had occasional glimpses of the site of Rochester, but has seen little as there was but little to see ; or rather has read little of it, for the reason that it has not been before reached in the order of time. It was late in attracting the attention of men of enterprise, founders of settlements and vil- lages. Now when its superior advantages are so obvious, when it has become a large and populous city, with those not familiar with the early history of the country, surprise is created that it was not one of the primitive theatres of investment and enterprise. In the first place, it may be observed, that there was a long series of years, after the settlement of the Genesee country commenced, when the Pioneers in detached settlements in the forest, were subduing the soil, and obtaining from it but barely the means of subsistence; in the most favored localities but a small surplus which was required by the new comers that were dropping in from year to year around them; there was little necessity for market places, or commercial depots, Rapids upon the small streams ex- isted in almost every neighborhood and settlement, upon which rude mills were erected, sufficient for all the then existing requirements. The extensive hydraulic power created by the Rapids and the Falls of the Genesee, was not put in requisition, because there was no occasion for it. Rochester, of itself, in its steady permanent growth, demonstrates the fact, that villages and cities should follow the gen- eral improvements of a country which is to be tributary to them, and not precede them. It sprung up when it was required, kept pace with the growth and improvement of the whole country - and a rapid march it had to make to do so - and thence its permanence and substantial character.
The territory bordering upon the shore of Lake Ontario, in the entire Genesee country, with few exceptions, did not attract settlers in all the earliest years. There was little of Lake commerce, and travel, transportation and business, centered upon the main thorough- fare, the old Buffalo road. It is a far greater wonder that at a peri- od when good roads was the great desideratum, when upon all ordin- ary soils they could not be made ; when even the main Buffalo road, after there had been expended upon it a vast amount of labor, was in most seasons of the year almost impassable, - that such a con- tinuous national highway as was the Ridge road, was not opened and travelled ; than that the Falls of the Genesee were not earlier
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improved. There was never, in the earliest period, any misapprehen- sion of the intrinsic value of the soil in all this northern region of the Genesee country. The Pioneers were aware of the fact, now so clear - ly demonstrated by time and experience, that from the Pennsyl- vania line, northward to the shores of Lake Ontario, there was a gradual improvement in the face of the country, and in all the ele- ments of successful agriculture ; but along on the Lake shore, in the whole distance from Sodus Bay to Fort Niagara, there was a wide belt of dense dark forest, the soil mostly wet ; its whole aspect repulsive and forbidding. It was penetrated in the earliest years by but few, and those as may well be conceded, the boldest of the Pio- neers. First, Mr. Williamson, attracted by the beautiful Bay of Sodus, by its fine building ground, and its prospective commercial importance, broke in there, and accompanying extraordinary enter- prise with a liberal expenditure of capital, made a failure of it, and years of decline, and almost desertion, followed. Then two hardy Pioneers set themselves down on the Lake shore, between Sodus and Pulteneyville ; (Brown and Richards.) Previous to this however, the Lusks, Hydes, Timothy Allyn, Orange Stone, the Scudders, and a few others had located upon an inviting spot in Brighton, near the head of the Irondequoit Bay. Then followed William Hencher, at the mouth of the Genesee river ; then the Atchinsons and a few others, formed an isolated and lonesome settlement at the head of Braddock's, (Prideaux's) Bay. Then James Walworth, Elijah Brown, (the same who had settled below Pulteneyville,) Elisha Hunt, the De Graws, Lovell, Marsh, Parmeter, Dunham, the Grif- fiths and others, located at Oak Orchard ; and soon after, openings in the forest began to be made in the vicinity of Fort Niagara, as low down as the Four Mile creek. Following these pioneer advents, other adventurers were "few and far between; " they were in a few localities in Niagara, along on the Ridge in Orleans, in Clark- son, Ogden, Bergen, Riga, Chili, Greece, Penfield, Macedon, Wal- worth, Marion, and along on the road from Sodus to Lyons. When little neighborhoods had been formed in all these detached localities, disease came into the openings of the forest, about as fast as they were made. Often families, and sometimes almost entire neigh- borhoods were carried into the older and healthier localities, upon ox sleds and carts, through wood's roads, to be nursed and cared for. Through long years this operated not unlike the carrying of the dead and wounded from a battle field into the presence of those whose aid is required to renew and maintain the strife. It was but little less appaling and discouraging. The whole region now immediately under consideration was sickly in all the early years, and upon that account, and for other reasons, was slow in settling. All the region around the Falls of the Genesee, at the mouth of the river, at King's Landing, (as the reader has observed and will observe,) was regar- ded as prolific in the seeds of disease - of chills and fevers-almost.
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as are the Pontine marshes of the old world, and the passes of the Isthmus on the route to California. A single instance may be sta- ted in this connection, in addition to what will appear elsewhere : -- In an early year, previous to 1800, Wheelock Wood, a pioneer in Lima, built a saw mill on Deep Gulley creek, within the present city limits of Rochester, had it in operation but one season, carried back to Lima, his workmen, prostrated by disease ; and was finally obliged to abandon his enterprise, and let his mill go to decay, for the reason that workmen could not be found who would incur the exposure to disease consequent upon the care of it.
The causes that have been cited are quite sufficient to account for the late start of Rochester ; to explain to the readers of the pre- sent day, why valuable hydraulic privileges, in the immediate neigh- borhood of shipping ports of Lake Ontario, were so long principally shrouded by the primeval forest, after settlement had approached and almost surrounded the locality. To these causes the reader may add what he has already observed, of the tendency of things toward the main thoroughfare, the Buffalo Road, in early years ; and the fact, that quite up to the period of the start of Rochester, the commercial enterprize and expectation of a large settled portion of the Genesee country was turned in the direction of the head waters of the Allegany and Susquehannah.
The year 1811, that being the year in which Col. Rochester, first surveyed and sold lots on the one hundred acre tract, may be regarded as the starting period of Rochester, though in reference to any con- siderable movement, accession of population and business, the years 1815, or '16 would perhaps be indicated. The first period named, preceding but a few months, another important event in our local his- tory, the war of 1812 - some account of the then general condition of the Genesee country, will not be out of place :- Commencing with the Pioneer region, the territory now comprised in the county of Ontario, improvements were considerably advanced. Generally, the soil there was more easily subdued, and made more speedy re- turns for labor expended, than the more heavily timbered lands that predominated elsewhere. There were many framed houses and barns, bearing orchards, largely improved farms, and good public highways. The territory had began to have a large surplus of pro- ducts, which principally found a market in the later settled regions, south and west. There may be included in this description a small portion of the present counties of Wayne, Livingston and Yates. In nearly all the northern portion of Wayne county settlement was recent, and but small improvements had been made. In Living- ston the considerable improvements were principally confined to the flats of the Genesee and Canascraga, the Buffalo road, Livonia, Conesus, Groveland and Sparta. A large portion of Allegany was a wilderness ; there were but few recent and feeble settlements. The older settlements in Steuben had began to produce a small surplus,
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which, with its lumber, was shipped upon the head waters of the Susquehannah, for the Baltimore market ; but most of the county was either a wilderness, or sparsely populated.
West of the Genesee River, the lands along the Buffalo road were principally settled, and many large improvements had been made. The principal public houses were along on that road ; it was the central locality ; those who lived away from that were in the back- woods, or interior ; there they gloried in some very respectable framed tavern houses ; " double log" tavern houses prevailed to the south and north of it. In Wyoming, there were settlements and considerable improvements along on the old " Big Tree" road, the Tonawanda and Allan's creek; elsewhere the Pioneers were in small isolated settlements, with wide belts of forests intervening. Cattaraugus had been broken into in but few localities, principally along on the Cattaraugus creek, the Ischua, and the Allegany River. Chautauque and the south towns of Erie had considerable settle- ments, principally along near the lake shore, and in the interior, on Chautauque Lake, and on the old " Big Tree" road. The settle- ments in all the northern portion of Erie, were along on the Buffalo road, and between that and the Seneca Reservation. In Niagara, settlement was principally confined to the Niagara River, the Ridge Road, and along on the narrow strip between the Ridge Road and Mountain Ridge. Orleans was mostly a wilderness, with but little in the way of improvement off from the Ridge Road, and in but few localities upon it. The Ridge Road in its whole extent, from the Genesee to the Niagara River, had but just been opened, a large portion of it was butan underbrushed woods road, with only a part of the streams having over them even rude log bridges. In short, in all the region between the Genesee River and the west bounds of the State, off from the main east and west road, there was but isola- ted neighborhoods and detached famlies, settlement had mostly commenced within the preceding six years. There was not fifty framed dwellings, nor over an hundred framed barns ; fifty acres was deemed a large improvement, much above the average.
The condition of the territory now comprised in Monroe, may be inferred from the history of settlement that has been given.
During the war, there was no increase of population in the whole region - as many left the country as came to it - a very large proportion of the effective men were upon the frontier, and alarm and apprehension paralyzed all of industry and enterprise. With reference to the period of 1812, Rochester had an untoward com- mencement ; and with reference to the latter period - 1815 and '16 - it started when the whole region with which it had a local iden- tity, had but passed its infancy, -when after acquiring a little strength and manhood, prostration and weakness had followed, from which it was just recovering.
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PHELPS AND GORHAM'S PURCHASE.
THE FIRST BLOW STRUCK ON THE SITE OF ROCHESTER - THE ALLAN MILL - REMINISCENCES OF EVENTS TO THE CLOSE OF THIE WAR OF 1812.
It was soon after Mr. Phelps had concluded his treaty, that he sold or gave to Ebenezer Allan the One Hundred Acre Tract, upon which he erected his rude mills. The mills were in operation be- fore the close of 1790, or rather were in readiness to saw and grind when there was anything to do. The measure on the part of Allan was premature ; when the grist mill was completed, there was not in all the region west of the old Pre-emption line, 1500 of our race ; and with the exception of the flats upon the Genesee and Canascraga, and a few small Indian improvements elsewhere, not 1000 acres of cleared land. As settlements increased, small mills were erected in other localities, leaving the Allan mills at the Falls of the Genesee, surrounded as they mostly were by an unsettled wilderness, but little to do. A miller was usually kept with them, the solitary occupant of all the now site of Rochester, but he had usually not employment enough to enable him to keep the mill in repair. Sometimes there would be no miller - the whole premises would be deserted - and in seasons of drouth, or when the small mills at Mendon, Wilder's Point, and at Conesus, would be out of repair, the new settlers would come down the Genesee River in canoes, upon Indian trails, or via the early woods road that came from Pittsford to Orange Stone's in Brighton, and to avoid the low wet lands that intervened, was carried off upon the ridges to the south, coming out upon the river near Mount Hope. Arriving at the mill, they would occupy the deserted cabin, supply a broken cog, mend a strap, put a bucket upon a wheel or a plank upon the floom, and be their own millers.
The mill and the Hundred Acre Tract was purchased of Allan by Benjamin Barton, senior, in March, 1792. The property was soon after conveyed 'by Barton to Samuel Ogden of the city of New York. Mr. Ogden being a lawyer, and a far off resident, was not likely to improve it, and as early as 1794 conveyed it to Charles Williamson. The next year Mr. Williamson put the property under the care of Col. Fish, and expended upon it about $500. But still there was a want of business for it, and in all the time that elapsed, during the ownership of Mr. Williamson, it was allowed to go grad- ually to decay. While in various other localities, in Sodus, Lyons, Geneva, Hopeton, Bath, on the Canascraga, in Caledonia, and to a small extent at Braddock's Bay, he was prosecuting enterprises, founding villages, and mills, the Falls of the Genesee seems to have had no considerable attractions for him. And this together with the then isolated condition of the locality in reference to the course that settlement was then taking, may furnish the explanation : In all expenditures and improvements he had reference to the increasing
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of the value of the property of his principals. All that is now Gates, most of Greece, a part of Chili, all of Henrietta, Rush, Mendon, Pittsford, Perrinton, Penfield, and Brighton, was not a part of the Pulteney estate. The principal interest of his principals in the im- mediate vicinity of Rochester, was most of what is now Irondequoit, a tract of 4000 acres at the Rapids, and a larger tract in what is now Chili. In January, 1802, in a valuation of all the different parcels of the Pulteney estate, made by Israel Chapin, Joseph Annin, and Amos Hall, the mill and hundred acres, was valued at $1,040.
Following the erection of the mill, the clearing away of a small spot of the forest around it, there was in respect to either settlement or improvement, an hiatus - an almost total suspension of opera- tions - for nearly twenty years ; a period in our present day, more than sufficient for settling States, founding new empires, and build- ing large cities.
In all this time the locality, and its immediate vicinity, was not. lost sight of; it was frequently visited by tourists and men of enter- prise. In 1795, Aaron Burr, -then a large operator in sites of towns, in tracts of wild lands, and in a few years after, the owner for a short period, of an 100,000 acres of Orleans county, contiguous to mouth of Oak Orchard creek - diverged from the old Buffalo road, came down and critically examined the Falls, taking measurements of them. Adventurers coasting along the Lake shore in batteaux, would put into the mouth of the river and survey the Falls, become impressed with the value of the location, the magnitude of its hy- draulic power; but the dark frowning forests, the low wet lands, the malaria they could well fancy they saw floating in the atmos- phere, sent them away to other fields of investment and enterprise, of far less importance, as time has demonstrated.
In 1796 Zadock Granger, Gideon King and others, as will have been observed, formed a settlement at what afterwards became Handford's Landing. These were the first comers upon the river, below the mouth of Black creek, (the miller of the Falls excepted,) after Wm. Hencher. In writing to his friends in England, Mr. Williamson was much disposed to make things quite as forward as
NOTE .- In this connection the author will make an extract from the manuscript re- miniscences of Thomas Morris : - " In June, 1797, Louis Philip, the late King of France, his two brothers, the Duke de Montpensier, and Count Beaugolais, were my guests at Canandaigua. Being desirons of shewing them the Falls of the Genesee River, we rode together to where Rochester now is. There was not at that time a hut of any kind. The nearest habitation was that of a farmer by the name of Perrin," (Orange Stone he should have said,) " where after viewing the Falls we dined in our return to Canandaigua. Notwithstanding all that I had heard of the progress of Roch- ester," (Mr. Morris is now alluding to his visit to the city in 1844,) it was difficult for me to realize that a place that I had last seen, even at that distance of time, an un- inhabited wilderness, should now be a busy, active city, containing elegant and costly buildings, and with a population, as I was informed there, of between twenty-five and thirty thousand inhabitants."
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they were, and to create the impression that the country was going ahead pretty rapidly. He announced the advent of these new comers, as a matter of considerable importance ; and speaks of the commercial enterprise of Mr. Granger, in the same year, as having created a new era in this region of the Genesee country. "The navigation of the river," says one of his letters, "is interrupted by four successive magnificent falls, the highest of them 96 feet ; around these falls a carrying place was made, and the inhabitants for the first time began to use the navigation, and they received their salt from the Onondaga salt works, and their stores from Al- bany, with a very trifling land carriage, compared to what they were before necessitated to undertake from Geneva; and it has opened to them a ready market for their produce."
From the very earliest period of the settlement of the Genesee country, there seemed to be a prevalent, vague idea, that a town of some consequence was to grow up somewhere in what is now the northern portion of Monroe - neucluses were formed, prelim- inary steps taken to start villages and commercial depots - but the sites, or locations, were for a long period fluctuating. There are within nine miles of Rochester, within the precincts of the over shadowing city - the sites of no less than five embryo villages, or towns, gone to decay - or rather, are either converted into highly cultivated farms, or have become principally the eligible sites of private dwellings ; and this, without including Frankfort - at first assuming rather an independent existence - but having now but little separate identity ; having long ago been merged in the city that is now travelling on, on, beyond it, with rapid strides.
Soon after the completion of the surveys of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, the late Augustus Porter, mapped the whole territory, carefully disignating the localities where villages and mills either were or were likely to be. He makes no mark or sign of civiliza- tion, on the river, below "Hartford," (Avon,) except at the Allan mill, and upon the afterwards site of Carthage, is printed, " Athens." This would lead to the conclusion that the earliest proprietors of the region, (even before the advent of Mr. Williamson,) had desig- nated that as their favorite locality. Eligible and beautiful as the site now is, it must have been in that early day, a most unpropi- tious spot, to introduce a name associated with the highest degrees of civilization in the old world. But let this reminiscence remind the dwellers there, that they are treading upon classic ground. " Tryon Town," in now Brighton, on the "Eutauntuquet* Bay," was the next favorite locality ; where, as will have been observed, a town was projected and commenced, and for many early years was the focus of business for a wide region of log cabins and wood's roads ; -- a shipping port, withal. Then succeeded "King's" and
* Vide, Judge Porter's Map.
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" Handford's Landings ; then "Charlotte ; " and next, (or perhaps in earlier years,) "Castle Town." All but the " oldest inhabitants" will have to be told where "Castle Town" was : - It was upon the west side of the river, at the Rapids, near the division line of Gates and Chili. Mr. Wadsworth owned lot 47, the south east corner lot of Gates, embracing the upper part of the Rapids, and the Pulteney estate, lots 12, 24, and 36 of the "4,000 acre tract," contiguous and below, embracing the lower part of the Rapids. The whole being under Mr. Wadsworth's control, as owner and agent, during the long years that the site of Rochester was left unimproved, he con- ceived the idea of founding a village there, it being the foot of nav- igation on the Genesee river, and the head of the portage from the navigable waters of the river below the Falls. A town was surveyed, some lots sold, a store and tavern house erected, and a few families settled there ; among whom was Isaac Castle ; and thence the name. Rochester starting up, and soon after, a diver- sion of the water power being made by the Canal Feeder, there was an end of "Castle Town."
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