USA > New York > Monroe County > Landmarks of Monroe County, New York : containing followed by brief historical sketches of the towns of the county with biography and family history > Part 5
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It being apparent that the two states would never reconcile their pre- tensions by mutual agreement, Massachusetts, in May, 1784, appealed to Congress to settle the difficulty by appointing commissioners whose decision should be final. Congress proceeded in the circuitous manner customary with that body, and, instead of appointing commissioners as requested, directed the two states to select, each its own agents, who were to appear and argue the matter in the following December. These instructions were complied with, but when the agents came be- fore Congress another change was made and they were told to agree
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SOVEREIGNTY AND PRE-EMPTION.
upon judges, who would hear and determine the matter. In the fol- fowing June they reported that they had agreed upon judges, but be- fore the time came for the sitting of the commission the chosen arbitra - tors had declined to serve, and Congress, at the request of the agents, granted a postponement, which meant an abandonment, of the proceed- ings. Baffled by these dilatory performances and this worse than use - less circumlocution, the two state legislatures did what they would have saved much time and trouble by doing at the outset-they empowered their agents to settle the matter among themselves, without the inter- vention of any third party. The commissioners, as they thus became, met at Hartford, Conn., and on the 16th of December, 1786, came to an agreement which was in the nature of a compromise, as such things usually are.
Under the guise of a reciprocal cession, as though each side owned everything, the right of New York to the government, sovereignty and jurisdiction over all the lands claimed by it was acknowledged, and, at the same time, Massachusetts was declared to possess the right to pre- emption of the soil from the Indians in a large tract of land between Chenango river and Owego creek,1 and also the same right with regard to all the land between a line running north to Lake Ontario from a point on the Pennsylvania line eighty- two miles west of the northeastern corner of that state (which passed through the western edge of Seneca lake), and a north and south line one mile east of the Niagara river. Supplementary details accompanied this division, but it is not necessary to give them, further than this, that Massachusetts was allowed to sell the pre- emption right and its grantees might purchase from the Indians, but no such purchase was to be valid until confirmed by Massachusetts after the approval of a superintendent appointed by that state, and the grants thus confirmed were to be recorded in the office of the secretary of state of New York. This agreement was signed by James Duane,
1 This peculiar partition of a tract of land covering 230,400 acres, and separated by so great a distance from the principal part of the territory conveyed, was due to the fact that Robert R. Livingston, afterward chancellor of the state, who was one of the agents of New York from the be- ginning, had, in previous conferences with the agents of Massachusetts, offered to cede to the latter state, as a peace offering, ten townships, each containing thirty-six square miles. Massachusetts, in expectation of receiving this tract, had entered into negotiations with prospective purchasers, though it was not actually sold till November 7, fur fifteen hundred pounds. This is the tract mentioned above, and it went afterward by the name of the " Boston Ten Towns,"
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LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.
Robert R. Livingston, Robert Yates, John Haring, Melanchton Smith and Egbert Benson, agents of New York, and John Lowell, James Sullivan, Theophilus Parsons and Rufus King, agents of Massachusetts. It is a little singular that both states should thus have recognised, in this formal manner, the ultimate right of the Senecas and Cayugas to the ownership of the land, in spite of all the sales and cessions of the same by the Indians to the king of England, as mentioned in the fore- going pages. The two states having, through their legislatures, ratified the settlement, it was deemed proper, if not necessary, to submit it to Congress for its approval, which was obtained without difficulty.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PURCHASE FROM THE INDIANS.
The Lessees-Conspiracy to Defraud Massachusetts -- Phelps and Gorham-They Contract for Western New York-They Extinguish the Indian Title-The Mill-Yard Piece-Remarkable Errors in the Survey-The Reversion to Massachusetts-Sales to Robert Morris-The Holland Purchase-The Treaty at Big Tree-Present Location of the Senecas.
While the compromise made at Hartford was not perfectly satisfac- tory to anybody, it was generally acquiesced in as being the best outcome of the dispute that was practicable. An exception existed in the shape of an association of individuals bearing the title of the New York Gene- see Land company, but better known by the aggregate name of " the Lessees." This band of conspirators, for it was nothing less, included the honored names of Livingston and Schuyler, and it commanded influence of the most formidable character, for several members of the New York legislature and other officials were engaged in it, besides others whose distinction in various directions gave them the prestige of expected success. Its object was to defraud Massachusetts of that which had just been formally acknowledged to belong to it, and, with- out paying one penny to that commonwealth, to get possession of all the land of Western New York.
Om Bromley
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THE PURCHASE FROM THE INDIANS.
By promising, though there is no reason to suppose that they ever paid it, a bonus of twenty thousand dollars to the Indians, this company secured, on the 30th of November, 1787, a lease of all the territory known as the lands of the Six Nations, and then in the actual possession of the chiefs or sachems of those tribes. The annual rental was to be two thousand Spanish milled dollars, and the lease ran for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, so that it amounted, practically, to a sale, for, if the swindle had gone through, the payment of the rental would, un- doubtedly, have been compromised, a little later, by the payment of a specific sum of money. So amazing was the effrontery of these unprincipled speculators, that they petitioned the legislature for a recog- nition of the lease, but the request was refused. On the contrary, so obviously fraudulent was the nature of the transaction, that the lease was declared absolutely void, as equivalent to a purchase, and the gov- ernor was authorised to use force, if necessary, to prevent the usurpers from entering into the occupancy of the land. The legislature of Mas- sachusetts of course declined to acknowledge the validity of the lease. In spite of all this the Lessees continued their intrigues for some time, and contemplated a project for forming a separate state out of the terri- tory, till the arrest of one of their number on the charge of treason convinced them that the sovereignty of New York meant something, and they reluctantly abandoned their nefarious scheme. In after years they petitioned the legislature so persistently for relief that that body weakly granted to them some lands in the Military tract, which had been set apart for Revolutionary soldiers.
Before the culmination of this audacious enterprise others had been stimulated to obtain in a legal manner what the Lessees had tried to get in defiance of treaties. For more than a century before that there had been a constant wrangle between the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut over the location of the east and west line that should divide them, and an unsightly indentation that still remains on all maps which include either of those states bears witness to the imperishable harm that may be accomplished by ambiguity of statement in land convey- ances or inaccuracy in topographical surveys. One of the towns that lay within this disputed belt, the most of which was finally given up to Connecticut, was Suffield, and all the children of that community grew 6
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LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.
up with a familiarity, though probably little comprehension thereof, with endless contentions about the difference between the magnetic north and the true north, the continued altitude of the polar star, the variation of the needle, and all those details that entered into the determination of a correct west line from a given point. Among these youths was Oliver Phelps, who, having arrived at this time at a sagacious manhood, appreciated, in view of all the circumstances just mentioned, and the general information that he had acquired, the almost boundless possi- bilities of settlement in what was then the great West, and the capabil- ities of confusion in running meridian lines. Probably, also, the expe- rience through which the Lessees were then passing showed him the advantage of dealing, in a discreet manner, with the legislature, instead of trafficking with the Indians.
Finding that Nathaniel Gorham, who had been president of the Con- tinental Congress in the preceding year, had made already some ad- vances in that direction, Phelps united with him, and the two together, in the beginning of 1787, made, for themselves and their associates, a proposition to purchase one million acres of this Western New York land at the rate of one shilling and sixpence per acre. This offer was declined, but in the following year another proposition was made, and on the Ist of April, 1788, the " general court " of Massachusetts, by which antiquated title the legislature of that state has always been known, sold to these parties the whole six and a quarter millon acres west of Seneca lake, previously described in the terms of settlement. This conveyance was subject, of course, to the Indian title, which was to be extinguished by the purchasers. The price agreed upon was $300,000 in consolidated securities of the commonwealth, and, as the Massachu- setts pound was equivalent to $3.3313, and the state securities were then worth one fifth of their face value, it made the amount to be paid nominally $1,000,000, but actually $200,000, or at the rate of a trifle over three cents an acre, the payments to be made in thirds annually, beginning one year from the date of the contract. True to its theolog- ical traditions, as mingling church and state together, it was provided in the instrument that the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, the religious and polit- ical missionary alluded to in a previous chapter, should superintend and approve, at the expense of the grantees, all the purchases to be made from the Indians of their claims.
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THE PURCHASE FROM THE INDIANS.
All published histories and articles on this subject, as far as I am aware, say that Oliver Phelps came to this region and obtained his deed from the Indians before any surveys were made, but facts have recently come to light which show that even before the legislature of Massachu- setts had made the grant to him, and while his proposition was pending before that body, he had come on here, or had sent a trustworthy sur- veyor who did the work required of him. A survey was made by running a line from the lower falls due west one-half mile (carrying it through the center of what was afterward called Rowe street till a year ago, when the name was foolishly changed to Lexington avenue), then running a line due south from the first point, carrying it through the present course of Grape street and Jefferson avenue. On these two lines, rectangular to each other, plots were mapped out half a mile square, the sides of which formed the basis for future streets in Roches- ter, as is seen from the fact that just half a mile from Caledonia avenue, the western limit of the One-hundred-acre tract, comes Jefferson avenue, the western line of the village of Rochester; half a mile from that is Child street, the first boundary of the city on that side, beyond which an equal distance is our present western confine. The Buffalo road (now West avenue), Lyell avenue, Rowe street (or Lexington avenue) and the Ridge road are a mile apart from each other, but the intersecting half miles have not been so plainly perpetuated. This little map, so long forgotten and unknown, is interesting, as showing the first survey made not only in Rochester but in Western New York, and as indicating that the west side of the river was considered even then as the more desirable portion and the locality between the lower falls and the rapids as the choicest spot in all this region. There is reason to suppose that Phelps, in his negotiations with the Massachusetts legisla- ture, used this map with accompanying promises of sales to influential members on terms satisfactory to them, for the art of lobbying is not a discovery of the present century and there must be some reason for the acceptance of an offer much lower than one that had previously been refused.
Phelps, who had been given by his associates full power in the matter of purchasing from the Indians, came to this part of the country soon after he obtained the grant, and in July held a council with the Senecas
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LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.
at Buffalo creek. The meeting had been delayed by the intrigues of the Lessees, and when it was finally held they were on hand to com- plicate matters. In this they were aided by another concern of a simi . lar shady character, called the Niagara Genesee company, comprised of Col. Butler and other loyalists, besides a number of British officers. Although a common interest caused these companies to work together at different times, no love was lost between them, and their disagree- ments sometimes enabled other people to run off with the plunder. A less adroit diplomatist than Phelps would have been dismayed by the obstacles that rose before him, but his experience showed him how to deal with them. By the conveyance to the Lessees of four townships their release of the land to be purchased from the Indians was obtained. It was more difficult to deal with the Niagara company, the members of which kept telling the Indians that the frontier forts would never be given up and that the whole country would soon come again under the dominion of the British. Finally, however, those conspirators were dis- posed of, exactly how is not known, but probably by taking them into partnership on a small scale. They alleged as much a few years later, when they filed a bill in chancery, stating that they had been promised by Phelps one-eighth of all the proceeds from future sales of the lands, but there is no reason to suppose that they ever gained anything by that proceeding.
Phelps was now left free to deal with the Indians, who, influenced by the powerful eloquence of Red Jacket, one of the principal sachems of the Senecas, agreed without much reluctance to sell all the land from Seneca lake to the Genesee river, but the latter was to be the dividing line, beyond which the transfer could not extend, for the land just west of that must, as the "great spirit" told them, be their home forever. Here, again, Phelps's peculiar talents came into play, for it would never do for him to give up the attractive piece of ground that had been plotted out on his little map. In some way he induced the Indians to believe that it would be to their advantage to let him have a large tract on the west side of the river. The popular story has always been that he agreed to build for them a saw-mill and a grist mill near the falls, at which all their lumber could be sawed and their corn could be ground without having to take the raw material to a great distance eastward, if
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THE PURCHASE FROM THE INDIANS.
they would give him a mill-seat suitable for the purpose ; that, lured by the prospect of a reduction of their manual labor, they finally consented to his demand without stipulating as to the area of this supplementary territory; that after the pipe of agreement had been smoked Phelps told them, in answer to a casual inquiry, that he considered that a piece twelve miles by twenty-four would be about the proper thing, and that the Indians, though overwhelmed with astonishment, considered them- selves bound by their promise and acted accordingly. This, if true, would show that their sense of honor was far higher than that of the white negotiator, who could thus cajole them out of this imperial mill- yard, but there is another explanation of their conduct which, while it deprives them of any claim to lofty integrity, adds nothing to the repu- tation of their customer. Ebenezer Allan, the constant advisor and apparent friend of the Indians, may have inspired them to their first re- fusal and also to their final acquiescence, by the combination of which actions he might readily be the gainer. The reason for this theory, which has never found place in any previous history, lies in the record of real estate transactions which will be mentioned in the succeeding chapter.
At any rate, Phelps got hold of the land, and the deed of surrender, which was signed July 8, 1788, conveyed to him and Nathaniel Gor- ham all the territory whose western limit consisted of a line run due north from the Pennsylvania boundary to the confluence of the Genesee river and Canaseraga creek, thence following the river northward two miles beyond Avon, thence twelve miles to the west, " thence running in a direction northwardly, so as to be twelve miles distant from the most westward bends of said Genesee river to the shore of Ontario lake." The remaining boundaries were the same with those described in the deed of conveyance from Massachusetts. The instrument was signed by twenty three Senecas, including Red Jacket, Little Beard and Farmer's Brother ; twenty-two Cayugas, eight Onondagas, three Mo- hawks, including Joseph Brant, and seven squaws, who were styled " governesses," and it was witnessed by several persons, the most note- worthy of whom were Col. Butler and Mr. Kirkland, the latter as representing the state of Massachusetts. It would seem as though, in · the transfer of a domain so vast, the consideration would have been
.
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LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.
fully expressed in the deed, but, on the contrary, no mention is made of it, and indeed it would have been in conflict with the character of those engaged in the transaction if everything had been arranged in such a way as to avoid future controversy.
When payment came to be made, which was done at Canandaigua in 1789, the Indians were loud in their complaints of treachery, alleging that the promises of Phelps were not complied with. Red Jacket, in a council held the next year at Tioga with Timothy Pickering, the super- intendent of Indian affairs for the northern district of the United States, charged that fraud had been committed, so that the Indians received only half of what they had been expecting, getting $5,000 instead of $10,000. Cornplanter, at the head of a delegation of Seneca chiefs, went to Philadelphia a month after that, and laid the case before Presi- dent Washington in person, complaining that they had been cheated in the payments and that the whole treaty at Buffalo creek had been fraudulently conducted. In reply to these accusations Phelps produced affidavits showing that the amount agreed upon was $5,000, half at once and half one year later, besides a continuous annuity of $500 pay- able half in cash and half in cattle. That was all he ever paid, to its acknowledged owners, for what is larger than some states in Europe. It is probable that he was right as to the technical points; it is equally probable that the Indians were overreached and were allowed, if not induced, to expect more than they ever obtained ; it is certain that they were grievously disappointed.
Phelps lost no time in having an official survey made of his new ter- ritory. Having brought Col. Hugh Maxwell along with him to the conference, he had that individual begin to run his lines within a week or two after the treaty was signed. Here, again, an obliquity mani- fested itself that fittingly supplemented the previous proceedings. The east line, or " pre-emption line," as it was generally called, was run first, and it was made to take a bend westwardly, by which some eighty-four thousand acres that belonged in the purchase were left out. Maxwell explained afterward that the mistake was made by some of his assistants while he was absent, getting supplies, but the fact that some of the land thus excluded was actually occupied by one or more of the Lessees, at the present site of Geneva, is very suggestive. The loss was more than
47
THE PURCHASE FROM THE INDIANS.
made up by the deflection, also westwardly, of the west line, from the point at which it should have begun to run parallel with the Genesee river, northeasterly, instead of which it shot due north from that point, thus taking in eighty seven thousand acres that had never been bought or sold. No pretense was made that this was a mistake ; it was simply robbery from the defenseless Indians. One good feature of this survey was that it possessed an admirable species of uniformity. By it the land was divided into ranges, six miles wide, which ran north and south, and those ranges were divided into townships six miles square, except where the bend in the Genesee as it neared the lake caused some ranges to be shortened and the shape of several towns to be altered. The general system of division in that way, not known to have been used before, became the model for all future surveys of new lands in the United States.
The history of the Phelps and Gorham purchase may as well be dis- posed of at this point. On November 21, 1788, the Massachusetts legislature confirmed the title to all the land between Seneca lake and the Genesee and also the mill-yard piece on the west. Phelps evidently continued to cherish hopes of being able to extinguish the Indian title to the remainder, for he seems to have done nothing looking to an ad- justment with Massachusetts during 1789. In February and March, 1790, he made various offers to surrender his claim to the rest, but it was not till March 10, 1791, that the commonwealth took back its pre-emptive right to the western land. The settlement was made on the hypothesis that that amounted to two thirds of the whole original purchase, but it did not, for what had been confirmed to Phelps really amounted to considerably more than one-third. By this arrangement Phelps should have paid to Massachusetts £100,000 in consolidated securities, but those funds had risen by that time to nearly their face value, in consequence of the United States government having assumed the payment of the debts of the states, and so the purchasers, if they had been held to the terms of the bond, would have had to pay more than four times as much as they had expected at the outset to pay. They appealed for justice on the ground of equity, though we have just seen how, in their dealing with the Indians, they refused to abate a single ounce of the pound of flesh, but, on the contrary, tried to take
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LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.
flesh and blood and everything else. What particular methods were used to bring about the compromise is not known, but it was effected in some way, and so, besides the cancellation of two of the three bonds, the third bond was reduced to less than one-third of its original amount, or £31,000, equivalent to a little more then $100,000.
Even this attenuated obligation could not have been discharged if Phelps and Gorham had not, in the meantime, on November 18, 1790, sold to Robert Morris, of Revolutionary fame, all of their land not pre- viously disposed of by them, reserving to themselves two townships, one including the present site of Canandaigua, the other that of Geneseo. Morris was too shrewd a man to buy a tract of land like that on a sur- vey so atrociously defective as Maxwell's had been, and in the deed to him it was expressly acknowledged that "a manifest error had been committed " with regard to the mill-seat tract, so that a new survey would have to be made. While they were about it, it was thought to be as well to have the surveyors run new boundary lines entirely, for the whole territory ceded to Phelps and Gorham by the Indians. This was done in 1791 and 1792, by a party with Major Adam Hoops, formerly of Sullivan's army, as superintendent, assisted by several persons, among them Augustus Porter, who then drew the first correct map of the original purchase. The eastern, or pre- emption, line was straightened, and the piece stolen from the Indians on the west, which was afterward called the "Triangle tract," was restored to them. Morris's purchase from Phelps was found to contain a little more than a million and a quarter acres, so that he bought almost exactly one-half of what the Indians had sold, and, though the consideration named in the deed is only nominal, there is reason to suppose that he paid about $150,000, which was more than Phelps paid for the whole.
It was less than a year before Morris disposed of this tract, selling it, through his London agents, to three Englishmen-Sir William Pulteney, William Hornby and Patrick Colquhoun. As the title to land in New York could not then be vested in aliens, Charles Williamson came over from Scotland and, after he had been duly naturalised, the property was deeded to him in trust for the real owners, the consideration being £75,000, the equivalent of which at that time was about $350,000, so that Morris more than doubled his money, as Phelps and Gorham had
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