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 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106
Charles Harroll
49
THE PURCHASE FROM THE INDIANS.
more than doubled theirs. Williamson established his office at a little settlement which he named Bath, after Pulteney's only child, Laura, countess of Bath. Being a man of ambition and tireless energy he did much to open up the new country, but his expenditures were so vast that his principals finally refused to let him go further, and offered him $150,000 and 12,000 acres of land at cost if he would turn the property over to them, which might have been done, as New York had then passed a law giving aliens power for three years to give and receive the titles to real estate. But this he would not or could not do, on account of the magnitude of the obligations that he had incurred. At the last it was only by giving him $89,000 and agreeing to pay his debts to the stupendous sum of $225,000 that he was induced to relax his grip and sign the deeds on the 3Ist of March, 1801, two days before the expira- tion of the enabling act. Robert Troup, a New York lawyer, succeeded Williamson in the agency of the "Pulteney estate," as it has always been known. On Troup's death, in 1832, Joseph Fellows succeeded him, and in 1862 Benjamin F. Young, then of this city, took charge of the office, which he still retains.
In this connection it may be as well to mention the principal transac- tions connected with the ownership of the western end of the state, which Phelps was not able to obtain, and to follow our old friends the Senecas, the former occupants of Monroe county, to their final resting- place in this world. Scarcely had the land been relinquished to Massa- chusetts when that state sold it for $333,000 to Robert Morris, who was already carrying so much real estate that he thought he might as well add indefinitely to the burden. The conveyance of the whole tract, nearly four million acres, was made on the IIth of May, 1791, and within two years the owner had sold it all-with the exception of a strip on the east (known as the " Morris Reserve "), twelve miles wide in the main and including the Triangle tract-to several Dutchmen living in Amsterdam, who, though not strictly associated together, are generally alluded to as the Holland Land company. In passing the title to the American agent of those foreigners Morris agreed to ex- tinguish the Indian claim as a necessary condition of the sale, and a part of the purchase price was held back till that should be done. The execution of this project was delayed for a few years by various consid-
7
50
LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.
erations, principally the desire on Morris's part to wait till Fort Niagara should be given up, so that he might not have to encounter the obstruc- tive machinations of the British officers. This difficulty was removed in 1795, but for some reason it was not till August, 1797, that the various parties assembled at Big Tree, near the present site of Geneseo, but whether on the east or west side of the river is a matter of dispute.
Robert Morris was not present himself, but his son Thomas was there in the interest of his father and with full power to act as the agent of the great financier ; the other attending whites were Col. Jeremiah Wadsworth and Gen. Shepherd, representing the United States and Massachusetts, respectively ; Israel Chapin, superintendent of Indian affairs ; representatives of the Holland company, interpreters and sur- veyors. Confronting them were the Seneca chiefs and sachems in full force, realising that this was their last opportunity for getting any re . muneration for the land that was slipping away under their feet-Corn- planter, Red Jacket, Farmer's Brother, Blacksnake, Handsome Lake, Little Beard and all the others. The council fire was lighted, the credentials were presented and Thomas Morris made a speech that had been carefully prepared beforehand, setting forth the great advantages that would accrue from the sale of the land. Day after day the council was held and the negotiations were continued, both sides being non- committal, Morris evading the question of specific payment and the Indians insisting that the proposal must come from him, not from them. Finally he offered $100,000, to be invested in stock of the United State bank, so that they should receive annually six thousand dollars for all time to come; if they would not accept that offer, his father would hold no further treaties with them. This was Red Jacket's opportu- nity ; springing to his feet he delivered an harangue full of the grand- est eloquence, rehearsing the wrongs of the red men and declaring that they would never sell their land ; then, with dramatic action, he scattered the burning brands, stamped out the glowing embers and raked together the ashes; the council was at an end. Alas, for the consistency of human pride ! Presents were freely made to the Seneca squaws, who thereupon insisted that negotiations should be resumed, the council fire was rekindled by Cornplanter and the deed of sale was duly signed September 17, 1797. The consideration was the same that
51
THE PURCHASE FROM THE INDIANS.
Morris had offered, and nothing else appeared upon the record, but there are documents in existence which show that Cornplanter received two hundred and fifty dollars as a private annuity for the rest of his life ; others, including Red Jacket, one hundred dollars in the same way, and others still smaller sums-that is to say, the influential leaders were bribed to sell their country. Upon which side falls the greater disgrace it is difficult to decide.
Eleven reservations, from out of all the land, were taken, aggregating three hundred and thirty- seven square miles, some of them because they had been sold or given already, but most of them to serve as the future home of the Senecas and such others of the Six Nations as might choose to dwell among them. Of these reservations the Indian title has, since then, been extinguished in all but four-the Tuscarora, the Tonawanda, the Allegany and the Cattaraugus-on the last two of which the sur- viving Senecas are located to the number of about 2,200. The Alle- gany reservation, which is the larger of the two, lies wholly in Catta- raugus county, while the other extends through that and two other counties, the two comprising a little over 52,000 acres. The state of New York pays to the Senecas an annuity of three hundred and eighty- five dollars, besides supporting fifteen schools among them, while the United States government distributes among them every year $11,902 in cash, besides thirty-five hundred dollars' worth of goods. Clouds still hang close to the horizon of their territory, the heaviest of which is the claim of the Ogden Land company, the successor of the Holland. Legislation was attempted in the last Congress for the purchase of that claim, but the bill failed to become a law and the matter was referred to the secretary of the interior, who is to make a report on the subject. When this incumbrance shall have been removed, either by its purchase or by a judicial declaration of the invalidity of the claim, the Indians may, as the next step, be invested with the rights of citizenship and their lands divided among them in severalty, which ought to have been done long ago. Until it is done, any real progress toward civilisation is impossible.
52
LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY
CHAPTER VIII.
CONNECTING LINKS.
The Tory Walker -- His Cabin at the Mouth of the River-Erection of the Mills --- Transfers of Land -- " Indian " Allan-His Murderous Career-His Plurality of Wives -- His Robbery from his Children-Mary Jemison, " the White Woman of the Gen- esee "-Her Abduction and her Captivity- - Her Change of Race-Murders of her Sons -- Her Admirable Character.
Before the time of the great purchase from the Indians there was no permanent white settlement in all this region or anywhere near it. A man named Walker had, it is true, lived at the present site of Summer- ville for several years after the close of the Revolutionary war. He was a loyalist who had come from Minisink, Penn., and had connected himself with Butler's Rangers, in which capacity he served as one of the opponents to Sullivan's advance in 1779. After the affair at Little Beard's Town he was detailed to go to Fort Niagara for boats to be sent to the mouth of the Genesee river to pick up the scattered Ran- gers who were fleeing from the invading army. Walker, having suc- ceeded in getting the boats, by which the loyalists were transported safely to the fort, seems to have been so well pleased with the scene of his exploit that he either remained there or returned to the spot after- ward and built a log cabin, which he occupied, leading a vagabond kind of a life, till he went to Canada in 1793. An early map of this region, printed in London, gives a little picture of the cabin at the mouth of the river, with the word " Walker's " underneath, and no other sign of civilisation on the whole shore of the lake from Oswego to Ni- agara. In a literal sense he was the first white inhabitant of Monroe county, but the term " first settler " cannot be applied properly to him, for he gave no indication of an intention to locate here permanently and he never laid claim to the ownership of the land.
It will be remembered that Oliver Phelps had promised to erect a mill or mills for the Indians near the upper falls as a compensation for
53
CONNECTING LINKS.
their gift to him of the tract of land on the west side of the river. In pursuance of this agreement he made a contract of some kind, at the very time of his purchase or before it, with Ebenezer Allan to put up those structures. The common story has always been that all the price paid for building the two mills lay in the transfer of one hundred acres of land, on which the mills were to stand. Posterity has contin- ued to believe the tradition from that day to this, regardless of the disparity between what was given and what is alleged to have been received, for one hundred acres then and there were worth but a very few cents an acre, and Phelps could not have sold the piece for as much as Allan had to pay for the mill irons. Allan had resided in this locality, as much as he resided anywhere, for some time previous to that, and in 1789, if not before, he was living on his farm where Scotts- ville is now situated, near where the creek that was named after him empties into the Genesee. This farm contained four hundred and sev- enty-two acres, and most writers have stated that it was a gift to Allan from the Senecas. Turner, in his " Phelps and Gorham Purchase," says that three hundred acres had been derived from the Indians and that the remainder had been bought from those white speculators. This is almost as far wrong as the other assertion, as anyone might have found by taking the trouble to examine the records.
On page 247 of book four of deeds in the Ontario county clerk's office, is the record of a deed from Oliver Phelps to Israel Chapin, who was present in an official capacity at the treaty of Big Tree in 1797. This deed is dated September 19, 1789, and it was recorded July 8, 1796. For the consideration of £1145, 16s., 8d., New England cur- rency, it conveys one-half of township number one in the first range of towns on the west side of the Genesee, the whole town to contain 2,500 acres. This deed was recorded in order to make good the title con- veyed in a deed already entered on page 93 in book two in the same office, that had been recorded November 10, 1793, and which was dated September 16, 1790, so the date of what was unquestionably the second deed was made to be one year earlier than that of the first. The deed recorded in 1793 was from Israel Chapin to Ebenezer Allan, and it con- veyed, for the consideration of two hundred pounds Massachusetts cur- rency, the whole four hundred and seventy-two acres of Allan's farm,
54
LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.
which was in the northwest corner of the township. If Allan had owned three-fourths of that farm he certainly would not have bought it over again from Phelps through Chapin, and even if, as is probably the case, he had no title to any of it, he would hardly have paid so high a price as that named for what was wholly wild land when he got it.
It may be remarked that, as the deed from Phelps to Chapin had been executed to validate the title of the latter, so the deed from Chapin to Allan was evidently executed to give Allan a title to what he had already sold to Peter Sheffer a year before, for this last-men- tioned deed, though not recorded till March 30, 1794, was dated No- vember 23, 1789-the one date that is known to be genuine. Chapin forgot to change his date, as he ought to have done, and the whole transaction is marked by the usual indirection, a crooked line instead of a straight one. These details have been given to show that, in all like- lihood, the consideration for the erection of the mills was not only the piece of one hundred acres but also the Scottsville farm, nearly five times as large, and perhaps something in addition to those. On some terms or other the saw-mill was built in the summer of 1789, and the grist mill in the following November. The latter stood on the south side of the present Race street, between Aqueduct and Graves streets, the saw-mill being just south of it. Allan moved with his family into the grist mill as soon as it was finished, and lived there for one winter, after which he transferred his residence to Mt. Morris, though his family stayed for some time longer in the mill. A description of the One- hundred-acre tract, with its various changes of title, and also some mention of the successive occupants of the mills, will be given in the sketch of the city of Rochester, but a slight account of the picturesque ruffian who was really the first white settler in Monroe county may be in order in this place.
Ebenezer Allan was a singular creature, almost unique in the annals of crime in that he was never punished for any of his misdeeds, but, on the contrary, lived and died with the apparent respect of his fellow- men. Murder, unprovoked and cruel, was with him a pastime, robbery was often his means of livelihood, and polygamy, if not reduced to a fine art, was the social system that he practised with a successful au- dacity that might excite the admiration of a Mormon elder. The only
55
CONNECTING LINKS.
act for which he ever suffered the slightest molestation in this country was the only good thing that he ever did in his life, when he preserved the peace by carrying the wampum belt, as mentioned in a previous chapter. For this he was hunted like a partridge on the mountains, by British soldiers and by Indians, until at last he was captured and car- ried to Fort Niagara, from which he escaped, only to be again tracked to his hiding-place on the Genesee-where Mary Jemison was secret- ing him-and taken to Canada, where he was tried on some fictitious charge and acquitted.
Born at some place known only to his parents, but probably in Penn- sylvania, his first appearance in history is in that state, where, in the early part of the Revolution, he took arms against his patriot neighbors and participated with the red men in their ravages on the Susquehanna. While scouting with a party of savages, according to his own story in later life, he entered, early one morning, a house where the owner was asleep in bed with his wife and child. Awakened by the noise, the man sprang to the floor to defend his family, only to be struck down by a fatal blow from Allan, who then cut off the head of his victim and threw it into the bed with his wife, after which he snatched the baby from her arms and beat out its brains by swinging it against the door- post. Coming into New York a little later he seems to have joined a band of Butler's Rangers, in which position his conspicuous ferocity rendered him an object of execration to all on the other side, but his hatred of restraint soon made him leave that corps and again associate with the Indians, no more savage than himself, among whom he had great influence and by whom he was called Genushio, the word being the same as the name of the Genesee river, on the banks of which he lived for the next twenty years. By the whites he was generally known as Indian Allan. About the time of his coming here he mar- ried a squaw, named Sally, by whom he had two children, Mary and Chloe.
Before the grist mill was built, a white man named Chapman came along with his daughter Lucy, on their way to settle at Niagara, and Allan was naturally attracted by the girl, who seems to have returned his affections. It may be that Sally and her children were not living at Scottsville at that time, or they may have been sent temporarily further
56
LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.
up the river ; at any rate Lucy was induced to remain with Allan, with the full consent of her father, who passed on westward. A magistrate, either real or pretended, came on the scene a little later and a marriage ceremony took place, after which Sally and Lucy were brought together and a scene ensued, but harmony soon prevailed and all parties made the best of it. By Lucy, Allan had one child, a son. The triple alliance was soon enlarged. An elderly man with a beautiful young wife came to the Genesee country in the course of their travels and Allan found no difficulty in persuading them to rest for a little visit, in the course of which he took the man for a walk by the bank of the river and deliberately pushed him into the water. The man contrived to crawl out, but he died within three days from the effects of the shock ; his widow at once united herself with Allan and lived with him as his third wife for a year, after which she became tired and left for parts unknown. Allan, being a man of taste, was not satisfied with the two colors of red and white, but desired to add a darker hue to the matrimonial rainbow, so he married a daughter of a runaway slave, commonly called Captain Sunfish, who had settled on Tonawanda creek and by trading in cattle had acquired some property. It is not uncharitable to suppose that the husband had that in mind when he made the match, for he soon got hold of all the accumulated wealth, after which he discarded the former Miss Sunfish and kindly pensioned her father out of the negro's own money.
After his last removal to Mt. Morris, Allan proceeded to set his house in order. First, he ordained that Sally should be a slave to Lucy, though he recognised the former as an equally lawful wife. Having arranged that, he married Millie McGregor (or Morilla Gregory, as the name sometimes appears), the daughter of one of the Rangers, who was then living on the Genesee flats. When Millie was taken home, Sally and Lucy, not satisfied with the situation, joined their forces and beat the new- comer so ferociously that Allan had to install her in a small cabin a short distance from the main house. By Millie he had six children. She was probably his last wife, though Mary Jemison says that " one of Morilla's sisters lived with Allan about a year after Morilla was married, and then quit him," which may mean that the family re- lations were as patriarchal as those of Jacob with Rachel and Leah.
Frank At, Clement
57
CONNECTING LINKS.
This antique mode of life was interspersed with a few cold-blooded murders, which seemed to create no disorder in the social universe of which Allan was the center, such as the case in which he sent a boy to the spring for water, and, as the urchin loitered too long on the way, the director took the bucket and beat him on the head with it till he died.
Allan's treatment of his children was peculiarly balanced. For the education of Lucy's son he provided by sending him to school at Phila- delphia, which seems to have been considered sufficient, for the boy was not mentioned in Allan's will. Sally's children, his Indian daughters, he sent to school at Trenton, N. J., and as an offset to that he robbed them of all their property. By deed dated July 15, 1791, the sachems of the Senecas had given to Mary and Chloe a tract of land four miles square in the vicinity of the present Mt. Morris, stating in the instru- ment that this was done on account of their love and affection for the girls, whom they considered as children and members of the Seneca nation and, as such, entitled to this portion of land. Two years later Allan took this deed, the making of which was unquestionably his own idea, down to Philadelphia and sold the whole 10,240 acres to Robert Morris for merchandise. When the treaty of Big Tree was about to be signed, in 1797, one of the girls endeavored to prevent the alienation of her land, or, if it could not be included in the reservations that were to be excepted from the transfer, to obtain some compensation for it from Thomas Morris, who conducted the purchase. Both efforts were futile, Morris taking the position that his father had bought the land once and was now paying for it again to the Indians, that he would not buy it a third time and that he should keep it. But both of the Morrises knew perfectly well that they could acquire no just title, no real right, to that land unless they bought it from the real owners, who were Allan's In- dian daughters, and whose father had no legal authority to sell it, either by the terms of the deed to them, which is on record at the county clerk's office at Canandaigua, or by any other known document. No deed from Allan to Morris was ever recorded. The treaty commis- sioners were appealed to, but they decided against the girls, who got nothing then nor on their father's death, long afterward, as he made no testamentary bequest to them,
8
58
LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.
When Allen moved to Canada, a few years later, he took only two of his wives with him, leaving Sally behind, who followed him, weeping, for some distance, till he peremptorily ordered her to go the other way, whereupon she turned and saw him no more. Millie he tried to dispose of in a more conclusive manner, for he hired two men to drown her, and they ran the boat over what was then the upper fall, near the pres- ent aqueduct, but Millie swam ashore and accompanied Allan and Lucy to Canada. There the whole white portion of the family settled at Delawaretown, without any recorded disapproval on the part of the neighbors, unless, indeed, the frequent prosecutions to which Allan was afterward subjected, on charges of which he was invariably acquitted, may be taken as an indirect form of criticism of his general conduct. Governor Simcoe gave him three thousand acres of public land in con- sideration of his building a church, a saw-mill and a grist mill, the mills to be his own property. On that estate he lived till 1814, when he died, compensating Millie for his attempt to murder her by bequeath- ing all his worldly possessions to her and her six children, while he left his other white wife, Lucy, penniless, to rejoin her kindred on the Ohio river. In rehearsing the life of this powerful criminal, who always lived outside the law, the story of his misdeeds may sound like a romance, but, without regard to the legends that cluster around his name, all the incidents above set down are well attested and most of them are alluded to in the narrative, told by herself and written by another, of Mary Jemison, "the white woman of the Genesee."
This remarkable person deserves more than a passing mention. Hav. ing been born on the ocean in 1742 or 1743, while her parents were migrating to this country, she lived, for most of her childhood, at a frontier settlement in Pennsylvania. When she was twelve years old the house was surrounded one day by French and Indians, and all the occupants were killed or carried off, except the two elder brothers of Mary Jemison, who escaped. All the rest of the family-father, mother, two younger brothers and sister-were murdered by the sav- ages on the second day of the flight, and the little child had to witness the cleaning and dressing of the scalps of those who were dear to her. Mary was taken to a small Seneca town on the Ohio river, where she was formally adopted into the tribe, receiving the name Deh-he-wa-
59
CONNECTING LINKS.
mis, or, more correctly, Deh-ge wa-nus-meaning " the two falling voices." On reaching maturity she was married to Sheninjee, a Dela- ware, whom she always alluded to in terms of deep affection and by whom she had two children, the last a boy, whom she called after her father, Thomas Jemison. A little later they all moved to the Genesee country, and there Mary, after the death of Sheninjee, married again, this time a Seneca chief, named Hiokatoo. He was a man noted for his cruelty, which was his ruling passion even in boyhood, when he used to torture the prisoners to the limit of their endurance, and never, as he boasted in later life, did he know what it was to feel pity over the sufferings of his victims or remorse over the torments that he inflicted. In 1782, when the Revolutionary war had closed, though the treaty of peace was not signed, he was engaged with a party of savages that laid waste the hamlets on the Pennsylvania frontier and that, having taken prisoner Colonel Crawford, one of Washington's most intimate friends, scorched him slowly to death. Mary, in her narrative, makes no at- tempt to palliate the demoniac deeds of this monster, whose hands were always reeking with the blood of her own race and who had probably killed more infants than any other man in America, but she turns from that recital to dwell upon his attitude toward her, for she says that dur- ing the nearly fifty years that she lived with him he treated her uniformly with tenderness and with all the kindness and attention that were due to her as his wife.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.