USA > Vermont > Vermont in quandary, 1763-1825 > Part 2
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By the 18th century, however, the proprietors were more often land speculators than settlers. These speculator-proprietorships originated in the desire of seaboard merchants to invest some of
1. Jones, Matt B., Vermont in the Making, 1750-1777 ( Cambridge, 1939).
2. Sce Akagi, Roy H., The Town Proprietors of the New England Colonics ( Philadel- phia, 1924); Woodard, Florence M., The Town Proprietors in Vermont ( New York, 1936 ).
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their capital which was not needed in commercial activities. More- over, these merchants were discouraged by the British from en- tering manufacturing. As a result, these monies found a source of profitable investment in frontier lands after 1700, or thereabouts. Henceforth, more land was granted in the New England colonies to speculator-proprietors than to actual settlers. These specu- lators were able to control the Proprietors' Meetings and also sell the land for profit. The emergence of land-speculators resulted in numerous conflicts between them and settlers over the price of land, the building and maintenance of public improvements, the use and disposal of common lands and the granting to settlers of the right to vote in the Proprietors' Meeting.3
It is now known that the opposition to New York's claims to lands which had been granted by New Hampshire came chiefly from Yankee speculator-proprietors.4 They were largely responsi- ble for continuing the opposition to New York's claims by appeal- ing to Great Britain. When appeal failed, they resorted to intimi- dation and violence and when this failed, they decided to estab- lish a government for the New Hampshire Grants, independent of the government of New York, which would validate their titles.
The New York merchants, like those of New England, invested some of their surplus capital in frontier lands; but they were ac- customed to a land system which differed radically from that of New England. In New York the manorial system was firmly en- trenched; in New England the freehold system prevailed.5 The New York settler was likely to rent land instead of buying it. The manors of the Phillipses, Van Cortlandts and the Livingstons were regarded by some as model social systems. Governor Tryon once commended the manorial relationship between landlord and tenant because it "creates subordination and counterpoises, in some measure, the general levelling spirit .... "6
The manorial system, however, was not extended by New York to the New Hampshire Grants, after New York reasserted its claim to the land west of the upper Connecticut River. In recog-
3. Akagi, op. cit., 50-174; Woodard, op. cit., 150.
4. Jones, op. cit., 20-66.
5. Mark, Irving, Agrarian Conflicts in Colonial New York, 1711-1775 (New York, 1940), 13.
6. Ibid., 62.
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nition of the attachment of Yankees to their institutions, New York employed the New England town system, but turned over the proprietorship of the towns to its own speculators rather than to Yankee speculators or settlers. So great was the speculation after the Seven Years' War that Jolin Watts, a well-informed observer in New York, declared that land speculators "were mak- ing Hay abundantly while the Sun shines, they have the whole game in their hands."7 Public and private interests in land specu- lation were as widespread in New York as they were in New Hampshire. In either province grants of land made by the royal governor could be secured almost for the asking; provincial lawyers amassed fees from the patenting of land; and the province of New York, in particular, increased its revenues by the collection of the annual feudal dues known as quitrents.
The sole difference between the two groups of land speculators lay in New York's successfully claiming title to the lands in dis- pute. The Yorkers asserted that the clause in their Royal Charter of 1664, which granted "all the land from the West side of Con- necticut to the East side of Delaware Bay .... ", established New York's eastern boundary along the west bank of the Connecticut River. The New Hampshire grantees countered by maintaining that the "West side of Connecticut" referred to the western boun- dary of that colony. When, in 1731, New York accepted a line drawn twenty miles east of the Hudson as the boundary between New York and Connecticut, additional color was seemingly given to the claim that the boundary between New Hampshire and New York should be a northward extension of this line. This con- tention, of course, the Yorkers rejected. They maintained that the establishment of the twenty mile line as the Connecticut-New York boundary and its acceptance in 1773 as the boundary be- tween Massachusetts and New York did not prejudice their rights to the Connecticut River as the boundary between their colony and Wentworth's province.8
The Yorkers should have clinched their arguments by quoting from the confirmatory charter granted in 1674, following the
7. N. Y. H. S., Collections, Letter Book of John Watts, LXI, 146.
8. The 1664 charter is printed in Macdonald, W. (ed.), Documentary Source Book of American History, 1606-1913 (New York, 1916), 75-76.
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restoration of the province to the English by the Dutch. This charter, so often over-looked, gave to New York "all the land [s] from the west side of Conecticutt River to the east side of Dela- ware Bay .... "9 The discrepancy between the two charters gave rise to the greatest confusion; it was worse confounded by the British government's neglect to make an authoritative and un- equivocal statement as to the real meaning of the troublesome clause in the 1664 charter and its reasons for changing the word- ing in the second charter. Possibly, the government at this time was not aware of the discrepancy.
As early as 1753, the Governor of New York issued a warning to the New Hampshire grantees that their titles were invalid; but not until after the French and Indian War did New York vigor- ously press its claims to these lands. Probably New York did not act earlier because these lands were menaced by the French and their Indian allies. Soon after the close of the French and Indian War, New York requested the British government to prohibit the Governor of New Hampshire from granting lands within the prov- ince of New York. New York officials must have agreed with John Watts when he said: "'tis high time all the lines were settled, or this little crowded Colony will be tore to pieces."10
On July 20, 1764, the Privy Council in rather ambiguous lan- guage declared the west bank of the Connecticut River "to be" the boundary between New York and New Hampshire.11 Although the Privy Council settled the dispute on the basis of the wording of New York's Royal Charter, it advanced additional reasons for its decision, declaring that the upper Connecticut River provided a natural boundary between the two provinces, that the Grants had better facilities for trade with New York than with New Hampshire and that the quitrents collected by New York would refresh the revenues of the Crown. The future showed that the first two reasons were debatable because the inhabitants of the Connecticut Valley never considered the river a natural boun- dary, nor did they consider that New York offered better facilities for trade and communication than New Hampshire.
9. The Colonial Laws of New York ( Albany, 1894), 5 vols., III, 1641.
10. Letter Book of John Watts, 147.
11. Jones, op. cit., 71.
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The decision of the Privy Council was received with gratifica- tion by New York land speculators, but with apprehension by their counterparts in New England. If this decision had declared merely that the Grants were transferred from the jurisdiction of New Hampshire to that of New York, the speculators in New Hampshire titles would have had little to fear. But, unhappily for them, the wording of the decision provided New York with the opportunity to state that the lands in dispute had been under the jurisdiction of New York since 1664 and, hence, that titles derived from New Hampshire were illegal. This decision, Yorkers stoutly maintained, invalidated all the titles to lands granted by New Hampshire between 1749 and 1764. From this moment land specu- lators who claimed grants under New Hampshire title began their long struggle against New York over these lands. To get a grant from New York or to secure New York's confirmation of a New Hampshire title would entail the payment of lawyers' fees, ex- penses which appalled speculators who had little or no cash. Settlers who had small acreages under New Hampshire title were able to pay the expenses of confirmation; but these expenses were forbiddingly large for speculators holding thousands of acres in which most or all of their capital was invested. Nevertheless, sixty confirmatory patents were voted by New York of which nineteen were actually patented.12
One might reasonably expect that the Yorkers, having so re- cently exposed to their satisfaction the illegality of the Went- worth grants, would have embarked in a lawful manner upon the granting or re-granting of lands in the area comprised within the New Hampshire Grants. But they showed no more disposi- tion than had Yankees to obey royal instructions. In flagrant dis- regard of the King's wishes, the Governors of New York, their Councils and their personal friends belonging to the landed, com- mercial and professional classes rushed to secure as large grants of land as their purses and influence would permit. When ex- Governor Tryon left the province in 1783, his deeds for land were left for safekeeping in the hands of his friend, Goldsbrow Banyar, one-time Deputy-Secretary of New York. Tryon held title to 15,000
12. Jones, op. cit., 110-111, and Appendices.
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acres in Norbury, granted in 1772 to Edward Fanning and asso- ciates "as Trustees for him (he himself being then Governor ) and by them reconveyed to him."13 The land-holdings of John Tabor Kemp, one-time Attorney-General of the province, consisted of 26,- 000 acres in Princetown, 4000 in Camden, 360 in Brattleborough, 5947 in Kempton, 1000 in Kent, 4000 in Fincastle, 6000 in Meath and 50 acres and four lots in New Brook.14 Even more extensive were the holdings of William Smith, a leading lawyer in the prov- ince, a member of the Livingston faction and the Governor's Council who until his death exerted great influence upon the his- tory of the New Hampshire Grants. These grants violated the royal instructions which limited to 1500 acres the amount of land to be granted to one individual.
Rumors of land-jobbing in New York which reached the British government, caused Lord Hillsborough, Secretary of State for the Colonies, in June of 1771, to order the Governor's Council to obey royal instructions. This order "gave much Dissatisfaction to the Council," according to William Smith.15 Three years later Smith reported that Lieutenant-Governor Cadwallader Colden remained "perfectly indifferent to the Smiles and Frowns of the King."16 Despite Hillsborough's disapproval of the "use of devices by which persons get more land than [that which] they are entitled to by law," New York granted to speculators lands in the New Hampshire Grants.17
The flagrant violations of the royal instructions by Yorkers had meanwhile provided an opportunity for Yankees holding New Hampshire grants to obtain in London a more sympathetic view of their plight. In 1767 a group of Yankee speculators, who re- fused to accept as final the Privy Council decision of 1764, dis- patched one of their number, Samuel Robinson, to England in order to secure confirmation of their titles by some less expensive means than that which had been proposed by New York. In Lon- don, he secured the aid of Connecticut's agent, William Samuel Johnson, who in turn enlisted the help of Lord Shelburne, then
13. N. Y. P. L .. Transcripts of Loyalist Claims, 59 vols., XLIII, 128. 14. Ibid., XLVI, 46. 42-48, 103, 227, 248-249.
15. N. Y. P. L., William Smith Diary, Aug. 4, 1771. 16. Ibid., July 20, 1774.
17. V. H. S., Jones Photostats, Hillsborough to Tryon, Dec. 4, 1771.
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Secretary of State for the Colonies, and also that of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Shelburne, hearing only the New England version of the land dispute, developed strong sym- pathies for the grantees under New Hampshire. Equally sympa- thetic was the S.P.G., whose interests were involved because Wentworth, from piety or design, had set aside land in each town for its benefit. Such a gift was no doubt highly pleasing, because the Society sought to increase its influence in New England where the rank and file of Yankees were opposed to the Anglican Church.18
Shortly thereafter, the S. P. G. presented a petition to the Board of Trade which described the advantages which would accrue to the Anglican Church by the confirmation of the New Hampshire titles. The Society did not choose to champion the legal right of New Hampshire to this land. Instead, the petition pointedly re- ferred to the omission of like grants to the S.P.G. by New York. The Board of Trade responded by advising the Privy Council that "we think it will be highly necessary and expedient, that the most posi- tive Orders should be immediately sent to His Majesty's Governor of New York to desist from making any grant whatever of any part of those lands, until His Majesty's further pleasure shall be known."19
In conformity with this advice, the Privy Council on July 24, 1767, forbade New York to grant lands which would conflict with those already granted by New Hampshire, until "the King's pleas- ure shall be known."20 In defiance of this order, New York con- tinued the granting of land, thereby increasing the confusion already existing in land titles.
Although William Smith was as deeply involved as any in land speculation, he opposed future violations of the royal instructions. He adopted this attitude perhaps because he had already secured grants totalling approximately 100,000 acres. His attitude did not prevent him from petitioning in the spring of 1771 for a grant in the vicinity of Royalton, justifying his action by saying to Gov- ernor Dunmore "frankly that I did not desire the grant til the
18. Ibid., William S. Johnson to Agar Tomlinson, Sept. 12, 1767.
19. Jones Photostats, Report of the Board of Trade, June 2, 1767.
20. Also to be found in Jones Photostats.
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instructions would admit of it. And that I only meant to secure a preference when they would admit of a Patent's issuing."21 So disobedient was the Governor's Council that in 1772 the British Government ordered the Governor of New York to desist from the confirmation of any more New Hampshire titles. Lord Hills- borough followed these instructions with a letter which was read in the Council on June 15, 1772. In it he gave an emphatic order to Tryon to obey them "without any respect to prudential consid- erations." 22
Thus by 1772, a situation unsatisfactory to Yankees had been reached because New York's title to the land had not been suc- cessfully challenged. The situation was unsatisfactory to Yorkers because the Privy Council decision of 1767 and the royal instruc- tions of 1772 prevented New York from taking full advantage of the Privy Council decision of 1764. The impasse between New York and New Hampshire grantees was broken only when the Yankee speculators forged an alliance with the actual settlers in the Grants in common hostility to New York.
The opposition to New York had been aroused initially by Yankee speculators, but by the time of the Revolution, the settlers had become a major source of opposition. In 1762, only about seventy families in a dozen towns had settled east of the Green Mountains and only about fifty families had settled in the region around Bennington in the Southwest.23 By 1771, 4669 persons were reported living within the confines of the Grants and by 1776 the number had risen to approximately 20,000.24
Yet the primary interests of settlers and speculators were dis- tinct and separate. The latter were primarily interested in vali- dating their New Hampshire titles and this was the chief cause for their hostility to New York.
The settlers' hostility arose from grievances only indirectly asso- ciated with the land title dispute. The grievances of the actual settler, whether on geographic, cultural, political, economic or
21. Smith Diary. June 7, 1771.
22. Ibid., June 15, 1772.
23. Jones Photostats, John Tabor Kemp Report to Governor Dunmore, March 17, 1771, Appendix No. 31.
24. Greene, Evarts B., Harrington, V. D., The American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York, 1932), 86.
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religious grounds, proved increasingly weighty handicaps to New York's assertion of governmental authority over the people in the Grants. "You always flatter yourselves with the New England mens turning good and faithful subjects," wrote the Yorker, John Monroe, to a friend in New York, "but beleeve its my sollit opinion if you was to bestow all your lands upon them without any fee or reward they will never be faithful to this Government for they are all possessed of a spirit of contradiction, their so full of venom and spite against the Government and all its authority that tho they are forced yet the sting remains. They talk so smooth and hensom yet the devil lies at the bottom." 25
Geography played an unspectacular but nonetheless effective role in causing eventually the separation of the Grants from New York. Only the Southwest was tied commercially to New York, the Connecticut Valley was tied commercially to New England, and the Champlain Valley to the Province of Quebec. Governor Colden must have been misinformed when he wrote that one advantage of the Grants' remaining in New York would be that the trade would gravitate naturally to New York.26 Although John Tabor Kemp recognized that the market for the northern parts of the Grants would lie in Quebec, "from its easy Com- munication by water," and that the market for the middle and southern parts would lie in the towns of the Hudson Valley and the valley of the Connecticut, he said, "in general it may be con- ceived that the greatest Quantity [of trade] will pass down Hud- son's River from the Superior Advantage of its Navigation."27 Yet geography placed the greater number of the inhabitants of the Grants at what they considered to be an inconvenient distance from the major commercial centers of New York.
Geography was also responsible in part for cultural differences between Yankees and Yorkers.28 They had been to a degree iso- lated from one another and had developed different customs and institutions. As a result, Yankees and Yorkers did not always enjoy one another's company. Lewis Morris of New York was, so
25. Wilbur Library, Wilbur Photostats, No. 3180.
26. New York Historical Society, Collections, IX, 67-68.
27. Jones Photostats, Public Record Office, C. O. 5/1102, 121-141.
28. Sce Fox, D. R., Yankees and Yorkers (New York, 1940).
به ول مجنه
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hostile to Yankees that he left instructions in his will that his son, Gouverneur, should never be sent to Connecticut for his educa- tion lest "he should imbibe in his Youth that Low Craft and Cun- ning, so Incident to the People of that Country, which is so inter- woven in their constitutions, that all their art cannot Disguise it from the World, though many of them under the Sanctified Garb of Religion have Endeavoured to Impose themselves on the World for Honest Men." 29
Yankees reciprocated with an intense dislike for New York's political and legal institutions. New York's suffrage qualifications, its refusal to sanction local government other than that of Pro- prietors' Meetings, its inequalities in Assembly representation and its swarm of debt-collecting lawyers and sheriffs were basic griev- ances in the eyes of New Englanders. Many Yorkers imperfectly perceived the significance of these grievances. Kemp wrote Dun- more on March 17, 1771, that "with respect to Government I am at a loss why this of New York should be detrimental or dis- agreeable to them, unless it arises from a Regret that this Prov- ince does not authorize like New Hampshire, Public Conventions or Town Meetings as they are called upon the Plan of the Eastern Governments, and which have been productive of so many Tumults and Disorders in some of the American Colonies, or allow of so many Elective offices." 30
It was necessary for New York to establish counties and county courts in the Grants in order to preserve law and order, and more particularly to enforce the collection of debts and to provide the means for exercising watch and ward over the interests of ab- sentee land-speculators. As a result, New York erected in what is now Vermont three counties: Cumberland County in the south- east corner in 1768, Gloucester County to the north in 1770, and Charlotte County west of the Green Mountains in 1772.31
Prior to 1772, New York did not admit representatives from these counties to the New York Assembly. Here, as in other colonies, representation and the apportionment of seats in the
29. Ibid., 214-215.
30. Jones Photostats, Kemp Report.
31. Hall, Benjamin H., History of Eastern Vermont ( Albany, 1865), 2 vols., 1, 142- 160; Jones, op. cit., 276.
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Assembly were major political issues. Yankees had always been fiercely attached, in theory, to the principle of equitable repre- sentation. If New York wished to maintain its jurisdiction and its authority in the Grants, this principle could not be ignored. The first plea for representation for the Grants was dated December 29, 1770. Nathan Stone, who lived in the Connecticut Valley, wrote William Smith that the lack of representation was esteemed "a very peculiar grievance". and that "the fatal Consequences from this Deprivation will appear so clear to Gentlemen of your Superior abilities as to need no elucidation, and I flatter myself that you will be pleased to lend your aid towards redressing the griev- ance." 32
Governor Tryon sympathized with the desire of the inhabitants to be represented in the New York Assembly. He was supported by William Smith who declared in 1772 "that the worst conse- quences would result from denying those N England settlers essential Rights, & that if a county were made and there were but 5 Free holders in it, I would vote for Representation."33 Tryon, according to Smith's diary, in urging action "upon Principles of public and general policy .... declared it to be the Right of the People, & that it would tend much to prevent & suppress Dis- orders-that when they made a County County Rights ought not to be denied, & that all objections that could be made would only be proper agt. making a County." 34
So strong was the opposition in the Council to the proposal to grant representation that not until December 23, 1772, did the Council agree to admit two representatives to the Assembly from Cumberland County. The New York Assembly, like other pro- vincial assemblies, was not representative of all Yorkers because of property qualifications for the suffrage. Yet in New York, the principle of sectional or geographical representation ( under proper safeguards) was firmly rooted. It was this principle which was extended to a part of the Grants in 1772. The Council of the Royal Province of New York, however, never granted representation to Gloucester and Charlotte Counties.
32. Jones Photostats.
33. Smith Diary. December 23, 1772.
34. Ibid., Dec. 11, 1772.
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The fears entertained by members of the Council, who resigned themselves finally to admitting these representatives from Cum- berland County, were undoubtedly exaggerated, for suffrage qualifications remained the same as for Yorkers elsewhere in the province. Furthermore, the members who were elected from the Grants, Crean Brush and Samuel Wells, were conservatives who represented Yorkers and their interests in the Grants. Brush, born in Dublin, Ireland, had served as assistant to Goldsbrow Banyar. before moving to the Grants in 1771. Although born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, Samuel Wells was a staunch defender of New York's authority. He was rewarded with an appointment as Judge of the Cumberland County Inferior Court of Common Pleas.35 Although these men might disagree with their colleagues in the Assembly on issues of a sectional character, they could be trusted to favor the speculators rather than the settlers. Thus, the settler could look forward to representation based on property qualifica- tions and to political patronage going to those who actively sup- ported New York. In these circumstances, representation was viewed as a mere mask behind which the provincial government exerted a firm hold on the Grants.
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