Floral Instruction

This article documents the history of Rochester, New York part of present day New York State. more...

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Early Settlement

Following the American Revolution, western New York was opened up for development as soon as New York and Massachusetts compromised and settled their competing claims for the area in December 1786 by the Treaty of Hartford. The compromise was that, while New York would have sovereignty over the land, Massachusetts would have pre-emptive rights to obtain title from the Native Americans.

On April 1, 1788, after extensive machinations by various speculators, Massachusetts' pre-emptive right over all western New York Lands — comprising some 6,000,000 acres (24,000 km²) — was sold to Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, both of Massachusetts. The sales price was $1,000,000, payable in three equal annual installments of certain Massachusetts securities then worth about 20 cents on the dollar. The right sold applied to all land west of a line running from the mouth of Sodus Bay on Lake Ontario, due south through Seneca Lake, to the 82nd milestone on the Pennsylvania border near Big Flats (the "Pre-emption Line"), and all the way to the Niagara River and Lake Erie (the "Phelps and Gorham Purchase"). In order to obtain title to such land, Phelps and Gorham would have to extinguish all Native American titles. Due to a failure to extinguish the Native American titles as well as a default in the 1790 payment, the pre-emptive rights to remaining lands of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase west of the Genesee River, comprising some 3,750,000 acres (15,000 km²), reverted back to Massachusetts. The state then re-sold those rights to Robert Morris in 1791 for $333,333.33. In 1792 and 1793, Morris then sold most of the lands west of the Genesee to the Holland Land Company, but he did not extinguish Native American title to the land until the Treaty of Big Tree in September, 1797. Morris reserved for himself a 500,000 acre (2,000 km²) strip approximately 12 miles wide and extending from Lake Ontario to the Pennsylvania border along the eastern edge of the Holland Purchase, known as the Morris Reserve. At the north end of the Reserve, an 87,000 acre (350 km²) triangular shaped tract ("The Triangle Tract") was sold by Morris to Herman Leroy, William Bayard and John McEvers, while a 100,000 tract due west of the Triangle Tract was sold to the state of Connecticut. Additional Phelps and Gorham lands east of the Genesee River which had not previously been sold were acquired by Robert Morris in 1791, who re-sold them to the The Pulteney Association, a syndicate of British investors.

Shortly after concluding the purchase, Phelps and Gorham gave a 100 acre (0.4 km²) lot within the Mill Yard Tract at the Upper Falls of the Genesee to Ebenezer "Indian" Allen, on condition he build a grist mill and sawmill there by summer 1789 (the "100 Acre Tract"). In exchange for the 100 Acre Tract, Allen built the agreed-upon mills at the west end of the Upper Falls of the Genesee. But the location was so deep in the wilderness that there were only 14 men in the area to assist in the mill's construction. The area was a dense forest and swamp, and infested with rattlesnakes and mosquitoes that spread 'Swamp Fever' or what we now call malaria.

Read more at Wikipedia.org