Lafayette’s Farewell Tour: The State Of Greater Western New York In 1825

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WNY portion of 1825 map published by H.S. Tanner, 177 Chestnut St. Philadelphia.

Remember how excited you were when you began a new school year, started a new job, or moved to a new place? Life fills you with promise and anticipation. You can’t wait to wake up and start the next day. Everything is sunshine and roses.

Then reality inevitably interrupts. Things get overwhelming. Despair and sometimes desperation set in. It seems as if you’re trapped. You can’t see a way out.

But, somehow, you find a way. You get over that hump. (Because, when you get over things, what once seemed like an overbearing mountain now appears as nothing more than a mere bothersome bump.)

Again, you look forward to tomorrow with an enthusiasm you thought you’d never again have.

Such was the state of Greater Western New York. It began as an enthusiastic rush into the undiscovered Genesee Country a few years after the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783. Then a new war reared its brutal head. Its aftermath, thanks to Mother Nature, left the survivors barely able to continue.

Thankfully, all bad things come to an end. By the beginning of 1825, the prospect of tomorrow elated the growing population of Greater Western New York. Like the rest of the country, Western New York felt that same Era of Good Feelings.

A blossoming confidence spread like wildfire. Gone was the uncertainty of war, the poverty of economic depression, the fear of an unrelenting nature. The pioneers of America’s First Frontier outlasted the worst, and they were ready to succeed.

And celebrate.

Lafayette’s arrival would coincide with the opening of the Erie Canal. Celebration and success were right around the corner.

And the people were ready.

Perhaps population growth represents the best way to demonstrate this roller-coaster affair. Before people could settle the land, governments had to agree who owned the land. Was it the Seneca Nation or The United States of America? Was it New York or Massachusetts? Or was it the British?

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The story of the Greater Western New York Region begins in earnest on December 16, 1786, with the signing of the Treaty of Hartford. On that date, New York and Massachusetts settled their competing claims for the land west of what would henceforth be known as “Preemption Line.”

But the negotiations didn’t stop there. All the Treaty of Hartford did was confirm New York State had the political jurisdiction over the land, while Massachusetts kept the economic rights. That being said, paying Massachusetts only gave developers (in this case, Phelps and Gorham) the right to buy the land from the Iroquois Confederacy. In other words, you couldn’t buy the land from the Confederacy without first paying Massachusetts. Before Phelps and Gorham could sit down with the Confederacy, however, two groups formed to jump ahead of the legitimate developers. They sought to exploit a loophole in the Treaty of Hartford.

The New York Genesee Land Company was comprised of wealthy New Yorkers (“mostly residing on the Hudson River”¹ and primarily from Columbia County²). Its counterpart, the Niagara Genesee Land Company, consisted of British and allied confederates who fled to Canada following the Revolutionary War. In November 1787, they met with the Six Nations and obtained a lease of 999 years.³

There was no doubt the lease was illegal. Still, this didn’t stop these two companies from selling land. New York passed legislation voiding all these sales, but Phelps had to negotiate with the so-called “Lessees.” Phelps and Gorham rewarded them with townships “for services rendered in facilitating the arrangement between the latter [Phelps and Gorham] and the Indians respecting the purchase of the right of soil in the land from which the pre-emptive right had been bought from Massachusetts.”⁴

By 1789, settlers began to trickle into the new Ontario County, which included all the land west of the Preemption Line. Only a year later, according to the 1790 U.S. Census, Ontario County contained 205 families and 1,081 people.⁵ By 1800, the combined population of the towns of Geneva and Canandaigua was more than twice that figure.⁶

Despite this apparent gusto, settling the Greater Western New York Region came with a healthy dose of uncertainty. Remember those Lessees? They didn’t give up. In November 1793, officials discovered disturbing circulars.⁷ These flyers referenced a convention held in Geneva that urged people to hold town meetings for purpose of creating a new state from the counties of Otsego, Tioga, Herkimer, and Ontario.⁸

This might seem frivolous today, but in 1793, New York State took this challenge of secession quite seriously. The state had just officially lost its northeastern colonies in 1790 to the independent state of Vermont. Such was the hatred of New Yorkers that Vermont secretly negotiated to return as a British Colony.⁹ Perhaps the fact that the notorious British Colonel John Butler headed up the Niagara Genesee Land Company suggested the British, and the Iroquois displaced to Canada hadn’t quite given up on reacquiring the Greater Western New York Region.¹⁰

Complicating matters further, Connecticut refused to abide by a 1733 colonial era agreement and again laid claim to a narrow strip of land along New York’s southern tier. The Constitution State didn’t live up to its nickname and unilaterally decided to establish settlements in New York in the late 1790s. Remember, this aggressive behavior led to several short “wars” between Connecticut and Pennsylvania both immediately before and immediately after the Revolutionary War. The situation with New York, however, ended peacefully when the Federal government reached an agreement with Connecticut in 1800.¹¹

The War of 1812 confirmed those fears of British incursion, (the Seneca sided with the Americans). The situation produced different reactions among Western New Yorkers. Some joined the militia. Others fled east. Joseph Ellicott sought to address concerns of settlers, saying the “lines were well guarded and the country safe from invasion.”¹²

That didn’t quite turn out to be true. Following the Americans burning Newark (today it’s called Niagara-on-the-Lake), the British and their Indian allies crossed the border to burn Lewiston and Buffalo. Rumors plagued Western New York settlers. Aaron Miller of Byron remembered one such scare. “A neighbor who came from Batavia brought home the report that 1,500 Indians were at Black Rock, and would come down through here to butcher us all.” The report turned out not to be true.¹³

In his 1846 book, Judge E.F. Warren described the scene of the extreme western portion of our region thusly:

“At this period, the frontier presented a scene of desolation rarely witnessed. The inhabitants who had escaped the tomahawk, fled into the interior, in the depth of winter, without shelter or means of support, and subsisted on the charity of their friends. The panic was general, and pervaded this county, though in a degree somewhat less than in the section of country in the immediate vicinity of the point of attack. The only buildings remaining in Buffalo were the jail, which was built of stone, a small framed house, and an armorer’s shop. All the houses and almost every building between Buffalo and Niagara Falls were destroyed, as were also many of those on the Batavia road, for several miles beyond Buffalo.”¹⁴

Finally, in 1815, the war with Britain was over and America could begin to relax. Not so much for those that remained in Western New York. Called “the year without a summer,” (likely because of the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia), 1816 was an unusually cold year. Orsamus Turner described it as “Peace had but just been concluded, when the cold and untoward season of 1816, came upon them, its biting frosts upon hill and valley, destroying all their hopes of sustenance, creating distress and want, driving, in many instances, men to the game in the forest, the fish in the streams, and wild roots and herbs, as their only resources toward off a famine.”¹⁵

For the Greater Western New York Region, the War of 1812 and its immediate aftermath took its toll on the population growth of the western counties (although the eastern counties saw some growth).¹⁶

But the best was yet to come. By 1825, Western New Yorkers had much to look forward to. For one thing, the Erie Canal would open later that year. Emigration was picking up, but the Canal would open the floodgates.

The census of 1830 had Rochester as the twenty-first largest city in America (and bigger than Buffalo). Ten years later, in 1840, the city on the Genesee had grown to rank 15^th among cities,¹⁷ still bigger than Buffalo. The Queen City would finally pass the Flour City in the 1850 Census.¹⁸

The state of the Greater Western New York Region was one of growing exuberance heading into 1825. Add to that the knowledge that The Nation’s Guest—General Lafayette—was soon to arrive only raised the level of excitement to puffing patriotic pride.

Next Week: The Making Of The Buffalo And Erie Road

¹ Turner, Orsamus, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps & Gorham’s Purchase, and Morris’ Reserve, William Alling, Publisher, Rochester, 1852, p.106
² O’Reilly, Henry, Settlement in the West. Sketch of Rochester with Incidental Notices of Western New York, William Alling, Publisher, Rochester, 1838, p.128
³ Turner, p.107
⁴ O’Reilly, p.127
⁵ McIntosh, W.H., History of Ontario County, New York, Everts, Ensign & Everts, Philadelphia, 1876, p. 37
⁶ Hough, Franklin B., Census of the State of New York for 1865, Charles Van Benthuysen & Sons, Albany, 1867
⁷ Turner, p.109
⁸ Turner, p.110
⁹ History of Niagara County, N.Y., Sandford & Co., New York, p.41
¹⁰ Ibid, p.88
¹¹ Hotchkin, James H. A history of the purchase and settlement of western New York: and of the rise, progress and present state of the Presbyterian Church in that section. New York: M.W. Dodd, 1848. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress April 24, 2024, <www.loc.gov/item/a40001696/>. p 4
¹² Johnson, Crisfield, History of Erie County, Printing House of Matthews & Warren, Buffalo, NY, 1876, p.207
¹³ Beers, F.W., Gazetteer and Biographical Record of Genesee County, J.W. Vose & Co., Publishers, Syracuse, NY, June 1890, p.396
¹⁴ Warren, Emory F., Historical Sketches of Chautauque County, J. Warren Fletcher, Jamestown, NY, 1846 p.60
¹⁵ Turner, p.456
¹⁶ Census Of the State Of New York, For 1865, New York State Library, retrieved November 12, 2023, https://nysl.ptfs.com/#!/s?a=c&q=*&type=16&criteria=field11%3D4750890&b=0
¹⁷ O’Reilly, p.24
¹⁸ Gibson, Campbell, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places In The United States: 1790 to 1990,” U.S. Census Bureau, June 1998, retrieved April 17, 2024, https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/1998/demo/POP-twps0027.html