By the eve of the Revolutionary War, with the French out of the way, Great Britain held dominant power in eastern North America—especially our region.

Or so it would appear.

Greater Western New York had been claimed many times before it was ever governed. European powers declared it theirs, and when Britain removed its rivals, the claims didn’t disappear—they multiplied. Now they came from within, as competing colonial charters layered atop one another. At one point, no fewer than five colonies claimed the region.

Yet, not one ever truly governed it.

Authority did not collapse at the forest’s edge. It contradicted itself at the source.

Long before a single settler felled a tree in Western New York, the kings of England were Continue Reading “A Royal Mess Of Competing Colonial Charters”