Today, we call it the Genesee Valley. To Sullivan’s soldiers, the broad plain surrounding the great Seneca town of Chenussio was the Genesee Flatts, a beautiful vista that remained etched in memory long after the campaign ended. Soon, very soon, to American pioneers scanning maps of the western frontier, the entire region would come to be known simply as the Genesee Country.

Before that, however, there was the Sullivan Expedition. It entered the Genesee Valley as a military campaign. It left behind something far more enduring. More than 4,000 soldiers carried home eyewitness accounts of a fertile country few Americans had ever seen.

Shortly after noon on Tuesday, September 14^th, 1779, Lieutenant Erkuries Beatty and his fellow soldiers had finished destroying a “great abundance” of corn and beans.¹ He—and the men with him—were about to behold a sight unlike anything they had seen before. For a Continue Reading “Sullivan’s Soldiers Discover The Genesee Valley”