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 14th, 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”
Competing Dreams of the Genesee—Part II: Phelps And Gorham Play By The Rules
Oliver Phelps came into this world on October 21, 1749 near Poquonock, Hartford County of the Connecticut Colony.21 The seventeenth child of Thomas Phelps, Oliver’s father died only three months after his birth, leaving his family destitute. At the young age of seven, Oliver got his first job working at a store in Suffield. Despite his employment, he was able to attain a modest education. By the time he was twenty-one, he had relocated to Granville, Massachusetts, “where he established a prosperous mercantile business and became recognized as one of the leading citizens.”22
An ardent patriot from the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Phelps was there at Lexington. With his business experience, and not because of any family wealth or ties, he was appointed to the commissary department, where he served until the end of the war.23
Livingston came from one of New York’s most prominent families. Phelps, on the other hand, rose from far humbler beginnings through trade, logistics, and business. While he may have Continue Reading “Competing Dreams of the Genesee—Part II: Phelps And Gorham Play By The Rules”