Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 8).djvu/48

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42

Early Western Travels

[Vol. 8

some villages, such as Utica, Bloomfield, Canandaigua,^[1] Batavia, &c., came to Buffalo, ^[2] at the foot of Lake Erie, where we met the gentleman waiting to receive his family, which he was going to put on board of a vessel and go up the lake. But preferring myself to go by land, I crossed the Niagara river into Canada; it being but three hundred miles to Detroit on that shore, while it is four hundred on the United States shore, and a much worse road. I went to a friend's house, formerly from Concord, who lived about nine miles from this place. This friend wishing to go on the journey with me, we began to make preparations; however, as I was a stranger in that country, he

↑ Old Fort Schuyler was erected upon the present site of Utica during the French and Indian War (1758), for the defense of the frontier, but was not maintained after the Treaty of Paris. The village was first settled in 1787-88, its importance dating from the construction of the Genesee or State Road. It obtained a city charter in 1832.
The site of Canandaigua, at the foot of Canandaigua Lake, was selected by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham for the principal town of their purchase; they and a company of associates having bought from Massachusetts (1788) her pre-emption rights to land in New York—namely, to all territory west of a line drawn through Seneca Lake. The village was surveyed and opened for settlement in 1789, and the following year contained eighteen families and a hundred other persons.
Bloomfield, the location of an old Seneca village, is nine miles northwest of Canandaigua, and was surveyed and settled at the same time, chiefly by emigrants from Sheffield, Mass.—Ed.
↑ Batavia bore the same relation to the Holland Purchase that Canandaigua bore to that of Phelps and Gorham. These proprietors extinguished the Indian title to their land only as far, approximately, as the Genesee River. Being unable to pay for the remainder, they returned it to Massachusetts (March, 1791), which, two days later, resold it to Robert Morris. He, in turn, sold to a company of associates in Amsterdam (1793), and the tract became known as the Holland Purchase. The Holland Company marked off a village and opened a land office (October, 1800) at Batavia, in an unsettled wilderness fifty miles west of Canandaigua. Two years later they surveyed and placed upon the market a second village, called by them New Amsterdam, and located at the mouth of Buffalo Creek. This stream being well known on the frontier, the name was transferred to the settlement, and "New Amsterdam" never came into general use. Buffalo received a charter in 1813. See Turner, History of the Holland Purchase (Buffalo, 1850).—Ed.

[1] Old Fort Schuyler was erected upon the present site of Utica during the French and Indian War (1758), for the defense of the frontier, but was not maintained after the Treaty of Paris. The village was first settled in 1787-88, its importance dating from the construction of the Genesee or State Road. It obtained a city charter in 1832.
The site of Canandaigua, at the foot of Canandaigua Lake, was selected by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham for the principal town of their purchase; they and a company of associates having bought from Massachusetts (1788) her pre-emption rights to land in New York—namely, to all territory west of a line drawn through Seneca Lake. The village was surveyed and opened for settlement in 1789, and the following year contained eighteen families and a hundred other persons.
Bloomfield, the location of an old Seneca village, is nine miles northwest of Canandaigua, and was surveyed and settled at the same time, chiefly by emigrants from Sheffield, Mass.—Ed.

[2] Batavia bore the same relation to the Holland Purchase that Canandaigua bore to that of Phelps and Gorham. These proprietors extinguished the Indian title to their land only as far, approximately, as the Genesee River. Being unable to pay for the remainder, they returned it to Massachusetts (March, 1791), which, two days later, resold it to Robert Morris. He, in turn, sold to a company of associates in Amsterdam (1793), and the tract became known as the Holland Purchase. The Holland Company marked off a village and opened a land office (October, 1800) at Batavia, in an unsettled wilderness fifty miles west of Canandaigua. Two years later they surveyed and placed upon the market a second village, called by them New Amsterdam, and located at the mouth of Buffalo Creek. This stream being well known on the frontier, the name was transferred to the settlement, and "New Amsterdam" never came into general use. Buffalo received a charter in 1813. See Turner, History of the Holland Purchase (Buffalo, 1850).—Ed.

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