1790
Mar 28
Geographer, geologist,
ethnographer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft is born in Guilderland to glassmaker
Lawrence Schoolcraft and his wife Ann Barbara Rowe Schoolcraft.
Apr 20
President Washington begins a
tour of Long Island, dining with a Mr. Barre of New Utrecht.
Apr 21
Washington stops at Hempstead to
feed and water his horses, probably at Simmonson’s Inn, then continues on to
Copaigue, stopping for dinner at the Zebulon Ketchem House. He spends the night
at Squire Isaac Thompson’s home (Sagtikos Manor) in West Bay Shore.
Apr 22
Washington rests at Samuel
Green’s home in West Sayville. He continues on to Patchogue where he dines at
Hart’s Tavern, before going on to spend the night at Austin Roe’s tavern in
Setauket.
Apr 23
Washington tends to his horse at
the Smithtown tavern of the widow Blydenburgh, dines at the Huntington home of
the widow Platt and stops for the night at Daniel Young’s Cove Neck Road home
in Oyster Bay.
Apr 24
Washington breakfasts with miller
Hendrick Onderdonck at Roslyn and tours his host’s grist and paper mills. He
stops for his midday meal at Flushing and continues on to Brooklyn, where he
catches the ferry to Manhattan, ending his tour of Long Island.
Jul 3
The Commissioners of the state’s
land office meet in New York City. Governor George Clinton presides. They
review surveys of 25 Military Townships and name them, then appoint Robert
Harpur and Lewis A. Scott to draw ballots. Over the next six days, lots of 500
to 600 acres are assigned at random to the veterans of the New York Continental
Line.
Sep 8
Canal engineer Canvass White is
born at Whitestown.
Oct 7
New York and Vermont come to an
agreement on their common boundary. New York relinquishes the Vermont area for
$30,000. Cumberland and Gloucester counties, along with part of Washington
County, become part of Vermont.
State
William Wickham and his family
leave Orange County in the fall, heading for the Finger Lakes. They winter over
in Tioga Point (Athens).
** The Federal
Census shows German Flats, in Herkimer County, has 1,307, including 20
slaves. ** Former Albany mayor John
Lansing is made a state judge. ** New York has the sixth highest U. S. slave
population. ** 14-year-old Amos Eaton of
Chatham goes to live with a relative, blacksmith Russell Beebe, at Duanesburg,
learns surveying, making his own instruments. ** The state's Land Board divides the Old Military
Tract into townships, which it names, often with classical allusion. ** Judge John Dow settles
Reading Center in Schuyler County. ** The Hamilton County town of Hope is
settled. ** James Craig erects the
first paper mill in Orange County, at Craigsville. **
Benjamin Griffin's house is built, at 12 Main Street in Cooperstown. The
village now has a population of 33 whites in eight families, two slaves, seven
houses and three barns.
** The Albany
(soon Saratoga) County town of Corinth is first settled, near South Corinth, by
Washington Chapman, Jephtha Clark, Jonathan Dewel, Jeremiah Eddy and Frederick
Parkman ** Speculator William Bingham
reaches agreement with Robert Hooper and James Wilson to divide a land patent.
Bingham gets the largest share, 10,000 acres, at the future site of Chenango
Point (Binghamton). ** Albany's population reaches 3,498. ** The state has 57,606
electors. ** Reuben Bateman's Van
Rennselaer Manor farm is leased out. ** Whitestown contains six parishes, three militia
regiments, and a corps of light horse artillery, where only two families lived
five years ago.
** Cornplanter
and other Seneca chiefs meet with Washington, complaining about the Fort Stanwix
Treaty terms and unfair land deals made with New York State. ** Major Augustine Prevost and
his wife Susannah Croghan Prevost transfer their Otsego lands to Aaron Burr in
payment for legal services.
** The
approximate date Nicholas Wohleben (Wollever, Woolever, Welleven, Wolleaver)
begins building a home near Fort Herkimer in the Mohawk Valley. ** William McKown builds a
tavern at a crossroads west of
Albany (later Fuller Road and Western Avenue). ** During the summer Italian explorer Count Paolo
Andreani travels through the state and eastern Iroquois lands. ** The Beardslee family builds
a house near New Berlin.
Utica
Land agent Sir Charles Gould
begins selling properties in the Cosby land grant (later site of Utica) to
settlers, continues selling through 1794. **
John Post, his wife and family sail - to the Cosby grant - up the Mohawk
River from Schenectady to set up a fur-trading post.
New Jersey
Burlington judge William Cooper
moves his family to his new settlement of
Cooperstown, New York, in the
fall, where they occupy the uncompleted Manor House. Unhappy with existing,
inaccurate boundaries on lands he owns in the region he begins a two-year
campaign to have them redrawn, afterwards compensating his tenants for
overcharges.
1791
Feb 7
Saratoga and Rensselaer counties
are taken off of Albany County. ** The Albany County town of Cambridge is annexed
by Washington County.
Feb 15
Washington County's Salem
Washington Academy is incorporated.
Feb 16
Herkimer, Tioga and Otsego (with
its seat at Cooperstown) counties are carved out of Montgomery County. The
future Hamilton County is included in Herkimer. The Broome County town of Union
is formed.
March
Shaker church builder Moses
Johnson, aided by John Bruce, Moses
Mixer, and Stephen Markham, begins construction of a
gambrel-roofed meeting house at Watervliet, his second in the
state – the first, built here in 1784, had decayed.
Mixer, and Stephen Markham, begins construction of a
gambrel-roofed meeting house at Watervliet, his second in the
state – the first, built here in 1784, had decayed.
Mar 4
Vermont enters the Union as the
14th state. It includes land on the western side of Lake Champlain, formerly
part of New York's Clinton County.
Mar 18
The town of Troy is formed from
the Rensselaerwyck Patent. The first village charter is adopted.
April
Silvester Tiffany establishes
Lansingburgh’s American Spy weekly newspaper.
May 11
Massachusetts officially
transfers 1,185,570 acres of its Hartford Convention lands to the following tracts – Morris
Reserve, Triangular Tract, Connecticut Tract, Cragie Tract, Ogden Tract, Cottinger Tract,
40,000-acre Tract, Sterrit Tract, Church Tract, Morris Honorary Creditors’ Tract, and
the Holland Company Purchase – which includes lands in Allegany, Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Orleans, and Wyoming counties.
June
With the foundation and basic
framing of the Watervliet Shaker meeting house completed, Moses Johnson moves
on to Enfield, Connecticut, to begin his next project.
Jun 7
Utica businessman Nicholas
Dvereaux is born near Enniscorthy, Scotland, to Thomas and Catherine Corish
Devereux.
Jun 13
Jefferson and James Madison ride across Long Island’s
Suffolk County.
Jun 15
Mastic landowner and Signer
William Floyd joins Jefferson and Madison.
September
Silvester Tiffany establishes
Lansingburgh’s Tiffany’s Recorder
newspaper.
** Stephen
Bayard, General Philip Van Cortlandt, Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, and Elkanah
Watson travel out of Albany to the Finger Lakes and from Cayuga Lake to Geneva
along New York’s Seneca River.
Nov 15
Former Long Island merchant Peter
Berton, a Loyalist settler in New Brunswick, Canada, and ancestor of the
Canadian historian Pierre Berton, dies in Québec at the
age of 62.
December
Canal promoter Elkanah Watson,
backed by Philip Schuyler and writing as "A CITIZEN", reports to the
New York state legislature that a canal could be built across the state
utilizing natural waterways.
State
William Cooper is named First
Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Otsego County by the governor. ** An private company is
chartered to make waterway improvements in the state. ** All state land west of Utica is made part of the
western senate district.
** Andrew
Ellicott and Connecticut surveyor Augustus Porter begin surveying the borders
of Phelps and Gorham lands.
** Amos Eaton
begins privately studying the classics, in and around the Duanesburg,
Schenectady County, area.
** Daniel Brown
becomes the first settler in the Madison County town of Brookfield. ** The U. S. government
establishes weekly mail service between Whitestown and Canandaigua. ** Ballston assemblyman James
Gordon is elected to the second U. S. Congress, serves two terms, representing
the 10th District.
Albany
The Society for the Promotion of
Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures is established at the Albany Academy. ** The Albany Institute of History and Art is
founded.
Utica
Merchant John Post builds a store
just north of his house on Genesee Street, for selling liquor, blankets, dry
goods, ammunition, beads and trinkets.
1792
January
George Gardner and James Hill buy
Lansingburgh, New York’s Tiffany Recorder
from Silvester Tiffany, begin publishing it as the Lansingburgh
Recorder.
Jan 10
Great Tract No. 4 - 450,000 acres
of the 1787 Macomb Great Purchase of New York lands in Antwerp and Jefferson
counties, Great Tract No. 5 and 6
(26,250 acres and 74,400 acres) in Jefferson Lewis, Oswego and Herkimer
counties) and the remainder of the Great Purchase lands (1,368,300 acres), is
sold to Donald McCormick.
Feb 14
The Albany Library is
incorporated.
Apr 29
Brewer and college founder
Matthew Vassar is born in East Dereham, England, to farmers and religious
dissenters James and Ann Bennett Vassar.
Mar 7
The Saratoga County town of
Milton is formed from the Town of Ballston.
Mar 14
New York State authorizes a loan
of $500,000, to be apportioned amongst it's twenty counties.
Mar 30
The Western Inland Lock
Navigation Company is incorporated by General Philip Schuyler and merchant Elkanah
Watson, to build a three-mile Little Falls, New York, canal and another linking the
Mohawk River with Wood Creek. Financier Robert Morris will soon be brought on
board. ** New York's Northern Inland
Lock Navigation Company is organized,
for the purpose of building a canal between the Hudson River and Lake Champlain.
Work will begin on it but it will never be completed.
April
Former English merchant Henry
Cruger is elected to the New York State Senate.
Apr 10
The Town of Fairfield is
established in Warren County.
** The Delaware
County town of Colchester is formed from Middletown.
August
Lansingburgh publisher Silvester
Tiffany takes on William W. Wands as a partner, forming the firm of Tiffany and
Wands. ** Reverend Hartwick reminds
William Cooper that he wants squatter Shipman put off his property. Shipman
leaves by year's end.
December
Wands takes over the operation of
Tiffany and Wands.
Dec 18
The Boylston Tract, 817,155 acres
of the 1787 Macomb Great Purchase of New York lands in Jefferson, Lewis, and
Oswego counties, comprising 13 towns, is sold to Samuel Ward.
Dec 29
The 25,335-acre fifteenth
Chenango Township is granted to Leonard M. Cutting.
State
George Clinton defeats John Jay
to become governor. 585 Cooperstown residents vote for Jay. Judge William
Cooper feels that there would have been many more but that a number of people
were off looking for a child lost in the woods near the Burlington
neighborhood. Irregularities in
voting are used as an excuse to discount the votes from Otsego, Clinton and
Tioga counties. The Board of Canvassers reject all protests. ** A group of French settlers
move into the future site of Chenango County's village of Greene. Most move on
when their title to the land is later invalidated. ** The approximate date Matthew Aldgate and his
sons settle the Essex County town of Chesterfield. ** Enoch Stowell and Jonathan Bates of Vermont
pioneer the Madison County town of Lebanon. ** Speculator Alexander Macomb buys 4,000,000 acres
of Adirondacks land.
** Gideon
Tripp's Van Rennselaer Manor farm is leased out after a survey is run. ** Senator Nicholas Gilman
discovers Saratoga's Congress Spring. ** Four-year-old Samuel Griffin dies in Cooperstown
- the oldest known grave in Christ Churchyard. ** A store opens at Ferry and Front streets in
Schenectady (Arthur’s Market in 2000). ** Vermont trapper Nathaniel “Nat” Foster settles
in the future Adirondack town of Salisbury. **
Canadian lumbermen from Montréál arrive at the future site of Massena to
build a dam and mill on the Grasse River. ** This year and next Massachusetts officially
transfers 3,600,000 acres of its Hartford Convention lands to the Boston Ten
Town tracts - in Broome and Tioga counties - to settlers. ** Nathaniel W. Howell, after
conducting an academy in Montgomery, leaves to study law. ** D. Ingraham travels from
Boston to Albany, then proceeds to set out across New York to Niagara, via
Schenectady, Whitestown, Clinton, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Geneva, the Jemima
Wilkinson settlement, Canandaigua, the Genesee River, and ending up at Fort
Niagara, then crossing over to visit the planned future site of the British fort.
Oneida County
Barnabas Mitchell starts a
settlement at Port Woodhull, in the town of Remsen. George A. Smith begins the
settlement of Staceys Basin, in the town of Verona. **
Settler Francis Van der Kemp reports seeing a pike in Oneida Lake
three-feet-six-inches in length as well as two catfish weighing ten and
twenty-four pounds.
1793
Jan 13
The 24,200-acre tenth Chenango
Township is granted to James Talmadge.
Jan 28
The 24,186-acre eleventh Chenango
Township, is granted to Leonard M. Cutting.
Jan 31
The 24,186-acre seventh Chenango
Township is granted to Robert C.
Livingston.
Feb 14
The boundary of Rennselaer
County's Town of Pittstown is changed.
Feb 20
The Brantingham Tract, 74,400
acres of the 1787 Macomb Great Purchase of New York lands in Lewis County, is
sold to William Inman. The Inman’s Tract, 25,000 acres in Lewis County’s Leyden
and Lewis towns, is sold to William Inman.
Mar 2
Congress appropriates $20,000 to
build a lighthouse at Montauk, Long Island. ** The U. S. revenue Collection
District at Plattsburgh is established, with satellite offices at Burke,
Centerville, Champlain, Chateaugay, Fort Covington, Hogansburgh, Malone,
Mooers, Perrysville, Rouses Point, Trout River, Westville, and Whitehall. ** The 24,384-acre sixth
Chenango Township, is granted to Thomas Ludlow, Jr.. The 24,218-acre 13th
Township is granted to Thomas Ludlow and J. Shipperly
Mar 12
The Fulton County towns of
Mayfield (later Broadalbain and Johnstown) and Amsterdam are formed from
Caughnawaga.
Apr 12
The Chassanis Tract, 210,000
acres of the 1787 Macomb Great Purchase of New York lands in Lewis and Jefferson
counties, is sold to Pierre Chassanis & Company.
May 3
The 22,565-acre eighteenth, the
20,750-acre nineteenth, and the 24,856-acre twentieth Chenango townships are granted to
John J. Morgan.
Jun 1
The 26,030-acre fourteenth
Chenango Township is granted to Leonard M. Cutting.
Jun 14
The 27,187-acre first Chenango
Township is granted to Alexander Webster.
Jul 31
Harriet Weld, future wife of
businessman Erastus Corning, is born in Troy.
November
After reading of plans for a
English canal Robert Fulton contacts the committee’s chairman Charles Mahon, third
Earl of Stanhope, with his own ideas for canals and the two men begin
corresponding.
Nov 11
Pennsylvania politician Albert
Gallatin marries Hannah Nicholson in New York’s Dutch Reformed Church.
Nov 25
An insurrection of slaves in
Albany is put down after a number of buildings have been burned.
Dec 9
Noah Webster establishes New York
City's first daily newspaper, The American Minerva.
State
The state’s Council of
Appointments, a Federalist-controlled body, now controls every political
appointment in the state.
** A pioneer
named Gunn first settles the Oneida County village of Oriskany Falls. ** Construction begins on the
Little Falls Canal. A shortage of funds will delay the work until next
year. ** Ezekiel Gilbert of Hudson
is elected to Congress.
** Putnam
County resident Samuel Morehouse moves to the Peaceful Valley area of the
Adirondacks (his settlement will later be named Sodom, for disputed
reasons). ** Revolutionary War veteran
Ephraim Sanford buys 1,864 acres of Mt. Washington land in the Town of Wayne
from New York City promoter Jacob Hallett. ** Suffolk County sheriff Silas Halsey moves
upstate, settles in Lodi, and establishes a grist mill. ** Wood Creek is cleaned out
and the channel connecting Schenectady and Fort Stanwix is shortened seven
miles by the cutting of 13 isthmuses. The trip that used to take larger boats
two weeks is greatly shortened. ** Robert R. Livingston begins considering the use
of steam to propel boats.
** A school
opens in Clinton. In 1812 it will be chartered as Hamilton College.
Albany
A fire destroys several downtown
blocks. ** The Society for the
Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, and Manufactures is incorporated.
Utica
The United Society of Whitestown
and Old Fort Schuyler is formed, presided over by the Reverend Bethuel Dodd.
Maryland
Slave and future freedman and
Hudson River valley gardener James F. Brown is born.
1794
January
Governor George Clinton addresses
the state legislature, urges strengthening defenses against the British. They vote
£30,000 for fortifying New York City and £12,000 for the frontiers to the west
and north.
Jan 5
Erie Canal engineer and surveyor
Holmes Hutchinson is born in Port Dickinson to county highways commissioner and
former army paymaster Amaziah/Amassa Hutchinson and Elizabeth A. Mack
Hutchinson.
Mar 1
Army lieutenant-colonel William
Jenkins Worth is born in Hudson.
Mar 22
The state legislature votes to
extend the Mohawk Valley Road west from Fort Schuyler (Utica) to the Genesee
River. The extension will be named the Main Genesee River Road.
Mar 26
Saratoga County appropriates
£1500 to build a courthouse and jail near Ballston Spa. John Ball, Richard
Davis, Jr., James Emott, John McClelland, and John Bradstreet Schuyler are
named commissioners to superintend construction.
Aug 9
Christopher Dugan writes to
Charles Williamson from the Falls of the Genesee, the first business letter
written in (the future) Rochester. He informs the agent that the mill is badly
in need of repairs, and that he would like some recompense for acting as
caretaker for the property.
** New York
State settler David Piffard is born in London’s Pentonville neighborhood, to a
stockbroker and his wife.
Sep 28
New York City tavern keeper James
Leeson dies at the age of 38. He’s buried in Manhattan’s Trinity Cemetery. His
tombstone will display Masonic symbols as well as a strange code, which will
not be deciphered until 1889.
November
John Jacob Astor writes to former
partner Peter Smith in Utica, seeking partial repayment of a land deal loan, in
order to finance a selling trip to Europe.
State
County boundaries are surveyed in
the Military Tract.
** John Stevens
demonstrates a steamboat.
** Judge
William Cooper is elected to Congress. ** Benjamin Barton sells his mill site on the upper
falls of the Genesee to Sir William Pulteney and his associates. ** Connewango pioneer Sarah
Ash (Metcalf) is born in Rensselaer County. ** Tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt is born at Port
Richmond, Staten Island.
** A
“Block-house” or public storehouse is erected at the salt springs at Onondaga
Lake. ** A group of settlers on the
banks of Esopus Creek petition the governor for pasture and firewood land in
the Catskill region. Traders Jacob Rutsen and Johannis Hardenbergh take
notice. ** The legislature authorizes
the surveying of a road between Utica and the Genesee River. ** Onondaga County is carved
out of part of Herkimer County. ** Jediah Stephens, having been recently elected
supervisor of the new Canisteo district (parts of Steuben, Allegany and
Livingston counties), meets Painted Post supervisor Eli Mead at Cohocton
Village. They ride to Canandaigua together. ** The approximate date Elder Daniel Irish conducts
the first church services (Baptist) in the Cayuga County town of Fleming. ** Augustus Porter prepares a
map of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase from his own survey. ** East Bloomfield pioneer
Markham family buys another farm in the area. The resulting settlement is named
Markham's. ** Potential Indian and
British problems slow settlement in the Genesee region. ** Joseph Lothrop and A. Mead
are the first to settle at the future site of Chenango County's North
Norwich. ** A one-room log schoolhouse,
paid for by subscription, is built south of Pittsford. John Barrows is the
first teacher.It will be the only one in the area for ten years. ** Philadelphian Thomas Cooper
visits the Genesee Country.
** The town of
Northfield, in what will become Monroe County, is created, containing the
future towns of Brighton, Henrietta, Irondequoit, Penfield, Perinton,
Pittsford, and Webster.
** The first
church services in the Oneida County town of Augusta are held in the Fairbanks
home. ** Dr. Richard Bayley helps
found the state Medical Society. ** The population of Herkimer County is 1500;
Otsego County 12000, Tioga County 7000. ** Judge Augustus Porter leads a team to re-run the
1788 Pre-Emption Line, to correct errors. ** Abraham Cuddeback becomes the first settler in
Skaneateles, starting a homestead in the military tract. ** Jemima Wilkinson arrives in
the Town of Jerusalem with her followers. ** The Fabius area is settled. ** A bridge across the Genesee
River is built at Avon.
** John
Danforth arrives in the future Liverpool. ** Jason Parker of Utica and several partners
establish a stage line to Albany. ** Canandaigua lawyer Thomas Morris, son of Robert
Morris, is elected as a Federalist to the state assembly; serves one term. ** After a subscription of 200
shares is taken up by the state, work on the stalled Western Inland Navigation
Company canal at Little Falls is resumed. ** Medina horse trader Richard Gordineer is born to
Jacob Gordineer, a Dutch settler in the Mohawk Valley, and a slave woman. He
and his mother will be sold to Joseph Grant when he is two months old. ** The approximate date Utica
merchant Peter Smith acquires proprietary rights for close to 50,000 acres from
the Oneida Indians, the land stretching from Syracuse to the Oneida County town
of Augusta. ** The Candor village area of
Tioga County is first settled. ** The Town of Virgil, part of the Town of Homer in
Herkimer County, becomes part of Onondaga County.
Albany
Simeon DeWitt publishes a map of
the area. ** The Bayard Land Company is
formed.
© 2012 David Minor / Eagles Byte
