WESTERN / CENTRAL New York timeline / 1780-1784

1780
Sep 19
After an attempt by Cornplanter's wife Etomeh to poison The-Ship-Under-Full-Sail (adopted prisoner Eleanor Lytle) the voluntary captive is kept secluded by the Seneca, awaiting the chief's return to Oswaya (near today’s Portville).

Sep 21
Cornplanter arrives at Oswaya with his war party. Learning of Etomeh's treachery he divorces her and banishes her to a cabin at the edge of the village.

State
Indians settle in the area of the future Buffalo. ** The Council House at Caneadea is built for the Seneca by British troops from Fort Niagara. ** Mohawk chief Little Abraham (Tigoransera) brother of the late chief King Hendrick, dies in a British prison in Fort Niagara. (birth date unknown). ** Joseph Brant and his prisoner Captain Alexander Harper pass through the Genesee Valley on their way from Schoharie to Niagara. ** Connewango pioneer Rufus Wyllys is born in Massachusetts. ** The legislature agrees to set aside bounty lands for veterans. ** The state legislature meets for the first time in Albany. ** Ontario County's population reaches 1,075. ** Tuscarora Indians who fled O-ha-gi, their village on the Genesee River, last year at the approach of Sullivan's troops, return. ** Politician Nathaniel Allen is born in the future East Bloomfield.


1781
Mar 1
New York presents its western lands (west of a north-south line running through the western end of Lake Ontario) to Congress, which uses them to provide Pennsylvania with a corridor to Lake Erie. Pennsylvania pays $151,640 for the land New York surrenders.

Oct 19
Cornwallis and his 17,000 troops surrender at Yorktown, Virginia.

State
Lawyer George Hosmer is born to Avon doctor and judge Timothy Hosmer and his wife. ** Unclaimed military lands and land between Seneca and Cayuga lakes fall under a survey grid plan of seven square -mile townships and 500 acre plots.

North Carolina
Merchant and veteran Nathaniel Rochester moves to Hagerstown, Maryland, where he sets up a nail factory, a flour mill and a ropewalk.

England
Scots captain Charles Williamson sells his commission and travels to America, with letters of introduction to General Cornwallis. He’s captured at sea by the Yankee ship Marquis of Salem and spends the rest of the war living with the family of Ebenezer Newell at Roxbury, Massachusetts. He will marry the daughter Abigail Newell.


1782
Feb 24
Rochester tinsmith and village treasurer Ebenezer Watts, Jr., is born in Boston, Massachusetts.

March
Early Connewango settler Benjamin Darling is born in Windsor, Vermont.

June
A party of British and Indians arrive at Chautauqua Lake to build a dam across the outlet, create a flood and sweep down the Alleghany River to attack Fort Pitt.

July
The force on Chautauqua Lake leaves without attempting their attack. ** The New Military Tract is formed from Indian lands, to award to Revolutionary War veterans. A lot of 400 acres in each township is to be reserved for support of the gospel and two lots of 200 acres reserved for schools.

Oct 29
Congress accepts New York State's western lands.

Dec 5
George III addresses Parliament, announces he has accepted American independence. In the audience are Admiral Richard Howe, painters Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley, and canal promoter Elkanah Watson.

State
Ebenezer “Indian” Allan, former lieutenant in the British Indian Department under Sir John Johnson, leads a raiding party into Sussex County, New Jersey. He retreats to Gardeau Flats, on the Genesee River near Mount Morris, for the winter and is assigned to watch the movements of the Seneca and the settlers.


1783
March
The New York legislature passes an act to aid those wishing to settle in central New York.

Mar 21
England’s Parliament naturalizes French-born, future New York State pioneer David Piffard, a bookkeeper.

Mar 22
Congress votes officer compensation.

Apr 1
Piffard, now a member of the Needlemaker’s Company guild, becomes a fee-paid freeman of London.

Apr 24
Piffard petitions London’s Court of Aldermen for permission to become a broker on the Royal Exchange, signs a £500 bond. Three weeks later it’s granted.

Apr 26
Evacuation Day. 7,000 Loyalists leave New York City for Canada and Europe.

Aug 21
The deadline for Loyalists to receive permission to evacuate New York.

Sep 3
Great Britain and the U. S. sign the peace treaty in Paris. Among other provisions France renounces all claims in Canada and the St. Lawrence watershed. Great Lakes boundary lines are set, opening western New York to settlement.

Nov 20
Eleanor Lytle is reunited with her parents Sarah and John at Oswaya.

December
The British arrest Ebenezer “Indian” Allen, imprisoning him first at Fort Niagara, then at Montréal and Kingston.

State
Future Syracuse pioneer Comfort Tyler becomes a surveyor and schoolteacher at Caughnawego, on the Mohawk. ** Ebenezer “Indian” Allen carries messages between the Iroquois and British prisoner Rev. Joseph Bull, a Moravian missionary held in Philadelphia, fostering a peace plan. Allen moves from Gardeau Flats along the Genesee River to nearby Mount Morris, where he opens a trading post. ** The Indian Committee of the Continental Congress urges that the tribes surrender part of their lands to the U. S. as part of a final peace agreement. The New York Assembly advocates expelling all Iroquois tribes that sided with the British, and moving the Oneidas and Tuscaroras to then-vacated Seneca lands in the western part of the state. **
Qualifications for veterans of the Revolution for the acquisition of lands in the New Military Tract are established. They range from 500 acres for a private to 5,500 acres for a major general.


1784
January
The approximate date New York City's Hardenbrook family announces they will be selling the Tea Water Pump property by April.

Jan 24
New York City becomes the capital of New York State. Colonial public records will be moved there from Poughkeepsie.

Mar 15
The Bank of New York is organized, the first bank incorporated in the state.

May 11
The state creates Commissioners of the Land Office to control bounty lands transactions resulting from the Revolution.

Jul 25
Rochester merchant Silas O. Smith is born in New Marlboro, Massachusetts.

October
Lieutenant Ebenezer “Indian” Allen, freed by the British, is dismissed on half-pay from their Indian Department.

Oct 22
The Six Nations of the Iroquois sign the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (Rome), surrender all claims to the Northwest territory in exchange for protection of an Indian zone in western and central New York, western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, from whites. To help protect local Indian lands the state constitution will forbid the sale of their lands to individuals.

Oct 25
Rochester botanist, minister and educator Chester Dewey is born in Sheffield, Massachusetts.

State
Simeon De Witt is named State Engineer and Surveyor. ** Future governor Enos Thompson Throop is born in Johnstown to George B. and Abiah Throop. ** Benjamin Keyes purchases land from Oliver Phelps that will soon become East Bloomfield. ** A commission is put into place to obtain title to Indian lands. ** French diplomat François Barbé de Marbois begins traveling through the U. S., spending the next five years exploring the new nation, with an emphasis on the Iroquois.

Maryland
Nathaniel Rochester and Thomas Hart begin a flour milling business at Hagerstown.

Surveys
Massachusetts and New York both opt for square, rather than irregular-edged, townships.

@2009 David Minor / Eagles Byte