WESTERN / CENTRAL New York timeline / 1785-1787

1785

Jan 30

Rochester’s, first mayor Jonathan Child is born in Lyme, New Hampshire, to Revolutionary War veteran and farmer William Child and his wife Mary Heaton Child.

July
French traveler and diplomat Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur visits Niagara Falls accompanied by a guide named Hunter. They visit with John Burch, a Canadian farmer. He introduces them to another Loyalist, Francis Ellsworth, who acts as their guide to the falls. They may be the first Europeans to go behind the falls. Crèvecoeur and Hunter ride to the mouth of the river where they catch a ferry back to Fort Niagara.

Oct 2
Rochester businessman-postmaster Abelard Reynolds is born in Red Hook (Dutchess County).

Nov 25
Rochester congressman Timothy Childs is born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

State
Geneva is founded on the site of an Indian village. ** A survey of the New York-Pennsylvania state line is begun by brothers Andrew and Joseph Ellicott. ** Township size in "waste and un-appropriated lands" of the Military Tract is set at 6.1 square miles, with a lot size of 200 acres. Veterans of the Sullivan Campaign begin buying land in the central and western areas of the state. ** Mohawk chief Joseph Brant tours the western tribes of the Great Lakes seeking their support for an Indian Confederation. ** The Genesee River floods. ** The approximate date artist James Peachey depicts View of Fort Niagara from the west.


1786

Feb 4
Geneseo schoolteacher Epaphroditus Bigelow is born in Marlborough, Connecticut.

Mar 18
The Steuben County town of Bath is formed.

Nov 30
The Hartford Convention convenes at Hartford, Connecticut, with New York State commissioners Egbert Benson, James Duane, John Haring, Robert R. Livingston, Melancthion Smith and Robert Yates, and Massachusetts commissioners Rufus King, John Lowell, Theophilus Parsons and James Sullivan present.

December
14 Indian tribes of the western Great Lakes, assembled at the urging of New York's Iroquois Confederation earlier in the year, meet in council near Detroit, make a pact for mutual defense in an Indian Confederation. They write to the U. S. requesting an official treaty and repudiate the treaties of Fort Stanwix, Fort McIntosh and Fort Finney.

Dec 12
New York governor William Learned Marcy is born in Sturbridge (today’s Southbridge), Massachusetts, to Jedediah and Ruth Learned Marcy.

Dec 16
The Hartford Convention votes for New York to divide the Iroquois lands with Massachusetts, which gets the land (preemptive rights – right to buy lands west of a pre-emption Line (nearly 6,000,000 acres) from the Indians), while New York gets political sovereignty. The 230,400-acre area known as the Boston Ten Towns, between the Chenango River and Owego Creek, is retained by Massachusetts. The western boundary of Montgomery County is extended to the Niagara River. It contain 15,057 people. The Town of Whitestown contains under 200 whites.

Dec 25

Buffalo merchant and philanthropist Seth Grosvenor is born in Pomfret, Connecticut, to Captain George Henry Grosvenor and his wife Abigail.

State
The approximate date followers of Jemima Wilkinson hire Abraham Dayton, Thomas Hathaway and Richard Smith to travel to Yates County to scout a site for a New Jerusalem. ** Gilbert Stuart paints a portrait of Mohawk Indian chief Joseph Brant (Thayendorogea). ** Future governor William C. Bouck is born to Samuel and Margaret Borst Bouck in Schoharie Valley. ** The Office of Land Commissioners is established. ** William Harris settles at the confluence of the Tioga and Conhocton rivers, the site of the future Painted Post. ** Pioneer Anna Mathilda Stewart (Church) is born in Philadelphia to General Walter Stewart and his wife. ** Township size in the "Old" Military Tract and in "waste and un-appropriated" land in the rest of the state, is increased from 6.1 to 10 square miles and from 200 to 640 acres. ** The Seneca confer with the British, arrange for refuge in Canada if relations with the U. S. sour. ** Judge and representative Moses Hayden is born in Conway, Massachusetts.

Syracuse
Trader-interpreter Ephraim Webster, along with Benjamin Newkirk, arrives from Schenectady and establishes a trading post among the Onondaga Indians on the east bank of Onondaga Creek, near Onondaga Lake.


1787

Feb 14
The tenth session of the New York State Legislature passes a law appointing a coroner for each county.

Mar 6
The state's Assembly and Senate each vote to name state Supreme Court judge Robert Yates, John Lansing, Jr. and Alexander Hamilton as delegates to the U. S. Constitutional Convention.

May 20
Early Cohocton settler and granddaughter of Indian captive Jemima Howe, Martha Howe (Fowler) is born in Vernon, Vermont, to Squire and Martha Field Howe.

July 25
Followers of Jemima Wilkinson, the Universal Friend, travel from Connecticut to the Mohawk River, then to Seneca Lake where they settle near today’s Dresden.

Jul 26
New York becomes the eleventh state to enter the Union.

Sep 17
The U. S. Constitution, in a final draft by Gouverneur Morris, is signed by delegates in Philadelphia, who then resolve to forward it to Congress, in New York City. New York dos not formally endorse the document.

Nov 30
The New York Genesee Land Company, an independent group of lessees, negotiates a 999-year-lease on the majority of Iroquois lands in New York State for an annual payment of 2,000 Spanish milled dollars. State governor George Clinton will declare all company transactions null and void.

State
Settlers, mostly from New England, found a settlement at Binghamton. It will be named for landowner William Bingham, who donated land to the village. A Mrs. Blunt is the first resident to die. ** Feudal tenure is abolished. ** A conference meeting at Hartford, Connecticut, sets the western boundary of Indian lands one mile east of the Niagara River, between lakes Ontario and Erie. Rights to the Mile Strip are reserved for the state. ** Great Lakes steamboat operator Josephus Bradner Stuart is born. ** Genesee Valley pioneer Nicholas Hetchler is born in Pennsylvania. ** Painted Post is included in the Albany County town of Whitestown. ** Job Smith, traveling north from the Chemung River, settles at the falls of the Seneca River (today's Seneca Falls), to open a mill. ** The state creates a Board of Regents to oversee schools, setting rules for the incorporation of colleges and academies (high schools), paving the way for a state university system. ** Tioga County’s Boston Ten Towns tract is sold to a company of 60 men, most of them from Massachusetts. ** The first settlement in the Genesee Country is made at the Indian village of Kanadesaga (later Geneva). ** Buffalo merchant and library benefactor Seth Grosvenor is born. ** Lieutenant John Enys of the 29th Regiment of Foot visits Niagara Falls.

© 2011 David Minor / Eagles Byte