It Happened Here-- Charles Williamson:  Covert Agent/       

                                                 Grandiose Promoter of the New York Frontier                                                                    

Covert communications, private deals, handshake negotiations and gentleman's agreements are often the engine of history, but the  bane of the historians existence, (or at least it certainly seems so from the observations of this non-historian-"historical tourist".)  Charles Williamson's biography is rife with unreported details and speculative "facts".

Charles Williamson  was born in  Scotland in 1757, the son of   Alexander  Williamson, the secretary to Lord  James Hope Johnstone into a class of  people who, though  not nobility,  enabled the aristocracy to function.  They were the managers, the secretaries, the keepers of the social calendar, the master gardeners, the mid-level diplomats.  In the army, they were the mid-level officers;  in Europe, the courtiers.  At the beginning of  the American Revolution the younger Williamson bought a commission in the 25th Regiment of Foot becoming a captain after three years, without serving in America.   He resigned his commission and was journeying to America with a letter of introduction to General Cornwallis when his ship was captured by a French privateer.  As a private citizen he was not sent to a prisoner of war camp but placed under house arrest in Boston, quartered in the house of Ebenezer Newell. There he fell in love with,  and eloped with Newell's daughter, Abigail.  After a prisoner exchange the couple returned to Scotland for nearly a decade where Williamson managed a farm/estate.  Bored with farming, Williamson secured a position in the government as part of a fact-finding mission that journeyed through Marseilles into the Balkans, Russia and Turkey.  Back in Scotland, his father arranged for him an introduction to Sir William Johnstone-- Pulteney.  Sir William had married  Frances Pulteney, heiress and cousin to the Earl of Bath, one of the riches men in all of Britain and when the Earl died Sir William (who took the last name of his wife) inherited a vast fortune.
                                                                                                    NYS 12, north of Waterville           

Meanwhile, in America the defeat of the British and their Iroquois allies and dependent tribes at the close of the Revolution had opened the possibility for American/European settlement.  Lands east of the 1763 Fort Stanwix Treaty line were designated the Military Tract and given to military veterans in lieu of cash payments owed them for their military services. In western New York, however,  the situation was much more murky.  There, the native peoples still claimed  the land. Complicating things were the claims several states made to Western lands based on grants British kings had given colonies in the early colonial period. Cavalierly ignoring any  rights native  peoples had to their  own land, Charles I and II had granted Massachusetts, Connecticut and William Penn's colony in Pennsylvania wide swaths of land defined, not  by any physical features but by lines of latitude, often contradicting one another or straight lines between poorly defined or even non-existent (!) landmarks.  Thus Massachusetts was given a swath of territory running from the undefined western border  of Dutch New Netherlands  to the Pacific.  Connecticut was given a similar swath of land spanning the latitudes of Connecticut, excluding Dutch Territory, running across the continent--a claim that would spawn conflict between Pennsylvania and Connecticut settlers in the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania before and during the Revolution.  And settlers from New York's Orange and New Jersey's Suffolk Counties would engage in similar but less deadly confrontations, on their shared border[1] 

                Co.Rte 42 and Canning Rd., Victor NY

The Hartford Conference of 1786 would settle the New York, Massachusetts dispute by establishing  a "Preemption Line."  Under this treaty a line would be established from the eighty second mile marker on the Pennsylvania border due North to Lake Ontario.  East of the line would be  governed (and taxed) by New York and west of the line would  also be governed (and taxed) by NewYork but Massachusetts would have the sole"right of preemption," the power to determine who could negotiate with Native Americans to buy that land from them--a right they could give, or sell!  The Preemption line was surveyed and and a group of New England investors headed by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham bought this right for $1,000,000 to be paid to                                                                                                   Massachusetts in three installments.  

                

              Preemption Line

         Boundary Drawn Between

     Massachusetts and New York

              December 16,1786

        Cause of Long Controversy

               In Western New York
             

                         NYS Hist. Marker

                            US 20 and NY 5

                     (Long reported missing)

But the Seneca Indians who lived on most of these lands agreed to sell only the easternmost third of the land for $5000 and a perpetual  annuity of $500 per year. The lack of roads, and general remoteness of the areas made the homestead  plots  difficult to sell so by the second installment Gorham and Phelps defaulted on their payment to Massachusetts.  A wealthy investor, who had helped  finance the American Revolution, Robert Morris, stepped in to buy up Gorham and Phelps investment in hopes he could use his international and diplomatic contacts to find European buyers to turn a quick profit.  Morris turned to William Temple Franklin [2], grandson of Benjamin Franklin who hooked him up with Sir William Pulteney who joined with two other partners to form Pulteney Associates. After expanding the Genesee Tract , as it became to be known, and reserving a piece for his own future investment, by negotiating a second treaty with the Senecas (The Treaty of Big Tree), Morris prepared to sell his property to them.  But there was an obstacle.  At the time, a New York law forbade non-citizens from buying New York property!

Upon meeting Charles Williamson,  William Pulteney and his two associates must have been impressed because they made the young man a remarkable offer. Williamson was to become his principal sales agent for selling  the  1,264,000  acres of the Genesee Tract that Pulteney Associates were intending to buy, but first, he needed to go to America and become a United States citizen (not a difficult task given his previous "residency" in America, and being married to an American wife), then as the company's agent he could finalize the sale and begin making plans for the development and sale of the property.

After a long grueling crossing of the Atlantic, Williamson and his family were landed in Norfolk, Virginia instead of Philadelphia and while he and his family were recovering he got to know people of the Southern Plantation-owner class. The idea occurred to him that if he could market to these people instead of hardscrabble New England farmers he could sell larger parcels of land, faster.

The notion of large wheat growing plantations, worked by dozens--scores of black slaves and of  rafts of timber cut by negro lumberman  sent down  to Baltimore to supply Britain's chronic timber shortage stirred his imagination. But how to attract southern plantation-class owners?   

First,  he needed to improve the roads leading into the Genesee Tract.  Williamson realized the major reason Gorham and Phelps had failed was the obvious inaccessibility of their purchase,

         Williamson Rd.

Built in 1782--1796 by Land

agent Charles Williamson

to open the Genesee Lands                --Pennsylvania  Historical and Museum Commission

in N,Y.  from Trout Run. It                  Lycoming Creek Rd. (Old U.S. 15) and

cut through the Wilderness                  Dekman Hollow Rd.--Williamsport, PA

to Lawrenceville by the 

same general route as

the present highway

Pulteney Associates employed a  recruitment agent to hire German farmers to come to America to build or improve roads into the Genesee Tract in exchange for homesteads on the tract.  But few German farmers were willing to give up their farms for the rigors and uncertainties of developing farms in the American wilderness.  The recruiter was forced to recruit among  poor and underemployed townsmen, including a troop of  unemployed circus performers.  Woefully unprepared for what was probably one of the most difficult jobs in early America, road building in the wilderness, the Pulteney  Associates contract laborers  improved the Mohawk Trail through the Mohawk Valley developing what was little more than a foot path at the western end, into a carriage road leading to the former Seneca town of Kandesegea at the north end of Seneca Lake.   Williamson, impressed by the picturesque beauty of the handful of cabins tucked along the northern end of the scenic lake renamed the town Geneva, after the Swiss town. [3]

                                                                                                                  Abele Rd.,  2 miles  East of  NYS 63, Mt. Morris

A large project would be to develop a road from Williamsport, on East Branch of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania into the Genesee Tract, from the south, following the Sheshequin Indian trail.  The work proceeded slowly here with the immigrant disgruntled workers  often refusing to work and fearful of Indian attack, although by now there were few Indians in the area and their fears were largely baseless.  Meanwhile, Williamson laid out a town for them  to settle in,  he named Williamsburgh.  Eventually the road was completed and some of the road builders settled there but others left for Canada, becoming some of the founders of Toronto. Along the western side of the Tract,  not located on a lake, Williamsburgh struggled  on for  decades before being completely  abandoned in 1915.

                112 Washington St., Geneva

Land offices were built in Geneva and Bath. Next, if Williamson were going to host perspective buyers for his tracts of land he needed suitable places for them to stay,  so Williamson built inns/hotels at Geneva, Painted Post [4], near the southern end of the Genesee tract, Sodus Bay on the shore of Lake Ontario at the Northern extreme of the Pulteney lands and Bath, a town he founded south of Crooked Lake (Keuka), around which he hoped to attract southern planters.

Built by New England carpenters, the Geneva Inn displayed an unexpected richness for the frontier with guests welcomed by a former butler to the Duke of Wellington.

.

Williamson's main efforts were reserved for the southern part of the Genesee Tract.  More hilly and less fertile than the northern sections, on the Ontario Plain,  large tracts remained unsold but the new road and its connection to the Susquehanna  river system offered the dream of wheat shipments being loaded on flat boats, "arks" or rafts being floated annually to Baltimore.  There, their cargoes  could be loaded on ships for transport overseas, with the rafts, themselves, broken up for the valujable timber they contained. 

Washington St. and Park Place, Geneva

                                                                                                                                        Pulteney Park, Bath

Williamson  laid out Bath with a central square and streets radiating from it.  Within a few years Williamson had constructed  Pultney's Land Office, a court house , a jail,  and private post office with service to Canada, Philadelphia and Washington.  Nearby was  Metcalf'e's Tavern  offering food and lodging. Williamson himself, built a palatial  two story home with two attached wings  and formal gardens that Williamson used to entertain  important clients.   A grist mill,  five sawmills, and two schools  were located in the area.   Another feature of the town would be a proper cemetery laid out by Williamson.  One of its first occupants was Williamson's  young daughter, struck down by "Genesee fever", a                 mosquito borne type of malaria once prevalent along the boggy backwaters of the Genesee valley                                                                                                                                                                  E. Morris St. and Lackawanna St., Bath

                                                               cor. Morris St. and Ark St., Bath

                                                        West Steuben St., west of Exchange St., Bath

With this host of "improvements" in place the year 1796 became a year of festivities and events touting the properties available on the Genesee Tract.  Bath got its first newspaper that year and hundreds of broadside posters were printed and put up inviting people from across New York, New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland,Virginia, and English speaking Canada to come to Bath .  Bath held a fair, virtually the first in the United States.  Williamson built a half-mile track and  horse races were held.  (Williamson knew members of the southern planter class were especially fond of horse-racing!)  And he even built a theater (albeit made of logs) that put on some of the most popular current plays.  Some 2000 visitors flocked to the Genesee Tract, and Bath, in particular.

                                                                                        cor. W. Morris St and W. Steuben St., Bath

                                                                                                                                (sign now missing)

All of these "improvements" were tremendously expensive, however, but Sir William  Pulteney and his partners remained remarkably patient as a constant stream of bills and receipts for expenditures flowed to their desks in Britain.  Only after changes in the legal environment occurred were they led to re-examine their situation.  First, in 1798 the New York legislature revoked the law forbidding aliens from owning property in New York.  Second,  in 1799 the legislature began the phased-in gradual abolition of slavery.  Though it would not be until 1817 that all enslaved New Yorkers would be freed, the handwriting was on the wall.  No southern planation owners  would be investing in New York  large scale   plantations powered by enslaved men and women.  Much of Williamson's efforts were frustrated!  Sir William ordered an audit.  It revealed that Williamson had spent $1, 374.470 but had taken in only $147.974.  (Exact figures are difficult to determine because many properties were sold, but returned, as the result of defaulted mortgages or otherwise tied up in legal limbo.)  In  March 1800 Sir William had his American land agent transfer ownership  of his property to himself and Charles Williamson was dismissed.  After five years Williamson received compensation for his efforts, being given his Bath Mansion and other property, but no cash settlement.

Williamson returned to Britain.  In Britain he became involved in the British diplomatic service and participated in quasi-governmental plans to increase British influence along the Louisiana-Floridian coast by organizing militias amongst British settlers in that area which could be mobilized in the event Spain became involved in open warfare with Britain.  He also became a liaison to  Aaron Burr whom he had met in his previous business in New York State and appeared to be making some sort of colonization effort in that area.  (Burr would later  be tried  unsuccessfully for treason for his activities. The cases were dismissed for lack of evidence).  A few years later Williamson would deliver a packet of secret correspondence to the Governor of Jamaica, and then be dispatched to Cuba.  He would die suddenly in 1808 on his way home to Britain, of yellow fever, aggravated by the "Genesee Fever" he had contracted years earlier.

[1] See NYSHMs: It Happened Here.  Sept. 3 2018.  "The NewYork, New Jersey  Line War."

[2] William Temple Franklin was a brilliant choice for Morris' agent.  Benjamin Franklin as a U.S. diplomat had gained widespread respect and esteem both in Europe during the war and in Britain during the protracted peace negotiations at the war's end.  William Franklin had gained  respect as a a royal governor of New Jersey an as a steadfast loyalist.

[3] Undoubtedly, he also wanted to divorce the town from its Indian/wilderness association.

                                     *****

---the usual internet suspects

--- John H. Martin. "Charles Williamson, The Pulteney Estates in the Genesee Lands"  Chapter IV. in 

    Saints, Sinners and Reformers, The Burned Over District Revisited.  serialized in The Cooked Lake Review.  Fall 2005  An excellent review of the Williamson-Pulteney story.

----DAHs (Danville Area Historical Museum). "Charles Williamson"   dansvilleareahistoricalsociety.org/ charles-williamson/.    This short biopic gives a compact summary of Williamson's rather mysterious life post-Pulteney

 Marker of the Week  Fortnight -- Colonies?

                                                                 co. rte 14, Montour Falls
Most of the solders involved in the Sullivan/Clinton Campaign in the summer/fall 1779 might have objected to their states being referred to as "colonies" a full year after they had declared their independence.  In fact, the Second Continental Congress had begun acting as a national government  from nearly the start of the Revolution, raising a continental army, appointing generals, signing treaties, appointing ambassadors, allocating funds and issuing paper money.   On September 9, 1776 they had formally adopted the name "United State of America " to replace the "United Colonies."