It Happened Here-- "E tu Brute?! Naming the Towns
of New York's Military Tract [1] [2]
If someone were to look at the names of towns, villages and cities of central New York State they might reasonably expect to find a mix of names reflecting physical features, the names of early settlers and entrepreneurs, a few famous Americans, and of course, many Native American place names, the heritage the western Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca peoples who inhabited this area for centuries. But instead we find a map dominated by towns and cities named after Greek and Roman Cities and Greek and Roman leaders and notables, plus a few classical scholars and a couple English enlightenment writers thrown in. How did this come about?
Fairly early in the course of the American Revolution, American generals, and George Washington in particular, realized Americans could not defeat the British army and force Great Britain to recognize American independence with militias alone. While militias were formed for local defense and local volunteer armies were formed for to respond to some regional threat, regular professional armies that could operate overtime, anywhere in the United States were needed that could counter and defeat British Armies. But patriotism alone would not be a sufficient motive to encourage large numbers of men to leave their homes and families for years, for a life of privation and perhaps early death. And New York, not to mention the other states, was in no position to offer cash bounties for enlistment, a situation that would only worsen as time went on and continental money became virtually worthless. But though cash poor, New York was, potentially, land rich. Initially, New York was expected to provide four battalions, but recruitment lagged until Congress offered a 100 acre bounty of land in the Ohio Country and New York added a bounty of 500 acres of N.Y. land, per recruit, with higher bounties for commissioned officers. Though generous, these offers were not strictly warrantable, (ie. legal!) as the land being given was Indian land, occupied for centuries by Native Americans, and certified as such by the Ft. Stanwix treaty of 1763. But fortunately for the American Revolutionary cause events of the war would weaken Indigenous claims. Though the Iroquois initial impulse was to stay neutral in this fight between their European neighbors, by the third year (1777) of the conflict most of the Iroquois had been drawn into the fight with the majority of the Iroquois (except the Oneida) supporting the British. By the fifth year, (1779) the Americans struck back against Iroquois, invading their home territories, leveling their towns, burning their crops and cutting down their orchards, driving them as refugees into the hands of the British who were ill prepared to support them. Disease, cold and famine killed large numbers. In the peace talks at the end of the war the British ignored their native allies leaving them to diplomatically fend for themselves! After the war only a fraction of them filtered back to their former homelands to try to rebuild their lives.
NYS Rte. 90, Union Springs (may be missing)
In the summer of 1782, while the peace negotiations dragged on with the British, New York began to develop a plan for paying the promised bonty to its Continental veterans. State Surveyor General Simeon DeWitt was tasked by the New York Legislature of coming up with a plan to allocate "wilderness" land running from Lake Ontario and East of Seneca Lake in 600 acre blocks. (An arrangement was made with Congress to compensate New York for the 100 acre parcels offered in the Ohio territory to soldiers). A rough rectangle of land in central New York was designated and divided into twenty-five numbered townships, each with 100 land parcels, as well as lands set aside for public use, schools and churches.
An unanticipated consequence of the Sullivan/Clinton and Van Schaik campaigns were that hundreds of New Yorkers and other would-be settlers got see the rich farmlands of the Finger Lakes region and Ontario plateau. Between veterans and speculators interest was high. Two thousand, ninety veterans were eligible.
Grapes growing along one of the
Finger Lakes (Keuka)
Three more townships would be added to accommodate all of the eligible veterans. When the plan to allot the land became known, not surprisingly, the Cayuga and Onondaga Iroquois tribes, whose land it had been, objected . It was seven long years before their cases were settled by treaties, which specified the payment of cash awards, annuities and the establishment of much smaller reservations on which returned Cayugas and Onondagas could live. [3]. Subsequent treaties would reduce Indian lands further with the land adjacent to Lake Onondaga becoming the city of Syracuse and the Cayuga Reservation disappearing altogether.
On July 3, 1790 a lottery was held with two barrels, one containing the names of eligible veterans, the other containing the numbers of land parcels with the names of the township in which they were located. Names for the townships had been assigned by Robert Harpur, a clerk in DeWitt's office. Harpur was versed in the classics and a teacher at King's College (the only instructor of fifteen professors at the college to support the Revolution). He had been a New York Assemblyman and served in a number of administrative posts. He became a land speculator in the upper Susquehanna Valley, moving there and founding the village of Harpursville.
NYS Rte 79, Harpursville
Harpur's list was made up of famous real and mythical figures from antiquity plus five English and Scottish enlightenment figures:
Homer, Ulysses, Lysander, Salon, Hector, Aurelius, Brutus, Camillus, Cato, Cicero, Cincinnatus. Fabius, Galen, Hannibal, Manlius, Marcellus, Ovid, Pompey, Romulus, Scipio, Sempronius, Tully, Virgil, Dryden, Junius, Locke, Milton, and Stirling (Sterling)
5617 Highland Ave., NYS Rte. 14, Millport
Cayuga St., NYS Rte 38, Monrovia
Many of the early townships would be broken up with new townships added in response to differing interests and burgeoning populations. There would be problems with land frauds, bogus titles, squatters, and Indian claims but before the end of 1790 settlement would be well under way.
[1] "You too Brutus?!" Is a famous line in Shakespeare's Tragedy of Julius Caesar when the Roman emperor realizes his friend Brutus has joined the Senators come to assassinate him.
[2] The word "Town" has several different meanings, which can be confusing. Commonly it refers to an area where there are a bunch of houses in close proximity, as opposed to a rural area where any dwellings are spread apart. In the New England and New York traditions it can also be an administrative or governing unit which usually (but not necessarily) has one or more groups of houses in it, and the lands surrounding it. It differs from an incorporated village which is a self-governing unit with relatively restricted land around it. New Englanders often call these towns-with-surrounding-lands. "townships" which distinguish them from mere clusters of dwellings. New Yorkers, unfortunately, don't. For clarity, I prefer to use the word "township, " even though New Yorkers typically use the word "town".
[3] I am struck by the legal language of the disposition of the Native Americans' cases and the historical pieces written about them. Legal claims of Native Americans were not "settled", "negotiated", "satisfied", or even "adjudicated". They were "extinguished".
--All the usual suspects. For this post I found the articles by the county historians of the different counties that were part of the Military tract interesting to compare. "Names of Townships Used in the Military Tract Compiled by D.G. Rossiter" (www.swampstomper.nl/history/military.html ) provides short bios of all twenty eight ancient and enlightenment people whose names were used in naming the townships, if you are curious.
Marker of the Week Fortnight -- Degory Prowtt
Yes, again! Degory's story is at the same time exceptional in the variety and number of both adventures and misfortunes that befell him and emblematic of the kinds of disasters and misfortune that could confront a young man in colonial/revolutionary times. The National Park Service has an excellent bio of his life, that I can't improve on--Take a look!
nps.gov/people/degory-prowtt.htm
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