Category: Rochester Aqueduct

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Taming the Genesee

This view of downtown Rochester, New York, looks west across the Genesee River. It was taken from the east end of the Broad Street Bridge, which is built on top of the second Rochester aqueduct, completed in 1842 as part of the first enlargement of the Erie Canal. Mills and other 19th-century industrial buildings, recently renovated to be used as office space, line the opposite bank; Main Street Bridge, finished in 1857, is at the far right. (Steve Boerner)
This view of downtown Rochester, New York, looks west across the Genesee River. It was taken from the east end of the Broad Street Bridge, which is built on top of the second Rochester aqueduct, completed in 1842 as part of the first enlargement of the Erie Canal. Mills and other 19th-century industrial buildings, recently renovated to be used as office space, line the opposite bank; the Main Street Bridge, finished in 1857, is at the far right. (Steve Boerner)

The balance of power between Rochester and the Genesee River would finally begin to shift after 1865.

The river was becoming an increasingly unruly neighbor. Freshets in 1817 and 1819 swept away buildings and damaged mills and millraces. Another in 1835, described by Rochester chronicler Henry O’Reilly as “the greatest flood ever known in the Genesee River,” undermined the west abutment of the second Main Street bridge. The bridge’s successor was carried off by another flood in 1857.1

Observers blamed human activity — clearcutting forests and draining wetlands, and construction of bridges, levees, and other obstructions — and warned that it would only get worse. But no one was prepared for the flood of 1865.

That March the river, swollen by an early spring thaw, roiled through the city. It inundated the new Main Street bridge, undermined buildings on both banks, and nearly crested the parapets of the second aqueduct, 27 feet above the riverbed. It was the most destructive flood in the city’s history, causing an estimated one million dollars in damage.2 In response, a commission was appointed by the state to investigate its causes and to recommend measures to prevent it from happening again.

Their report, published the following year, included a list of seven commonsense remedies that included dismantling obstructions, erecting movable dams, and building retaining walls. But in a supplemental report, Isaac F. Quinby, a mathematics professor at the University of Rochester who had assisted with the committee’s investigations, urged the city to take more drastic action: “To blast out a channel along the axis of the river from High Falls to a point about half way between Main street bridge and the aqueduct, or still better, to a point above the latter structure.” The channel would be seventy feet wide at the top and fifty feet wide at the bottom. Its average depth would be ten feet. Excavating it would be expensive, Quinby warned: An estimated 54,222 cubic yards of rock would need to be removed and 2,926 cubic yards of masonry retaining walls built, all at a cost of $121,611. But if it could be accomplished, his plan would increase the river’s capacity and might spare the city from future inundations.3

But Quinby’s plan was shelved, and for the next several decades the local government did almost nothing to protect the city from high water. The floods became more frequent. From the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century the Genesee inundated nearby neighborhoods nine times. In March 1902 a flood nearly as destructive as the one of 1865 swept through downtown; it was followed by another in July — incredibly, during the high summer season. In February 1904 the river, choked with ice, struck again.4

In 1905 another commission was appointed and another report compiled. Of the seven flood control recommendations made in 1866, the new commissioners noted, only three had been completed and another “partly accomplished.”5 But their report went nowhere; nothing more was done.

The flood of March 1913 would be the wakeup call.

The weather system that created it extended from the lower Ohio Valley to western New York. Over several days a series of storms funneled along a low-pressure trough delivered high winds, tornadoes, hail, and sleet throughout the Midwest and South. Up to nine inches of rain fell on Indiana, Ohio, and northwestern Pennsylvania. Rising water trapped thousands of people; newspapers reported that up to two hundred died in Dayton, Ohio, when fire broke out within the submerged part of the city.6

The Great Flood of 1913 remains one of the most widespread natural disasters in the history of the United States. Newspaper editors, running out of ways to describe the devastation, compared it to the Johnstown Flood of 1889 and the Great Galveston Storm of 1900. Recent estimates of the number of people killed range from 650 to more than 900.7

The record rainfall and resulting runoff flooded communities and interrupted train schedules throughout western New York. In Rochester, on the edge of the storm system, the Genesee River overflowed its banks and filled nearby basements and streets with water. But there were no fatalities.

Steam shovels load broken stone into railroad cars in the bed of the Genesee River in October 1915. The view, probably from the Andrews Street Bridge, looks north toward the old Central Avenue Bridge. Channeling machines, lower right, cut slots to square off the cut and protect the building foundations. (Annual Reports of the Department of Engineering for the City of Rochester, 1914–1916, via Google Books.)
Steam shovels load broken stone into railroad cars in the bed of the Genesee River in October 1915. The view, probably from the Andrews Street Bridge, looks north toward the old Central Avenue Bridge. Channeling machines, lower right, cut slots to square off the cut and protect the building foundations. (Annual Reports of the Department of Engineering for the City of Rochester, 1914–1916, via Google Books.)

A local newspaper quoted a visiting “Pittsburgh engineer” who, when asked how such events might be averted in the future, recommended straight away that “the river bottom ought to be blasted out from Court Street to the Upper Falls.”8

The Common Council at last was roused to take action. It may have been stung by criticism from local merchants, including the Front Street clothing salesman who posted signs in the windows of his flooded store that read: “Water in here Friday 10 p.m., 4 feet. Damage probably $3,500. Why didn’t the city build retaining walls along the river instead of one-half million Exposition Park?”9 Or perhaps council members looked to Dayton and realized that next time Rochester might not be so lucky.

I. F. Quinby’s nearly fifty-year-old plan was dusted off and that December — nine months after the floodwaters receded — the council approved a contract to deepen the riverbed.10

By now the scale of the project had changed dramatically. The excavation would extend from bank to bank, an average width of 240 feet, from just above Court Street to the brink of the High Falls, a distance of 2,700 feet.11

Contractors constructed a dam down the center of the river so it could be diverted first to one side, then the other, exposing the rocky bed.12 For more than five long years city residents endured the constant din of drilling and blasting and the incessant hammering of steam-powered channeling machines. By the spring of 1919, when the last contract was completed, more than 150,000 cubic yards of rock and earth had been removed — nearly three times Quinby’s 1866 estimate — and the project’s cost had soared to nearly a million dollars.13

The final depth of the excavation is not easy to pin down. The original ordinances specified that the riverbed would be lowered an average of five feet from above the aqueduct to the brink of the High Falls.14 Estimates based on the geology of the riverbed and gorge indicate that the High Falls themselves were lowered about ten feet.15

Within a few years the Court Street Dam would be built in downtown Rochester as part of the new Barge Canal system, which would replace the old Erie Canal and also provide a measure of flood control. The final touch would be added in 1952 with the completion of the Mount Morris Dam, thirty miles south of Rochester. This 230-foot-high dry gravity dam serves as the ultimate backstop, impounding high water during extreme weather events to reduce flooding and protect property from Mount Morris to Lake Ontario.

The Genesee River had finally been tamed, and in the process its historic appearance was permanently changed. This was especially true in downtown Rochester where, for all practical purposes, the river’s channel was by now completely man-made.

This reconstructed view of the Genesee River in 1804 uses the same vantage point as the photograph of downtown Rochester at the top of this post. The last shelf of the Upper Falls reaches across the river to the opposite bank, an alluvial slope that rises gradually to the base of the rocky ledge in the distance. There is a similar ledge on the near bank, but that one is right next to the river. Less than twenty years from now, engineers designing the Erie Canal will put the first Rochester aqueduct right here, where it can bridge the 800-foot gap between the two ledges. (Digital landscape by Steve Boerner)
This reconstructed view of the Genesee River in 1804 uses the same vantage point as the photograph of downtown Rochester at the top of this post. Less than twenty years from now, engineers designing the Erie Canal will put the first Rochester aqueduct right here, where it will bridge the 800-foot gap between the near bank and the rocky ledge in the distance. (Digital landscape by Steve Boerner)

To help you imagine the extent of these changes, just pretend for a moment that you are accompanying Nathaniel Rochester, William Fitzhugh, and Charles Carroll on their first visit to the Falls of the Genesee. Emerging from the dense forest on the east bank, you are greeted by a landscape much like the one shown here.

The last shelf of the falls reaches across the river to the opposite bank, which rises gradually to the foot of a low, stony ledge. This nondescript feature, which eventually will be buried beneath the city of Rochester, will play a role in the development of the village along with its vibrant flour-milling industry and, eventually, the construction of the Rochester aqueduct.

The year is 1804. Soon a stream of incoming settlers, tentative at first and then becoming more steady, will start the long process of transforming the landscape and river.

  1. Henry O’Reilly, Settlement of the West: Sketches of Rochester; with Incidental Notices of Western New-York (Rochester, New York: William Alling, 1838), 351. Dorothy S. Truesdale, “Historic Main Street Bridge,” Rochester History 3 (April 1941), 12. Report of the Committee on Investigation of Flood Conditions Affecting the City of Rochester, N. Y. (Rochester, New York: W. W. Morrison, 1905), 8; image copy, HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b77585 : accessed 29 November 2024) > image 20. ↩︎
  2. Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor of the State of New York for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1896 (Albany: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford, 1897), 33; image copy, HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015067178494 : accessed 29 November 2024) > image 53. ↩︎
  3. Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, 96th session (Albany: G. Wendell, 1866), doc. no. 117, “Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Investigate the Causes of the Inundation of the City of Rochester in March, 1865,” p. 23–24; image copy, HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924093488496: accessed 29 November 2024) > images 1141–1142. ↩︎
  4. Report of the Committee on Investigation of Flood Conditions Affecting the City of Rochester, N. Y. (Rochester, New York: W. W. Morrison. 1905), table, 45–46; image copy, HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b77585 : accessed 29 November 2024) > images 75–76. ↩︎
  5. Ibid., 70–71; image copy, HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b77585 : accessed 29 November 2024) > images 100–101. ↩︎
  6. “Hotel and 200 People Burned,” The (Rochester, New York) Democrat and Chronicle, 27 March 1913, p. 2, col. 2; image copy, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/135734903 : accessed 29 November 2024). ↩︎
  7. “Great Flood of 1913,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1913 : accessed 29 November 2024). ↩︎
  8. “After Attack on City River Gives Ground,” The (Rochester, New York) Democrat and Chronicle, 30 March 1913, p. 27, col. 1; image copy, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/135734990 : accessed 29 November 2024). ↩︎
  9. Ibid. ↩︎
  10. “Final Ordinance 4379: Construction of Movable Dams and Deepening Genesee River Bed,” Proceedings of the Common Council of the City of Rochester: 1913 (Rochester, New York: Rochester Herald Press, 1914), 612; image copy, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/YWkwAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 : accessed 29 November 2024). ↩︎
  11. “Genesee River Flood Protection for the Year 1916,” Annual Reports of the Department of Engineer of the City of Rochester for the Years 1914, 1915 and 1916 (Rochester, New York: John P. Smith, 1917), 5: image copy, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Annual_Report/-uA2AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 : accessed 30 November 2024). ↩︎
  12. The foundation of this dam can still be seen during periods of low water. ↩︎
  13. “Deepening Genesee River for Flood Protection,” Annual Reports of the Department of Engineering of the City of Rochester: Years 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1920 (Rochester, New York: John P. Smith, 1921), 6; image copy, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Annual_Report/Kd42AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 : accessed 29 November 2024). “H. W. Rippy Obtains Figures,” The (Rochester) Democrat and Chronicle, 1 November 1919, p. 15, col. 2; image copy, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/135411869 : accessed 29 November 2024). The newspaper reported that the city paid $839,781.49; adding $115,000 paid to cover a loss by the contractor brings the total to $954,781.49, or more than $16 million in today’s currency: “CPI Inflation Calculator,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm). ↩︎
  14. Report by the public works committee, Proceedings of the Common Council of the City of Rochester: 1913 (Rochester, New York: Rochester Herald Press, 1914), 611; image copy, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/YWkwAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 : accessed 29 November 2024). ↩︎
  15. Thomas X. Grasso, “Geology and History of the Rochester Gorge, Part One.” Rochester History 54 (Fall 1992), 21. ↩︎
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“This stupendous fabric”

James Eights recorded this view of the "aqueduct bridge" over the Genesee River in Rochester, probably in 1825. A packet boat, drawn by a team of horses, passes over the aqueduct while the Genesee River cascades over one of the shelves of the Upper Falls below. The large stone building at the left is a brewery. Mills, warehouses, and residences crowd the west bank. The dome of the Monroe County Courthouse and spire of St. Luke's Episcopal church can be glimpsed to the left of the high gabled roof near the right side of the image. A scientist as well as a skilled draftsman, Eights provided this and other illustrations for Stephen van Rennselaer's "Geological and Agricultural Survey of the District Adjoining the Erie Canal in the State of New York." Though a publication date of 1824 is printed on the report's title page, the appearance of St. Luke's, completed in late 1825, indicates a later date for the image. (Library of Congress)
James Eights recorded this view of the “aqueduct bridge” from the east bank of the Genesee River around 1825. A packet boat drawn by a team of horses passes over the aqueduct while the river cascades over one of the shelves of the Upper Falls below. The large stone building at the left is a brewery. Mills, warehouses, and residences crowd the opposite bank. (Library of Congress)

The great aqueduct over the Genesee River at Rochester was built over fifteen months, from July 1822 to September 1823. 

Actual construction, however, took about eight months. Though work elsewhere along the canal line began each year in early spring, the aqueduct builders in Rochester waited till July, when the level of the river dropped. Most of its water was then diverted into the millraces on the east and west banks, allowing access to the rocky riverbed.

The contractors — Alfred Hovey, Abel Wethey, and a handful of others — may have been under pressure to finish the job quickly. The state’s canal commissioners hoped to open the entire canal from Albany to Buffalo by the end of 1823. They did not know that difficulties further west at Lockport would delay everything for another two years. In 1822, they may have assumed that Rochester would be the bottleneck. 

Already an entire year had been wasted. Hovey and Wethey’s contract represented the second attempt to cross the river. The first, commenced the previous year by William Brittin, had failed disastrously. Ill-prepared and underfinanced, Brittin had managed to erect only a culvert and the eastern abutment by the time the river rose that fall. During the ensuing winter it carried off the abutment, leaving behind a few straggling anchor bolts bent over by the force of the current. That December, Brittin died. 

The partners who picked up the contract spent much of the winter of 1822 searching for a convenient source of suitable building material — stone that was durable, easy to work, and that could be quarried in blocks large enough to withstand the force of the river’s annual floods. They found this durable material, or so they thought, at the bottom of the Genesee River gorge: a layer of red Medina sandstone. 

Most of the stone used to build the aqueduct would come from here. After being cut from the quarry, the large red blocks, from two to five feet thick and weighing several tons apiece, were somehow hauled to the brink of the gorge — a near-vertical ascent of almost 200 feet. Or perhaps they were floated downstream to Hanford’s Landing, where skids had been built to convey heavy items between the top of the gorge and the water’s edge. Either way, the blocks then would have been hauled by ox-drawn sled to the aqueduct site three miles away.

In all, more than 13,500 cubic yards of rock would be used to build the aqueduct, enough to fill a football field with a stack of stone blocks six feet high. As the stones slowly piled up on the east and west banks of the river, workers used black powder to blast away the shelves of the Upper Falls that were in the way.

Much of the quarrying and blasting — the most difficult and dangerous work — was done by convicted criminals from the new state prison at Auburn.

Stone construction is an ancient art; the methods used by the aqueduct builders would have hardly changed for thousands of years. First, the rough blocks were cut and dressed by skilled masons, who took particular care to fashion the wedge-shaped voussoirs to precisely fit into each arch. Then the heavy blocks were transported up to four hundred feet out over the riverbed and delicately lowered into place. Tolerances were measured in fractions of an inch. Aside from the animal teams used to haul the stones to the site, the work was entirely powered by human effort.

They worked quickly, setting the abutments and piers firmly into the rocky bed of the river and erecting the nine main arches, each of which took only a few days to complete. By the end of 1822 all of the arches and the walls between them were finished.

The water table, parapets, pilasters, and coping were assembled from enormous slabs of gray Cayuga County limestone, delivered by way of the partially completed canal from quarries sixty miles away. The aqueduct was finished by September 1823. It opened amid a shower of toasts the following month.

Erie Canal engineer David Bates described the completed work in the Rochester Telegraph:

“This stupendous fabric, which forms a prominent link in the great chain of our inland com­munication, is built on one of the rifts which compose a part of the extensive falls of the Genesee river. 

“The Aqueduct, from the eastern extremity of its parapet walls to its western termination, is 804 feet long, and is built on eleven arches; one [on the east side] of twenty-six feet chord, under which passes the water necessary for a number of important flouring mills, &c., nine of fifty feet chord, and one on the west side of the river of thirty feet chord, under which passes water for a number of flouring mills and other hydraulic establishments. . . . 

“The structure is founded on solid rock, in which nitches [sic] were cut to found the piers, which are thirty-six feet long and ten feet wide, including at each end a pedestal and dome, out of which rises a pilaster. The height of the piers is about four and an half feet; the rise of the arch eleven feet; its thickness at the foot three feet; at the apex, two and an half feet. The parapet walls or sides of the trunk, are five and an half feet high, including the coping, which is so constructed as to form a capital to tile whole trunk. The whole of this immense building is of cut stone; many of them, particularly the piers, of very great size. . . .

“On the north wall, which is of sufficient thickness for the towing path, is an elegant iron railing; and at the west end the whole is terminated by a highway and towing-path bridge of the most solid and elegant workmanship.”1

Alas, the aqueduct’s flaws would soon become apparent. They were several, all serious.

First, integrating the existing channel of Elisha Johnson’s north-south millrace into the east-west alignment of the canal had resulted in a ninety-degree turn at the aqueduct’s eastern end that would snarl traffic and prove hazardous for large boats.

Second, the seventeen-foot width of the aqueduct waterway meant that canal traffic across the river would be one-way. Eastbound boats would have to wait for westbound boats, and vice-versa. Rochester was a busy canal port. Basins near both ends of the aqueduct would have been crowded with passenger and freight traffic. As much as any other feature of the canal, the aqueduct’s narrow width would create endless bottlenecks and fistfights among canal-boat bullies.

The final insult: Not only was the aqueduct the wrong size and possibly built in the wrong place, it leaked. This may have been partly due to its rapid and probably substandard construction. But the main culprit was the red Medina sandstone of which it was built, a poor choice of building material that turned out to be porous. The aqueduct began to crumble as Rochester’s yearly freeze-thaw cycle broke up the stones and the water lime that filled the gaps between them.

By the 1830s engineers began to draw up contingency plans in case the aqueduct failed completely. Its replacement, finished in 1842, stands to this day: a testament to professional engineering, quality workmanship, and the tough limestone of which it is made.

A German tourist by the name of A. Duttenhofer sketched Rochester's Erie Canal aqueduct in 1826. The view, apparently from an upper floor of one of the new buildings on Mill Street, looks east across the Genesee River. Jonathan Child's sawmill straddles the raceway at lower left, behind an empty canal boat tied up in Child's Basin. Gristmills and sawmills line the opposite bank, while others crowd the south wall of the aqueduct, right. Duttenhofer titled his drawing "Bruck-Canal uber den Fluss Genesee in Rochester" ("Bridge Canal over the Genesee River in Rochester"), and included it in his "Bereisung der Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf den Erie-Canal" ("Tour of the United States of North America with Particular Regard to the Erie Canal"), published in Stuttgart in 1835. (New York State Library)
A German tourist by the name of A. Duttenhofer sketched the aqueduct from the west bank in 1826, apparently from an upper floor of one of the new buildings on Mill Street. Jonathan Child’s sawmill straddles the raceway at lower left, behind an empty canal boat tied up in Child’s Basin. Gristmills and sawmills line the opposite bank, while others crowd the south wall of the aqueduct. (New York State Library)

Rebuilding the aqueduct

You may have guessed by now that the construction of the first Rochester aqueduct will be the subject of my next landscape.

All of my images are based as much as possible on original research, but I realized early on that this one would be in a league of its own. There were many stories to follow: The construction of the aqueduct, the founding and early growth of Rochester, and the development of the flour milling industry, to name just a few. Following these stories took a few years and involved several trips across New York state to visit libraries, historical societies, and archives. Many hours were spent online going through newspapers, property deeds, state prison records, and period textbooks and treatises on carpentry, masonry construction, and civil engineering.

I’m planning to post more frequently as work on the landscape continues. Brief historical narratives will fill out the broad overview given here and will alternate with updates on the image itself.

If you haven’t already, please go back and read “There for the Taking,” “On the Brink,” and “Over the River.” These establish some historical context and set the stage. If you like, you can use the form on this website’s home page to subscribe to future posts.

  1. “The Aqueduct,” The (Rochester, New York) Telegraph, 14 October 1823, p. 2, col. 3; image copy, NYS Historic Newspapers (https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=rot18231014-01.1.2&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN———- : accessed 26 August 2024). ↩︎
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Over the river

Map of Rochester c. 1820
The four-story Red Mill (center right) is prominently featured in this detail from a hand-drawn, early 19th-century map of Rochester. North is to the right. The Genesee River flows from left to right, with artificial mill races branching off either side to supply water power to several mills and factories. On the west side of the river (top), from left: the sawmill of John C. Rochester and Harvey Montgomery; and the sawmill and Red Mill of Ely & Co. On the east side, from left: Hervey Ely’s two sawmills; the clothworks; the paper mill built in 1818 by Derrick Sibley and Harvey Gilman; William Atkinson’s Yellow Mill, built in 1817; an unidentified mill; and William Johnson’s oil and woolen mills, built in 1818. The map’s origin and date are uncertain. The lack of any reference to the Erie Canal and aqueduct would seem to place it before the summer of 1821; however, the unidentified mill may be Hervey Ely’s Etna Mill, completed in 1822. (Rochester Historical Society)

The raising of the Red Mill was cause for celebration in the Hundred Acre Tract.

Finished in 1815, the four-story structure became the first gristmill on the tract since Ebenezer Allan’s failed effort twenty years before. Allan’s mill employed one pair of crudely carved millstones; the Red Mill’s large overshot wheel powered four.1 Supplied with grain harvested on the Genesee Flats and shipped north in Durham boats,2 it was intended to put Rochesterville on the map.

“It was the greatest thing that had been done for the locality and, for years, that mill continued to grind the ‘grists’ that crowded to its doors from far and near,” wrote Maude Motley, who would be born decades later into a prominent Rochester milling family. “It was not unusual for men waiting their turn for grinding to spend the whole night in that first red mill, be­guiling the time by telling stories and drinking.”3

Four years earlier, the future had not seemed so bright.

In late 1811 the Hundred Acre Tract was nearly untouched wilderness. Near a shelf of natural rock by the Upper Falls, the pitiful remains of Allan’s mills lay crumbling into the earth. His sawmill had been swept away by a freshet in 1803 — a harbinger of things to come — and the gristmill had burned four years later.4

Nathaniel Rochester, then 59 years old, spent several weeks patiently laying out a city that for the moment existed only in his imagination. He then hired a neighbor, Enos Stone, as his agent and returned to his farm in Dansville. Stone purchased the first lot that November.5

More than anyone, Rochester understood the tract’s waterpower potential and wished to take advantage of it by building his own mill there. But he was broke.

“I have been to the Falls of Genesee lately, and laid out & sold some more lots, say about twenty-five in all,” he wrote that November to his brother-in-law. “And for want of funds to build a good Merchant Mill there, I have leased a Mill seat for ten years, which will contribute very much to the improvement of the Town & neighborhood.”6

Rochester did not specify who had taken the lease. But an earlier letter from his partner Charles Carroll offers a clue: “We have no hesitation in acceding to the offer of Genl. M’Clure & Mr. Cameron to erect a merchant mill on any part of our Estate.”7

“Genl. M’Clure & Mr. Cameron” likely would have been George McClure and Dugald Cameron of Bath, Steuben County. McClure, a miller and farmer, “also became the local postmaster, county judge, state legislator, and a brigadier general in command of the county militia.”8 Any plans he may have had for the Hundred Acre Tract would have been interrupted by the War of 1812; his part in that did not go well and ended with him shouldering much of the blame for the burning of Buffalo.

Ely & Co.

Meanwhile, the war had put a stranglehold on the Hundred Acre Tract. McClure’s contract having fallen through (if indeed there ever was one), Rochester and his partners were ready to find someone else who could build a gristmill, demonstrate the site’s potential, and kick its development into gear.

They had good reason to press ahead. Competing settlements at the Middle and Lower Falls — Hanford’s Landing and Franklin to the north, and Carthage to the northeast — threatened to siphon off settlers and surpass Rochesterville. At any moment Enos Stone, in Brighton on the opposite bank, might begin selling lots adjacent to the river that, after the construction of a raceway, could be used as mill seats.

Diagram of a gristmill from Oliver Evans's "The Young Mill-Wright & Miller's Guide."
Gristmills at the Genesee Falls would have used a system developed in the late 1780s by Oliver Evans of Newport, Delaware, who combined existing technology with machines of his own invention to grind, dry, sift, and pack finished flour into barrels — the first automated assembly line. The process, for which he received one of the nation’s first patents, dramatically reduced waste and the labor required to mill grain. In his book describing the new process, “The Young Mill-Wright & Miller’s Guide,” he calculated that it could save a mill operator $298 a year. “A mill that made 40 barrels a day, required four men and a boy,” he wrote. “Two men are now sufficient.” (Library of Congress.)

The appearance in 1813 of two brothers from West Springfield, Massachusetts, provided the catalyst that Rochester and his partners needed.

The Ely brothers — Elisha was 32, Hervey, 22 — arrived brimming with self-confidence and determination. They had practical experience in water-powered manufacturing: Elisha and his older half-brother, Alexander, had operated a wool-carding mill in Massachusetts.9 The Elys opened a store on Buffalo Street and erected a sawmill that would commence business the following spring.10 Then Elisha Ely applied for and received water rights for seven years on the primitive raceway and negotiated a lease for a lot on which to build a gristmill.11

The terms of the lease have not surfaced, but Rochester may have sweetened the deal by making it rent-free, at least initially.12 At any rate, the Elys and their partner Josiah Bissell Jr. proceeded to build their four-story mill and finished it with a coat of red paint.

Rochester, Fitzhugh, and Carroll remained steadfast in their commitment not to sell any mill seats in the Hundred Acre Tract. Not even to family: Nathaniel Rochester, whose son John C. Rochester and son-in-law Harvey Montgomery built a sawmill near the Red Mill, retained ownership of the property and required a lease for the mill.13

After building a store, a sawmill, and a gristmill in the Hundred Acre Tract, Ely & Co. hedged their bets in 1815 by purchasing two lots from Stone.14 They also leased a third lot that included a sawmill;15 two years later Hervey Ely would build a second, larger sawmill next to it.16 North of the sawmills stood a carding machine and woolen clothworks with a yard full of tenter bars on which the fulled cloth was stretched to dry.17

Stone’s efforts to develop his Brighton property had been haphazard. Contracts drawn up for the mill lots he sold included a section committing him to build a raceway to supply water to them. But he never got around to building it. William Atkinson used the lots he occupied to store lumber and barrels while he waited for the water that someday would power a mill.18

Elisha Johnson land office advertisement
Advertising placed by Elisha Johnson in newspapers throughout the northeast United States, including the July 7, 1817, edition of the Rochester Telegraph, mentioned the water lots (mill lots) that were for sale and made special note of the canal (raceway) that he had built to supply water to them. (FultonHistory.com.)

“The capitalist and the man of enterprize”

So things stood until 1817, when Elisha Johnson arrived at the Genesee Falls. 

A Yankee from Wells, Vermont, Johnson had relocated as a young man to western New York, where he found work as a surveyor.19 He had come to the Falls at the behest of the founders of Carthage, and for them Johnson laid out a classic New England town with a promenade along the edge of the gorge and a central square.20 

When he was finished he may have looked south to Enos Stone’s farm and sensed an opportunity.

Exhibiting some skill as an entrepreneur as well as a surveyor, Johnson negotiated the purchase of Stone’s farm and a mortgage (financed by Stone) that would allow him to pay off its $10,000 price over ten years with no interest. The terms of the mortgage also required Johnson to build the millrace that Stone had for so long put off.21 Johnson then sold a fifty percent stake in his purchase to a group of Canandaigua investors. They agreed to pay Johnson $10,000 in several installments over five years with interest, and to pay half of his mortgage to Stone. The investors — Orson Seymour, Harris Seymour, and Punderson B. Underhill — also agreed to pay for half of the new raceway.22

Mortgaged to the hilt, Johnson did not stop there. He made a proper survey, laying down streets, town lots, mill seat lots, and a public square.23 (He later would have the resulting map professionally engraved and printed.) He opened a land office on his new Main Street and, to attract purchasers, placed ads in newspapers across the Northeast. When he boasted in the advertisement that “there is no village in the western country . . . which offers to the capitalist and the man of enterprize so many inducements for settlement, as Rochester,” he may have had himself in mind.24

He also began blasting a channel for the long-awaited raceway.

It was a massive and expensive undertaking. The dam and raceway — four feet deep, up to 60 feet wide, and a thousand feet long — would reportedly end up costing $12,000. By the end of the year the raceway extended to lot No. 4, on which Atkinson’s new mill, painted bright yellow and containing three run of stones, could now open for business.25

Atkinson's Yellow Mill in 1838
The Yellow Mill, built by William Atkinson in 1817, survived into the 1830s when it was owned by Meech, Rice & Co. In 1838 Henry O’Reilly included an engraving of it in his book “Settlement in the West: Sketches of Rochester; with Incidental Notices of Western New York.” In the engraving it is dwarfed by the much larger Crescent Mills of Thomas Emerson, built in 1835. (Internet Archive.)

More development followed. In 1818 Derick Sibley and partner Harvey Gilman purchased mill seat lot No. 8, built a three-story paper mill, and were soon making newsprint for the Rochester Telegraph.26 On lot Nos. 1 and 2, north of the Yellow Mill, Johnson’s younger brother William opened a flax-seed oil mill and a woolen mill.27

East side, west side

Ten days after buying Enos Stone’s Brighton farm, Johnson had written to Nathaniel Rochester with a business proposition:

“In the course of this week I propose adopting a plan of opperation in relation to the water priviledges opposite to yours at this place . . . & considering that a plan ought to be adopted that would be mutually for our interests & believing some improvement may be made that would particularly be for your benefit, makes me anxious to see you at this place the latter part of this week.”28

Johnson’s “plan of opperation” involved the construction of a mill dam across the river above the Upper Falls. The dam would impound the water and divert it into the raceways on both banks. The water would be shared fifty-fifty. Johnson also may have proposed sharing the cost of building guard gates on each of the races as well as a few property adjustments. We do not know, because the terms of the contract have not survived. But either they were not clearly defined or there was willful misunderstanding of what they meant, because the agreement and the dam would become a source of vexation and conflict for years to come.

Charles Carroll would forever remain suspicious of Johnson. Months later, after the troubles began, he would confess that when Johnson made his proposal “I suspected something sinister, for ‘timeo Danaos & dona ferentes’ & I wanted no compromise or terms with them.”29

Map of Rochester including the east side of the river
Detail from a map of Rochester, possibly drawn by Elisha Johnson around 1820, shows the mill seat lots on either side of the Genesee River with the steps of the Upper Falls in between: Johnson and his partner Orson Seymour’s properties on the east side; and Rochester, Carroll, and Fitzhugh’s properties on the west side. (Rochester Historical Society.)

Competition from Johnson may have prompted a suggestion by Rochester to improve the raceway on his side by moving it slightly west, where it would extend further along the natural rock shelf. “It would give us more fall,” he wrote to his partners, “and more Mill Seats.”30 Rochester, Carroll, and Fitzhugh that summer signed an agreement to divide up the remaining unsold properties in the Hundred Acre Tract.31

Unlike Rochester and his partners, Johnson had no qualms about selling the mill seats he had so meticulously plotted out. His goal was to make a quick profit and they were immediately put on the market.

The different approaches may have been partly cultural. Rochester, Carroll, and Fitzhugh, southerners all, traced their lineage back to a traditional society where most property was controlled by an aristocracy of land-owning families and worked by slave labor.

Johnson was from New England, where the colonial tradition of owning land in common had given way to individual fee-simple ownership. Combined with an unabashed preoccupation with making money, this could sometimes result in extreme land speculation schemes. Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, fellow New Englanders who had been the first to try their hand at real estate in western New York, had purchased millions of acres but soon after had to surrender a large part of their investment and sell out. Johnson’s project was much smaller scale, but it was a still a calculated risk.

There also was a physical difference between the two sides. Johnson’s mill seats and raceway were protected by a high, stony bank. Those on the west side were built on a low alluvial deposit that sloped gradually up to the rocky shelf on which the village of Rochesterville was laid out. Wittingly or not, Rochester and his partners were erecting their industrial infrastructure — raceway, mills, and warehouses — in a flood zone.32

“Low down as the bed of the river — to the rock”

The Genesee’s last major flood had been in 1803, before the area had been settled. That was the one that had carried off the remains of Ebenezer Allan’s sawmill.33

Now the river struck again. 

The Freshet of 1817 would be widely reported as one of the worst floods in memory. The weather system that spawned it covered much of the country, raising rivers and spreading misery from the Ohio to the Susquehanna.34

In western New York the rain began falling on Friday, October 31, and it did not abate until the following Sunday morning. By then the Genesee River had spilled over its banks and inundated the flats between Geneseo and Leicester. The torrent damaged the toll bridge between those settlements and swept away fields of corn and wheat ready for harvest. At Avon two wagons and their teams were lost when the ferry carrying them became fouled against a bridge. At Allen’s Creek an entire flock of sheep was carried off. And in Leicester several families had to be rescued by boat, with one family desperately removing their cabin roof for use as a raft.35

A few days later the crest reached Rochesterville. It flooded the raceways, undermined John Rochester’s sawmill, and washed away several feet of the riverbank near the west end of the bridge, taking several structures with it.

“The river has continued to rise since you left here,” John C. Rochester wrote to his father on November 7. “It’s taken away the shop built by Curtis & 1 part & all the under work of my saw mill. . . . The village has been constantly busy securing the West end of the Bridge & Mr. Johnson’s race towards the head which broke away two or three times.”36

As the water subsided the extent of the damage became clear. “It has worn away very little above the race,” John wrote. But “the land where Curtises shop the Slaughter house & store is extremely washed away . . . low down as the bed of the river — to the rock.”37

The November 19 edition of the Geneva Gazette summed it up. “At Rochester, two buildings were swept away, and considerable damage done to the mills, dams, &c. by the late flood.”38

Charles Carroll at once recognized a longer-term consequence of the flood — bad publicity — and was quick to assign blame. He was certain that the damage had been aggravated by the height of the new mill dam and hinted that Johnson may have built it that way on purpose. “We have already in public estimation sustained irreparable injury by the report of the destruction of the mills & the inundation of the Village,” he wrote. “It is all important to us, & the more we suffer in the eyes of the Public, the better for Brighton. I have learnt enough of Yankees to dread & fear their wiles & offers . . . Take heed my frd or they will be yr ruin.”39

Rochester 1865 flood
The worst flood in Rochester’s history struck in March 1865. Buildings and other encroachments in the Genesee River were blamed for the inundation, which swept over the Main Street Bridge and undermined the foundations of buildings on both banks. This photograph looks west across the river with Main Street in the foreground. The six-story structure at the far left is the New Red Mill, built in 1822 by Harvey Montgomery and Thomas H. Rochester — a rare and perhaps unique example of one of the original Upper Falls gristmills surviving long enough to be photographed. It would be demolished five years later to make way for new construction. (From the collection of the Rochester Public Library Local History & Genealogy Division.)

The flood of 1817 would be followed by many others. When high water again threatened his raceway in early February 1819, a weary Nathaniel Rochester begged Elisha Johnson for help: “I have been busily engaged since I wrote you last with four Irishmen endeavoring to secure the guardlock with frozen sod and some stones, having nothing else to do it with, and I fear they will do no good. . . . I am very low in spirit, and know not what to do for the best.”40

Rochester and his fellow citizens were being schooled in the river’s annual rhythm: high water in late fall, high water again in winter or early spring (often accompanied by ice), and a dry spell that spanned late summer and early fall. It was a harsh lesson. The dry season coincided with the grain harvest, the busiest time for the village’s nascent milling industry. Then the mills needed every drop of water they could get. The dam would stay.

The floods of 1817 and 1819 had other consequences.

Perhaps exhausted by the worry and effort needed to protect and maintain his property, and beset with unrelated financial problems, the now 67-year-old Nathaniel Rochester redoubled his efforts to liquidate his remaining real estate holdings in the Hundred Acre Tract. This included his mill seats, beginning with lot No. 12 near the west end of the bridge, which was divided between Thomas Morgan’s nail factory and blacksmith William Cobb’s triphammer mill.41

In 1822, Rochester, Fitzhugh and Carroll signed a new partition agreement to merge and reorganize the mill lots.42 The lease for John C. Rochester’s sawmill was assumed by Rochester’s son-in-law, Jonathan Child, who also bought its lot, No. 6, along with several other properties.43 Rochester sold neighboring lot No. 5 to his son Thomas H. Rochester and other son-in-law Harvey Montgomery.44 On it they constructed the tract’s second gristmill. It, too, was painted red, and became known as the New Red Mill.45 Finally, the original Red Mill and its lot, No. 2, were sold to Ebenezer S. Beach.46

“The most safe and cheap passing of the Genesee river”

The floods also may have influenced the Erie Canal commissioners’ decision in late 1819 to build a stone aqueduct across the Genesee River.

The idea of building an aqueduct had been around at least since 1811, when it was mentioned in the canal commissioners’ first annual report to the state legislature.47 But since then James Geddes, the engineer most familiar with Rochester, had recommended using a slackwater crossing instead.48 When he completed his survey of the Western Section in 1816, that is what was shown on his map and described in his report to the Canal Commission.49

Slackwater crossings sometimes were used to traverse rivers that obstructed the line of the canal. The canal would be connected to the river, which was dammed below the crossing to create a pond of still water on which boats could safely cross. Guard locks on both sides of the crossing would lower the boats to the level of the river and prevent it from flooding the canal during periods of high water. The horse or mule teams that towed the boats would cross on a timber bridge. 

They were seen as simpler alternatives to aqueducts. But tying unpredictable rivers to the canal was risky. Destructive floods could render a crossing unusable and might damage the canal. Dry spells might strand boats and back up traffic for weeks.

But it was understood that Geddes’s 1816 survey was subject to change. Three years later, as the canal commissioners prepared to let contracts for the Western Section, fresh survey teams were dispatched.50 The team led by engineer Canvass White would begin at Rochester and head east. He was specifically instructed by Commissioner Myron Holley to “ascertain carefully where the Genesee could best be crossed.”51

When he visited Rochester that summer, White may have viewed firsthand some of the lingering evidence of the recent floods and realized that it was high time to scrap the notion of a water-level crossing and build an aqueduct instead. If he needed more encouragement, all he had to do was take a good look at Elisha Johnson’s raceway. It pointed like an arrow to the base of the Upper Falls, where the water was shallow and the rocky riverbed would make a perfect foundation for a large masonry structure.

The state had granted almost unlimited power to the canal commissioners to seize any property they needed to complete the canal.52 Elisha Johnson had already done the hard work of blasting a channel that could now serve as the eastern approach to an aqueduct that would cross the river in the very heart of the village. It was just the right size. All they had to do was take it.

Which is what they did. To compensate Johnson, a new raceway would be built parallel to the canal in the bed of the river.53

At the October meeting of the canal commissioners in Utica, Chief Engineer Benjamin Wright reported on the results of the new surveys and offered three options for the canal route between the Seneca and Genesee rivers. The second option, Wright noted, included “the advantages of the most safe and cheap passing of the Genesee river, by an aqueduct near the bridge at Rochester, where rock-bottom to the river and stone for the structure are at hand.”54 The commissioners selected this option by a vote of three to one.55 At last the way was clear.

By then the Canal Commission and its cadre of self-taught engineers had been toiling away on the Erie Canal for more than two years. They were justifiably proud of what they had accomplished and this may have influenced their decision. A stone aqueduct over the Genesee River would comprise “the greatest mass of mason work contained in any one structure” on the canal.56

They were confident they could build it. Why not try?

  1. Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York, Seventy-Seventh Session, vol. 2 (Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1854), doc. no. 63: “Communication from the Canal Appraisers in Relation to the Claims of Jacob Graves and Others, Mill Owners, at Rochester,” p. 59, transcription of a statement by Hervey Ely; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112105707969 : accessed 12 December 2023) > image 599. ↩︎
  2. Henry E. Rochester, “The Genesee River and Western New York,” Publications of the Rochester Historical Society (Rochester, New York: Rochester Historical Society, 1892), 1:67. ↩︎
  3. Maude Motley, “The Romance of Milling: With Rochester the Flour City,” Centennial History of Rochester, New York, ed. Edward R. Foreman (Rochester, New York: Rochester Historical Society, 1931), 1:175. ↩︎
  4. William F. Peck, Semi-Centennial History of the City of Rochester (Syracuse, New York: Mason & Co., 1884), 78. ↩︎
  5. Colonel Nathaniel Rochester’s Account Book [1811–1822]; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York; Rochester Public Library microfilm Rr333.333 R676c; Rochester Public Library, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  6. Nathaniel Rochester to Elie Beatty, letter, 19 November 1811; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  7. Charles Carroll to Nathaniel Rochester, letter, 17 August 1811; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  8. Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (New York: Knopf, 2010), 247. ↩︎
  9. “Pittsfield Factory,” Pittsfield (Massachusetts) Sun, 7 June 1806, p. 3, col. 4; image copy, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/531979706 : accessed 21 November 2023). ↩︎
  10. Howard L. Osgood, “Rochester: Its Founders and Its Founding,” Publications of the Rochester Historical Society, Publication Fund Series (Rochester, New York: Rochester Historical Society, 1922), 1:67. ↩︎
  11. Nathaniel Rochester to William Fitzhugh, 18 June 1814, letter; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  12. Hervey Ely to Nathaniel Rochester, letter, 12 March 1823; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  13. Nathaniel Rochester to Harvey Montgomery and John C. Rochester, sawmill lease agreement, 14 March 1816; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  14. Ontario County, New York, Land Records, Liber 25:326, Enos Stone to Hervey Ely, Elisha Ely, and Josiah Bissel Jr., 17 January 1814; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9WH-N9MJ-K : accessed 21 November 2023), Ontario > Deeds 1815-1816 vol. 24-25 > image 432 of 511; citing Ontario County Clerk’s Office, Canandaigua, New York. ↩︎
  15. Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York, Seventy-Seventh Session, vol. 2 (Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1854), doc. no. 63, pp. 223–225, transcription of Enos Stone to Hervey Ely, Elisha Ely, and Josiah Bissell Jr., 1 May 1815; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112105707969 : accessed 12 December 2023) > images 763–765. ↩︎
  16. Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York, Seventy-Seventh Session, vol. 2 (Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1854), doc. no. 63, p. 59, transcription of a statement by Hervey Ely; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112105707969 : accessed 12 December 2023) > image 599. ↩︎
  17. Ontario County, New York, Land Records, Liber 23:240, Isaac Stone to Elisha Cobb, 1 January 1814; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99WH-J145 : accessed 21 November 2023) Ontario > Deeds 1814-1815 vol 22-23 > image 418 of 601; citing Ontario County Clerk’s Office, Canandaigua, New York. ↩︎
  18. Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York, Seventy-Seventh Session, vol. 2 (Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1854), doc. no. 63, p. 59, transcription of testimony by Everard Peck; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112105707969 : accessed 12 December 2023) > image 616. ↩︎
  19. John S. Minard, Allegany County and Its People: A Centennial Memorial History of Allegany County, New York (W. A. Fergusson & Co.: Alfred, New York, 1896), 56. ↩︎
  20. Susan Huntington Hooker, “The Rise and Fall of Carthage,” Publications of the Rochester Historical Society, Publication Fund Series (Rochester, New York: Rochester Historical Society, 1922), 2:207. ↩︎
  21. Ontario County, New York, Land Records, Liber 28:98, Enos Stone and Clarisa his wife to Elisha Johnson, 6 May 1817; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99WH-J7L7 : accessed 21 November 2023), Ontario > Deeds 1817-1818 vol 28-29 > image 54 of 571; citing Ontario County Clerk’s Office, Canandaigua, New York. Ontario County, New York, Mortgages, 8:375, Elisha Johnson and Betsy [sic] his wife to Enos Stone, 6 May 1817, consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9WX-SWRT : accessed 21 November 2023), Ontario > Mortgages 1814-1817 vol 7-8 > image 498 of 644; citing Ontario County Clerk’s Office, Canandaigua, New York. ↩︎
  22. Ontario County, New York, Land Records, Liber 28:417, Elisha Johnson and Betsey his wife to Punderson B. Underhill, Harris Seymour, and Orson Seymour, 24 July 1817; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99WH-J4X8 : accessed 21 November 2023), Ontario > Deeds 1817-1818 vol 28-29 > image 217 of 571; citing Ontario County Clerk’s Office, Canandaigua, New York. ↩︎
  23. The public square would become Rochester’s Washington Square Park. ↩︎
  24. “Land Office,” The New-York Columbian, 6 January 1818, p. 3, col. 1; image copy, Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers (access through participating libraries : accessed 14 November 2023). ↩︎
  25. A Directory for the Village of Rochester: Containing the Names, Residence and Occupations of All Male Inhabitants Over Fifteen Years of Age in Said Village, on the First of January, 1827. To Which is Added, a Sketch of the History of the Village, from 1812 to 1827 (Rochester, New York: Elisha Ely, 1827), 92. ↩︎
  26. Ontario County, New York, Land Records, Liber 33:245, Elisha Johnson and Betsey his wife and Orson Seymour and Caroline Maria his wife to Harvey Gilman and Derick Sibley, 14 May 1819, consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9WH-KKSJ : accessed 21 November 2023), Ontario > Deeds 1818-1819 vol 32-33 > image 452 of 544; citing Ontario County Clerk’s Office, Canandaigua, New York. Gilman and Sibley’s Paper Mill, The Rochester (New York) Telegraph, 13 October 1818, p. 2, col 5; image copy, NYS Historic Newspapers (https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=rot18181013-01.1.2&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN———- : accessed 21 November 2023). ↩︎
  27. “Oil Mill . . . Cloth Dressing,” The Rochester (New York) Telegraph, 8 September 1818, p. 3, col. 2; image copy, NYS Historic Newspapers (https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=rot18180908-01.1.3&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN———- : accessed 21 November 2023). ↩︎
  28. Elisha Johnson to Nathaniel Rochester, letter, 16 May 1817; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  29. Timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs: “I fear the Greeks even when bearing gifts,” quoting Virgil’s Aeneid; Charles Carroll to Nathaniel Rochester, letter, 6 November 1817; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  30. Nathaniel Rochester to Charles Carroll and William Fitzhugh, letter, 29 September 1817; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  31. Genesee County, New York, Land Records, Liber 11:160, Charles Carroll, William Fitzhugh, and Nathaniel Rochester, 13 August 1817; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9WR-KZ85 : accessed 21 November 2023), Genesee > Deeds 1817-1818 vol 10-11 > image 354 of 538; Genesee County Clerk’s Office, Batavia, New York. ↩︎
  32. Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, Eighty-Ninth Session, vol. 5 (Albany: C. Wendell, 1866), doc. no. 117: “Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Investigate the Causes of the Inundation of the City of Rochester in March, 1865,” p. 18; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924093488496 : accessed 12 December 2023) > image 1132. ↩︎
  33. William F. Peck, Landmarks of Monroe County, New York (Boston: Boston History Company, 1895), 148. ↩︎
  34. Ohio River Rises 40 Feet, Hampden Federalist (Springfield, Massachusetts), 4 December 1817; Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers (access through participating libraries: accessed 18 November 2023). Susquehannah Swelled to an Unusual Height, (New York) Commercial Advertiser, 15 November 1817; Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers (access through participating libraries: accessed 18 November 2023). ↩︎
  35. “Destructive Flood,” (Cooperstown, New York) Watch-Tower, 27 November 1817, p. 3, col. 1, from the Genesee Farmer; image copy, Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers (access through participating libraries: accessed 14 November 2023). ↩︎
  36. John C. Rochester to Nathaniel Rochester, letter, 7 November 1817; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  37. John C. Rochester to Nathaniel Rochester, letter, 10 November 1817; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  38. Two Buildings Swept Away at Rochester, Geneva (New York) Gazette, 19 November 1817, p. 3, col. 1; image copy, NYS Historic Newspapers (https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=gg18171119-01.1.3&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN———- : accessed 22 November 2023). ↩︎
  39. Charles Carroll to Nathaniel Rochester, letter, 9 November 1817; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  40. Nathaniel Rochester to Elisha Ely, letter, 4 November 1819; Nathaniel Rochester Papers; Rochester Historical Society, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  41. Genesee County, New York, Land Records, Liber 14:180, Nathaniel Rochester to Thomas Morgan, 9 November 1819; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89WR-ZJ7L : accessed 22 November 2023), Genesee > Deeds 1818-1823 vol 14-15 > image 391 of 607; citing Genesee County Clerk’s Office, Batavia, New York. Monroe County, New York, Land Records, Liber 28:473, Nathaniel Rochester to William Cobb, 9 November 1819; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99WF-Q3V : accessed 22 November 2023), Monroe > Deeds 1833-1834 vol 28 > image 485 of 595; Monroe County Clerk’s Office, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  42. Monroe County, New York, Land Records, Liber 2:117, Charles Carroll, Nathaniel Rochester, and William Fitzhugh, 19 September 1822; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99WF-7ZZW : accessed 22 November 2023), Monroe > Deeds 1822-1823 vol 2 > image 120 of 550; Monroe County Clerk’s Office, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  43. Monroe County, New York, Land Records, Liber 2:131, Nathaniel Rochester and Sophia, his wife, to Jonathan Child, 8 October 1822; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89WF-7D4K : accessed 22 November 2023), Monroe > Deeds 1822-1823 vol 2 > image 134 of 550; Monroe County Clerk’s Office, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  44. Monroe County, New York, Land Records, Liber 2:256, Nathaniel Rochester and Sophia, his wife, to Harvey Montgomery and Thomas H. Rochester, 25 December 1822; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9WF-789D : accessed 22 November 2023), Monroe > Deeds 1822-1823 vol 2 > image 259 of 550; Monroe County Clerk’s Office, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  45. “New Red Mill,” The Rochester (New York) Telegraph, 17 December 1822, p. 3, col. 4; image copy, NYS Historic Newspapers (https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=rot18221217-01.1.3&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN———- : accessed 22 November 2023). ↩︎
  46. Monroe County, New York, Land Records, Liber 1:208, Charles Carroll and Ann his wife, William Fitzhugh and Ann his wife, and Nathaniel Rochester and Sophia his wife to Ebenezer S. Beach, 14 August 1821; consulted as “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9WF-Q7SK : accessed 22 November 2023), Monroe > Deeds 1821-1822 vol 1 > image 211 of 749; Monroe County Clerk’s Office, Rochester, New York. ↩︎
  47. Laws of the State of New York, in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, vol. 1 (Albany: E. and E. Hosford, 1825), 61, 66; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hwsr1t : accessed 12 December 2023) > images 79, 84. ↩︎
  48. Laws of the State of New York . . . Canals, vol. 1, p. 145; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hwsr1t) > image 163. ↩︎
  49. Laws of the State of New York . . . Canals, vol. 1, p. 213; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hwsr1t) > image 235. ↩︎
  50. Laws of the State of New York . . . Canals, vol. 1, p. 451; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hwsr1t) > image 475. ↩︎
  51. Myron Holley to Henry O’Reilly, letter, 18 December 1837, in O’Reilly, Settlement in the West. Sketches of Rochester; with Incidental Notices of Western New-York (Rochester: William Alling, 1838), 220. ↩︎
  52. Laws of the State of New York . . . Canals, vol. 1, p. 360: “An Act Respecting Navigable Communications, Between the Great Western and Northern Lakes, and the Atlantic Ocean,” sect. 3; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hwsr1t) > image 384. ↩︎
  53. Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York, Sixty-Second Session, vol. 5 (Albany: E. Croswell, 1839), doc. no. 283: “Report of the Committee on Canals and Internal Improvements on the Several Memorials of Hervey Ely, Wm. Fitzhugh, Jonathan Child, Thomas Kempshall, Joseph Strong, Maltby Strong and John T. Potter,” p. 5–6, transcription of mill owners’ memorial; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b2998836 : accessed 12 December 2023) > images 435–436. ↩︎
  54. “The Grand Canal,” Geneva (New York) Gazette, 19 November 1819, p. 2, cols. 3–4, from the Albany Register; image copy, NYS Historic Newspapers (https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=gg18191110-01.1.2&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN———- : accessed 22 November 2023). ↩︎
  55. Myron Holley to Henry O’Reilly, letter, in O’Reilly, Settlement in the West, 220. ↩︎
  56. Laws of the State of New York . . . Canals, vol. 2, p. 100; imaged at HathiTrust (https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hwsr15) > image 136. ↩︎
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On the brink

Drawing by French naturalist Charles Alexander Leseur of the High Falls of the Genesee at Rochester.
This early depiction of the Middle Falls of the Genesee River at Rochester, New York, was sketched by French naturalist Charles Alexandre Lesueur in 1816. This waterfall at 96 feet was the highest of the area’s four falls, and along with the others was quickly exploited for its industrial potential. The large building at the upper right is a gristmill built in 1807 by Englishman Charles Harford. (Charles Alexandre Lesueur, “Genesee River,” Rochester, New York. Gray wash and pencil — 20 x 13 cm. Muséum d’histoire naturelle, Le Havre, inv. no. 39059r.)

The Genesee River is the star of the show when it comes to the early history of Rochester. All the other players come and go, but the river is always there.

Rising in the northern highlands of Pennsylvania, the Genesee drops some 2,000 feet on its way to Lake Ontario. Much of the descent occurs over two sets of magnificent waterfalls, one in Letchworth State Park, the other in downtown Rochester. It is named after the Seneca word for the surrounding landscape, often translated as “beautiful valley.” But the Seneca themselves from long familiarity and use had many names for the river. One was particularly appropriate — “river of many falls.”1

“They call this River Casconchiagon,” wrote the Jesuit priest and explorer Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix in a letter home to France in May 1721. He had reached an outpost on the Niagara River and met “M. de Joncaire, Captain in the Troops of New France,” who gave him this first-person account of the river, which lay some distance to the east:

“Two Leagues from its Mouth, we are stopped by a Fall which appears to be sixty Feet high, and one hundred and forty Yards wide. A Musket Shot higher, we find a second of the same Width, but not so high by two thirds. Half a League further, a third, one hundred Feet high, good Measure, and two hundred yards wide. After this, we meet with several Torrents; and after having sailed fifty Leagues further, we perceive a fourth fall, every way equal to the third.”

The good Father Charlevoix, who must have paddled past the river on his voyage west, ruefully wrote that he would have visited it himself if only he “had been sooner informed of its Singularity.”2

Map of the north part of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase.
In 1788 a syndicate controlled by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham purchased the preemption rights to western New York, allowing them to negotiate the purchase of the land from the Seneca Nation. Short of funds, Phelps and Gorham could acquire clear title to only about 2.6 million acres. This map detail shows the northern part of their purchase, including the Mill Lot Tract west of the Genesee (“Geneseo”) River. The Middle and Lower falls are marked on the map, along with Ebenezer Allan’s gristmill and sawmill. (Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation/River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester)

A hundred acres and a waterfall

The Genesee Country would be opened to white settlement within a couple of generations of Charlevoix’s visit. During the American Revolution the indigenous occupants, the Senecas, were defeated by the Continental soldiers of General John Sullivan, their fields and villages laid to waste. Afterward, when those soldiers returned home, their accounts of the fertile country to the west caught the ears of speculators eager to make another kind of killing.

A group of investors led by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham in 1788 purchased the preemption rights to western New York, allowing them to negotiate with the Senecas who, in principal, still held title to the soil.

The Senecas, unwilling to part with all of their territory, sold everything east of the Genesee, about 2.6 million acres, for $5,000 or a little more than five cents an acre. In a concession to Phelps they included a diagonally shaped tract west of the river, about twelve miles by twenty-four, for use as a “mill lot.” In return, Phelps promised to establish a sawmill and gristmill to serve native inhabitants and white settlers alike.3

An Indian trader named Ebenezer Allan agreed to operate the mills, and Phelps sold or gave to him a smaller tract of one hundred acres on which to build them.

Allan’s tract was adjacent to a stretch of rocky ledges and rapids known as the Upper Falls, so named because they were the first in a series of four cataracts over which the Genesee River tumbled on its way to Lake Ontario. The Upper Falls dropped a mere 14 feet – nothing compared to the mighty 96-foot-high Middle Falls a half-mile downstream. If you were to visit downtown Rochester today you would find no sign of them. But in the early 19th century the power they could generate was sufficient to drive many mills and factories.4

Allan turned out to be a poor millwright. His crudely constructed mills were inefficient and inaccessible to early settlers, and in 1792 he sold the falls tract and moved away. The tract passed through several hands before being contracted for purchase in 1803 by Nathaniel Rochester, William Fitzhugh, and Charles Carroll, three Maryland businessmen visiting on a tip from a local land agent. Impressed with the tract’s potential, they signed a contract, agreeing to buy the hundred acres for $1,750 to be paid in five annual installments.5

It was a cold-eyed real-estate investment that may have been underwritten in part by Rochester’s slave-trading business back home.6

Hundred Acre Tract Deed
The copy of the deed to the Hundred Acre Tract on file at Genesee County Clerk’s office includes a small thumbnail plan of the property, labeled “Carroll Fitzhugh Rochester 100 a[cre]s.” Partners Nathaniel Rochester, William Fitzhugh, and Charles Carroll in 1803 had agreed to purchase the property from the Pulteney Estate. This contract, signed on Nov. 18, 1811, finalized the deal. (Genesee County Land Records, Liber 3, p. 307/Microfilm scan via FamilySearch.com.)

“A nest egg for Posterity”

At first, none of the three partners was willing to relocate to the new property. Rochester established a large farm, complete with gristmill, sawmill, and paper mill, at Dansville, about 40 miles south. Carroll and Fitzhugh remained in Maryland, leaving to him the hands-on management of their “estate.”

In the late summer of 1811 Rochester surveyed the purchase, plotting it out as a simple grid. He envisioned a mercantile future for his “paper city” and omitted a town square and located property reserved for civic functions (such as a future courthouse) away from the community center. That space instead was filled with narrow, high-priced lots to encourage commercial use.7

All was done in consultation with Carroll and Fitzhugh. In a long, advice-filled missive to Rochester, Carroll urged him to hold back any property suitable for water-powered industry: “We perfectly accord with you in sentiment as to the advantage of laying out a Town & selling building lots . . . & this you are fully authorized to do, but by no means to sell any ground that can in any possible manner or shape injure or interfere with any scites [sic] or situations for water works.”8

Heeding Carroll’s words, Rochester reserved a large undivided parcel adjacent to the Upper Falls that could accommodate several mills and warehouses. He named it, simply, “Mill Yard.”

Nothing “should induce us to divest ourselves of the fee in any part of that Property,” Carroll had emphasized. “We hold it as a nest egg for Posterity . . . & scarcely any given sum would weigh with me one moment to divide or part with it.”9

For the three partners, this was the money lot.

Charles Alexandre Lesueur's 1816 sketch of the village of Rochester
Five years after its founding, the struggling settlement at the Falls of the Genesee remained a motley arrangement of muddy tracks, tree stumps, and free-range pigs. Even so, this first artistic rendering of the Hundred Acre Tract — made in 1816 by French naturalist Charles Alexandre Lesueur and wryly titled “City on Genesee River at the Fall” — hints at the growth and prosperity soon to come. The view looks southwest from today’s Four Corners in downtown Rochester. The track running diagonally from left to right, grandly named Buffalo Street, is today’s West Main Street. The large building at the left is the original Red Mill built by Hervey Ely and his partners in 1814. A smaller building, drawn across the page gutter, may be the sawmill built by John C. Rochester and Harvey Montgomery in 1815. One of the cascades of the Upper Falls can be seen immediately to its left. (Charles Alexandre Lesueur, “Ville sur Genesee River à la fall,” Rochester, New York. Pencil — 40 x 13 cm. Muséum d’histoire naturelle, Le Havre, inv. no. 39059v + 39060.)

“Their destroying attention”

The Hundred Acre Tract plays an outsize role in the popular history of Rochester. As the village and then city prospered and grew over the course of the 19th century — and it did, spectacularly — the rough outlines of its early years would be worn smooth by the fading memories of its original settlers and their children. But the fact is that for years after its establishment Rochesterville persisted as a remote, rattlesnake-infested foothold in the wilderness, virtually inaccessible to overland travelers. In more ways than one, it was a community on the brink.

The little settlement’s isolation was eased somewhat in 1812 when a wooden bridge was built across the river along Buffalo Street, its main thoroughfare — just in time for the outbreak of hostilities along the Niagara Frontier.

War with Great Britain commenced with much fanfare and bluster that June with a declaration of war by Congress and an invasion of Upper Canada. The campaign, doomed by poor planning and incompetent leadership, drew to a close in December 1813 with American General George McClure penned up in Fort George on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. The British forces closing in included disciplined regulars who had long experience fighting on the Continent and elsewhere for the Empire. McClure, who could muster only about 100 raw United States regulars and Canadian volunteers, made the reasonable decision to retreat to the American side of the river. But before departing he gave the order to burn the nearby village of Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) to the ground, a criminal act that served no purpose and stranded the village’s inhabitants, mostly women and children, in the freezing cold and snow.10

Enraged, the British pursued the Americans across the river and with a ruthless bayonet attack captured Fort Niagara. They then turned south and in retaliation for the immolation of Newark burned the settlements of Lewiston, Youngstown, Manchester (Niagara Falls), Black Rock, and Buffalo, and many isolated homesteads besides.11

The devastation — and fear of the British army’s Native American allies — sent refugees streaming east toward the Genesee River.

“The sufferings of the unfortunate people about Buffaloe [sic] excite the sympathy of all who have heard them,” wrote Fitzhugh to Rochester in early February 1814. “It would seem if the war should continue that every feeling of Humanity would be put to sleep.”12

That spring the settlers of Rochesterville found themselves under attack — or so they thought — when a British squadron unexpectedly appeared off the mouth of the Genesee River. According to a later account “all the male inhabitants of the village, capable of bearing arms (being 33), turned out with the militia of the neighboring towns,” to prevent a landing. But the village’s remoteness from the lake and a lack of satisfactory targets gave the British little incentive to attempt one. After a desultory volley or two the commander, Sir James Yeo, sailed off.13

In other words, Rochesterville likely was spared the fate of the Niagara Frontier because it was still in such a backward state — a detail that was not lost on Rochester and his partners.

“I observed by way of the eastern papers that the Enemy had been at no great distance from our Mill Seat at Genesee Falls,” noted Fitzhugh. “It is well perhaps the village was not improved with mills [and other] buildings which might have claimed their destroying attention.”14

James Geddes Survey
James Geddes and his survey team on July 29, 1816 crossed the Genesee River near Rochesterville, where he recommended taking the canal across the river by way of a slackwater crossing. “It is proposed to pass the Genesee river by a dam ten feet high, with a bridge some distance above it, for a towing path,” he reported. “The place of passing is a few chains south of the village or Rochester.” (Detail from Map 11, Series A0851, New York State Archives. Image courtesy of Craig Williams.)

“They crossed the river yesterday”

The treaty of Ghent was signed at the end of 1814 and within a few weeks hostilities sputtered to a close. By then a few more tentative steps had been taken at the Hundred Acre Tract. A sawmill was raised in 1813, followed the next year by the Red Mill, the tract’s first gristmill since Allan’s failed effort twenty years before.

In the meantime, reports began to filter in from Albany about a new and massive state project. The details were far from certain, but the proposed “monstrous canal,” in Fitzhugh’s words, which would connect the waters of Lake Erie with the Hudson River, had the potential to change everything. “What distance will the canal run from our mill seat?” he asked. “Not far I think by the direction it takes upon the map.”15

Rochester’s reply came a few weeks later: “The route for the Canal . . . crosses the Genesee River on our Land immediately above the falls, about where we forded the River twelve years ago. The advantages that would result to the State of New York, and particularly to this western part of it would be incalculable if it can be accomplished.”16

Hervey Ely letter
In a postscript to a brief business letter, dated July 30, 1816 and addressed to Nathaniel Rochester, mill owner Hervey Ely casually notes that “the surveyors for the great Canal” crossed the Genesee River the day before. (Nathaniel Rochester Papers, Rochester Historical Society)

Planning for the canal had started much earlier, but out of necessity it had been set aside during the war. With the arrival of peace it could resume in earnest. After much political wrangling a skeptical state legislature in April 1816 appointed a board of canal commissioners and instructed them to undertake a new set of surveys. The commissioners wasted no time. James Geddes, who led the survey team east from Tonawanda Creek near Buffalo, was soon approaching the Genesee River.

Hervey Ely, one of the builders of the Red Mill, broke the news to Nathaniel Rochester in a postscript to a letter written July 30, 1816: “P.S. The surveyors for the great Canal are now here, they crossed the river yesterday about 100 yards above the head of the race.”17

Once again the Genesee River was front and center. It wasn’t finished with Rochesterville. Not by a long shot.

  1. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Genesee River.” Encyclopedia Britannica, June 11, 2008, https://www.britannica.com/place/Genesee-River. ↩︎
  2. Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix. Letters to the Dutchess of Lesdiguieres (London: Goadsby, 1763), 144. ↩︎
  3. Howard L. Osgood, “The Title of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase,” Publications of the Rochester Historical Society (Rochester, NY: Rochester Historical Society, 1891), 1:20–23. ↩︎
  4. “Over the years the change in terminology for Rochester’s three waterfalls (originally four) led to much confusion. Going downstream from downtown, the original Upper Falls no longer exists. The old Middle Falls is now the High (or Main, or Upper) Falls, while the Upper Step-Lower Falls is now the Middle Falls and the Lower Step-Lower Falls is currently known as the Lower Falls.” Thomas X. Grasso, “Geology and History of the Rochester Gorge, Part One.” Rochester History 54, no. 4 (Fall 1992), 9. ↩︎
  5. William Farley Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, New York: From the Earliest Historic Times to the Beginning of 1907 (New York: Pioneer Publishing Company, 1908), 1:32. ↩︎
  6. For a thoughtful treatment of Nathaniel Rochester’s slave-trading past, see Justin Murphy, “Rochester’s founders held people in slavery, but would name changes make up for past injustice?” Democrat & Chronicle, July 20, 2020, https://www.democratandchronicle.com/in-depth/news/2020/07/20/rochesters-founding-fathers-held-people-slavery-does-matter/3256274001/. ↩︎
  7. Diane Shaw, City Building on the Eastern Frontier: Sorting the New Nineteenth-Century City (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004), 30–35. ↩︎
  8. Charles Carroll to Nathaniel Rochester, 17 August 1811, Nathaniel Rochester Papers, Rochester Historical Society. ↩︎
  9. Ibid. ↩︎
  10. Lewis L. Babcock, “The Spoliation of the American Frontier,” chap. 8 in The War of 1812 on the Niagara Frontier (Buffalo, NY: Buffalo Historical Society, 1927), 115–138. ↩︎
  11. Ibid. ↩︎
  12. William Fitzhugh to Nathaniel Rochester, 2 February 1814, Nathaniel Rochester Papers, Rochester Historical Society. ↩︎
  13. A Directory for the Village of Rochester (Rochester, NY: Ely, 1827), 90, in Franklin Hanford, Notes on the Visits of American and British Naval Vessels to the Genesee River, 1809–1814 (Rochester, NY: Genesee Press, 1911), 11–15. ↩︎
  14. William Fitzhugh to Nathaniel Rochester, 2 February 1814. ↩︎
  15. Ibid. ↩︎
  16. Nathaniel Rochester to William Fitzhugh (manuscript copy), 15 March 1814, Nathaniel Rochester Papers, Rochester Historical Society. ↩︎
  17. Hervey Ely to Nathaniel Rochester, 30 July 1816, Nathaniel Rochester Papers, Rochester Historical Society. ↩︎
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There for the taking

David Cusick painting of three Iroquois wearing diverse costumes
Tuscarora artist David Cusick in 1827 painted these Iroquois “in diverse costumes,” with two carrying weapons and one holding a pipe. Cusick is thought to have been born around 1780 on the Oneida reservation in central New York. His younger brother, Dennis, also was a watercolor painter; David Cusick, as well, was a veteran of the War of 1812, a physician and an early student of Haudenosaunee oral tradition. His 1828 “Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations,” the later editions of which he illustrated, is thought to be the first English-language account of indigenous history and myth written and published by a Native American. (Collection of the New-York Historical Society)

Long before European incomers began pushing their way up the Hudson and then west, the interior of what is now New York state had been settled by a Confederacy of five indigenous nations — the Haudenosaunee or People of the Longhouse. From east to west, these were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca.

The French called them the Iroquois.

Their territory, embracing the Finger Lakes region of modern central and western New York, was covered with forests teeming with wildlife. Hunting, fishing, and agriculture sustained by the rich alluvial soil of the river valleys provided sustenance. The Confederacy provided protection.

1771 Map of the Six Nations
This 1851 facsimile map shows the territory of the Six Nations confederacy across present-day western New York state and northern Pennsylvania. The original was produced in 1771 by Guy Johnson for William Tryon, the governor of the colony of New York. The Six Nations or Haudenosaunee were allies of the British during their colonial wars with France in the 17th and early 18th centuries. (The New York Public Library)

The Confederacy was “the most powerful and sophisticated Indian nation north of the Aztecs,” notes Woodward A. Wickham, writing for the Institute of Current World Affairs in 1973. He continues:

“Besides securing domestic peace among the Five Nations, the Iroquois eventually dominated all other Indian states from the St. Lawrence River to the Tennessee, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi. The Confederacy homeland included the major east-west trail (now the New York Thruway), the eastern Great Lakes, and the headwaters of all four major river systems: the Delaware, Susquehanna, Ohio, and St. Lawrence. When Europeans settled the Atlantic coast, the Iroquois controlled all communication between them and the western tribes. The Iroquois of the Confederacy were the first Indians to acquire guns without being eradicated in the process, and soon grew rich through trade, raiding, and selling protection to Europeans and tributary Indians.”

In 1722 the Tuscarora, an Iroquois-speaking people who had fled their Carolina homeland to escape white incursion and warfare, were accepted into what now became the Six Nations. By then the Confederacy had endured for three centuries. 

But the Haudenosaunee could not prevent European settlement around their perimeter. Caught between the British to the east and the French to the north and west, they were forced to choose sides. Their alliance with the British Crown worked to their benefit during the imperial wars of the 17th and early 18th centuries. But it proved disastrous once the colonies declared their independence.

The Confederacy itself was broken. The Oneidas and Tuscaroras joined the rebellious colonies and turned against their brethren to the west.

Map shows the route of the Sullivan Expedition of 1779 and its encampment near present-day Geneseo, New York.
Part of a hand-drawn 1779 campaign map depicts Sullivan’s march through the Genesee Valley from east to west in the vicinity of present-day Geneseo, New York. Six campsites are shown, dated Sept. 9 (right) through Sept. 14-15 (left). Sullivan’s forces suffered their worst setback of the expedition not far from here when a small detachment was surrounded and destroyed by a larger force of native warriors and British Rangers. Undeterred, Sullivan’s main force loitered long enough to complete its grim mission before turning home. “The whole Army was immediately engaged in destroying the Crops,” Sullivan reported in a letter to Washington. “The Corn was gathered and burnt in Houses and in Kilns, that the Enemy might not reap the least advantage from it, which method we have pursued in every other place. . . . I am persuaded except one Town situated near the allegany [sic] about 57 Miles from Chenessee — there is not a single Town left in the Country of the five nations.” (Library of Congress/Geography and Map Division)

Scorched earth

For the Senecas the war all but ended in 1779, when George Washington finally turned his attention to the brutal conflict that had sputtered and raged for years along the New York and Pennsylvania frontier. The escalating cycle of atrocities and reprisals carried out between the Senecas and their Loyalist allies and the white settlers of the region could no longer be ignored. Washington’s response was to send an expeditionary force into the heart of the Seneca’s country. The invaders were to conduct a scorched-earth campaign and show their enemies no mercy.

“Sir,” wrote Washington to Major General John Sullivan on May 31. “The expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the six nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.”

The Sullivan Expedition was one of the largest independent Continental operations of the war. That August a force of about 3,200 regulars and militia marched into Confederacy territory. The Senecas, along with their native and Loyalist allies, lost a single engagement at Newtown (present-day Elmira) and then retreated, unable to offer an effective defense. Following Washington’s orders, Sullivan’s force moved into the Genesee country, systematically destroying villages, burning fields, and slaughtering livestock. 

When the campaign ended the native survivors sought refuge near the British forts along the Niagara frontier. That winter their numbers were further depleted by sickness and starvation.

In 1781 the fate of the Six Nations was sealed by the Continental and French victory at far-away Yorktown, Virginia. In signing the Treaty of Paris two years later the British ceded much of their North American empire to their former colonies. The treaty made no mention of the Haudenosaunee, some of whom made their way to join the British in Canada. Those who remained on the United States side of the new border were simply abandoned.

One of the prime causes of the American Revolution had been hunger for western land. British colonial policy had barred settlement beyond the Appalachians. Now the door was flung wide open. Thousands of veterans who had participated in the Sullivan campaign had returned to New England and elsewhere and were spreading word of the fertile country of the Genesee. There for the taking.

Manuscript copy of the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1784.
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix, signed in 1784, one year after the end of the Revolutionary War, was one of the earliest treaties between the new federal government and representatives of the Six Nations. Its four brief articles set out to reward the Oneida and Tuscarora nations, which had fought alongside the Continentals, and to punish those who had allied themselves with the British. The full Six Nations council refused to ratify the treaty, however, and its provisions were overridden by later federal treaties, particularly the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua. It might be said that, ultimately, these U.S. treaties were worth little more than the parchment they were written on, as New York state and private interests routinely ignored federal law in their drive to push the Haudenosaunee off their land and, if possible, out of the state. (National Archives)

Interlocking forces

In his book Conspiracy of Interests: Iroquois Dispossession and the Rise of New York State historian Lawrence M. Hauptman defines three “interlocking forces . . . that helped create an urban industrial corridor in the heart of Iroquoia”: land, transportation, and national defense.

Of these, transportation meant roads, of course, but also canals: first, the waterway improvements of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company; later, the much larger and more disruptive Grand Canal that would connect the Hudson River to Lake Erie.

Many of the men who populate the histories of these canals — including Philip Schuyler, Peter B. Porter, and DeWitt Clinton — were unscrupulous in their dealings with the Six Nations. In their eyes the Senecas and their allies were broken enemies that could be swept aside in the rush to open western New York to white settlement.

They applied the same policy to their nominal allies, the Oneidas, whose territory lay across a natural east-west communications corridor and included the Great Carrying Place, the strategic portage that connected the headwaters of the Mohawk River with Wood Creek and, in turn, the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes.

State politicians and speculators (who were often one and the same) ignored the weak federal government and its laws regulating trade and land sales between settlers and native peoples and set about depriving the Oneidas of their home. The ink had hardly dried on their illegal “treaties” before the surveyors arrived and workers for the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company began clearing Wood Creek. 

On Lake Erie, state and private actors chipped away at the large Seneca reservation at Buffalo Creek — which had also become a home for native refugees from across the Confederacy — clearing the way for the western terminus of the Erie Canal and the future growth of the city of Buffalo.

By the 1820s the people of the Six Nations would be boxed into reservations scattered around New York state, having fought an increasingly hopeless rear-guard action against a powerful array of private and state interests. They had been outnumbered, riven by internal divisions, and betrayed by the very missionaries and agents who ostensibly had been sent to protect them. Vast tracts of forest, lakes, and river bottomland had been surrendered for a pittance.

But they were not entirely defeated. Unlike the indigenous peoples of the southern United States, the people of the Six Nations successfully resisted removal. There would be no northern counterpart to the Trail of Tears. Only the Oneida Nation — which split in two with the larger part moving to Wisconsin and later Ontario, Canada — would consider abandoning their homeland. The rest remained.

But they had been pushed out of the way of the Erie Canal.