Buttrick followed the Genesee Road, the well-established route to Lake Erie. In 1794 the legislature had appropriated money for the construction of a road six rods wide from old Fort Schuyler (Utica) to the Genesee River at Canawagus (Avon, twenty-seven miles south of Lake Ontario), passing the outlets of Cayuga, Seneca, and Canandaigua lakes. Being but little better than an Indian path in 1797, lotteries were authorized for its improvement. In 1799 a stage began to run over the road, and the following year it was made into a turnpike. A highway was opened the same year from the Genesee River to Buffalo, thus completing the connection between Albany and Lake Erie.—Ed.
[4]. Old Fort Schuyler was erected upon the present site of Utica during the French and Indian War (1758), for the defense of the frontier, but was not maintained after the Treaty of Paris. The village was first settled in 1787–88, its importance dating from the construction of the Genesee or State Road. It obtained a city charter in 1832.
The site of Canandaigua, at the foot of Canandaigua Lake, was selected by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham for the principal town of their purchase; they and a company of associates having bought from Massachusetts (1788) her pre-emption rights to land in New-York—namely, to all territory west of a line drawn through Seneca Lake. The village was surveyed and opened for settlement in 1789, and the following year contained eighteen families and a hundred other persons.
Bloomfield, the location of an old Seneca village, is nine miles north-west of Canandaigua, and was surveyed and settled at the same time, chiefly by emigrants from Sheffield, Mass.—Ed.
[5]. Batavia bore the same relation to the Holland Purchase that Canandaigua bore to that of Phelps and Gorham. These proprietors extinguished the Indian title to their land only as far, approximately, as the Genesee River. Being unable to pay for the remainder, they returned it to Massachusetts (March, 1791), which, two days later, resold it to Robert Morris. He, in turn, sold to a company of associates in Amsterdam (1793), and the tract became known as the Holland Purchase. The Holland Company marked off a village and opened a land office (October, 1800) at Batavia, in an unsettled wilderness fifty miles west of Canandaigua. Two years later they surveyed and placed upon the market a second village, called by them New Amsterdam, and located at the mouth of Buffalo Creek. This stream being well known on the frontier, the name was transferred to the settlement, and “New Amsterdam” never came into general use. Buffalo received a charter in 1813. See Turner, History of the Holland Purchase (Buffalo, 1850).—Ed.
[6]. Old Fort Erie, at the head of Niagara River, on its western bank, was built by the English in 1764. The location proving unsatisfactory, a new fort farther back from the river was begun in 1805, and completed at the outbreak of the War of 1812–15. This was captured by the Americans, July 3, 1814. Although successfully resisting the siege of the British during August following, the fort was blown up in September and the troops retired to Buffalo. It was never rebuilt.—Ed.
[7]. General Isaac Brock, born in Guernsey in 1760, entered the English army, and after serving in Jamaica and Barbados, came to Canada in 1802. He was placed in command at Fort Niagara, and in 1811 was appointed lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada. Immediately upon the outbreak of the War of 1812–15, he ordered an attack upon Mackinac, and marched with the main body of his troops to Detroit, receiving Hull’s surrender in August, 1812. Brock planned a most efficient defense of Upper Canada, but was killed in the American attack on Queenstown (October, 1812). Perhaps no English officer has been more beloved by the people of Upper Canada; several towns have been named in his honor, and a monument was erected to him on Queenstown Heights.—Ed.
[8]. When the English withdrew from Fort Niagara, in accordance with the provisions of Jay’s Treaty, they constructed this fort directly across the river. It was captured by the Americans (May 27, 1813), but abandoned at the end of the year. After the War of 1812–15 it was dismantled and allowed to fall into decay.—Ed.
[9]. For the early history of Fort Niagara, see Long’s Voyages, volume ii of our series, note 19.—Ed.
[10]. The Black Rock ferry across the Niagara River was in existence as early as 1796, and was much used for transporting merchandise, especially salt. It owed its name to the low black rock about a hundred feet broad, from which teams entered the ferry. Passing into the control of the state in 1802, the ferry continued to run until 1824, when the harbor was destroyed and the black rock blown up in the construction of the Erie Canal. The village of Black Rock was laid out in 1804, but grew very slowly, and in 1853 was incorporated in the city of Buffalo.—Ed.