Macomb's Purchase is a large historical area of northern
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
purchased from the state in 1791 by
Alexander Macomb, a merchant who had become rich during the
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of ...
. He acted as a land speculator, selling off portions of this land.
History and geography
In 1792 in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, the state of New York was struggling financially. It opened for sale nearly five million acres of land which state officials, under pressure from land speculators and other business interests, had forced the
Iroquois
The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...
tribes to cede. Alexander Macomb, William Constable, and
Daniel McCormick agreed to purchase nearly from the state at the extremely low price of 8
pence (New York state money) per acre.
[Barlow, p. 2.][Schneider, p. 90.] This was an enormous amount of land, about one-eighth of the entire state of New York. Convinced something illegal must have occurred, the New York State Legislature held exhaustive hearings into the land purchase, but no wrongdoing was uncovered.
Macomb, however, was unable to sell his land to settlers and developers fast enough to fund his massive purchase. He went bankrupt and was sentenced to
debtor's prison
A debtors' prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debt. Until the mid-19th century, debtors' prisons (usually similar in form to locked workhouses) were a common way to deal with unpaid debt in Western Europe.Cory, Lucinda"A Histori ...
six months after the purchase was made.
Macomb sold to Constable for 50,000 pounds (New York money), who six months later sold to banker
Samuel Ward for 100,000 pounds.
Ward, in turn, sold to
James Greenleaf, the son of a wealthy Bostonian merchant.
[Barlow, p. 3.]
Constable subdivided his land into numerous plots. He found buyers worldwide for the property as well. The
High Sheriff of London,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
purchased for a
shilling an acre.
Greenleaf had purchased a cargo of
tea from
Rhode Island
Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but i ...
merchant
John Brown (whose family funded and lent its name to
Brown University). Greenleaf paid for the cargo partly in cash, and partly with the land he owned in New York. This became known as Brown's Tract.
Description of the area
Macomb's Purchase was in size. The tract included much of northern New York along the
St. Lawrence River and eastern
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border sp ...
(including the
Thousand Islands). The purchase was eventually divided into 10 large townships. From this purchase are derived the deeds for all the lands that are now included in
Lewis,
Jefferson, and
St. Lawrence
Saint Lawrence or Laurence ( la, Laurentius, lit. " laurelled"; 31 December AD 225 – 10 August 258) was one of the seven deacons of the city of Rome under Pope Sixtus II who were martyred in the persecution of the Christians that the Roman ...
counties, as well as portions of
Franklin,
Herkimer, and
Oswego counties.
See also
*
Castorland Company The Castorland Company was organized in Paris, France in 1792 as the Compagnie de New York -- The New York Company -- to invest in lands in north and northwestern New York. Land in Lewis County, New York, part of the Macomb's Purchase, was bought f ...
References
Bibliography
*Barlow, Jane A. ''Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks: The Story of the Lake, the Land, and the People.'' Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2004.
*Schneider, Paul. ''The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness.'' New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1997.
Geography of New York (state)
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