OF THE HOLLAND PURCHASE OF WESTERN NEW YORK: EMBRACING SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT REMAINS; A BRIEF HISTORY OF OUR IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS, THE CONFEDERATED IROQUOIS, THEIR SYSTEM SOME NOTICES OF THE BORDER WARS OF THE REVOLUTION: AND A HISTORY OF PIONEER SETTLEMENT UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE HOLLAND COMPANY; INCLUDING REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR OF 18 1 2 ; THE ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND COMPLETION OF THE ERIE CANAL, ETC. ETC. ETC. BY O. TURNER. BUFFALO: PUBLISHED BY JEWETT, THOMAS & CO.: GEO. H. DERBY & CO. 1850. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1849, by O. TURNER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Northern District of New York. JEWETT, THOMAS & CO. STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS, Buffalo, N. Y. TO THE SURVIVING PIONEERS AND DESCENDANTS OF PIONEERS. OF THE HOLLAND PURCHASE, THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. READ THE PREFACE! A command that may be regarded as too imperative, and yet one that an author has some right to make, in consideration of the deep interest which he may be supposed to have in its observance. Having prepared an entertainment, as he is about to open the door to his guests, it is quite natural he should wish to pass them in with his own introduction. First, as to the general plan of the work:-There may be readers of it who have anticipated a history more strictly local in its character, than they will find this. It was the original intention of the author to have commenced with the close of the Revolution, and traced settlement and its progress westward, very much as has been done, with the exception of a more extended detail. Upon proceeding to his task, however, after materials for it had been collected, the important consideration presented itself, that, although there existed, in detached forms, sketches of the earliest approaches of civilization to this region-of early colonization tending in this direction of the French and Indian and French and English wars; the long contest for supremacy and dominion; the occupancy of that extraordinary race of men, the Jesuit Missionaries; the Border Wars of the Revolution; still, there was no history extant that connected all this, and furnished an unbroken chain of events allied to the region of Western New York, and especially the Holland Purchase. The distinguished historian, Mr. BANCROFT, was the first to draw from French sources any considerable amount of the history of French occupancy of the valley of the St. Lawrence, and the borders of our lakes and rivers; of the advents of Jesuit Missionaries, and their cotemporaries, the fur traders; and embellish his country's history with a long series of interesting events, before almost unnoticed. But little could be gathered by an humble local historian, after such a gleaner had passed over the ground; but his work is of a magnitude to preclude access to it, by the great mass of readers; |