The Reason Why The Americans Were Eager To See Upper State New York Settled by French Canadian Farmers like the Jesmer’s.
The Reason Why The Americans Were Eager To See Upper State New York Settled by French Canadian Farmers like the Jesmer’s.
The following is an article concerning the settling of Upper State New York in the late 1700’s. Jesmer’s moved there to farm around 1814, from Upper Canada, near Cornwall Ontario. The land was vacated by the British after the Revolutionary War. The land needed to be surveyed and settled by the Americans. French Canadian farmers were very welcome. The French Canadian farmers were competing with the Scot’s for land on the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence River. They were not making much money lumbering and farming. They would have welcomed the American invitation to settle in Upper State New York as an opportunity to better themselves. The Jesmer’s settled in between Bombay and Hogansburg, on the edge of the St Regis, Mowhawk Indian Reserve, somewhere in the red area.
All of what is now Norwood was once Indian country, a part of a vast hunting and fishing territory of rival Indian tribes, the Adirondacks and Iroquois being the chief contenders. The Raquette River was full of fish and the forests full of game.
By 1650 the Iroquois had driven the Adirondacks into Canada and the Mohawks, one of the Iroquois tribes, claimed northern New York as their territory, their headquarters were in the Mohawk Valley. The profusion of Indian pottery, clay pipes and other artifacts uncovered on the Dublin Road Haggett farm are certain indication that an Indian village was once situated on the ridge sloping down to the river. Local legend calls this village Ka-na-ta-seke, meaning New Village, and tells of final skirmishes of the French and Indian War taking place there. However an anthropologist from an area college dates the village as much earlier.
After the four “French and English Wars” Great Britain, represented by the Province of New York, was the owner of northern New York. The American Revolution drove the British out and left the State of New York in possession of hundreds of thousands of acres of land “in the wilderness” unknown, unsurveyed and unsettled, with an English possession, Canada, just across the St. Lawrence River.
Deeming it advisable to get the land sold and settled as quickly as possible, a land sale was held in New York City in 1787, even before Washington became president, and almost the whole area went to one man, Alexander Macomb. He made two large land purchases, one in 1787 and the other in 1792, and through purchase and private agreements acquired title to the Ten Towns already established by New York State as well as most of Franklin, St. Lawrence, Lewis and part of Oswego Counties.
The Ten Towns, each ten miles square, involved in Macomb’s original purchase were Louisville, Stockholm, Potsdam, Madrid, Lisbon, Canton, Dekalb, Oswegatchie, Hague (Morristown) and Chambray (Gouverneur). Mr. Macomb had over extended his resources and was compelled to call on wealthy New York City men, about 25 of them, to help him out. One of these men, William Constable, in 1792 bought Potsdam, Madrid, part of Louisville and part of Stockholm for 1500 English pounds and he immediately began to sell the land, including the Town of Potsdam, in smaller size tracts. A wealthy and large New York City family, the Clarksons, bought most of Potsdam. A strip along the Potsdam-Madrid Town line had been divided in two parts and sold the west part to the Ogdens and the east part which includes a small portion of Norwood to Charles LeRoux. The boundary between the Clarkson and LeRoux Tracts ran almost to the northwest corner of River Street and in a south westerly and north easterly direction across Bernard Avenue, Prospect Street almost to the Main Street end and across North Main Street to the Norfolk Town Line.
The Clarksons in turn began to sell their big holdings. One of the purchasers was Benjamin G. Baldwin who bought just south of the Clarkson-LeRoux Tracts in a series of six good size purchases.
http://norwoodny.org/history-lyman.html#Early%20Land%20History
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