VERMONT HISTORICAL MAGAZINE.

 

                     RUTLAND COUNTY.

 

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                                 RUTLAND COUNTY

 

                             IN THE NEW YORK CONTROVERSY.

 

                                     BY HON. HILAND HALL OF NORTH BENNINGTON.

 

When Lieut. Governor Colden of New York issued his proclamation of the 10th of April, 1765, announcing the fact that the king, by an order in council of the 20th of the pre­ceding July, had made Connecticut river the eastern boundary of that province, more than two thirds of the land in what is now Rut­land county, had been granted by New Hampshire in sixteen different townships, viz Brandon, (by the name of Neshobe) Castleton, Clarendon, Danby, Hubbardton, Mount Tabor, (by the name of Harwich) Pawlet, Pittsford, Poultney, Rutland, Sher­burne, Shrewsbury, Sudbury, Tinmouth, Wal­lingford and Wells. All of these towns had been granted in 1761, except Sudbury, the charter of which bore date in 1763, and Hubbardton, in 1764.

The territory was at first treated by New York as belonging to the county of Albany, but in 1772 it was included in a new county by the name of Charlotte, which extended from Canada line south to about the middle of the present county of Bennington, and west from the Green Mountains beyond Lakes George and Champlain. When the Vermont state government was organized in 1778, the territory now comprising the coun­ty of Rutland was made to form a part of the county of Bennington, but with all that between the mountains and Lake Champlain northward from its present southern bound­ary to Canada line, it was by the General Assembly in 1781, formed into the new coun­ty of Rutland. The county has since been diminished by the legislature to its present limits.

Immediately after the date of the above mentioned proclamation of Lt. Governor Colden, he commenced issuing patents for lands in his newly acquired territory, and by the first day of the following November he had granted about 12,000 acres of Military Patents, within the present county of Rutland, prin­cipally in Benson, Fairhaven and Pawlet. The subsequent Military Patents in the county exceeded 26,000 acres, not less than 25,000 of which were made in direct disobedience of the order of the king in council of July 24, 1767, which forbid the New York gov­ernors from making any such grants, under the penalty of incurring "his Majesty's highest displeasure." These latter patents embraced lands in detached parcels in the sev­eral towns of Pawlet, Wells, Poultney, Cas­tleton, Fairhaven and Benson.

These patents for military services gene­rally for the benefit of speculators, includ­ed but a small portion of the lands which were granted in the county by the New York governors. They had a general authority from the crown to grant lands for purposes of settlement, in quantities not exceeding 1000 acres to any individual. The names of a number of persons were usually includ­ed in one patent, who were therein declared to be entitled to 1000 acres each, though in almost all cases the patent was really for the benefit of one or two of the number, the residue being inserted in nominal compliance with the king's instructions. These grants, by way of distinguishing them from those before mentioned, were sometimes called civil grants.

The following list of these grants is com­piled from the records of the patents in the office of the Secretary of .State at Albany. It shows the date of each patent, the name of the tract or of that of the leading patentee, the location of the land, and the number of acres granted. The land being generally

 

 

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described in the patents without any refer­ence to the boundaries of the New Hamp­shire towns, it is often difficult to determine their precise location. They frequently in­clude parts of several townships.

 

                  NEW YORK CIVIL GRANTS IN RUTLAND COUNTY.

 

1770.                                                                                            acres.

May 20, Kelso, Tinmouth,                                                              21,500.

Aug. 1, Hulton, Shrewsbury,                                                         12,000.

Sep. 8, To Wm. Farquahar, Benson,                                                  5,000.

1771.

Feb. 28, Adam Gilchrist, Poultney,                                                  12,000.

Apr. 3, Socialborough, Rutland, Pittsford and Clarendon,                    48,000.

June 12, Halesborough, Brandon,                                                   23,000.

   " 24, Newry, Shrewsbury, Sherburne and Mendon,                        37,000.

   " 28, Richmond, Wells and vicinity,                                              24.000.

1772.

Jan. 7, Durham, Clarendon and Wallingford,                                    32,000.

Feb. 20, John Tudor, Danby,                                                           1,000.

Nov. 6, Henry Vin Vleck, Ira,                                                           5,000.

June 19, John Thompson, Pawlet,                                                    2,000.

Making 222,500 acres in the whole.

 

For every thousand acres of these lands the governors exacted a fee of $ 31.25, and there was divided among six other govern­ment officials $ 59 more. Thus the whole amount of government fees for these lands would be $ 20,080.62, of which the govern­or's share would be $6952.12, leaving $13,127.50 to be divided between the Secretary of the province, the clerk of the council, the Auditor, the Receiver General, the Attorney General and the Surveyor General. Nearly all of the patentees were News York city speculators who were well aware that most of the lands had been previously granted by New Hampshire, and were fast being settled under that title. They had no desire to oc­cupy the lands themselves, but only to dis­pose of them at a profit to the settlers and others. It will be perceived by the dates of the patents that they were all issued long after the order of the king in council of July 1767 forbidding any such grants, and it seems impossible to conceive of any motive for the making of them, other than the avarice and cupidity of the patentees and of the greedy government officials.

Many personal collisions occurred between the settlers under the New Hampshire title and the New York patentees, the most violent and serious of which were with the claimants under the patents of Socialborough and Dur­ham, in the towns of Clarendon, Rutland and Pittsford; but accounts of these conflicts ap­propriately belong to the histories of those towns, and will not be related here. A brief description of those two New York patents may not, however, be out of place.

The patent of Socialborough bore date, as has been already stated, April 3, 1771, and was issued by Governor Dunmore in violation of the king's order in council of July, 1767, forbidding any such grants. This pro­hibitory order, and the consequent want of authority in the governor to make the grant, was well known to the parties for whose ben­efit it was made, and it was therefore illegal and void. The land was described in the patent as follows. "Beginning on the East side of Otter Creek in a line of trees marked in 1767 by Archibald Campbell, when sur­veyed by William Cockburn that year, in the North bounds of Clarendon, thence South 86° East 209 chains, thence North 13° West 1052 chains, thence West 500 chains, thence South 13° East 1019 chains, thence South 86° East 299 chains to the place of begin­ning, containing 48,000 acres.

It will be perceived by this description that the tract was about 13 miles long from North to South by over 6 miles in width, and being bounded on the South by Clarendon would be nearly identical with the towns of Rutland and Pittsford. But it is said to be understood in the vicinity of the tract, that as claimed by the patentees, it reached some distance into the town of Clarendon, which perhaps may be accounted for by the suppo­sition that the line of trees marked by Camp­bell in 1767 was not the northern bounds of that town, as stated in the patent, but a line to the south of such bounds. The nominal patentees were 48 in number, who were de­clared to be entitled to 1,000 acres each, but the real owners were a few government offi­cers and land speculators of New York city. When the 30,000 dollars which was paid by Vermont on the settlement of the controver­sy came to be divided by commissioners in 1797 among the New York land claimants, it turned out that of the 48,000 acres, 12,000 belonged to the Clerk of the council and other government officials, 15,000 acres to James Duane, and 6.000 acres to John Kelly,

 

 

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two leading city land speculators. The re­maining 15,000 were unclaimed, having prob­ably been owned by one or more New York tories who had been either attainted for treason or had fled the country.

The patent of Durham, which was issued by Governor Tryon, bore date January 7, 1772, and like that of Socialborough was issued in violation of the king's order in council of July 1767, and also of the 49th article of his standing instructions, by which he was forbidden "upon pain of our highest displeasure," to snake any grants whatever "within that district heretofore claimed by our province of New Hampshire." It pur­ported to grant 32,000 acres in shares of 1000 acres each to 32 individuals by name, and was bounded and described as follows:

 

"Beginning at a black birch tree in the South line of Socialborough formerly marked Clarendon and now marked Durham, being the north-east corner of a tract of land known by the name of Kelso, and runs thence along a line of trees marked for the said south bounds of Socialborough and the bounds of a tract known by the name of Newry granted to Charles McEvers and oth­ers, S. 86º E. 540 chains, thence along the bounds of Newry S. 4° W. 315 chains, and S. 86° E. 50 chains, thence S. 240 chains, thence N. 80° W. 252 chains and 2 rods, thence N. 176 chains, thence N. 80° W. 300 chains to Kelso, thence along the East line of Kelso N. 4° W. 322 chains to the place of beginning."

From this description of the tract it would seem to include either the whole or a large portion of Clarendon, with a notch about 3 miles in width from east to west, that ex­tended southerly into Wallingford. At the time of the making of this grant of Durham a portion of the lands in Clarendon was occupied by persons who had settled under a spurious title from one John H. Lydius, and they had been persuaded to accept the New York title as a defence against the claims of the previous grantees under New Hampshire, and to associate themselves in such defence with the leading New York land speculators. This excited the strong displeasure of the Green Mountain Boys, and occasioned con­troversies and conflicts, for an account of which readers are referred to the history of Clarendon. It appears from the report of the New York commissioners under whose award the sum paid by Vermont was dis­tributed, that of the 32,000 acres included in the patent of Durham, 14,225 acres belonged to the city claimants, one third of which was to be the property of James Duane.

From statements published in behalf of the colony of New York in 1773, it has since been taken for granted that a patent made by the governor of that colony to one God­frey Dellius in 1696, included a large tract of country lying on the east side of Lake Champlain, in the present counties of Rut­land and Addison. It has since been thus referred to in several historical works, and among them in the account of the town of Addison in this Gazetteer (Vol. 1, p 2), and by Judge Swift in his valuable history of Middlebury (p. 49) An examination of the patent itself shows clearly that not an acre of the land could possibly have been on the east side of Lake Champlain or in any part of Vermont. See Early History of Vt., 488—491. For more about the Lydius title, see ibid. 495.

 

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                                         BENSON.

 

                                                       BY LOYAL C. KELLOGG.

 

The boundaries of the town of' Benson, ac­cording to its Charter, are as follows:

 

"Beginning on the east bank of Lake Cham­plain, six miles south from where the English Flag-staff stood at Tyconderoga Fort, it being the south-west corner of the township of Orwell: thence east about seven miles, until turning south, ten degrees west, will run in Hugh-barton and Castleton west lines: thence south, ten degrees west, seven miles: thence west, ten degrees north, eight miles and twenty-six rods, to Lake Champlain: thence northerly, by the side of said Lake, at low-water mark, to the bounds first mentioned; containing by estimation twenty-five thousand two hundred and fourteen acres, be the same more or less."

On the "Land Register" kept in the office of the Surveyor-General of the State, the town is stated to contain "nearly 28,340 acres," or nearly 42 3-4 square miles.

The grant of the townships of Benson and Fairhaven (the latter town originally contain­ing the whole of the present towns of Fairhaven and Westhaven, and adjoining Benson on the south,) was made by "the Governor, Coun­cil and General Assembly of the Representa­tives of the Freemen of Vermont," Oct. 27, 1779, and the charter of Fairhaven bears date on that day; but from some cause,— probably the inability or neglect of its proprietors to