Thanks to those who responded to my questions about  the "townships" of 
Frugality, Enterprise, etc.  The leads to the literature  on the John Brown Tract 
will be very helpful to me.
 
    One person asked (offline) if I could provide a  link to De Witt's maps 
showing these tracts.  Here is a link to his 1802  map at the Library of 
Congress: _http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3800.ct001270_ 
(http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3800.ct001270) .   His 1804 map can be found by searching the same site.
 
    Two people (one offline) pointed out that these  surveyed tracts are not, 
strictly speaking, "townships," which have no legal  existence in New York.  
This would apply not only to these quadrilateral  parcels in the John Brown 
Tract, but to similar parcels in the New Military  Tract, the Phelps and Gorham 
Purchase, the Holland Purchase, and  elsewhere.  It should be pointed out in 
response that these land parcels  are usually referred to as townships in the 
historical literature--probably  because there is no other good word to 
describe them.
 
    This raises some other interesting questions.   Were these tracts 
sometimes described as "townships" by New Yorkers prior  to ca. 1830?  I note that De 
Witt describes many of these tracts as "Town  of..." or "T. of..." on his 
1802 map.  But the example of modern day  Tompkins County indicates a complicated 
relationship between these tracts and  the towns that were later created in 
the area.  Modern Tompkins County is  made up mostly of the old tracts of 
Ulysses and Dryden (with maybe portions of  neighboring tracts).  But De Witt also 
shows a "T. of Ulysses" which  encompasses parts of both Ulysses and Dryden 
tracts.  The article on  Tompkins County in the Encyclopedia of New York shows 
the Town of Ulysses  (founded 1794) as still existing, along with the Town of 
Dryden (1803), along  with seven other towns incorporated between 1811 and 1821.
 
    This makes me wonder:  What was the legal  status of the land in these 
survey tracts prior to their incorporation?   How were tracts converted into 
towns?  What legislation controlled the  creation and governance of towns between 
1790 and 1830?  Has anything been  written about this subject?  The more you 
learn, the more you discover that  you don't know.
 
David Allen
Encinitas, CA



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