>     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
>
>
>
>
>Get a sneak peek of the all-new 
><http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour/?ncid=AOLAOF00020000000982>AOL.com.

	Towns in the state were created under the Towns Law of 1777. 
The relationship is really pretty straightforward:  Towns were set 
aside in the New Military Tract and elsewhere, and within them there 
might be hamlets, unincorporated entities, incorporated villages, and 
even cities.

	Modern Tompkins County, established in 1818, contains 1/2 of 
the Town of Milton (now  the Town of Lansing), 1/2 of the Town of 
Locke (now the Town of Groton), the whole of the Town of  Dryden, the 
whole of the Town of Ulysses, which was split into three units, 
thereby creating the town of Ithaca (with the village of Ithaca 
established in 1821; later  the City of Ithaca 1888) , and the town 
of  Enfield, leaving a portion as the Town of Ulysses within which, 
Trumansburg became the major  village.  The remainder of Tompkins 
County came from the Watkins and Flint Purchase resulting in the 
towns of Danby, Newfield, and Caroline.

	In Tompkins County the word townships has not been used. 
People from New England, familiar with the term township, who came 
into New York often referred to these town units as townships; New 
Yorkers have generally used the term towns.  On my copy of the 1804 
De Witt map, Ulysses and Dryden are separate and do not overlap.  On 
the 1929 Burr Atlas map of Tompkins County it is easy to see that 
what began as the Town of Ulysses had become three towns.  Ithaca was 
designated as the county seat in 1817.

	Prior to the Revolutionary War, the land that became the New 
Military Tract was Iroquoia.


Carol Kammen
Tompkins County Historian