Sure Dave! Distract me from what I'm suppose to be doing with a topic I've grown to love despite the fact I'm from Western NY.  :-)  First I have to relay a story.
Through time and word of mouth people come to find out I'm an abstractor as well as a historian.  So every now and then I get an email asking if I can help them figure out where a piece of land is by the description on a deed.  Last year a gentleman emailed me for help on what he thought was a deed, but didn't have the same lingo.  He was working on his genealogy (some with the name of Allen) and had borrowed a bunch of documents from his Uncle that had been handed down through the family.
I had him jpg me a copy of it and email it to me.  It was dated 1741.  So I got out my scale and protractor and plotted it out.  I got half way through it and had to stop and go to the end and plot in reverse because in the middle of the description it said "along the bank of the Mohawk".  When I was done it looked like a barbell, and what ever it was, it was huge!  So I found a great website for 18th & 19th century digital maps http://www.davidrumsey.com/ and looked up some of DeWitt's surveys, and there it was! To make a long story short it was 28,000 acres and turned out to be the Sacondaga Patent.  He then emailed me another document dated 1820 to Alexander St. John in reference to the patent (pertaining to a dispute) and signed by S. DeWitt.  From a historian's point of view as well as an abstractor, it was all just too cool for words!
That and other documents he had lead to Johnston Hall being in his family at one time.  So being historian for the town of Alabama where the Tonawanda Indian Reservation is, this was exciting as well because of William Johnston's connection with the Mohawks, one of the Six Nations.
I knew a bit about DeWitt but not a lot.  I did a little digging and contacted Rutgers College, which sent me some info on Simeon DeWitt. (They have a building named after him and a bit of history)
In the e-mail that follows you will find excerpts from The NY State Gazetteer printed in 1860, and the two articles that Rutgers sent me which may give you some clues to which way to go.  (Don't want to go to long in one e-mail) I can also send you a jpg of a page in the Gazetteer that I sent to him about Simeon DeWitt and the canals.  If you have the book it is page 58 in the footnote section.  (The footnotes being the best part of the book in my opinion!)  If not I can E-mail you the jpg.

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Cindy Amrhein
Town of Alabama Historian
in Genesee Co., NY
Experience the Town of Alabama in Genesee County, NY.  Current events, wildlife, history, genealogy, cemetery inscriptions, and census records.
http://www2.pcom.net/cinjod/historian/



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