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.
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