THE PRE-EMPTION LINE: The survey
that started it all
The drawing of the Pre-emption Line in 1788 lies at the very
beginnings of western New York's post-Revolutionary settlement. Its
history is complicated, but displays elements of all the competing
interests that saw and coveted the vast new lands just then opening
up.
The story goes back to the 17th century and the Stuart kings of
England. Charles I granted lands to Massachusetts Bay that stretched
from the Atlantic to the Pacific; his son Charles II, when creating a
new colony for his brother James, the Duke of York, granted similar
lands to New York. The conflicting grants not only proved the two
monarchs' poor knowledge of North American geography, but created
problems when the new states began trying to rationalize their
boundaries after the Revolution.
Until 1783 and independence, all of what is now western New York was
the home of the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois confederacy. The Senecas
had remained loyal to the crown, and their title had to be cleared. The
British were still a strong presence on the Niagara frontier, and some
of them were not above conspiring with the Indians to further their own
interests.
The conflicting claims of Massachusetts and New York were settled in
1787 by the Treaty of Hartford, and the following summer a team of
surveyors set out to draw the eastern boundary of the new lands. Since
Massachusetts had retained the pre-emption rights, that is to say the
right to make a treaty with the Senecas, the boundary of the pre-emption
lands was naturally called the Pre-emption Line. Everything west of it
would be under the sovereignty of New York, once the Indians' title was
pre-empted.
The line was supposed to run due north from a point on the
Pennsylvania border to the shore of Lake Ontario. The surveyors cut
their way through the primeval forest, marking trees along the way so
later another set of lines could be run west and then a grid of
townships formed. They used a marine compass to take their bearings, and
anyone who looks at a modern map can see that they strayed to the west.
Discussion has continued to this day as to whether the line was drawn in
the wrong place by accident or on purpose; but the fact is that the
entire territory of the pre-emption lands, some 6 million acres, was
laid out from this line.
The Pre-emption Line was resurveyed in 1794, but by that time much of
the land had already been sold. The triangular area between the two
lines is known as the Gore, and it contained in 1790 (when the first
federal census was taken) settlements at modern Geneva, City Hill and
Watkins Glen that were left uncounted, apparently because the Ontario
County man on the west went no farther than the line which marked his
eastern boundary; and the Montgomery County man on the east knew that
the line itself was in the wrong place and didn't feel like crossing all
that wilderness to catch the few hundred inhabitants in between.
Because of what amounted to a conspiracy between a group of Hudson
Valley speculators and the British and Canadians at Fort Niagara, the
syndicate that was trying to make a deal with the Senecas was forced to
cede several townships in advance, plus the title to all the land in the
Gore was clouded. Settlers were in some cases made to pay for their
improvements several times over, a great deal of ill will was
occasioned, and the maps of the towns in the first range west of the
Pre-emption Line forever complicated.