Chapter 1 - Page 2

and yet perfectly historical aspect. Our own earlier
labours will have told the reader, that all of this extended district
of country, with the exception of belts of settlements along the two
great rivers named, was a wilderness, anterior to the American
revolution. There was a minor class of exceptions to this general rule,
however, to which it will be proper to advert, lest, by conceiving us
too literally, the reader may think he can convict us of a
contradiction. In order to be fully understood, the explanations shall
be given at a little length.

While it is true, then, that the mountainous region, which now contains
the counties of Schoharie, Otsego, Chenango, Broome, Delaware, &c., was
a wilderness in 1775, the colonial governors had begun to make grants
of its lands, some twenty years earlier. The patent of the estate on
which we are writing lies before us; and it bears the date of 1769,
with an Indian grant annexed, that is a year or two older. This may be
taken as a mean date for the portion of country alluded to; some of the
deeds being older, and others still more recent. These grants of land
were originally made, subject to quit-rents to the crown; and usually
on the payment of heavy fees to the colonial officers, after going
through the somewhat supererogatory duty of "extinguishing the Indian
title," as it was called. The latter were pretty effectually
"extinguished" in that day, as well as in our own; and it would be a
matter of curious research to ascertain the precise nature of the
purchase-money given to the aborigines. In the case of the patent
before us, the Indian right was "extinguished" by means of a few
rifles, blankets, kettles, and beads; though the grant covers a nominal
hundred thousand, and a real hundred and ten or twenty thousand acres
of land.

The abuse of the grants, as land became more valuable, induced a law,
restricting the number of acres patented to any one person, at any one
time, to a thousand. Our monarchical predecessors had the same
facilities, and it may be added, the same propensities, to rendering a
law a dead letter, as belongs to our republican selves. The patent on
our table, being for a nominal hundred thousand acres, contains the
names of one hundred different grantees, while three several parchment
documents at its side, each signed by thirty-three of these very
persons, vest the legal estate in the first named, for whose sole
benefit the whole concession was made; the dates of the last
instruments succeeding, by one or two days, that of the royal patent
itself.

Such is the history of most of the original titles to the many estates
that dotted the region we have described, prior to the revolution.