Because of a surveyor’s error, Canandaigua, N.Y., not Geneva, became the site of the nation’s first real estate office on the country’s western frontier, which is what western New York State was in the late 1700’s.
In 1788, two Massachusetts investors, Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, and their partners, bought the rights to six million acres in western New York, including most of the Finger Lakes, from Massachusetts. After Phelps cleared the Seneca title to about 2,600,000 acres, he was ready to start selling the land and sending the profits back to his associates in Massachusetts.
But first, the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, as it became known, had to be surveyed into towns and lots. The survey started with the Pre-emption Line, which would be the eastern boundary of the purchase. It was to be run from the 82nd milestone on the New York State-Pennsylvania border due north on a meridian to Lake Ontario. Even from the rudimentary maps of the day, Phelps believed that the line would run through Seneca Lake and that the Indian settlement at what is now present-day Geneva, N.Y., would be on his purchase. It was here that he planned to make his headquarters and open the real estate office. Geneva was poised to become America’s first boomtown.
Phelps hired Col. Hugh Maxwell, a decorated Revolutionary War soldier, to make the survey. Col. Maxwell’s reputation was impeccable. A religious man, he was known as the Christian patriot.
The history books present a number of theories of what happened on the survey of the Pre-emption Line, but the truth seems to be that the colonel simply made a careless error. He followed a compass as he trekked north from Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario. The compass pointed to the magnetic north pole, not quite the same as the geographic north pole (remember your high school Earth Science?).
His original notebook, now kept at the Geneva Historical Society, mentions no allowance for the compass variance during most of his survey.
When the survey team reached present-day Routes 5 & 20, it was about a mile west of Seneca Lake, where present-day Pre-emption Road intersects. Phelps knew something was wrong, but he had a million-dollar payment due to Massachusetts in less than a year (Phelps and Gorham bought the land on credit) so he ordered William Walker, his real estate agent, to make “Ye Outlet of Kennedarqua (Canandaigua) Lake” the headquarters.
Everything went wrong with the Phelps and Gorham Purchase. When the investors couldn’t meet their payments, the land then unsold was transferred back to Massachusetts, which resold it to Robert Morris, the financier of the American revolution, who at one time was the largest private landowner in America. He had the Pre-emption Line resurveyed in 1792 and what became known as the New Pre-emption Line was adopted by the New York State Legislature in 1796.
And what do you know? The new line ran due north on a meridian and passed right through Seneca Lake, just as everyone thought that it should have in 1788. The settlement at present-day Geneva really was on the Phelps and Gorham Purchase.
In subsequent surveys of the interior towns in the purchase, Col. Maxwell’s notes show that he allowed for the “variation of the needle” and compensated for the difference between due north and magnetic north.
But it was too late. The Phelps and Gorham Company had established its office in Canandaigua. It remained the headquarters for the first land sales in the new United States. And some say that the people in Geneva have never gotten over it.
Extracted from The Settlement of Western New York State, With a Review of Early Records of the Town of Gates 1809-1837, published by the Gates (N.Y.) Historical Society (forthcoming, September 2010).