Some two or three months ago Mr. D. F. Attwood, President of our village, received a request for documents and information relating to it. The applicant was a newspaper editor or correspondent in Geneva, Switzerland, who thought that his fellow citizens would be interested in some brief account of all the American GENEVAS. His request being complied with, he now courteously sends to President Attwood and others the net results of his study of our character and our history. We give below a somewhat free translation of this article, (it appeared originally in French), believing that our readers will be glad to avail themselves of the "giftie" so earnestly coveted by the poet Burns -- "to see oursel's as others see us."
The women tax-payers will be sorry to learn that our Swiss friend is in error in his statement that les femmes recalcitrantes cannot be forced like the men to pay their taxes. To be sure, the charter provides that no body execution shall issue against women, but this is their only exemption from the processes of the collector. As the provision for a "body execution" is never put in force against the men, women and men are practically on the same footing in this respect.
Geneva, N. Y. -- THE ELDEST OF THE AMERICAN GENEVAS.
Mr. Editor, I have presented to your readers eighteen American Genevas. I would like today to talk with them about the GENEVA of New York, eldest of the Genevas of the United States. Let a map of the state of New York be consulted; upon the same degree of longitude as Washington and nearly upon the 43rd degree of north latitude is found a village called Geneva, situated at the north of a lake. In order to point out its position precisely we will add that Geneva, N. Y. is 105 miles east of Lake Erie, 25 miles south of lake Ontario, 220 miles north-east of New York, and almost upon the same degree of latitude as Toulon. Five little lakes about half as large as lake Leman flow from south to north, parallel to one another, and upon an average about 12 miles apart. Their northern extremity is about twenty-five miles south of Lake Erie which is almost as large as Switzerland. Going from east to west these lakes are Skaneateles, Owasco, Cayuga, Seneca and Canandaigua.
Geneva, N. Y., situated at the north of lake Seneca, is ten days by post from the Swiss Geneva.
Mr. D. F. Attwood, president of the Board of Trustees of this Geneva, sends me some documents of recent date relating to its settlement. Ex-president George S. Conover is its historiographer. It is through his kindness that I am able to offer you the following statement:
The first official document concerning Geneva, N. Y., is a letter from Dr. Cabb Benton to William Walker, surveyor and land agent dated Oct. 15, 1788. Nine other official documents bearing the name of Geneva and a date following one another up to Sept. 20th, 1791, which is the date of a description by Elkanah Watson in his newspaper. It was nine months, then, before the presidency of Washington, and eight years after Major Andre, the Swiss Genevan, had been shot by Washington as a spy and buried as a hero by England in Westminister Abbey, that the Geneva of New York was settled. While surveyors were laying out the boundaries of Geneva, N. Y., this is what was happening in the Swiss Geneva: (It is the historian Jullien who writes:) "The wealthy people of Geneva were generous; in September, 1788, the city of Sion, capital of Valais, was laid waste by a fire which consumed a hundred and twenty-six houses and caused a loss of more than a million; the contributions of Geneva amounted to more than forty-three thousand florins."
And now a few words about the pre-historic American Geneva which called itself Kanadesaga. The army of Gen. Sullivan made the tour of the lake now called Seneca September 17th, 1779. At the north of it they found a prosperous Indian village, chief place of the Kanadesaga tribe. There they saw a beautiful apple-orchard surrounding a fortress known later as Indian Castle. Mr. Conover gives us a detailed account of the most renowned chiefs of the Kanadesagas in 1788. On the 4th of June of this year, Oliver Phelps arrived at this Indian village; was struck by its beauty and by its favorable situation from a commercial point of view. He there wrote a letter in which one reads these memorable words: "We mean to found a city here." The chronicler reports to us the dramatic history of the debates between the Indian chiefs and the Americans Phelps and Gorham over the cession of the territory of the new Geneva. He gives us the speech of Red Jacket against the American offers, and the reply of Farmer's Brother in favor of acceptance. All this took place in the presence of the tribes assembled in a clearing of the virgin forest. It was then in the autumn of 1788 that Kanadesaga took the name of Geneva, and became the isolated outpost of what was called the Geneva country. Soon it became the rendezvous of traders going to the great lakes. Taverns, cottages, surveyors, speculators, explorers, the Leasee company and its agents, (some educated men and gentlemen), a crowd of vagrants -- the foam on the crest of the westward-moving wave, -- all seized by the fever of hope and ambition.
Phelps and Gorham, the first owners, sold what remained of their tract to Robert Morris in 1790. He, in turn, sold his title through his London agent to Sir William Pulteney, John Harnbey and Patrick Colqumann, but these gentlemen not being Americans and being by this fact disqualified to acquire real estate in America, sent over their agent, Mr. Charles Williamson, who became naturalized and thus bought land in the new Geneva in his name for the English financiers. This deed was signed April 11th, 1792.
The appearance of the new Geneva was less attractive than that of Kanadesaga, its predecessor; in fact, Elkanah Watson who visited it in 1791 wrote the following lines on the 21st of September: "Geneva is an unhealthy little village consisting of about fifteen houses, all of wood except three, and perhaps twenty families. We were well enough received at the Patterson tavern, situated upon the shore of the lake, but our sleep was disturbed nearly all night by gamblers and fleas, those two social plagues." In 1793, Captain Williamson had a new survey of the village made. The charts and the original plans have not been preserved. Historian Conover despairs of finding them again.
Lakes Cayuga and Seneca have been explored with the greatest care by Professors E. Fuertes and Crandall and Mr. J. P. Church. Students of engineering worked in 1878 and 1883 to take soundings and to make surveys. Exact charts of the bottoms of these lakes have been prepared. Seneca Lake is thirty-four miles in length; its greatest width is 3.12 miles, and its greatest depth is 618 English feet. In other words, Seneca Lake measured upon Lake Leman would stretch from Geneva to Ouehy in length, and from Nyon to Nernier in its greatest width.
The town government of Geneva is excellent. Public and private gambling houses are prohibited, also, horse-racing. Unreasonably fast driving is forbidden, and the public is warned not to play at hoop or ball, or to engage in any game through which persons passing by might be injured.
On the third Tuesday in May, at ten in the morning, all tax-payers are gathered in a general assembly to approve or reject the annual budget which is submitted to them by the Trustees of the Village Board. And, a thing unknown in Europe ! Women who are tax-payers "refuse to pay their taxes cannot, like the men, be forced to pay."
Any person who does not observe the proprieties of language, or is not decently clothed, is liable to a fine. Bathing in the lake, or in the water-courses traversing the village limits, except at night, is forbidden.
It appears that the supervision of public morals is as severe as it was in our Geneva in the days of Calvin.
Locomotives and steamboats are not allowed to whistle within the village limits except in case of impending danger. The code from which I borrow these laws consists of a hundred and fifty pages, and appears to me to be a model of clearness and judicious foresight.
The authorities of the Geneva New York have been touched by the sympathetic comparison which I have endeavored to establish between the Geneva of Julius Caesar and the first Geneva of the New World. May these reciprocal sentiments bear fruit in the future ! It is my dearest wish.
W. V. I. Mercer John Wood Geo. Wight P. Hastings A. Messer D. Field jun'r John Woods G. W. Cromwell R. Hogarth J. S. Hogarth Peter M. Dox Charles S. Bronson Sexton Mount W. W. Watson Wm. Mager S. H. Bostwick William Inslee J. Gray David S. Skaats Jacob Larzelere Wm. Hudson John W. Nevius C. A. Cook J. M. Soverhill Henry Stephens J. M. Page S. Buckley Harvey Tomlinson Luther Kelly George Wood David Carey W. E. Sill R. W. Stoddard Alonzo Seymour Chas. T. Brouer Nathan Parke H. V. R. Schemerhorn Robert C. Nicholas G. P. Stephens Samuel Robinson Robert Daskam H. Brizse A. H. Barber H. Hastings L. W. Hamblin James Gillespie W. S. DeZeng Theodore Hinman jr. J. A. Coffin Charles Butler W. Gordon William Cole Hugh Black David Wilson Josiah Anderson John Hall John Greves Oliver S. Phelps |
G. H. Merrill J. Thayer J. Snow M. M. Williams E. Hastings Phinehas Prouty David S. Hall D. L. Lum John W. Tillman R. M. Bayly J. B. Rumny D. G. Johnson Jerome Loomis H. H. Bogert Wm. H. Townsend H. DeGraff A. Hemiup Geo. Merrill G. H. Haskill H. A. Nagly C. Rodney Geo. A. Condit Levi A. Stevens R. Bedell S. L. Wood John N. Bogert W. W. Carter T. B. Tallmadge Jas. B. Dungan S. Hemenway R. Hemenway John Fargo Joseph I. Scidmore E. H. Gordon A. I. Wynkoop J. F. Jenkins John C. Merrill David Hudson Ducondray Holstein S. B. Grosvenor A. H. Osborn U. E. Lewis James Rees John H. Stagg C. Powell Peter Staats John D. Locke Wm. W. Greene Joseph C. Northup Abr'm B. Hall B. Stainton Wm. Tippetts A. Fleming Septs Evans J. Smith S. H. Rose J. R. Morrison |
Asa Messer Peter M. Dox David S. Hall Jacob Larzelere J. M. Soverhill John M. Page Wm. E. Sill Samuel Robinson |
Geo. A. Condit
Dr. J. SmithJno. N. Bogert Wm. S. DeZeng David Wilson B. Stainton J. R. Morrison |
R. Hogarth Horace Kingsley J. Rice John I. Freleigh W. Grissel John Sloan Sr. H. S. White David Squier F. Barnard D. Field Jr. Thomas Lynds Wm. Goff Edward White Nathan Reed John Reed John Scoon E. Hall |
Benj. Tuttle Solomon Gardner Josiah Smith Mitchell M. Combs John S. Reed Phineas Stow A. Lewis Artemus Stow (Stone) Ezekiel Roberts Nathan Reed 2d Joseph Hammond Thomas Barron William Smith Isaac L. Latts Thomas Crawford Shubael Hammond John How--d |
Article 1. This association shall be called the Ontario Trojan Band and shall continue its existence until
January 1st, 1850.Article 2. The object of this Band is to proceed to California by way of Panama, and personally engage in amassing gold by mining operations and for the mutual benefit and protection of its members -- the number of which shall not exceed thirty persons.
. . . . .etc.
From Geneva Gazette 16 February 1849
The members of the band, and those who have signified their intention of joining it -- and such as would like to join it, are requested to meet at my office in Geneva, on Saturday, the 10th inst., at 2 P. M.
From Geneva Gazette 9 March 1849
The following list shows the names and places of residence of the
Ontario Trojan Band for California:
George R. Parburt, Geneva M. H. Lincoln, Hopewell Thomas B. Tyler, Gorham Robert Walker, Canandaigua Stephen Parrish 2d, Canandaigua John Swart, Gorham Seth T. Walker, Canandaigua Henry Tidman, Canandaigua James McGowan, Canandaigua William Rowlatt, Gorham Marvin D. Mapes, Gorham Miles B. Clark, Gorham William E. Tooker, Gorham James M. Richardson, Gorham William E. Williamson, Gorham F. W. Collins, East Bloomfield Allan Pierce, East Bloomfield Robert Quick, East Bloomfield John T. Dickson, East Bloomfield Lockwood Proper, Potter, Yates Co. John Wells, Potter, Yates Co. Henry Pultney, Potter, Yates Co. James Scott, Italy Hollow William S. Kemp, Lockport, Niagara Co. M. S. Thompson, Springport, Cay. Co. Chas. H. Westfall, Port Jervis, Orange Co. Levi Westfall, Port Jervis, Orange Co. |
Chief of the Band Vice Chief of the Band Scribe Treas. & Sen. mem of B'd of Conciliation Associate mem. of B'd of Conciliation Associate mem. of B'd of Conciliation |