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Map of Phelps and Gorham Purchase 1802–1806. The Phelps and Gorham Purchase was the sale, in 1788, of a portion of a large tract of land in western New York State owned by the Seneca nation of the Iroquois Confederacy to a syndicate of land developers led by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham.
1788 Apr 1 – Massachusetts agrees to sell all of its preemptive rights to Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts. 1788 Jul 8 – Phelps and Gorham purchase from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) tribes land amounting to some 2,600,000 acres. 1788 Jul 25 – Colonel Hugh Maxwell begins survey of the first (false) preemption line.
Phelps and Gorham were to pay $1,000,000 in three equal annual installments for this land, payable in certain Massachusetts securities that were then valued at 20 cents on the dollar. Under the terms of the purchase agreement, they took title only when they had extinguished the Indian title.
Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham then purchased the pre-emption right from Massachusetts, but failed to extinguish the Indian title to this tract and defaulted on their purchase in 1790. Robert Morris next purchased the pre-emption right from Massachusetts in 1791 for $333,333.34 (about $5.98 million today).
Before defaulting on the rest of the land purchase agreement, Phelps and Gorham gave a 100-acre (0.4 km 2) lot within the Mill Yard Tract at the Upper Falls of the Genesee to Ebenezer "Indian" Allen, on condition he build a grist mill and sawmill there by summer 1789 (the "100 Acre Tract").
On April 1, 1788, [1] Massachusetts sold its rights to the entire six million acres (24,000 km 2) to Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham for $1,000,000, [2] payable in three equal annual installments, and payable in specie or in certain Massachusetts securities then trading at about 20 cents on the dollar, the money used to repay some of the state's debt from the Revolutionary War.
Jeremiah was considered one of the wealthiest men in Connecticut at the time and was interested in investing in, and financially backing, the efforts of Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, who in the previous year purchased more than 2,250,000 acres (9,100 km 2) of land from the Iroquois Six Nations in Western New York State, known as the ...
Iroquois lands circa 1720 A map showing the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, the Morris Reserve, and the Holland Purchase. Aboriginal title in New York refers to treaties, purchases, laws and litigation associated with land titles of aboriginal peoples of New York, in particular, to dispossession of those lands by actions of European Americans.