The Twenty - Five Things That Made Genesee County Famous
Number 4
The Holland Land Company
Big businesses have always called Genesee County home. Today, there are Graham, Liberty Pumps, Milton Cat, and many others. Names from the past include Johnson – Harvester, LeRoy Plow, Genesee Pure Foods, and countless others. Every company in western New York is here because of the Holland Land Company.
The origins of the Holland Land Company go back to 1789, when four Dutch investment firms sent an agent to the United States in search of investment opportunities. The Club of Four, as it was called then, started to buy large tracts of American land in 1792. Two more investment firms joined the original four, creating the Club of Six. The six firms decided to merge their individual holdings into one stock company, and so the Holland Land Company was formed on November 20, 1795.
In September 1797, the company purchased 3.3 million acres of Western New York land from Robert Morris. The plan was to sell off the land in large tracts to speculators and make a quick profit, but the economy changed and they were forced to hang onto the land, develop it and sell it over the next 40 years.
Following the Treaty of Big Tree, the Holland Land Company hired a well-known surveyor by the name of Joseph Ellicott. It was Ellicott’s job to survey and divide Western New York into townships six miles square.
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1829 Holland Land Company Map (click for a larger version) |
The Great Survey ended in 1799, and by the spring of 1800 the land was ready to sell. The Holland Land Company again hired Joseph Ellicott, this time as resident-agent, with the charge of selling the 3.3 million acres.
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Joseph Ellicott |
Ellicott started selling land out of an office he rented at Asa Ransom’s tavern in what is today Clarence Hollow. Knowing he needed a better sales location, he chose a spot along the great Indian Trail at the big bend in the Tonawanda. He started to call his new shire town Bustiville, after his boss Paolo Busti. Busti objected to the name and suggested it be called “Batavia,” the name for the Dutch republic where the Holland Land Company owners lived.
Ellicott stayed on as resident-agent until his retirement in 1820. During his years of service western New York transformed from a frontier outpost to a thriving collection of villages and towns. The Holland Land Company stayed in Western New York until 1837, when all remaining lands were sold to local investors. How Does It Make Genesee County Famous?
A case could be made that without the Holland Land Company, Genesee County wouldn’t be here today. It’s an interesting thought, but I think that if it wasn’t the Holland Land Company and Joseph Ellicott, it would have been somebody else.
Today, the Holland Land Office Museum reminds residents and visitors of the importance of the Land Company’s influence on the development of western New York. The Land Office is the most recognized building in the county. It is featured on the official seals of Genesee County, the City of Batavia, and Genesee Community College. To honor the building and its prominence in Western New York, the University of Buffalo built a replica in 1931 to house its bookstore.
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Click on the ruler above for a story about Joseph Ellicott and the one foot ruler |
Before starting the Great Survey in 1798, Joseph Ellicott was deeply concerned about accuracy. At the time, there was no national standard of measure. To ensure accuracy, Ellicott took a number of one-foot rulers, averaged them out, and used that as his standard one foot measure for the survey. He attached a brass ruler to the surveyor’s field books and that eventually became the national standard for the one foot measurement. So the one foot ruler was born in Western New York because of the Holland Land Company.
When a business is busy, the old saying goes, “We’re doing a land office business.” The saying comes from the Holland Land Company because there were so many people at the office to buy land that the line often stretched out the door. The saying was carried across the country as government land offices opened in the west.
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