Xkw York State 57 



Monroe, Schuyler, Allegany, Chemung, and Livingston, and was 



bounded on the east by the Pre-emption Line. Morris also con- 

 tracted- with Massachusetts for her pre-emption right to the lands 

 west of the Phelps and Gorham purchase and sold off several 

 tracts, extinguishing the Indian title at the treaty of Big Tree, 

 now Geneseo, in 1797. One of these sales was made to the Hol- 

 land Land Company and covered about 3,600,000 acres, including 

 the present counties of Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Allegany, 

 Wyoming. Erie, Genesee, Orleans, and Xiagara. The first land 

 office of the company was opened in Batavia in 1801. 



Another tract granted by Xew York to Massachusetts was known 

 as the " Boston Ten Towns," and is now included in the counties 

 of Broome and Tioga. This tract was sold to John Brown and 

 others. 



The line of pre-emption was originally very uncertain in the 

 vicinity of Seneca Lake. For this reason Phelps and Gorham 

 agreed with Reed and Ryckman, two Indian traders who had 

 secured a patent of 16,000 acres along the lake, to fix the line. The 

 survey was highly favorable to the traders but disappointing to 

 Phelps and Gorham, who, when they sold to Robert Morris, speci- 

 fied in their deed a tract in a gore between that line and the west 

 bounds of the military tract. When Morris sold, a new line was 

 run, which ^came known as the " Xew Pre-emption Line," and 

 was adopted as the true line of division between the claims of the 

 two. states. Xew York State had permitted land warrants to be 

 located on disputed territory, under the impression that the first 

 line was correct ; hence the addition to the military tract of what 

 were called " Compensation Lands," in what is now Wayne 

 County. 



In 1782 the legislature set apart the "Military Lands" to be 

 granted to the officers and soldiers of Xew York who should serve 

 in the army until the end of the war. These tracts contained 

 about 1.800,000 acres and included, generally speaking, the coun- 

 ties of Onondaga, Cortland, Cayuga, Tompkins, and Seneca and 

 parts of Oswego and Wayne. Th^ military lot called for tracts 

 one mile square, the state reserving the right to retain 100 acres 

 from the southeast corner of each lot and donate a similar amount 

 of Ohio land. This lot as reserved was called the " State's Hun- 



