Genesee County, the Holland Land Company, and the Fabric of American History

Michael J. Eula, Ph.D. Genesee County Historian

Let me begin by thanking all of you for inviting me to speak today. I am honored to be here, and look forward to an exciting and productive relationship in the years ahead. I see this short talk as an opportunity to reflect in public my initial thoughts on our County’s history, and hope that my brief remarks will stimulate discussion.

When I was approached and invited to give this talk I was immediately struck by the irony of being asked to reflect in public about a topic which has over the last several months been on my mind consistently, and has now become the exclusive focus of my professional life. During the years I spent as an academic historian I consistently felt that history is too important an area of life to be left to the campus, and to now have this opportunity to bring history to as wide an audience as possible is, to risk an understatement, exhilarating – and yes, even a bit frightening. But for the moment I will put aside any discussion of my ideas about extending the wonderful work undertaken by my predecessor, Susan Conklin. I will also put aside any discussion of how to continue and expand upon the enthusiastic and committed work undertaken by the leadership of the Museum, along with that of the town historians whom it has been such a pleasure to begin work with. I will restrain myself from sharing ideas designed to bring even more of this County’s rich past to as many people as possible. I will instead restrict myself to a broad sketch of our County’s history, which means initially to say that, at least in my view, it is not an overstatement to say that Genesee County, while having its own unique historical qualities, is also one in which the broader fabric of American history is also visible. Tying together the thematic elements making up this fabric is of course the central role played early on by the Holland Land Company.

Hence there is a discernible connection between the unfolding of the County’s history, along with that of the Holland Land Company – and of wider America. In that multilayered history – that sometimes mystifying array of patterns and configurations – we see what can be understood as an area of the country – and its people – who serve to constitute a crucial watershed in American history; a history which remains to this day fresh and unfinished.

Maybe the most prominent motif revealed in the history of Genesee County is the unbounded optimism which motivated its people from the beginning. And by its people I mean not just such pivotal historical actors as Robert Morris and , but, in addition, the Native Americans at Buffalo Creek who saw the potential of a flour mill on the western side of the – an overlooked and rare chapter in Native American history illustrating the fusion of the self-interest of two groups – Europeans and Native Americans – who otherwise are typically depicted as having interests so mutually hostile that peaceful cooperation remained unattainable. Hence the optimism growing out of the self-interest of two seemingly disparate groups early on served to embody an optimism that may be more accurately understood as a fervent belief in progress which resonates throughout the long and storied history of our County.

It was that unshakable belief in the possibility of a progress inextricably tied to freedom which sustained Genesee County throughout a history punctuated by wars, economic downturns, and even the outbreaks of medieval-like plagues – the influenza scourge of the post-World War One period. Despite such challenges, the people of the County actually seemed to have their faith in the idea of progress strengthened – while such setbacks seemed to plunge other areas of the country into despair and disintegration, the political, social, and moral fabric of Genesee County’s people remained distinctly upbeat.

How can we explain this? Maybe more than anything else, four factors need to be acknowledged – four variables first set in motion by the Holland Land Company at the end of the eighteenth century. When Robert Morris sold all of his land in to five trustees acting on behalf of Dutch land developers – the Holland Land Company – a belief that progress is rooted in free enterprise was on display. So too was the attendant philosophy of individual freedom in other areas of life – press, religion, assembly, speech and so forth – which was seen as a pivotal component of progress. This vision of what some have called classical liberalism is one that runs throughout the history of Genesee County. While it is true that this theme is also evident in wider American society, that same society – reeling from the effects of, say, the Great Depression – retreated from that view which, it can be argued, was never truly recaptured from the New Deal on. But even a cursory examination of Genesee County’s history reveals that in this sense the history of our County is here too somewhat unique. For example, look at George’s Dairy in Batavia. Despite the deepening economic crisis by 1930, owner Sylvester George – along with his sons – purchased the Fred Parker Farm in Elba. The following year they dared to expand the business to include dairy sales in what was called the ice storage room (a reference to ice cut from the Tonawanda Creek and then stored in a cement block building to cool milk in the summer). In January of 1932, as national unemployment skyrocketed and the numbers of failing businesses and banks continued to escalate, the Georges nonetheless kept expanding – adding a dairy route on January 1, 1932.

George’s Dairy is an example of a persistent belief that progress is possible despite immediate obstacles. It was a display of a moral motor force that could not shake a belief that improvement is attainable. The faith in progress, anchored in the conviction of individual liberty, was one that even the Great Depression could not eradicate in Genesee County. And that liberty was not the product of political intervention. It was instead the result of decisions made by Sylvester and Mary Petz George and their children. Their exercise of individual freedom dovetailed with the assumption that all of this added up to a progressive development of individual lives and society at large. Their business continued beyond the life of Sylvester, who died in 1961.

But the insistence upon the reality of progress first displayed in the entrepreneurial spirit of the Holland Land Company was not simply economic in nature. There is also the role played by technology and its part in sustaining the optimism evident in Genesee County history. Once again, the part played by the Holland Land Company was crucial. Joseph Ellicott, the Company’s chief surveyor, employed some of the more advanced survey instruments of his time. In order to ensure accurate astronomical measurements as they applied to meridians, Joseph’s younger brother, Benjamin, built portable transit instruments – a telescope placed atop a tripod. This guaranteed the stability and accuracy needed by the land surveyor, who no longer had to rely upon a standard compass. Here the opportunity perceived by the trustees and investors of the Holland Land Company produced a technological innovation – the portable transit instrument – which itself symbolized the boundless optimism of early Genesee County. The subsequent history of the County is replete with new and innovative technologies exuding the cherished ideal of individuals free to pursue their dreams. The Colt Clamp Company, the designer of a clamp utilized by construction firms a century after its invention, is but one example of innovators whose daring rests upon a belief that life can improve – and that improvement demands a development tempered by tradition and public spiritedness.

This brings us to my next point. While progress and optimism rear their heads time and again throughout the history of our County, so too does a public spiritedness which had once been called voluntarism. Here as well Genesee County both reflects, and diverges from, wider American patterns. In his seminal work of 1922 entitled American Individualism , President Herbert Hoover spoke of the role played by civic minded Americans in their communities. While unprecedented governmental intervention from the New Deal on tended to undermine some of this voluntarism, Genesee County nonetheless retained much of this tradition of public service to an extent not seen throughout the country to the same degree. Even a cursory examination of one part of the County after another reveals the public role played by private institutions and private individuals – religious bodies, service organizations ranging from Kiwanis through Lions to study groups and volunteer fire fighters, all of which offer a view of life in which liberty and the natural optimism and assumption of continued progress that goes along with this means a society demanding a high level of civic involvement. Prior to becoming president, then General Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke of this “bundling of freedoms:”

All our freedoms – personal, economic, social, political – freedom to buy, to work, to hire, to bargain, to save, to vote, to worship, to gather in a convention or join in mutual association; all these freedoms are in a single bundle. Each is an indispensable part of a single whole. Destruction of any inevitably leads to the destruction of all.

At the risk of overstating the point, Genesee County’s history is one in which this “bundle of freedoms” reigns as a beacon of light in an America that increasingly falls short of that ideal. In this sense our County’s history can serve as an object lesson in the maintenance of a republican tradition (small r) stretching back to the founders themselves.

Therefore, it is not surprising that a third element serving to illustrate a County history both reflective of, and diverging from, wider American life, is that of what philosophers have called pragmatism , a distinctly original American idea. Simply put, it is a cherished American ideal stressing practical consequences over ideology. From the beginning, settlers in Genesee County from New England, through the subsequent industrialists of the nineteenth century and beyond, looked with suspicion upon political speculation. Results, not theories, remained the primary motivations for farmers and businesspeople alike. Indeed, this was the guiding principle for such political leaders as Congressman Barber B. Conable, Jr. As his biographer, James S. Fleming, put it in his assessment of Congressman Conable’s reaction to the 1964 Republican National Convention:

As a pragmatist, Barber Conable never accepted Goldwater’s brand of ideological partisan politics in the United States . . . Conable had warned his young friends against the danger of the Goldwater movement that even then was sweeping the Republican Party. It would be a great mistake, “simply and bluntly political suicide,” he warned them, for either of the two major political parties of the country “to rework themselves into a radical movement to the left or right . . . The great mass of our voting population prefer the center, be it the Republican center or the Democratic center. This center likes to consider itself uncommitted, free to swing either way with the current of popular thought, but resentful and suspicious of extremes and partisanship.”

The Congressman’s assessment of political ideology was expressive of a broad trend in our County’s history – a recognition of the necessity of adapting to changing realities while simultaneously retaining a sense of place and tradition which translates into slow, purposeful change guided by the need to respond to evolving social demands. In other words, change should never take place merely as an end in itself. Accordingly, compromise is possible only within a tradition that rejects ideology and its tendency towards extremism. Congressman Conable continued a County tradition of pragmatism visible in the work of Joseph Ellicott, who approached his work by focusing on meticulous details which enabled him to see the bigger picture as it rests upon concrete realities – rather than starting with some abstract view of society serving to prevent an understanding of actual realities which, in the end, make up the stuff of day to day life.

Along these lines one can see that a history of Genesee County is one in which the value of community is placed above that of divisiveness. This is not to say that the County’s history is devoid of conflict – far from it. But it is to say that there is a solid consensus of values – the importance of family, a belief in hard work, the provision of opportunity, loyalty to one’s country, the freedom to worship God in whatever manner one decides, etc. – that have been perpetuated over many generations among a people sharing both common purpose and a common faith in the essential worth of individual dignity. Even when the residents of Batavia in 1823 were beset with no sidewalks, no local laws, no street lights, no street drainage, no police, no water supply, and were confronted by loose livestock in streets replete with pools of stagnant water – and with some residents opposed to an incorporation that would provide a tax base to address these issues – despite a sharp split between those who saw the necessity of incorporation and those who initially did not – in the end, the needs of the community at large triumphed over concerns about restrictive local laws and tax liability. Here was the consensus of values at work – individual needs were balanced with the requirements of good civil order. Thirteen years later, as we discover in Safford E. North’s 1899 publication of Our County and Its People: A Descriptive and Biographical Record of Genesee County New York , there was

. . . the attempt of a mob to assault and destroy the office of the Land company during the so-called “Land Office war” in 1836. Fortunately the inhabitants of the village were apprised of the impending trouble in ample time to arm themselves, and when the mob reached the village they found that such a determined and organized resistance had been prepared that all efforts on their part looking to the destruction of the land office or any other property would be accompanied by the death of greater or less numbers of the invading party.

Already, the county; the community; was seen as a living organism with deep roots outweighing any narrow self-interest working to the detriment of the County as a whole. Our community is one which has shown, over four centuries, a tendency to delicately balance individual and societal needs. Customs and traditions would go to serve as the primary creative force in the County’s constellation of groups working side by side for the common good. Therefore, what does all of this mean? It means a local history with political, social, cultural, and economic patterns both commonly seen in United States history and, simultaneously, displaying trends more unique to Genesee County in particular. It means a Genesee County whose history displays an optimism and belief in progress with deep roots in a past stretching back to the colonial period. It means a Genesee County whose history must necessarily be preserved and interpreted for meanings relevant to us today and into the future, for this history is continuously unfolding and helping to set the tone for not only future generations of County residents, but just as dramatically, for future generations of Americans who can view our home as a guide to what will hopefully be, in some way, the future of our American Republic. By acknowledging the contributions of all of our County’s residents – famous and otherwise – it is New York State and America at large, who will, in the end, emerge as the heirs to our County’s noble and inspiring past.

I thank you for the opportunity this afternoon to share with you my overall thoughts on Genesee County’s history, and I am happy to respond to any questions you may have.