Welsh Journals

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names such as Bryn Mawr, Llanerch, Meirion, Haverford, and Dyffryn Mawr had considerable appeal to Welsh emigrants. In 1795 about fifty emigrants left Montgomeryshire for lands purchased by the Cambrian Company in western Pennsylvania. The first settlement was at Ebensburg from which place Welshmen migrated to Paddy's Run in southern Ohio. Substantial Welsh colonies grew up near Gomer and Jackson, Ohio. But Oneida County in the 1790s was also a booming frontier region which was drawing hundreds of settlers each year, especially from New England.5 It enjoyed good transportation since settlers could move their goods by keelboats up the Mohawk River or by wagons through the Mohawk Valley. Land was cheap, especially north of Utica, then known as Old Fort Schuyler. The fresh lands with their rich covering of vegetable mould produced good yields of wheat. The rolling countryside naturally appealed to persons brought up in New England or in Wales. Furthermore, backwoodsmen had already made the first clearings, a necessary step before the more stable farming community could be established. In 1786 Baron Von Steuben received a grant of 16,000 acres from New York State for his great services in the organization of the Continental Army. The Baron made his selection from state land which he believed would be near the portage of Fort Stanwix (present-day Rome). Unfortunately, his tract lay some five miles to the north of the Mohawk River and in hilly country. In the spring of 1787 James Cockburn surveyed the tract, laying out 160 lots of approximately 100 acres each. Steuben decided to adopt the leasehold policy, which probably fitted in with his memories of landholding in Prussia and the Hudson Valley. But he found difficulty in attracting Yankee settlers, who disliked the leasehold and who found the land in southern Oneida County more fertile. By 1791 Steuben decided to sell half his lots for one dollar an acre or$1.25 an acre with three years' credit. In 1791 he had 3,446 acres under lease. Three years later the old soldier died leaving his estate to his Revolutionary aides, Benjamin Walker and William North. In the following year North sold his interest to Walker for$5,000. We know little of Walker's manage- ment of his holdings, but his will in 1818 reveals 2,800 acres under lease. Walker also sold farms for cash. For an account of the land pattern and settlement of Oneida County, see David Maldwyn Ellis, Landlords and Farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk Region, 1790-1850 (Ithaca, 1946), pp 46-54.