The Military Tract

 After Sullivan’s march through Cayuga territory, members of the Cayuga Nation were scattered, and few remained in their homeland. They no longer held title to their land after the Albany Treaty of 1788-1789.

 In 1781, lands were promised to soldiers serving for the Continental Army by New York State. Early in the process, lands were set aside in northern New York, but the rights of the Iroquois to those lands in the “Old Military Tract” had not yet been extinguished and soldiers were anxious to get their claims settled.

 The Federal Government had promised land in order to encourage enlistments into the Continental army:

 

Colonel, 500 acres

Lieutenant-General, 450 acres

Major, 400 acres

Captain, 300 acres

Lieutenant, 200 acres

Ensign, 150 acres

Private, 100 acres

 

The State of New York added to that bounty:

 

Major-General, 5500 acres

Brigadier-General, 4250

Colonel, 2500 acres

Lieutentant-Colonel, 2250 acres

Major, 2000 acres

Captain and Regimental Surgeon, each, 1500 acres

Chaplain, 2000 acres

Subaltern and Surgeon’s Mate, each 1000 acres

Non-commissioned officer and private, each, 500 acres[1]

 

So the minimum acreage available to the lowliest private totaled 600 acres once the war was over.

 After much confusion, and the ultimate realization that the lands in Central New York had become available and were much more desirable as farmland, the 1788, Treaty of Fort Stanwix extinguished Haudenosaunee claims to the land, so the Onondaga Military Tract of nearly 2 million acres was created. 

 The military tract is located in the present counties of Cayuga, Cortland, Seneca, Onondaga, and parts of Steuben, Wayne, and Oswego.

 There were 28 townships, all given names from classical history, with a few more modern names thrown in.

 

1	Lysander	15	Fabius
2	Hannibal	16	Ovid
3	Cato	17	Milton
4	Brutus	18	Locke
5	Camillus	19	Homer
6	Cicero	20	Solon
7	Manlius	21	Hector
8	Aurelius	22	Ulysses
9	Marcellus	23	Dryden
10	Pompey	24	Virgil
11	Romulus	25	Cincinnatus
12	Scipio	26	Junius
13	Sempronius	27	Galen
14	Tully	28	Sterling

 

 

 

Initially, there were just the first 25 townships, but the last three were added to in 1790, 1792, and 1795, respectively, to accommodate the large number of claims for land^{.[2], [3]}

 The first three were named after historic military leaders, fighters against the Roman republic. The names that followed for the next five were Roman republican heroes, but the remainder seemed to follow no real pattern.. being a list of a variety of Greek, Roman, and English poets, philsophers, and warriors.^[4]

 Cato may refer to Marcus Porcius Cato, known as Cato the Younger, a Roman senator, “remembered for his stubbornness and tenacity (especially in his lengthy conflict with Julius Caesar), as well as his immunity to bribes, his moral integrity, and his famous distaste for the ubiquitous corruption of the period,”^[5] or Cato the Elder, his great-grandfather, a soldier, senator, and farmer.  The name “Cato” was added to the family name and denoted his wisdom, experience, and common sense.^[6] The early settlers of the town, with a few exceptions, certainly exhibited the integrity and common sense of both Catos.

 Each township was divided into 100 lots of 600 acres each.

 In July, 1790, soldiers so entitled drew lots to determine which lands were to become theirs.^[7] 

 If a veteran private took his federal-granted 100 acres in another state, the “State’s Hundred,” 100 acres in the Southeast corner of his lot in New York was given back to New York State.  Additionally, each veteran had to pay 48 shillings to have his lot surveyed. If he chose not to do so, 50 acres came back to the state. Six lots in each town was reserved for the development of churches and schools, and to compensate for unusable land, such as swampy areas.^[8]

 In July, 1790, soldiers so entitled drew lots to determine which lands were to become theirs.^[9] 

 At the same time of the establishment of the Military Tract, reservations were set aside for the Haudenosaunee. New York State took away most of the Onondaga, and all of the Cayuga reservations by treaties.  Those treaties are still in dispute, as the Federal Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790 forbade the states from purchasing reservation lands without Federal approval.  Such approval was not sought or granted at the time of the taking.^[10]

 

 

 Frances Wright, in a series of letters describing her travels through the region, found humor in the rude villages located in places with such high-sounding names. “There is something rather amusing in finding Cato or Regulus typified by a cluster of wooden houses.”^[11]

 The original Town of Cato was four times larger than at present, since in 1821, the towns of Conquest, Victory, and Ira became separate townships. The original lot numbers appear on the map below.  The names “Victory,” and “Conquest” reflect the feelings of the citizens of those new townships when they won the fight for separation.  There are a couple of traditions about the name of the town of Ira.  One says that perhaps it as short for “Irate,” and another says that perhaps it was named after Ira Dudley, later an esteemed minister at the Baptist Church in the town. 

 There is one story about the reason that Conquest, Ira, and Victory wanted to separate from Cato, and it was because traveling to Cato Four Corners, the center of political activity, including elections, was difficult, especially in winter and spring.  Separation allowed each of the three new towns to have their own political center.

 

In 1834, act 258 of the state legislature annexed “part of the town of Ira to the town of Cato in the County of Cayuga.”  That accounts for the small anomalous bumpout at the northeast corner of Cato, and was done to compensate the town for the swampy lands elsewhere in the town.[12]

 

Cayuga County originally had eight towns:  Sterling, Cato, Brutus, Aurelius, Sempronius, Milton, Scipio, and Locke, but subdivision of all of them has resulted in the current 22 towns.^[13],[14]

 

Aurelius
Brutus
Cato
Conquest	Split off from Cato, 1821
Fleming	Split off from Aurelius, 1823
Genoa	Name changed from Milton, 1808
Ira	Split off from Cato, 1821
Ledyard	Split off from Scipio, 1823
Locke
Mentz	Renamed Jefferson and split from Aurelius, and renamed Mentz, 1808
Montezuma
Moravia	Split from Sempronius. 1833
Niles	Split from Sempronius. 1833
Owasco	Split from Aurelius, 1802
Scipio
Sempronius
Sennett	Split from Brutus, 1807
Springport	Split from Scipio and Aurelius, 1823
Summerhill	Split from Locke, 1821
Throop	Split from Aurelius, Mentz, and Sennett, 1859
Venice	Split from Scipio, 1823
Victory	Split from Cato, 1832

 

 

As you can see, from the map below, Meridian is on the border of lots 82 and 83, and the north part of Bonta Bridge Road, with Ferris Road, defines the border between them.

 

Lot 82 was assigned to Richard Williams, who had been a Corporal in the NY Regiment of Artillery.

 

Lot 83 was assigned to Jacob Frank, who was dead at the time of the balloting for the lots.

 

Northwest of the village, 400 acres of Lot 70 (now in Ira) was assigned to Hunlock Woodruff, a surgeon in the Third NY Regiment.  His rank entititled him to 1,000 acres, so he also was granted 600 acres in Lot 91 in Cicero.

 

Northeast of the village, Albert Rose, a private in the 1^st NY Regiment, was assigned Lot 71.

 

In Cato village, Lots 80 and 81 are in the current town of Cato, south of the Ira-Cato town line, and Lots 68 and 69 are all in Ira.  Route 34 is the north-south line dividing 80 from 81, and 68 from70.

 

Israel Dunham, who had died by balloting time, was assigned Lot 68. He had served in McCracken’s company in the First NY Regiment.  Lot 69 went to John Christie, a mattross (gunner’s mate) in the NY Regiment of Artillery. Thomas Warner served in the NY Artillery, also as a mattross and earned Lot 80.  Another member of the NY Artillery, Lieutenant William Morris received Lot 81, as well as land in lot 7 in Sempronius.

 

None of the veterans who were given any of these eight lots around Meridian and Cato were settled by the veterans who had been assigned to them.  In fact, most of the lots in the entire Military Tract ended up in the hands of speculators.  Some authorities claim that fewer than 200 veterans settled on the land they were granted.

 

Lot 82 was assigned to Richard Williams, who sold it to Robert Walker in 1794.  Eliphalet Weeks, who appears to have speculated in Military Tract lands, purchased from Walker three years later.  Lot 83 was assigned to Jacob Frank, who had died by the time the lands were allotted to him.  His lot was sold by his heirs, multiple times, leading to a bit of confusion in the early years.  The bulk of Frank’s property ultimately ended up in the possession of Abner Hollister, except for the southeast corner a “State’s Hundred,” which was purchased by Stephen Dudley, and some acreage in the southwest corner, purchased by George Loveless.[15]^,[16],[17]

 

One local family has held on to the land since their ancestors first settled there in 1802.  In what would become the Town of Victory, Lot 65 was allotted to a veteran, John Ervin (or Erwin in some sources), who had served in Smith’s Company of the Second New York Regiment during the Revolution.[18]  Ervin sold his 640 acres to James McLaughlin, an Irish immigrant, for the huge sum of  a horse and saddle (the going rate at the time was whatever the traffic would bear, or about $8). He promised his son-in-law, John Martin, also from Ireland, 100 acres of the lot if he would improve it. John and his wife Mary came to the farm in 1802 and they lived there for the rest of their lives. Their daughter Jane, born in 1804, married Samuel Wood, from Ohio, and they lived on the farm, as well.  Upon their deaths, their son Smith Wood took over the property, and their Wood family descendants have lived on the farm on Town Line Road ever since.[19]

 

 

 

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[1] “Extract from the Journal of the Assembly of New York. Dated March 27, 1783,” The Balloting Book and Other Documents Relating to Military Bounty Lands in the State of New-York, Albany (NY): Packard & Van Benthuysen, 1825.

 

[2] Pierce, Grace M., “The Military Tract of New York State,” The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Volume 40, No 1, January 1909

[3] ”Logan and the Home of the Iroquois,” The Knickerbocker, Vol. LIII. No, 5, June, 1859.

 

[4] Stewart, George R., Names on the Land - The Classic story of American Placenaming, San Francisco (CA): Lexicos, 1945, 1982

 

[5] “Cato the Younger,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_the_Younger

accessed 19 August 2021

 

[6] “Cato the Elder,’ Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_the_Elder accessed 19 August 2021

 

[7] “Today in History: Revolutionary War Veterans Draw for Lots in the Military Tract,” Onondaga Historical Association,  https://www.cnyhistory.org/2016/07/revolutionary-war-military-tract/ , accesses 19 August 2021

 

[8]“A Summary History of the Military Tract of Central NY for the Cayuga County NY GenWeb Project,”  https://www.cayugagenealogy.org/land/mtracths.html accessed 19 August 2021

 

[9] “Today in History: Revolutionary War Veterans Draw for Lots in the Military Tract,” Onondaga Historical Association,  https://www.cnyhistory.org/2016/07/revolutionary-war-military-tract/ , accesses 19 August 2021

 

[10] “Central New York Military Tract,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_New_York_Military_Tract, accessed 18 August 2021

 

[11] Wright, Frances, Views of Society and Manners in America by an Englishwoman, New York: E. Bliss and E. White, 1821

[12] “About Cato and Its History,” Cayuga County, New York, https://www.cayugacounty.us/477/About-Cato-Its-History, accessed 21 August 2021

 

[13] Gordon, Thomas F., “Cayuga County,” Gasetteer of the State of New York, Philadelphia (PA): Printed for the Author, 1836

 

[14] “Towns and Villages,” Cayuga County, New York, https://www.cayugacounty.us/156/Towns-Villages, accessed 19 August 2021

[15] The Balloting Book and Other Documents Relating to Military Bounty Lands in the State of New-York, Albany (NY): Packard & Van Benthuysen, 1825.

 

[16] United States, New York Land Records, 1630 - 1975

 

[17] Murphy, Betty H, History of Meridian – A Bicentennial Product, privately printed, 1976.

 

[18] The Balloting Book, Ibid.

 

[19] Hornburg, Evelyn J., editor, A Brief History of the Town of Victory, Cayuga County, NY, 1821-1976, Ovid, NY: Press of W.E. Morrison & Co., 1976.