SIR WILLIAM JOHNSTONE PULTENEY
AND
THE SCOTTISH ORIGINS OF WESTERN NEW YORK
by
Jeffrey M. Johnstone, FSA Scot
What Whig but wails at good Sir James;
Dear to his country by the names
Friend, patron, benefactor?
Not Pulteney’s wealth can Pulteney save!
And Hopetoun falls, the generous, brave!
And Stuart bold as Hector!
--Robert Burns
Second Epistle to
Robert Graham of Fintray, 1791
INTRODUCTION
Many place names in western New York State--for example, Bath, Pulteney, Henrietta, Pultneyville, Caledonia, and Williamson--are vestiges of a little-known period of British land speculation in the United States, shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War and before the War of 1812. The episode is all the more curious because, at the time, British soldiers were stationed not only across Lake Ontario in Canada, but they also continued to hold forts at Oswego and Niagara, and the Americans were very wary of the British. Many of the major actors in this unusual drama were Scots, mostly from Dumfriesshire.
After the Revolutionary War, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts claimed the vast
Indian territory south of Lake Ontario that is now western New York State. New York disputed
the claim, and in 1786 Massachusetts and New York finally entered into the Treaty of Hartford,
which settled conflicting land claims in relation to a north-south line running near the present
city of Geneva on Seneca Lake, and extending north to Lake Ontario and south to the
Pennsylvania border. New York State received land to the east of this “Preemption Line” and
Massachusetts received the land to the west of it.
In 1788 Massachusetts sold the right to
develop virtually the whole of what is now western New York State to two New England
entrepreneurs named Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham. Phelps and Gorham proceeded to
enter into the Treaty of Buffalo Creek with the Seneca Indians who resided there, and thus
obtained clear title to develop the land for settlers from New England.
Within a few years, Phelps and Gorham ran into financial trouble, and they were forced
to sell out. In 1790 Robert Morris--signer of the Declaration of Independence, financier of the
American Revolution, and then the wealthiest man in the United States, although he later
languished in debtors’ prison--acquired title to the “Phelps and Gorham Purchase” bounded by
the Preemption Line on the east and extending to a westerly bend of the Genesee River on the
west. At this time, there were fewer than nine hundred settlers west of the Preemption Line in the
Genesee country. Morris hoped to sell the land for a quick profit. In 1792 Morris’s agent,
William Temple Franklin, grandson of Benjamin Franklin, sold approximately 1.2 million acres
to a partnership of British investors known as Pulteney Associates.
The Pulteney Purchase, or
Genesee Tract, comprised all of the present counties of Steuben, Ontario, and Yates, the eastern
portion of Allegheny, much of Livingston, most of Monroe and Wayne, and part of Schuyler.
The major British investor was Sir William Johnstone Pulteney, an elderly Scottish lawyer and Member of Parliament, who held a nine-twelfths interest in Pulteney Associates. The other partners were William Hornby, former Governor of Bombay, who held a two-twelfths interest, and Patrick Colquhoun, a Scottish merchant, statesman and philanthropist, who acquired a one-twelfths interest in exchange for putting the deal together. The activities of these men would have a profound influence on Anglo-American rapprochement and some of their heirs continued to own land in western New York until the 1920s.
SIR WILLIAM JOHNSTONE PULTENEY
Parentage
Sir William Johnstone Pulteney is little remembered today, and consequently it is
difficult to piece together a coherent biography. The multi-volume Dictionary of National
Biography does not even have an entry for him,
although it has one for his younger brother,
Commodore George Johnstone.
Nevertheless, in his own day Sir William Johnstone Pulteney
was one of the most influential men in the British Empire. He was born in October 1729, as
William Johnstone, at Westerhall
, his family’s ancestral home in Westerkirk Parish,
Dumfriesshire, Scotland. He was the third son of Sir James Johnstone, third Baronet of
Westerhall, and Barbara Murray of Elibank, and he may have been named in memory of William
Johnstone, first Marquis of Annandale, Chief of his clan. Miss Catherine Laura Johnstone,
author of History of the Johnstones, has published a letter of congratulations on the birth of a son
dated April 21, 1720, from the first Marquis of Annandale (died January 14, 1721), to Sir
William Johnstone Pulteney’s father:
Whitehall 21 of April, 1720
Cusin,
I congratulate you heartily upon the birth of your son. I wish my lady a safe recovery and all healthe to the childe. I thank you for the compliment of his name and assure you as I have ever been a true friend to the family so I shall ever continue to do you and yours all the particulars that lie in my power for nobody shall ever wish your prosperity, and the good of your family more than I shall do. My wife gives your lady her humble service and I hope next summer they shall be known to one and other. My service to Lord Elibank and all the good family. I hope your father will do all in reason and justice that can be expected of him. I am cusin your true friend and servant,
Annandale
Either the date of William Johnstone Pulteney’s birth is earlier than commonly reported, or, more likely, his parents had an earlier son named William who did not survive.
The Johnstones of Westerhall
are probably an early offshoot of the Johnstones of
Annandale in Dumfriesshire, Scotland--the main branch of the family. The first member of the
Westerhall family was Matthew Johnstone, who received a grant of land in Lanarkshire around
1455. The Westerhall family claims
that Matthew was a son of the Chief of the Johnstones of
Annandale, and that he received land called Westraw in Pettinain Parish, Lanarkshire, which the
King had given to the Johnstones for service in the Battle of
Arkinholm
in 1455. That battle,
near the present town of Langholm, Dumfriesshire, was the final episode in the Black Douglas
revolt. The Black Douglas family was the most powerful family in southern Scotland and had
become a serious rival to the Stewart Kings of Scotland. King James II took measures to weaken
the Black Douglas threat with fire and sword, and the Royal forces at Arkinholm were led by a
rival branch of the Douglas clan, known as the Red Douglases. Among the many smaller clans
that helped the Red Douglases to put down the Black Douglases at Arkinholm were the
Johnstones, who soon became one of the most powerful Riding Clans
of the Anglo-Scottish
border. The destruction of the Black Douglases was a major turning point for the Scottish
monarchy. History records the King rewarded the Johnstones with land for their role at
Arkinholm, but it has never been proven conclusively that Matthew Johnstone, founder of the
Westraw (later Westerhall) branch, was a son of the Chief of the Johnstones of Annandale.
Around the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Johnstones of Westraw sold their land in Lanarkshire, and purchased an estate in the parish of Westerkirk, Dumfriesshire, not far from the site of the Battle of Arkinholm. They named their new estate Westerhall and henceforth have been known as Johnstones of Westerhall. The family prospered and intermarried with the Johnstones of Annandale. In 1700 Sir John Johnstone of Westerhall was created a baronet of Nova Scotia. Many representatives of the family served as Members of Parliament, for Dumfries and other seats.
Sir William Johnstone Pulteney, a scion of the Westerhall family, began his life as “a
penniless younger son,”
and in his youth he developed habits of extreme thrift which he
maintained for the rest of his life. He was educated in the law, became a member of the Scottish
Bar in 1751, and went on to become an eminent advocate. On November 10, 1760, he married
Frances Pulteney, cousin and heiress of the first Earl of Bath. In 1767, when his wife came into
her enormous inheritance, he agreed to add her name to his own.
Associations with the Scottish Enlightenment
In 1762, while he was still known as William Johnstone, Pulteney was appointed
secretary of the Poker Club in Edinburgh, where men of learning and wit mingled with members
of the nobility. He was a patron of both science and the arts and was personally acquainted with
many of the giants of the Scottish Enlightenment. He was a friend of the philosopher and
historian David Hume (1711-1776) and was an intimate friend of the political philosopher and
economist Adam Smith (1723-1790) from 1748 until Smith’s death. In 1752 Adam Smith wrote
to James Oswald
of Pulteney that he possessed
qualities which from real and unaffected modesty he does not at first discover; a
refinement, depth of observation, and an accuracy of judgement, joined to a
natural delicacy of sentiment. . . . He had when I first knew him a good deal of
vivacity and humour, but he has studied them away. You will find him . . . a
young gentleman of solid, substantial (not flashy) abilities and worth.
In 1772 Smith thanked Pulteney for recommending him to the East India Board of Directors, stating:
You have acted in your old way of doing your friends a good office behind their
backs, pretty much as other people do them a bad one.
Pulteney was also a friend and patron of the architect Robert Adam (1728-92), whom he eventually employed to design the world-famous Pulteney Bridge on the Avon, linking the city of Bath with his wife’s undeveloped lands called Bathwick. The bridge is in the Palladian style and, unusually, is lined with shops. Pulteney served as a pallbearer at Adam’s funeral.
Sir William Johnstone Pulteney carried out public spirited projects in his ancestral district and in Edinburgh. He personally bore the cost of eight miles of the coach road that ran from Langholm to Annan, planned the coach road in the Ewes valley, and in 1763 obtained an act of Parliament to carry out the plan. He also funded the Agricultural Professorship at Edinburgh University.
Beginning of Parliamentary Career
Even before his wife succeeded to her fortune, Pulteney had expressed his desire to enter Parliament. In the 1760s he left Edinburgh for London and Bath. He unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary seat for Shrewsbury in 1768, but soon was returned for the city of Perth and also for Cromartyshire, and he chose to represent the Scottish county rather than the city. In Parliament, he voted independently--with the administration on the expulsion of Wilkes in 1768, but with the opposition on the Middlesex election of 1769. He continued this pattern for the rest of his life. Pulteney also spoke frequently in Parliament on a wide variety of matters, especially financial ones, and published a number of pamphlets. In 1774 he again contested the seat for Shrewsbury, and although he was defeated, he was returned on petition the following March.
Interest in America
Sir William Johnstone Pulteney maintained an interest in affairs in India, as did his brothers. He also had a strong interest in America’s financial possibilities. While his younger brother, Commodore George Johnstone, was serving as Governor of West Florida, Pulteney invested both in the West Indies and in mainland North America. After the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Pulteney published a pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs with America, and the Means of Conciliation, which sympathized with the resistance of the American colonies to taxation without representation, while urging a continuing union of Great Britain and its American Colonies. In March of 1777, he expressed his interest in possible one-on-one negotiations with Benjamin Franklin, and in December of that year he wrote to Lord George Germain:
Dr. Franklin knows that I have always respected him when it was the fashion to
entertain other opinions. He knows that I have always wished the most perfect
freedom of America with respect to taxation and charters; but he knows too that I
wished the indissoluble union of Great Britain and America.
In March 1778, as “Mr. Williams,” he acted as a British emissary and met personally with
Benjamin Franklin in Paris to discuss U.S.-British conciliation. Pulteney later wrote to a friend
that he foresaw that an independent America “would soon rival Europe in arts as well as
grandeur, and their power in particular would rear itself on the decay of ours.”
Shortly after the
conclusion of the Revolutionary War, he began to invest in bank securities in the United States.
On June 1, 1782, his wife, Frances, died, leaving him her fortune.
Patronage of Thomas Telford
In 1783, Pulteney began working with a young stone mason from his home parish of
Westerkirk, Dumfriesshire, to make some renovations to his family’s ancestral mansion of
Westerhall. The young stone mason had walked to London from Edinburgh in search of more
interesting work and had become acquainted with Pulteney there. He was
Thomas Telford
(1757-1834), who became the famous civil engineer. Sir William Johnstone Pulteney was
Telford’s friend and patron, and he played a key role in furthering Telford’s career. Around
1787, he commissioned Telford to design and supervise the remodeling of Pulteney’s occasional
residence of Shrewsbury Castle. In 1787, Pulteney was instrumental in helping Telford obtain
the post of Surveyor of Public Works for the County of Shropshire (also known as Salop). At
this time Telford was such a protégé of Pulteney, that he was referred to as the “young
Pulteney.” Around 1796, when he was Governor of the British Fisheries Society, Pulteney was
responsible for obtaining Telford’s services to build the world’s largest herring-fishing port at
Wick in Caithness.
Telford built the harbor and a new settlement for herring fishermen. The
fishing village was named Pulteneytown in Sir William Johnstone Pulteney’s memory and is
currently the location of the Old Pulteney whisky distillery.
Public Life
A member of seven successive British parliaments, Pulteney served for Cromartyshire from 1768 to 1774, and for Shrewsbury from March 1775 to May 1805. He was also an astute man of business who used his power and enormous fortune liberally and wisely in both public life and the management of his vast estates. He never abused his power, and in Parliament he had a reputation for scrupulous honesty and integrity. According to Sir John Sinclair, a Member of Parliament and architect of The Statistical Account of Scotland:
He never gave a vote in Parliament without a thorough conviction that it was
right; and men of that description deservedly acquire a great influence in a
popular assembly. [He was] a quiet man of plain, unadorned language and strong
personality whose opinion was always received in the House with respectful
attention.
............Pulteney’s demeanor was “austere, serious and socially concerned.”
In 1788, he
exchanged correspondence with James Johnstone of Galabank concerning the possibility and
wisdom of abolishing slavery, without injury to trade or navigation.
In April 1800, he
introduced a bill in Parliament to abolish bull baiting--the first attempt to secure legislation to
protect animals from cruelty.
Telford particularly admired and emulated Pulteney’s complete
lack of ostentation. According to Telford, Pulteney was a man who did not court popularity, and
who was “distant, cautious and reserved to mankind in general, but I believe to the few in whom
he can confide there is no man more open.”
Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, a Member of Parliament,
wrote a description of Pulteney that crystalizes the essence of the man:
under a very forbidding exterior and a still more neglected or almost thread-bear
dress which he usually wore, [he] manifested strong sense, a masculine
understanding and very independent as well as upright principals of action. Nor
did he want a species of eloquence, though it could boast of no elegance of
ornament.
The Annandale Peerage Case
More than once, Sir William Johnstone Pulteney refused a peerage. In 1792, George,
third Marquis of Annandale, Chief of the Name and Arms of Johnstone, died unmarried and
without an heir. By this time, the Westerhall Johnstones had become the most influential branch
of the family. Pulteney’s older brother, Sir James Johnstone, fourth Baronet of Westerhall,
immediately petitioned for the Annandale peerage titles. After James’s death the following year,
Pulteney succeeded as the fifth Baronet of Westerhall in September, 1794, and acted in
character by promptly dropping the proceedings to gain the Annandale titles. When it became
known that Sir William Johnstone Pulteney did not intend to pursue the dormant Annandale
peerage, James Hope Johnstone, third Earl of Hopetoun and a descendant of the daughter of the
first Marquis of Annandale, petitioned for them. The Earl of Hopetoun had long served as
conservator of the vast Annandale Estates in Dumfriesshire owned by his great uncle the third
Marquis of Annandale. Hopetoun’s petition was unsuccessful. In June 1805, shortly after
Pulteney’s death, his nephew Sir John Lowther Johnstone renewed the Westerhall petition to the
House of Lords claiming the dormant titles of the Johnstones of Annandale, but he was likewise
unsuccessful, as were other claimants.
Death and Burial
In 1804 Sir William Johnstone Pulteney, fifth Baronet, Member of Parliament, married,
as his second wife, Margaret, widow of Andrew Stewart of Torrance and Castlemilk, daughter of
Sir William Stirling. The marriage did not last long. Pulteney died intestate at Bath House,
Piccadilly, on May 30, 1805, and his family held a grand funeral and interment at Westminster
Abbey.
In America, James Wadsworth of Geneseo wrote to Robert Troup, Pulteney’s second
American agent, in September 1805:
I have just heard of the death of Sir William Pulteney. My mind is strongly
impressed with the disasters that my befall this section of the State, from the
event. Sir William was a man of business; he was capable of deciding for himself,
what was and what was not proper. What may be the character of his successor
we know not.
Pulteney’s Westerhall baronetcy descended to his nephew Sir John Lowther Johnstone, who became the sixth Baronet of Westerhall. His only daughter, Henrietta Laura, Countess of Bath, inherited his lands. Upon her death in July 1808 without leaving any descendants, the Pulteney lands also passed to Sir John Lowther Johnstone.
Character
Despite being one of the wealthiest men in the British Empire,
in his private life Sir William Johnstone
Pulteney’s frugality had remained extraordinary, although he showed generosity to his old
friends. According to Sir John Sinclair:
having been accustomed to live on £200 a year, he thought it a great extravagance
to spend £2,000 per annum, when he might have spent £20,000.
His obituary in the Gentlemen’s Magazine states:
In private life he was remarked chiefly for his frugal habits, perhaps the more
striking as he was supposed to be the richest commoner in the Kingdom. His
landed property amounted to nearly £2,000,000, and he was the greatest
American stockholder ever known (1805). He had the greatest borough interest of
any gentleman in the country, and of course his friendship was courted by all
parties. In the latter part of his life he was remarkable for his abstemious manner
of living, his food being composed of the most simple nourishment, chiefly bread
and milk. ...Sir William’s character has been much mistaken by the world. He was
penurious only as to himself. All his servants enjoyed comforts unusual in most
other families...
Sir Henry Raeburn painted a portrait of Sir William Johnstone Pulteney. Another full-length painting of him by Thomas Gainsborough is owned by the Yale Center for British Art.
Agency in America
Sir William Johnstone Pulteney never saw his enormous territories in what is now western New
York State. As aliens, the Pulteney Associates--Pulteney, Hornby, and Colquhoun--were not at
that time legally permitted to own land in the United States. They needed a representative who
would become an American citizen and hold title to the land for their benefit. To serve as their
land agent, they chose a member of the gentry from Pulteney’s ancestral district, Captain Charles
Williamson. Williamson was born on July 12, 1757, to Alexander Williamson,
secretary to
James Hope Johnstone, third Earl of Hopetoun,
and his wife Christina Robertson, who lived on
the estate of Balgray in Applegarth and Sibbaldbie Parish, Dumfriesshire.
Charles Williamson
Although Charles Williamson had served as an officer in the 25th Regiment of Foot in the British Army, he did not serve in the Revolutionary War. He had resigned his commission and was traveling to America with letters of introduction to Lord Cornwallis, when an American ship captured him. For the duration of the war, he lived in the home of Ebenezer Newell, near Boston. During this time, Williamson married an American, Abigail Newell. After the war, Williamson returned to Scotland, where he resided for the next ten years. Sir William Johnstone Pulteney and his associates selected Williamson to become their agent, in part because of his extensive knowledge of the United States.
In July 1791, a thirty-four year-old Charles Williamson sailed with his family for
America from Annan, Dumfriesshire, to assume his new role as land agent for Pulteney
Associates. To assist him in America, Williamson immediately employed two other Scots, John
Johnstone, who may have been a relative, and Charles Cameron.
Williamson was an
enterprising, tireless, and visionary land promoter. His first planned community, called
Williamsburgh after Sir William Johnstone Pulteney, was intended as a German colony but was
unsuccessful due to causes beyond Williamson’s control. He later planned Bath, named for
Pulteney’s daughter, Henrietta Laura, Countess of Bath, for whom the town of Henrietta in
Monroe County is also named. Williamson’s most successful settlement was Geneva, where
Pulteney Park remains the center of the city’s South Main Street Historic District. He also
developed the port of Sodus Bay and extended trade south to Pennsylvania. He established a
village called Hopetoun, named for the Earl of Hopetoun, on the outlet of Keuka Lake, between
the present villages of Penn Yan and Dresden.
Captain Williamson sent messengers throughout New York, New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and British Canada. The messengers plastered the walls with posters touting the Pulteney lands and inviting everyone to great fairs and horse races. Williamson built the first good roads, taverns and hotels, mills, theaters and racetracks. He supported schools and churches, arranged for regular mail delivery, established the first livestock markets and fairs, established the first newspaper, and contributed to charity.
Williamson attempted without success to induce a group of Scottish highlanders, led by Donald Stewart, to settle on the Pulteney lands. However, he recognized that his native countrymen possessed the qualities of industry, thrift and ambition essential to successful pioneers. In 1798, he heard that a group of emigrants from Perthshire in Scotland had landed in New York City and had stopped at Johnstown, near Albany, to consider where to settle. Williamson traveled to Johnstown to meet the Scots, and he encouraged them to settle at Big Springs, which he later named Caledonia. He made the Scots an offer with very generous terms: He agreed to donate land for a church and a school, to accept payment in wheat, to provision the settlers until the first harvest, and to provide money for transportation. In March 1799, the first twenty Scottish pioneers arrived at Caledonia by sleigh over the winter snow. Others followed over the next few years. In 1803, the community built the first schoolhouse in New York State west of the Genesee, and in 1805 it formed the first permanent church in New York State west of the Genesee.
Direct Ownership of American Land
Although Williamson was a very energetic and enterprising agent, his reports and financial dealings were not up to Sir William Johnstone Pulteney’s exacting standards. As time went on, Pulteney became increasingly interested in owning his American properties directly. In a letter to Robert Troup, dated September 28, 1799, he wrote:
I am desirous of obtaining an act of naturalization of the State of New York,
which I should consider as conferring upon me an honor of which I should feel
proud.
However, this expediency proved unnecessary because on April 2, 1798, the New York State Legislature had already passed “An Act to Enable Aliens to Purchase and Hold Real Estate Within the State of New York.”
By 1800, Sir William Johnstone Pulteney had become very impatient with the lack of profits on his
American investment and with Williamson’s heavy expenditures. The American political scene
was also changing, and the Federalists who favored good relations with Great Britain would
soon to be out of office. In March 1800, Charles Williamson conveyed the lands which he had
held in trust to Sir William Johnstone Pulteney under authority of the 1798 act enabling aliens to
hold title to real property. In 1801 Williamson resigned his land agency.
Finally, in 1805, after
protracted negotiations,
he reached a settlement with Sir William Johnstone Pulteney, which
left him with Springfield and White Hart Farms, 13,085.5 acres of land in Steuben County
(worth a total of $93,298), and practically no cash, for fourteen years of work. Charles
Williamson returned to Britain, later entered government service, and died at sea of yellow fever
on August 28, 1808, while returning to England from Havana, Cuba.
SUBSEQUENT SCOTTISH INFLUENCES ON WESTERN NEW YORK STATE
The course of events that Sir William Johnstone Pulteney had set in motion stamped a
lasting Scottish imprint on western New York State. When Rochesterville (later Rochester) was
established in 1812, the Scots colony at Caledonia brought needed grain to, and furnished trade
with, the new community. Charles Williamson’s assistant, John Johnstone, persuaded another
Scot, John Greig, to seek his fortune in America. Greig was a native of Moffat, Dumfriesshire,
where his father was factor to the third Earl of Hopetoun. Greig became a prominent lawyer in
Canandaigua, President of the Canandaigua Bank, and a member of Congress. He succeeded as
the agent for the Hornby and Colquhoun Estates on the death of his friend John Johnstone in
1806. John Greig also laid out and promoted the Greig Tract, a pioneer Rochester subdivision on
the west bank of the Genesee. The Greig Tract was along Caledonia Street, the southern
extension of Plymouth Avenue. It centered on Caledonia Square (now Plymouth Circle), which
was framed by Edinburgh and Glasgow Streets. From then on, Scottish families took an active
role in the development of Rochester and became leaders in many fields.
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Annandale Heritage |
Clan Johnston/e in America
