Land Speculation
Two of the directors of the Hagerstown Bank, Colonel William Fitzhugh and Major Charles Carroll were, like Rochester, wealthy landowners interested in acquiring land in the new "frontier" of the U.S. In 1800, Fitzhugh and Carroll convinced Rochester to travel with them on a prospecting visit to the frontier lands of New York State, and specifically to the lands along the upper portion of the Genesee River. Fitzhugh and Carroll acquired land along the river on their trip, but Rochester, sensing the opportunity to develop a town, chose a 120-acre (0.49 km2) tract along Canaseragea Creek near the hamlet of Dansville. Upon a return trip to the area, they travelled farther up the river to a small abandoned tract of land near the river's Upper Falls. The men saw a business opportunity here as any goods which travelled up the river would need to be unloaded here and portage fees could be charged. They purchased 100 acres (0.40 km2) of land around the falls for $1,750.
Rochester's interest in the land he now owned along the Genesee, in part, prompted him to decide to relocate his family there in 1810. In early June of that year, the family reached Dansville and established a homestead.
Read more about this topic: Nathaniel Rochester
Famous quotes containing the words land and/or speculation:
“They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them, not those which have a humane house alone. But I wished to see that seashore where man’s works are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and comes ashore without a wharf for the landing; where the crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all you can say of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Many expressions in the New Testament come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant and practical texts. There is no harmless dreaming, no wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum of good sense. It never reflects, but it repents. There is no poetry in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the light of beauty merely, but moral truth is its object. All mortals are convicted by its conscience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)