Meet the Neighbors: John Delafield

By Alice Askins,  Education Coordinator at Rose Hill Mansion

When the Swans moved to Rose Hill in 1850 their neighbor to the east was John Delafield.  Most of our information about John’s life comes from the Centennial Historical Sketch of Fayette by Diedrich Willers, published in 1900.  John was born in 1786 on Long Island.  After graduating from Columbia College in 1805, he found work in a dry goods store. In 1808, his firm made him super-cargo on a brig going to the West Indies and other ports. A super-cargo managed trade for his firm.  Basically, he sold merchandise at the ports the ship sailed to and bought goods to bring back home.  A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts.  Used by merchants and the navy, brigs were fast and maneuverable.    

John’s voyage was not uneventful.  His brig’s captain died of yellow fever in Cuba, and the mate died two days after they left Havana.  At this point, John took charge of the ship.  Several days later, the crew mutinied and tried to kill him.  One of the crew helped him subdue the mutineers and the two men managed to get the ship to Corunna, Portugal.  At this time, Europe was in the middle of the Napoleonic wars, and France and England were wrangling over Spain and Portugal.

The USS Niagara is a wooden-hulled brig that was the relief flagship for Oliver Hazard Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.  The Niagara is one of the last remaining ships from that war.  It is usually docked at Erie, Pennsylvania, as a museum exhibit. It also often travels the Great Lakes during the summer. 

I have not found whether John’s ship was originally supposed to go to Europe from the West Indies, or why he sailed north after leaving Portugal in 1809.   He must have done so as Mr. Willers tells us the ship met a violent storm off the coast of France, and limped into Bristol, England, with a lot of damage.  There was tension at the time between England and the US that would eventually result in the War of 1812.  Mr. Willers says,

Mr. Delafield was here thrown into prison for some alleged violation of the revenue laws and although soon released he was detained within bounds of thirty miles around Bristol, a stranger and without money. He employed his time, however, in working for a cabinet maker, and in a drug store, remaining thus under British surveillance until the close of the war with the United States.

Eventually John was allowed to go into business for himself, and he married a Bristol woman.  When his wife died in 1820 he returned to New York City.  In New York John became a teller in the Phoenix Bank and ten years later he became the bank’s president.  John was an early promoter of the Hudson River Railroad, a director of the University of New York, and an organizer of the Philharmonic Musical Society. He retired from banking in 1841, and two years later he bought a farm of 352 acres near Rose Hill.  He called it "Oaklands," and dove into the improvement of farming.  He became president of the Seneca County Agricultural Society in 1846, and remained president until he died except for 1851.  That year he was president of the State Agricultural Society, and ran the State Fair in Rochester.  Oaklands won county and state awards.

John was crucial to the farming revolution that John Johnston brought to North America.  When Mr. Johnston was installing drain tile on his farm Viewfields, his neighbors were skeptical.  They assumed that an underground system could never work.  Many thought the system would clog up and the tiles would all smash from draft horses or oxen walking over them.  Ten years after Mr. Johnston put his first tile lines down, he uncovered one of them, planning to increase the capacity of that drain.  While he had it open, he asked John to come see it.  It looked just the same as it had when it was buried in 1838.  John decided that under-draining could work after all, and he imported a Scraggs Tile Machine from England.  Benjamin Whartenby of Waterloo was the potter who had been hand-making drain tiles for John Johnston.  John gave Mr. Whartenby the machine, in return for one quarter of the tiles produced with it.  This machine inspired the spread of under-draining in North America – once one machine was here, someone else imported a second one, a third man copied the first, and so on.

In 1850, John published a history and survey of Seneca County.  It was the most extensive and accurate account that had yet been published.  The work he was most devoted to, though, was the establishment of an Agricultural College for New York State.  He was involved with that at the time of his sudden death in 1853, at the age of 67.  John was survived by his second wife, whom he married in 1825, and by three sons and two daughters.  John’s sons became successful businessmen in New York City and elsewhere.   

The agricultural college was to have been centered at Oaklands, but after considerable time and debate it was located at Cornell.  The Agricultural Experiment Station, part of Cornell, is still with us in Geneva to remind us of John Delafield.

The First Leg of the Journey Home

By Alice Askins, Education Coordinator at Rose Hill Mansion

When the Johnston family emigrated from Scotland to Seneca County in 1822,  John Johnston’s sister Agnes came with them.  She stayed at Viewfields farm for three years, before returning to Scotland.  She wrote to her sister-in-law Margaret Johnston about the first part of her voyage.  A man named James Grieve (or Greive) traveled with her.   Anne DeRousie, who has studied the Johnstons extensively, believes that Mr. Grieve may have had a family connection with the Johnstons.  In 1825, it would have been improper, and perhaps frightening, for a woman to undertake a long journey without a man to assist her.  I reproduce Agnes’s spelling and punctuation as literally as I can.

I am happy to inform you that I arrived safe at Jersey City on Fri- night after a very tiresome journey of four days.  We did not reach Ithaca the day we started until twelve o/clock at night & had to start at two A. M.  We came to Owego to breakfast & crossed the Susquehanna river at the Great Bend.  . . . then we came into the state of Pennsylvania We reached a place called [illegible] tavern at night.  And I never was in all my life so completely tired out.  I fell asleep in my Chair before we had supper which was about eleven o’clock.  I would very gladly have gone to bed with-out supper but Mr Greive persuaded me to take a little food as I had scarcely taken any thing since leaving home  We were on our way again about two o’clock in the morning – We Had no one but our-selves in the stage all that day and it was nothing but up one mountain & down another until we reached Milford where we put up for the third night  I wished I had you with me to have seen what a wilderness we traveled through that day – We did not see a church for a hundred miles.  I have not seen a place to compare with Geneva since I left it – John used to grumble about people getting tired of a place – you may tell him from me if any of you should get tired he has only to send you down as far as Milford & you would be glad to return – We left Milford about three o’clock in the morning.  We crossed the Delaware river about a mile from there on a ferry setting in the stage there  We reached the State of New Jersey – a poor looking country – The land that is cleared seems to be worn out.  And we reached Jersey City about seven o’clock at night.  There I might have had a comfortable night’s rest if fatigue & the pain in my side had permitted me – Indeed I was quite sick although I did not say much about it – I rested there two days.  James Greive went over the next day & went through a great many vessels but could hardly find one to his mind – At last how-ever he engaged passage for us in an Irish brig for $25 each . . . She is the brig the Prince of the Asturious.  Capt Morris – I am to have the room at the foot of the Cabin stairs . . . and James Greive will have a berth in the Cabin – I came over here [to New York] on Mon Morning & I never saw kinder people than Mr & Mrs. Mc Crae – They made us move our trunks here & stay till our brig sails . . . we are to have Every Thing on board before Eleven o'clock this fore-noon.  The brig is bound for Dublin but has part of her cargo for Liverpool where we are to be landed.  I assure you it is not with-out fear that I trust my-self in her as she seems a very mean looking concern & Every one on board Except Mr Greive & My-self are Irish and I do not know that there will be another feamel [female] on board but My-self.  The Capt—[sic] said He was not sure but that there was an Irish Lady going.  She had not quite determined –

Travelers in 1825 had to buy enough food to last the entire voyage.  Roughly 3300 miles lie between New York and Scotland.  Before steam ships became common, and if you were not wealthy enough to take the fastest clipper ships, you could expect to spend 36 to 42 days crossing the Atlantic Ocean.  Agnes wrote Margaret, “We have got our provisions all purchased . . . I shall have plenty of money have no doubt.”  

An 1827 brig.  A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts.  During the Age of Sail, brigs were considered fast and maneuverable.       

Agnes’s letter suggests that a family argument might have led to her decision to return to Scotland:  

I hope John has got over his displeasure at me.  It really was not kind of him to be so severe upon me when he knew that one word from him would have stopped me – I don't think I Ever refused to do what he or you asked me while there and God knows, I would . . . have done any-thing what ever that would have added to either of your comfort.

On the Johnston trip from Scotland in 1822, the ship ran aground off Anticosti Island in the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River.  The passengers had to be rescued.  This mishap must have been in Agnes’s mind as she contemplated another voyage.

  -  I trust in God we shall reach the old English ground in safety  Should it be other wise determined We must submit our-selves to the will of the Almighty who orders all things for the best . . . 

Agnes’s brig was going to Dublin, but it had cargo for Liverpool.  She and Mr. Grieve got off in Liverpool and traveled north to their destination in the area of Dumfries.  As the crow flies, Liverpool is about 115 miles from Dumfries

We do not know whether another female traveled on the Prince of Asturias, or whether the Irish passengers were unkind to the Scottish passengers, but we know that Agnes came to Scotland safely.  Eventually she married and had children of her own.

There are two other letters from Agnes written to her niece Nancy, which was a nickname for Agnes.  One letter is from 1838 and the other from 1842.  Nancy was not born yet when Agnes left for Scotland, so Agnes knew her namesake mostly through letters.  In her letters Agnes urges her nieces to keep writing and to visit her and her family in Scotland.

Rose Hill Farm, Sustainable Agriculture, c. 1860

By Anne Dealy, Director of Education and Public Information

In May of 1850 Robert and Margaret Swan took up residence at their new property on Seneca Lake. According to several sources, the farm was not in great shape, but had, as we might say today, potential. Certainly Robert knew this from his time living on the Johnston Farm just next door. Rose Hill Farm was comprised of 350 acres and was purchased by Robert's parents as a wedding gift for the young couple. The previous owners, the VanGiesons and their relative, William Strong (builder of the mansion), had not been farmers and probably leased the land out to tenants who farmed it. As a consequence:

"It was then in the ordinary condition of farms in that section of country, and being a wet, tenacious soil, the crops were, except in very favorable seasons, small. The farm was very indifferently fenced—filled with swales and sunken places, where coarse aquatic grasses and noxious weeds had full possession. Here was a work of no ordinary importance for a young man, just entering upon his career, as a farmer." [New York Agricultural Society Transactions, 1857].

Sale notice for Rose Hill farm, 1847

Likely too busy to keep much account of his doings the first year after his marriage, we have no records of his farming during 1850. He probably spent much of that time repairing fences and deciding what he would plant and where. We have both an account book he kept from 1851 to 1862 and a journal of his activities on the farm for 1851 to 1858. These, combined with family letters and articles about farming in the state farm journals, give us a fair idea of how he worked his farm.

Robert, like his mentor and father-in-law John Johnston, grew wheat as his chief crop. He also grew oats, corn and grass for forage (timothy grass and clover) every year. Some years he mentions barley and buckwheat, but it is unclear if he grew these annually. He had sheep, cattle and pigs on the farm, as well as horses for transportation.

In upstate New York farmers plant wheat in the fall and harvest in early July. Robert must have planted in fall of 1850 because he started harvesting 58 acres of wheat on July 19 and wrote it looked to be a "fare [sic] crop." The next year did not go so well, beginning with dry weather in September when he planted the wheat and a cold spring. These conditions were followed by grasshoppers at harvest time. By July he wrote, "My wheat looks miserable enough. I don't think I will Average 10 Bushels an Acre. I Shall only sow 25 or 30 Acres of wheat this Fall. Drain more, manure more, & have more of my farm in grass, & by this means I will by & by make more grass, & by this means I will by & by make more out of it than having so much in crop."

Genesee Farmer, November 1858

And drain he did. Over the next two years he laid over 60 miles of drain tile on 305 of his acreage. He reported that this cost him $0.30 per rod (16.5 feet) or $96.00 per mile. This brought the total cost of drainage to $5,823. He wrote in his application for the State Farm Premium, "This land reclaimed, is now equal to any land upon the farm, and in the field of 60 acres of wheat raised the present year [1857], about fifteen acres of it was land reclaimed; and the wheat upon that portion was equal to the very best of the field." [NYAS Transactions, 1857]. His wheat yields grew from five bushels an acre in 1852 to 20 bushels per acre in 1857, a year when the wheat midge damaged portions of the crop. By 1862, Rose Hill averaged 40 bushels an acre, just short of the modern American average of 46 bushels for a non-irrigated farm.

He followed Johnston's method of farming: raise sheep and cattle for manure, meat, milk and wool; raise grass, corn, and clover for feed and bedding straw; spread rotted straw and manure on the fields to feed the crops; sell livestock and butter for cash; use cash and credit to drain the land. Johnston and Swan also made sure to rotate crops, leaving wheat fields fallow for portions of the year or growing clover on them to restore the soil's fertility. In many ways, this is what we would today call a sustainable system. Swan grew crops to feed livestock, and the livestock fed the land to grow better crops. According to one article about the farm, every crop grown on it was consumed except wheat, which was the most profitable crop to sell.

 

Ad for Albany tile works in 1858 Cultivator magazine

This method relied on a formula of "Dung, Drainage and Credit." The farmer needed to drain and manure. To do both he needed credit until his farm proved profitable. While John Johnston had to invest his profits in draining his land a little at a time, Robert Swan's access to credit (likely due to his father's connections) meant he could drain his entire farm more quickly and profit more quickly. Even the modern farmer would probably say that with credit, nearly anything in farming is possible.