Holland Land Company

300px|thumb|Map of the Holland Purchase (source: Holland Land Company Map - circa. 1821)

The Holland Land Company was an unincorporated syndicate of Dutch investors from Amsterdam, headquartered in Philadelphia, which purchased large tracts of American land for development and speculation. In operation in various iterations between 1789 and 1858, the syndicate's primary acquisition was of the western two-thirds of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase in 1792 and 1793, an area that afterward was known as the Holland Purchase. Additional lands were purchased in northwest Pennsylvania.

Aliens were forbidden from owning land within New York State, except by special acts of the New York State Legislature, so investors placed their funds in the hands of certain trustees who bought the land in central and western New York State. The syndicate hoped to sell the land rapidly at a great profit. Instead, for many years it was were forced to make further investments in their purchase; surveying it, building roads, digging canals, to make it more attractive to settlers. and promote the construction of the Erie Canal and government roads on the company lands. It supported Governor Dewitt Clinton's faction in the state government to achieve these goals. The company finished selling its lands in New York in 1839, and in Pennsylvania in 1849, and was liquidated in 1858. His purchase from Massachusetts was for some , divided into five parcels, except for the of the Mill Yard Tract, which Phelps and Gorham retained along with their other lands east of the Genesee. He was soon pressed by his own debts and sought another purchaser for the land. He kept one parcel of for himself in a tract wide and running the breadth of Western New York from Lake Ontario to the Pennsylvania border, known as the Morris Reserve. The right for the remaining four parcels, comprising the westernmost was then purchased between December 1792 and July 1793 from Morris by the Dutch investors comprising the syndicate, through Cazenove and trustee Herman LeRoy.

Treaty of Big Tree

Before Morris could give the Holland Land Company title to this land, it was still necessary to extinguish the Indians' title to it. Chiefs and Sachems present included Red Jacket, Cornplanter, Governor Blacksnake, Farmer's Brother and about 50 others. Red Jacket and Cornplanter spoke strongly against selling the land. They held out for reservations, lands which the Indians would keep for their own use.

Investors

In 1798, the New York Legislature, with the assistance of Aaron Burr, authorized aliens to hold land directly, and the trustees conveyed the Holland Purchase to the real owners. The members of the Holland Land Company never travelled to America.

Land sales

Land surveys

In 1795, Joseph Ellicott was hired as the chief surveyor for the company. (about $ in today's dollars). While surveying the boundaries of the Buffalo Creek Reservation, Porter bent the northwest corner of the reservation so that the Holland Land Company would own the land around the mouth of the creek where the village of Buffalo was to be built.

Company agents

300px|thumb|left|The Holland Land Co. office in [[Batavia, New York]]

In 1799, Paul Busti (Paolo Busti) succeeded Cazenove as General Agent. Busti was a native of Milan who had made his career in Amsterdam where he married Elizabeth May, a sister-in-law of one of the syndicate members, Isaac ten Cate. Other agents with Dutch roots included John Lincklaen, Gerrit Boon, and his brother Thomas Ludlow Ogden were legal advisors to the company.

Company operations

The Holland Land Company opened a main land office in 1801 in Batavia, New York, which later became the county seat of Genesee County. A second office was opened in Danby, Vermont.

The company struggled to sell its Pennsylvania lands, which were unsuitable for farming and today remain sparsely populated. Ellicott recognized that the company lacked the resources to build and maintain roads, and so he lobbied the state legislature for the creation of Genesee County, which initially encompassed all of the Holland Purchase lands, so that it could assume control over local road construction. After succeeding, Ellicott ensured that all of the county's officials would be favorable to the company. Most settlers believed that company and government services were still inadequate, and public campaigns were organized to levy a tax on nonresidents to support government improvements starting in the 1810s. The company responded by ending its lenient policies to increase profits. It also began selling its land deeds to local investors, who enforced collections and evictions even more strictly. Events came to a head in 1836 when the Mayville and Batavia offices were both attacked by mobs.

Ogden Land Company

David Ogden purchased the pre-emption right for the remaining Seneca reservation lands from the Holland Land Company in 1810, and transferred the right to a new syndicate called the Ogden Land Company in 1821, led by Robert Troup, Thomas Ludlow Ogden, and Benjamin W. Rogers. In 1826, the syndicate negotiated a treaty to purchase several reservation lands, including the Caneadea Reservation, Canawagus Reservation, Big Tree Reservation, Squawky Hill Reservation, and portions of the Gardean, Tonawanda, Cattaraugus, and Buffalo Creek Reservations, for $48,216. The treaty was never ratified by the Senate, and in 1896 the Seneca Nation unsuccessfully attempted to recover the land in Seneca Nation of Indians v. Christy. In 1838, after Ogden's death, the company was party to the Second Treaty of Buffalo Creek for all of the remaining Iroquois lands in New York, which was ratified but was also disputed as fraudulent. This land purchase was modified by the Third Treaty of Buffalo Creek in 1842 and Fourth Treaty of Buffalo Creek in 1857. In 1856, agents of the company were successfully sued by Seneca John Blacksmith for forcibly evicting him from his sawmill in Fellows v. Blacksmith.

In 1895, the sole surviving trustee of the Ogden Land Company, Charles Appleby, falsely claimed the company had extinguished the aboriginal title to the Allegany and Cattaraugus Reservations, and possessed clear title to them. He attempted to sell the lands to the United States government for $300,000, and funds were appropriated for the purchase in that year's Indian Appropriations bill. This measure was supported by David Hill in the Senate but opposed in the House of Representatives and ultimately defeated.