Oliver Phelps (October 21, 1749February 21, 1809) was an American politician. He was early in life a tavern keeper in Granville, Massachusetts. During the Revolution he was Deputy Commissary of the Continental Army and served until the end of the war. After the war ended, he was appointed a judge, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and became a land speculator in western New York state. A depressed real estate market forced him to sell most of his holdings.
Personal life
Phelps was born in Poquonock in the Connecticut Colony. His father, Thomas Phelps, died in Oliver's first year of life, and his mother was left to raise their seventeen children. Phelps took a job at age seven in a local store to help support his family. He supplied troops and received commendation from General George Washington for his efforts. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1778 to 1780 and a member of the Federal Constitutional Convention in 1779 and 1780. After the war ended, he became a prominent businessman and was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1785 and served on the Governor's council in 1786.
Land speculation
The connections he established during the Revolutionary War aided his efforts in forming in 1788 a syndicate with Nathaniel Gorham, also a former member of the Federal Constitutional Convention. They organized a company of speculators, retaining 82 shares for themselves, and brought in competing companies to join in their effort. They sold 15 shares to the Niagara Company, composed of Colonel John Butler, Samuel Street, and other Tory friends of the Indians, and another 23 shares were divided among 21 persons. Phelps was the active agent for the syndicate Phelps and Gorham wanted to buy , but the Indians refused to sell the rights to any land west of the Genesee River. Phelps suggested that the Indians could take advantage of a grist mill to grind their maize which would relieve the women of the grinding work. The Indians asked how much land was needed for a grist mill, and Phelps suggested a section of land wide and deep, about , along the western bank of the river. Phelps and Gorham finally bought the rights to including a tract on the west bank of the river later named Mill Yard Tract where they planned to locate a saw mill and grist mill. The Indians were later much amazed that so large a tract of land was needed for the grist mill.
They paid US$1 million (about £300,000), or less than 25 cents per acre, between 1787 and 1788.
At first Phelps and Gorham thought they would make the site of current-day Geneva their headquarters, but discovered that their survey had somehow left that site just east of their boundary. So they chose Canandaigua, New York, at the head of Canandaigua Lake, as the seat of the new Ontario County. The name Canandaigua is derived from the Iroquois word "Kanandarque" which means chosen spot. It was the site of the principal village of the Seneca Indians, burned by the whites during the war in the Sullivan Expedition.
Builds home in Suffield
After the purchase, Phelps returned to Suffield, Connecticut, and bought what was later named the Hatheway House from its builder Shem Burbank, who as a Tory sympathizer during the American Revolution had suffered financial difficulties afterward. Phelps spent generously on furnishings for the home, hired servants, and added a wing to the home in 1794, a display of his wealth and an "architectural masterpiece" that still features original Paris-made wallpaper.
He opened one of the first land sales offices in the U.S. in Suffield He was also appointed the first judge of Ontario County and served in Congress between 1803 and 1805. They gave up their contract for the land instead. Despite his remaining, vast land holdings, changing money values affected the mortgages held on the tracts of land and a depressed land market caused Phelps to get into financial difficulty. In August 1790, the reverses forced him to sell his Suffield home and his interest in the Hartford National Bank and Trust Co.
He continued to invest in land and by 1796 had purchased roughly a million acres of land along the Mississippi River. He also helped organize the Connecticut Land Company which for $1,200,000 bought all but the extreme western portion of the Connecticut Western Reserve in the Northwest Territory from the state of Connecticut. Phelps borrowed heavily to finance the company. In 1796, his creditors demanded payment.
- Oliver Leicester Phelps (1775–1813), who married Elizabeth "Betsy" Law Sherman, a daughter of William Sherman and granddaughter of founding father Roger Sherman.
Purchasers of his land had continued difficulty paying off the mortgage loans which he held. He tried to help those who had bought his land contracts but who could not fulfill their contracts, and Phelps died on February 21, 1809,
Descendants
Through his daughter Mary, he was a grandfather of Harriet Jackson (1804–1868), who married John Albert Granger, son of U.S. Postmaster General Gideon Granger and younger brother to U.S. Representative Francis Granger.