Joseph Ellicott was an American surveyor, city planner, land office agent, lawyer and politician of the Quaker faith.
Background
Joseph Ellicott was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the third son of Joseph and Judith (Bleaker) Ellicott, and brother of Andrew Ellicott.
His mother was of Dutch stock, his father English.
Like his father and brothers he early showed a marked aptitude for science and mechanics.
Education
His formal education was limited to the common school of a backwoods county; his native talent was developed in congenial surroundings in Maryland whither his family moved in December 1774. Here Joseph remained until 1780.
Career
Here Joseph remained until 1780.
In 1791 he was employed by the federal government to run the line between Georgia and the territory of the Creek Indians.
The turning point in his career came in 1794 with his entry into the service of the Holland Land Company, a group of Dutch bankers who had invested largely in wild lands in Pennsylvania and Newr York.
Employed at first as an explorer in northern Pennsylvania, he began in the fall of 1797 the survey of the Holland Purchase, a tract of over three million acres in western New York.
This survey, which necessitated the subdivision of the lands into townships six miles square, grouped in a series of ranges, required two years for completion.
When in the autumn of 1800 the Holland Company was ready to open its lands for settlement, Ellicott was appointed agent under the supervision of the Company’s general agent in Philadelphia.
For twenty-one years he was the “pa- troon” of western New York.
From his office at Batavia he directed the multifarious details incident to a great land agency.
He arranged for the opening of roads through the new country, for internal surveys of the townships into small lots, for the making of contracts for land sales, for the collection of instalments, and for the granting of deeds and mortgages.
The leniency of the Holland Company toward its indebted settlers was in large part the result of Ellicott’s advice.
He founded the city of Buffalo.
From the first he appreciated the importance of its site and was responsible for preventing its inclusion within the Indian reservation nearby.
In 1803 he had the village laid out on plans similar to those used for the city of Washington.
He was a strong advocate of the Erie Canal, a project which promised great benefits to the Holland Company and to Ellicott himself, who had become a large landholder in western New York.
Though he held the position of canal commissioner for a time and directed some of the preliminary surveys, his duties as land agent forced his resignation before the work was well begun.
Ellicott was an impressive person physically, over six feet tall and powerfully built, with a tendency in later life to corpulence.
There was something paradoxical in his character.
His enemies declared, but quite erroneously, that he used his position as land agent to build up his political power.
At his home in Batavia he surrounded himself with relatives to whom he showed much generosity.
About 1818 he fell victim to melancholia and became almost a recluse.
This condition and increasing opposition to him because of his political activities unfitted him for his duties as land agent.
He resigned by request in 1821 and devoted himself to his private business until his disease forced him into an asylum.
He died in 1826.
Achievements
Religion
Raised in a Quaker family
Politics
In politics he was a Democrat; no public speaker and in later life averse to all social intercourse, yet for a score of years he was the “boss” of his party in western New York, controlling nominations and appointments.
Personality
He was by nature a fighter; hot-tempered and domineering, he was extremely lenient with the debtors under his control; a wealthy man and something of an aristocrat in his backwoods community.
Connections
Near Baltimore his father and uncles erected flour mills where new and ingenious mechanical devices were introduced.
During the next fifteen years he took part in one survey after another, first as assistant to his brother in locating the southwestern boundary of New York State (1789) and in the survey of Washington City, later working independently.