Background
Joshua Forman was born at Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County, New York, to which place his parents Joseph and Hannah (Ward) Forman, both natives of New Jersey, had removed from New York City.
author of the New York Safety Fund plan early advocate of the Erie Canal
Joshua Forman was born at Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County, New York, to which place his parents Joseph and Hannah (Ward) Forman, both natives of New Jersey, had removed from New York City.
After graduating from Union College in 1798, he studied law in Poughkeepsie and New York, but in 1800 removed to Onondaga County, then almost a wilderness.
He practised law at the village of Onondaga Hollow until 1819, when he removed to the present site of Syracuse, of which he has been officially recognized as the founder. Since land titles at that time were in a state of almost hopeless confusion, and litigation was consequently brisk, lawyers could prosper in apparently insignificant hamlets.
In 1813 Forman was appointed the first judge of the court of common pleas in the county and served ten years. He was an able business man, as well as a good citizen, and was interested in many enterprises in the county.
He built a tavern and grist-mills, organized a company to work the gypsum deposits near by, and greatly improved the methods of manufacturing salt. He was active in establishing public institutions, and while living in Syracuse procured the passage of an act to lower the level of Lake Onondaga, making it possible to drain the adjacent swamps, and thereby greatly improving health conditions in the vicinity.
Transportation was a vital question in a region where roads were often quagmires, and there was much talk of building canals to connect the various settlements, but no comprehensive plan was proposed. In 1807 Forman, though a Federalist in a Republican county, was elected to the Assembly, and in 1808 introduced and carried a resolution to appoint a joint committee to consider “the propriety of exploring and causing an accurate survey to be made of the most eligible and direct route for a canal, to open a communication between the Tidewaters of the Hudson River and Lake Erie” (Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, II, 28).
This was the beginning of legislative action which finally resulted in the construction of the Erie Canal. In his later years Forman was inclined to claim the credit of originating the idea, but it is clear that some months previously Jesse Hawley had published a series of articles advocating the measure in the Genesee Messenger.
However, Forman constantly advocated building the canal, and in 1825, as president of the village of Syracuse, represented the town and the county at the opening celebration. He frequently speculated in land, and at one time controlled the heart of the present city of Syracuse, which he laid out into lots.
Due to his investments his affairs became involved, and about 1826 he removed to New Brunswick, New Jersey, to work a copper-mine. Fie continued to take keen interest in his native state, especially in the banking situation, which was then quite unsatisfactory. On the election of Martin Van Buren to the governorship, Forman offered him a plan to insure the redemption of bank-notes by requiring all banks to contribute to a guarantee fund.
He had gained the germ of the idea from reading of a somewhat similar plan of mutual guarantee of indebtedness in practise among the Hong merchants of China. Van Buren, after consultation with his financial advisers, approved, and sent a special message to the legislature enclosing the plan (Jan. 26, 1829), together with a full explanation by Forman. With considerable modification the plan was enacted into law as the Safety Fund Act, and became an important landmark in the financial history of the state (Journal of the Assembly, 1829).
The same year Forman, wrho had previously purchased an immense tract of wild land in North Carolina, removed to the village of Rutherfordton in that state. He spent the remainder of his life there, engaged in disposing of his lands and in various business enterprises until a stroke of paralysis reduced his activities.
He was highly esteemed by his neighbors and associates (J. H. Wheeler, Historical Sketches of North Carolina from 1584 to 1851, 1851, p. 399).
Though said to be a good lawyer, he was essentially a promoter and builder. His boundless faith in the development of the United States sometimes caused him to be regarded as visionary, but his early advocacy of the Erie Canal, his faith in Syracuse, and the idea of the Safety Fund are solid contributions to the public welfare.
He was a man of wide information and high character.
His first wife was Margaret Alexander of Glasgow, Scotland, who died just before his removal to North Carolina.
Later he married Sarah Garrett of Warm Springs, Tennessee.