A Vendre Belle Propriété...

£5,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Very rare: an apparently unrecorded large-format broadside concerning Castorland, a French settler colony in Upstate New York. It was published in Paris for Victor Colinet, the former quartermaster of Castorland, to promote the sale of a large land tract along Lake Ontario that was once part of the colony. The promotional text includes much intriguing intelligence, as well as an overly optimistic depiction of the region’s agrarian potential. Importantly, it is illustrated with an attractive original map of the Chaumont Bay region highlighting the real estate in question . In the wake of the Revolutionary War, the State of New York was in a perilous financial position. By settling the Upstate region, it sought to both fortify its Canadian border and encourage trade and tax revenue. The investment required for such an undertaking was beyond the scope of New York State and so private investment was sought. Alexander Macomb (1748-1831), an American fur trader and merchant, purchased a huge tract of land (nearly four million acres) extending from the shores of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River to the Adirondacks at a price of 8 pence (New York currency) per acre. Even at that low price, Macomb soon realised that he was unable to attract enough settlers to recoup his outlay. As such, in 1792 he sold a large portion of the land (at 20 pence per acre) to William Constable, an American based in London. Constable worked closely with Gouverneur Morris, the energetic American Ambas

• Year: 1840

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