New York Borders
(This
938th Buffalo Sunday News column was
first published on March 15, 2009.)
New York
State and its Neighbors
Mark
Stein's book, How the States Got Their
Shapes (Smithsonian), relates the interesting history of the boundaries of
each of our fifty United States. I have drawn on his and other accounts to
describe how New York State got its odd outline.
The
Colony of New York began when the British wrested the region from the Dutch between
1664 when Peter Stuyvesant surrendered to British forces and 1674 when the
British finally gained full control. King Charles II then gave the portion
north of New Jersey to the Duke of York. This region encompassed the Hudson
River watershed east to the Connecticut River and thus included not only the
western half of Connecticut and Massachusetts but all of Vermont.
In
1664 Connecticut accepted an agreement that Long Island was part of New York and
in 1683 a complicated arrangement was reached between the two states about a
north-south border 20 miles east of the Hudson, but with a panhandle that left
Greenwich and Stanford to Connecticut. In exchange for this panhandle, a long
narrow slice of land following the northern section of the boundary was ceded
to New York. This thin pie-shaped slice running all the way to Massachusetts is
called "the Oblong".
In
the case of Massachusetts, England had to intervene to settle matters. In 1759,
the British declared that the NY-Mass boundary was to be a continuation of that
survey line 20 miles east of the Hudson River.
But
not quite. If you examine the map you will see that a small triangle is snipped
off the southwest corner of Massachusetts. The hamlet of Boston Corners was cut
off by mountains from the rest of the state and was only reached by roads and
railroads from New York and Connecticut. Isolated from Massachusetts law
enforcement, it became what came to be known as a criminal "city of
refuge". After a celebrated fight between boxers John Morrissey and James
Sullivan in 1853 led to a riot there, local citizens petitioned to New York for
annexation. Between 1853 and 1855 this was accomplished, New York promptly
enforced the laws and the outlaws were driven away.
New
York gave up Vermont in 1789, twelve years after Vermonters declared their
independence and two years before the state was admitted as the fourteenth of
the United States. The survey line south of the Lake Champlain border was
finalized in 1812.
At
the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, England gained the Canadian
Province of Quebec and important access to the Great Lakes through the St.
Lawrence River. Worried about upsetting the largely French population of
Quebec, the British established the northern boundary of the then Colony of New
York as the St. Lawrence and, to provide a buffer for Montreal, the east-west
45° Latitude line.
Later
the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War established the
Niagara River border between New York and Ontario and confirmed that northern
boundary as well.
New
Jersey's northern border with New York was also contentious, but shortly after
the Revolutionary War a line running from the Hudson at 41° North Latitude to
the point at which the Delaware River turns northwest was established. As you
might expect, negotiations were tougher in the New York City area. Finally a
complex agreement gave New York Staten and Ellis Islands, but when New York
extended Ellis Island to take care of additional immigrants, that same
agreement gave New Jersey the right to the new area.
The
location of our long southern border with Pennsylvania was complicated by a
claim by Connecticut for these same lands. Two confrontations called the
Yankee-Pennamite Wars fought over this boundary. Those were finally settled in
1788, but then a disagreement arose over which parallel of Latitude would serve
as the NY-Penn border. Here math played an odd role. Pennsylvania claimed 43°, New
York 42°, quite a difference because 43° would have made Buffalo part of
Pennsylvania. Finally it was agreed to round down to 42°, only because Pennsylvania
had a similar argument with Virginia to its south.
Only
one bit remained. A triangle was ceded to Pennsylvania to give the state access
to Lake Erie. By agreement, the north-south line cutting this off from New York
is the same longitude as the western end of Lake
Ontario.-- Gerry Rising