Plan of Niagara. This map illustrates the mouth of the Niagara River shortly after the British siege of Fort Niagara in July 1759. It shows on the west bank of the Niagara River “ploughed land” on the high land and a “garden over the river” on the marshland. Both had apparently been established by the French before the arrival of the British. Map published in 1762 and reproduced in the Sir William Johnson Papers, vol. 3 (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1921), photo insert.
In 1764 Sir William Johnson negotiated with the Senecas an oral treaty sealed by a wampum belt whereby a four-mile strip of land along the east side of the Niagara River from its mouth to the escarpment including the strategic portage and a two-mile strip on the corresponding west bank were ceded to the British. The land was to be used for military and trade purposes only. Within a year, the British started construction of the Navy Hall complex at its present site[8] chosen because its wharf provided easier docking for tall-ships[9] and because of its proximity to huge oak trees on the plain above Navy Hall. Oak had long been regarded by the British Navy as the ideal building material for sailing ships.[10]
With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Fort Niagara became headquarters for Colonel John Butler’s Rangers, a corps of provincials who waged guerilla-like warfare against the rebels of upstate New York and Pennsylvania. Fort Niagara was overcrowded with Native, white, and black refugees from war and devastation in the Mohawk Valley; hence, Butler received permission in late 1778[11] to start construction of two log barracks and a few small “huts” for his men on the west side (approximately at the site of Chateau Gardens today).[12] The next year more log houses and a hospital were added.[13] With the Rangers now occupying the west bank, they were encouraged, when not out on raiding parties, to till the land — some twenty five acres known as the “King’s Field” — now part of the Commons. Such efforts would provide agricultural provisions for the men but even more importantly, for the garrison across the river. Sir Frederick Haldimand, Governor of Quebec (which included present-day Ontario) and an avid gardener himself, had devised an agricultural policy that provided a system of gardens and farms around each of the British garrisons to produce enough food to enable the garrison to be self-sufficient. However, under the terms of the 1764 treaty, large-scale farming was not permitted by the Senecas on the east side. Moreover, “both from the Soil and Situation, the West side of the river (is) by far preferable to the East.”[14]
With the American General Sullivan’s destructive swath through the Mohawk Valley in 1779, there was an even greater influx of refugees into Fort Niagara, further taxing the food supply. As a result, Guy Johnson, superintendent general of Indian Affairs, was directed to negotiate a treaty, signed in May 1781, with the Chippewas and Mississaugas who had sovereignty in the Niagara Peninsula. In return for “about the value of three Hundred Suits of Cloathing [sic]” a strip of land four miles wide westward from the Niagara River, stretching from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, was granted to the British.[15] Even before the treaty had been signed, Haldimand granted permission for “amongst the distressed families three or four”[16] to farm full time on the west bank with the understanding that they were tenants only and that they were to sell all their produce to the garrison at prices set by the commanding officer. Within one year the “three or four” farmers had become sixteen households according to Butler’s first census of August 1782.[17]
Sir Frederick Haldimand (1718–1791), artist Lemuel Francis Abbott, oil on canvas. As governor, Haldimand ordered the land above Navy Hall be reserved for a garrison. With permission of the Royal Ontario Museum © ROM, #953.215.1.
With the Treaty of Paris in 1783, those Loyalists already at Niagara could not return home. Moreover, the influx of new Loyalist families into western Quebec steadily increased. The government would have to establish guidelines for orderly civil settlement in the colony. The result was the “Cataraqui Plan,”[18] a four-point plan to establish townships for the settlement of the Loyalists:
1 Each township was to have a military reserve.
2 Provision was to be made for an Indian settlement “where some of the most noted [Indians] might be allowed to build.”
3 A “common” of four hundred acres was to be preserved “for the use of the town” but it could be leased back to settlers “for a term not exceeding 30 years” or until the town needed the land.
4 Each township was to be a six-square mile grid … similar to what the settlers were used to in their former colonies. There would be approximately seven rows of twenty-five rectangular lots with a road allowance along each row.
The plan also provided for the establishment of churches, grist mills, and saw mills in each township.
The prime prerequisite for such a plan of settlement, of course, would be an accurate official survey. Butler, perhaps to give some legitimacy to the settlers’ concerns regarding land tenure of their already settled lands, hired Ranger Allen Macdonell[19] to survey the settlement that was completed before May, 1783.[20] In the Haldimand papers there is an undated and unsigned survey, “The New Settlement Niagara.” Although not to scale, it does show the extent of the new settlement, concentrated primarily along the riverbank, and a second block of lots north of the “Due West Line” — now called the East-to-West Line — approximately between the Two and Four Mile Creeks. The large area west of Navy Hall to Two Mile Creek is simply marked “Rangers’ Barracks” and probably constituted the tiny settlement of “Butlersburg” and the surrounding military reserve.[21]
Plan of Niagara, circa 1784, paper document hand-copied by J. Simpson, 1909, from the original in the Shubbal-Walton Papers, Library and Archives Canada. This portion of an early official survey of Niagara shows Navy Hall and Rangers Barracks but most of the land from the Niagara River to Four Mile Creek, north of the “Due-West Line” is reserved by the Crown.
Courtesy of the Niagara Historical Society and Museum, #986.003.
Haldimand dismissed the Butler-Macdonell survey and hired a government surveyor, Lieutenant Tinling. One of his prime duties was to set aside “[g]round necessary to be reserved for a Post,”[22] which was to include all the “[h]igh ground above Navy Hall” to the Four Mile Creek north of the Due-West line.[23] Upon Tinling’s arrival he was quickly confronted by the reality that several Rangers officers “have cultivated and built good farm houses” on land between Navy Hall and Four Mile Creek and had no intention to leave.[24] Eventually, Tinling produced a survey of Niagara Township that confirmed the general principles of the Catarqui Plan, including the military reserve as specified by Haldimand.[25] But thanks to heavy Rangers lobbying, several blocks within the reserve were nominated for specific settlers.[26] There was, however, no provision for a commons or Indian reserve.
Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester (1724–1808), artist unknown, miniature oil on ivory. Carleton introduced a system of land tenure and encouraged the creation of town sites.
Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum © ROM, #935.23.1.
By 1788 Lord Dorchester, who had succeeded Haldimand as governor, proclaimed that settlers could in fact hold their land as English freehold and also directed officials to begin to lay out a town site within the township. The newly constituted Land Board, comprised of several local prominent citizens, took up the task. Initially they concluded that the most appropriate location