Oneida County

"Oneida County has always been at the center of transportation developments that controlled the growth of New York State and in large measure, the North Eastern United States. Nearly one hundred miles west of the state capital of Albany, Oneida County holds the upper reaches of the Mohawk River flowing eastward to the Hudson River. The County is also the site of streams flowing west to the Great Lakes, North to the St. Lawrence River, and South to the Susquehanna River. The height of land in this east-west watershed divide is the site of the City of Rome. A few miles to the east is the site where the Mohawk River is the most fordable for north-south travel, the City of Utica.

In the centuries before settlement, Oneida County was completely wooded and waterways afforded the easiest travel. As a result the Oneida Indian Nation, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, located on the western part of the County. French, English and Dutch traders knew this land was the key to controlling the fur trade from the west and as access to developing colonial agricultural settlements in the east. For these reasons fortifications were built in the Rome and Utica areas and significant battles and raids were carried out from the early 1700's to the conclusion of the Revolutionary War.

Following the Revolutionary War, New England farmers who had traveled and fought along the Mohawk River, came back to clear and settle more promising lands. Hugh White who settled Whitestown in 1784 was one; Jedediah Sanger founder of New Hartford was another. So was Moses Foote of Clinton and James Dean of Westmoreland.

The success of these early families soon brought more pioneers to purchase low-cost and potentially rich farm land. They settled across Oneida County at crossroads and hamlets that have become today's twenty-six towns and three cities of the County.

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