Oliver Phelps (October 21, 1749February 21, 1809) was an American politician. He was early in life a tavern keeper in Granville, Massachusetts. During the Revolution he was Deputy Commissary of the Continental Army and served until the end of the war. After the war ended, he was appointed a judge, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and became a land speculator in western New York state. A depressed real estate market forced him to sell most of his holdings.
Personal life
Phelps was born in Poquonock in the Connecticut Colony. His father, Thomas Phelps, died in Oliver's first year of life, and his mother was left to raise their seventeen children. Phelps took a job at age seven in a local store to help support his family.
When he was 21 in 1770, Oliver and his young wife Mary moved to Suffield, where he apprenticed to a local merchant, and in 1770 the couple moved to Granville, where he opened his own store.
Career
At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Phelps joined the Continental Army and fought in the Battle of Lexington. He left the service in 1777 and, relying on his experience as a merchant, became Massachusetts Superintendent of Purchases of Army Supplies, a Deputy Commissary of the Continental Army. He was introduced to Robert Morris, the great financier of Revolutionary times. He supplied troops and received commendation from General George Washington for his efforts. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1778 to 1780 and a member of the Federal Constitutional Convention in 1779 and 1780. After the war ended, he became a prominent businessman and was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1785 and served on the Governor's council in 1786. He was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Eighth United States Congress, holding office from March 4, 1803, to March 3, 1805, and ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1804 on the ticket headed by Aaron Burr.
Land speculation
The connections he established during the Revolutionary War aided his efforts in forming in 1788 a syndicate with Nathaniel Gorham, also a former member of the Federal Constitutional Convention. They organized a company of speculators, retaining 82 shares for themselves, and brought in competing companies to join in their effort. They sold 15 shares to the Niagara Company, composed of Colonel John Butler, Samuel Street, and other Tory friends of the Indians, and another 23 shares were divided among 21 persons. Following the American Revolution, there remained a confusing collection of contradictory royal charters from James I, Charles I, and Charles II, mixed with a succession of treaties with the Dutch and with the Indians, which made the legal situation intractable. Massachusetts owned land west of the "Preemption Line" in New York that was disconnected geographically from the rest of the state. New York and Massachusetts reached a compromise settling their competing claims for the region in December 1786 with the signing of the Treaty of Hartford. The syndicate lobbied for a law that was passed by the Massachusetts legislature that enabled them to buy land, payable over three years, using Massachusetts Consolidated Scrip, which was worth about 20 cents on a dollar at the time.
On July 4–8, 1788 a council was held with chiefs of the Five Nations of Indian at Buffalo Creek. Phelps was the active agent for the syndicate and negotiated with the Indians to purchase their title to the land. The Indians considered themselves to be the owners of the land, but Phelps persuaded the Chiefs that since they had been allies to the defeated British during the Revolutionary War, and since the British had given up the lands in the 1783 peace treaty, the tribes could only expect to retain whatever lands the United States would allow them to keep. Phelps and Gorham wanted to buy , but the Indians refused to sell the rights to any land west of the Genesee River. Phelps suggested that the Indians could take advantage of a grist mill to grind their maize which would relieve the women of the grinding work. The Indians asked how much land was needed for a grist mill, and Phelps suggested a section of land wide and deep, about , along the western bank of the river. Phelps and Gorham finally bought the rights to including a tract on the west bank of the river later named Mill Yard Tract where they planned to locate a saw mill and grist mill. The Indians were later much amazed that so large a tract of land was needed for the grist mill.
They paid US$1 million (about £300,000), or less than 25 cents per acre, between 1787 and 1788.