The Holland Land Company was an unincorporated syndicate of thirteen Dutch investors from Amsterdam, headquartered in Philadelphia, who purchased large tracts of American land for development and speculation. Their primary purchase was that of the western two-thirds of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase in 1792 and 1793, an area that afterward was known as the Holland Purchase. Additional lands were purchased in northwest Pennsylvania. Aliens were forbidden from owning land within New York State, except by special acts of the New York State Legislature, so investors placed their funds in the hands of certain trustees who bought the land in central and western New York State. The syndicate hoped to sell the land rapidly at a great profit. Instead, for many years they were forced to make further investments in their purchase; surveying it, building roads, digging canals, to make it more attractive to settlers. They influenced state policy in New York to allow foreign ownership of the land, avoid new taxes, and promote the construction of the Erie Canal and government roads on the company lands. They supported Governor Dewitt Clinton's faction in the state government to achieve these goals. The company finished selling its New York lands in 1839 and its Pennsylvania lands in 1849, and the company was liquidated in 1858.
Company lawyer David A. Ogden purchased the pre-emption rights for the remaining Seneca reservation lands from the Holland Land Company in 1810 and established another unincorporated syndicate, the Ogden Land Company. The company purchased much of the Seneca lands in the 1820s and 1830s, often fraudulently.
Land purchases
Early purchases
Dutch interest in American investments began during the American Revolution. In 1789, four Dutch firms, Pieter Stadnitski and Son, Nicolaas and Jacob Van Staphorst, P. & C. Van Eeghen, and Ten Cate & Vollenhoven, joined together and hired Theophile Cazenove as their purchasing agent to engage in land speculation. Cazenove's office, and later the company headquarters, were based in Philadelphia. The four houses soon expanded to six when they were joined by W. J. Willink and Rutger Jan Sshimmelpennick in 1792, and established shares for the Holland Land Company in 1795. In 1791, Cazenove purchased north of the Mohawk River and in central New York, organized under the Cazenovia Establishment, on behalf of the four houses. In 1792, Cazenove arranged for the purchase of in northwestern Pennsylvania on behalf of the six houses.
In addition to land, the Dutch investors bought American funds, including the South Carolina Funded Debt and the Massachusetts Deposit, and shares in the Pennsylvania Population Company. On the advice of Cazenove, they also obtained shares in canal companies in the years 1791–1792, including the Patowmack Canal, James River and Kanawha Canal, Santee Canal, Western Canal and the Connecticut Canal.
The Holland Purchase
The tract purchased in Western New York was the portion of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase that lay west of the Genesee River. The aboriginal title to the land belonged to the Seneca people at the time. During the colonial area, New York and Massachusetts had both claimed pre-emption, the right to purchase the land from the Seneca, based on their colonial charters. In 1786, the two states negotiated an agreement in the Treaty of Hartford that would allow Massachusetts to retain the pre-emption right. Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham then purchased the pre-emption right from Massachusetts, but failed to extinguish the Indian title to this tract and defaulted on their purchase in 1790. Robert Morris next purchased the pre-emption right from Massachusetts in 1791 for $333,333.34 (about $ today). Morris was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and a financier of the American Revolution, and at the time was the richest man in America. His purchase from Massachusetts was for some , divided into five parcels, which contained all lands west of the Genesee River except for the of the Mill Yard Tract, which Phelps and Gorham retained along with their other lands east of the Genesee. He was soon pressed by his own debts and sought another purchaser for the land. He kept one parcel of for himself in a tract wide and running the breadth of Western New York from Lake Ontario to the Pennsylvania, known as the Morris Reserve. The right for the remaining four parcels, comprising the westernmost was then purchased between December 1792 and July 1793 from Morris by the Dutch investors comprising the syndicate, through Cazenove and trustee Herman LeRoy.