Hamilton-Oneida Academy Mortgage, [15 August 1795]
Hamilton-Oneida Academy Mortgage1
[August 15, 1795.] “Be it remembered that on the fifteenth day of August in the Year one thousand seven hundred and ninety five, The Trustees of Hamilton Oneida Academy, to wit Alexander Hamilton, Eli Bristoll, Erastus Clark, James Dean, Moses Foot, Sewall Hopkins, Thomas R. Gold, Michael Myers, Jonas Platt, Jedediah Sanger, John Sergeant, Timothy Tuttle, Samuel Wells, Asahel S. Norton and Joel Bradley … for securing The Payment of seven hundred Dollars within two Years from the twenty ninth day of July 1795, with lawful Interest annually, Have mortgaged unto Erastus Clark … and Jonas Platt and Thomas R. Gold … two certain Pieces, Parcels or Tracts of Land lying in … Town of Paris2 on a large Tract of Land granted to the Rev. Samuel Kirkland.…”
Copy, Oneida County Clerk’s Office, Utica, New York.
1. The Hamilton-Oneida Academy was the forerunner of the present-day Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. In 1793 the state of New York granted Samuel Kirkland, an Indian missionary, a charter for the Hamilton-Oneida Academy. In January of the same year Kirkland had taken “the stage to Philadelphia, in order to confer with the Honbl Mr Hamilton, Secretary of the United States, and others, upon the subject of the School.” On January 8, 1793, Kirkland wrote in his journal: “Mr Hamilton chearfully consents to be a Trustee of the said Seminary, and will afford it all the aid in his power; which was requested by Good Peter and several other Indian Chiefs when at Philadelphia the last spring” (Joseph D. Ibbotson and S. N. D. North, eds., Documentary History of Hamilton College [Clinton, N.Y., 1922], 57–58).
2. Paris is in Oneida County, New York.