During the early years of the Republic, the Ogden family of New Jersey and New York parlayed ability, family, fortune, and political resilience into social and economic power. For three generations commencing with the New Jersey jurist and Loyalist, David Ogden (1707-1798), the family exploited some of the most lucrative forms of enterprise the new nation offered, enriching themselves vastly in the process. As skillful attorneys with powerful family and business connections, the brothers David Aaron, Thomas Ludlow, and Gouverneur Ogden positioned themselves to enter into the rabid speculation in newly available lands in western New York state during the 1790s. Their company, the Ogden Land Company, purchased huge tracts of land from Indians of the Six Nations and resold it to whites at an enormous profit.

Although the family remains best known for its legal pursuits, its members enjoyed a diversity of vocations and avocations that gave them leading roles in several important areas of American life in the early nineteenth century. Through their position as counsel to the Holland Land Company, David Aaron Ogden and Thomas Ludlow Ogden influenced the settlement of western New York, the construction of the Erie Canal, the determination of property law in New York, the political competition between the Bucktails and the Clintonians, and the financing of land development. As land speculators themselves, the Ogdens strove for the development of northern New York in the region near the St. Lawrence River. They attempted to create a system of privately-financed internal improvements, including harbors, mills, and turnpikes that would promote economic development around Ogdensburg and encourage emigration into the surrounding area.

Unlike his father and several brothers, Abraham Ogden was committed to the cause of independence during the Revolution, and fared well in the post-Revolutionary years as a result. After serving as surrogate for Morris County, N.J., his friend, George Washington appointed him as the first attorney general for the state of New Jersey.

The eldest of Abraham's sons, David A. Ogden (1770-1829), blazed a trail that each of his brothers followed. After graduating from Columbia College (then called King's College), he studied law and was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1791. After practicing in Newark, N.J., for several years, he became a business associate of fellow Federalist and attorney, Alexander Hamilton, after Hamilton had retired from political life.

In about 1810, David Ogden moved to Ogdensburg (now Waddington), St. Lawrence County, N.Y., and acquired almost 200,000 acres of land in western New York State from the Holland Land Company, doling out of the enormous sum of $100,000. Although he engaged in land speculation for many years, Ogden did not neglect his law practice, eventually serving on the court of common pleas in St. Lawrence County (1811-1815, 1820-24, 1825-29). He dabbled in politics, as well, earning election to the state assembly in 1814 and 1815, and to the U.S. House for one term (1817-1819), and for several years, he was active in lobbying the national government to remove the Seneca Indians from his property.

David's younger brother, Thomas Ludlow Ogden (1773-1844), is said to have ridden on Washington's horse during his inspection tours of the Continental Army when they were encamped near the Ogden family home. Although his father's Loyalism caused brief trouble for the family, Thomas entered Columbia College in 1788, graduating in 1791 with the delivery of a very un-Loyalist oration, "On the rising glory of America."

After studying law with his father and Richard Harrison in New York city, Thomas was admitted to the New York bar in 1796, and in the same year, married Martha Hammond, entering into partnership with her elder brother, David. Thomas soon became one of the most active corporate lawyers in New York city, specialising in wills, trusts and equity jurisprudence. He was instrumental in convincing the state legislature to grant the Holland Land Company to sell land to aliens on the same term as native-born Americans. For many years served as a trustee of Columbia College (1817-1844), as vestryman or warden of Trinity Church (1807-1844), and delegate to several special councils of the Episcopal Church, among a host of philanthropic and public-spirited appointments.

Like his brothers before him, Gouverneur Ogden (1778-1851) graduated from Columbia (1796) and entered the legal profession. After traveling for several years in the southern and western parts of the nation working for the Federalist Party, he returned to live and work in upstate New York, and became a strong advocate of expansionist (capitalist) investment in the developing west.

Scope and contents:

The Ogden Family Papers consists of three fairly discrete series relating to various members of the Ogden family of New York state:

1. The papers of David A. Ogden (19 items, 1811-1819)
2. the Ogden Family Papers (ca.5000 items, 1790-1850); and
3. the papers of Gouverneur Ogden (28 items; 1791-1810).

The David A. Ogden series records Ogden's efforts between 1811 and 1819 to persuade the Monroe administration to remove the Seneca Indians from the 200,000 acres in western New York that he and his associates had purchased from the Holland Land Company. Included are the sales agreement, the articles forming the Ogden Land Company, and a long memorial to President Monroe. The series includes three letters from Lewis Cass and two to John C. Calhoun.

The bulk of the Ogden family series consists of the legal papers of the brothers, David A. and Thomas L. Ogden. There are approximately 8 linear feet of materials related to cases tried by David Ogden in upstate New York, or by his brother Thomas L. Ogden in the vicinity of New York City. The legal records include a complete index of litigants, and a vast quantity of material relating to Indian reservation lands in western New York and other property transactions, as well as the dealings of the Ogden Land Company and the Holland Land Company. There is some personal and family correspondence in the series, as well, consisting primarily of letters addressed to David A. and Thomas L. Ogden. At the end of the series are several folders of material containing approximately 0.3 linear feet of correspondence and documents relating to the St. Lawrence Turnpike Company.

The Holland Land Company (HLC) material includes the extensive correspondence between the Ogdens and Paul Busti, general agent for the HLC as well as the legal files from cases in which the company's disputes were adjudicated. Once the HLC decided to sell its three million acres west of the Genesee River to individual landholders rather than to proprietors, the HLC became involved in a wide variety of other pursuits. In order to attract settlers to western New York, the company financed the construction of mills and other crucial commercial ventures; it promoted the construction of the Erie Canal, employing David A. Ogden's political influence in Albany and donating 100,000 acres of land to help pay for the canal's construction; and it tried to facilitate the availability of credit to prospective land owners. All of these efforts produced correspondence between Busti and the Ogdens. They also produced litigation. While the letters and legal files reveal a great deal about this activity, the record that they provide is incomplete. The HLC legal files, like all of the legal files in the collection, do not provide a perfect paper trail marking out the course of a trial or dispute. The files include some scattered documents which indicate much, but conclusively prove little. Similarly, the correspondence is often elliptical, and it provides relatively little information about the activities of other important figures in the history of the company such as Joseph Ellicott, the HLC's resident agent in N.Y. This incompletion does not make the material incomprehensible, but it would not really serve the purposes of a narrowly-focused specialist in any particular field.

Because he was one of the most prominent lawyers in New York City, Thomas L. Ogden represented some of the city's most powerful merchants and land owners in a variety of court cases that illuminate both the economic arrangements that permitted the rise of commercial capitalism and the legal instruments through which those arrangements were made. Finally, the documents from Thomas L. Ogden's law practice also reveal much about the law's effect on more ordinary matters, from the settlement of estates to the pursuit of actions for defamation of character.

The Gouverneur Ogden series consists mostly of outgoing correspondence relating to business concerns in western New York and land transactions.

Provenance:

Acquired, 1976

Related materials:

Abraham Ogden's niece, Sarah, married Nicholas Hoffman. Their son, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, is represented in the Clements Library's Fenno-Hoffman Family Papers.

Subject Index

Federalist Party
Lawyers--New York (City)
Lawyers--New York (State)
Legislators--New York (State)
New York (State)--Politics and government--1789-1812
New York (State)--Politics and government--1815-1845
Ogden, David A., 1770-1829
Ogden, Thomas Ludlow, 1773-1844
Ogden, Gouverneur, 1778-1851
Ogden Land Company
Real property--New York (State)
Seneca Indians--New York (State)
Six Nations
Speculation
United States. Congress. House

Return to:

Brief guide to manuscripts collections

Homepage	Manuscripts	Collections	Staff	Hours and policies