A truce arranged at the beginning of…

Nathaniel Gorham had served as one of the Massachusetts delegates to the United States Constitutional Convention for several months in 1787.

Gorham frequently served as Chairman of the Convention's Committee of the Whole, meaning that he (rather than the President of the Convention, George Washington) presided over convention sessions during the delegates' first deliberations on the structure of the new government in late May and June 1787.

After the convention, he had worked hard to see that the Constitution was approved in his home state.

In connection with Oliver Phelps, Gorham had purchased from the state of Massachusetts in 1788 preemption rights to an immense tract of land in western New York State that straddles the Genesee River, all for the sum of $1,000,000 (the Phelps and Gorham Purchase).

The land in question had been previously ceded to Massachusetts from the state of New York under the 1786 Treaty of Hartford.

The preemption right gives them the first or preemptive right to obtain clear title to this land from the natives.

They soon extinguish the Indian title to the portion of the land east of the Genesee River, as well as a one hundred and eighty-five thousand-acre (seven hundred and fifty square kilometer) tract west of the Genesee (The Mill Yard Tract), survey all of it, lay out townships, and sell large parts to speculators and settlers.

Phelps and Gorham are unable to fulfill their contract in full to Massachusetts, so in 1790, they surrender back to Massachusetts that portion of the lands which remains under the Indian title, namely, nearly all of their unsold lands east of the Genesee.

It will soon be acquired by Robert Morris, who in 1792 and 1793 will resell most of it to The Holland Land Company.

Robert Morris has founded several canal companies, a steam engine company, and had launched a hot air balloon from his garden on Market Street.

He has the first iron rolling mill in America.

His icehouse is the model for one Washington installs at Mount Vernon.

Morris is already one of the most important land speculators in the Northeast.

He purchases the western portion of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase—an area of western New York consisting of about 3,750,000 acres (15,200 square kilometers)—in March 1791 for $366,333.33.

The land is conveyed to Morris in five deeds on May 11, 1791.

Morris quickly sells one million acres (four thousand square kilometers) of the reserve to The Pulteney Association in March 1791 for £75,000 (for a profit of $216,128). (This tract becomes known as the "Pulteney Tract".)

Morris does keep five hundred thousand acres (two thousand square kilometers) for himself, and that land will become known as The Morris Reserve.

The association of William Morris with James Greenleaf had started in February 1792, when Morris sold one hundred thousand acres (four hundred square kilometers) of the Morris Reserve to Greenleaf, James Watson, and Andrew Craigie for £15,000 New York currency ($37,500).

Morris sells another million acres (four thousand square kilometers) to the Holland Land Company between December 1792 and July 1793 for £112,500, and his son sells 1,800,000 acres (7,300 km2) to the Holland Land Company for $500,000.

Morris sells another 87,000 acres (three hundred and fifty square kilometers) ("the Triangle Tract") to an investor group in January 1793.

The Rochester Athenaeum (the future Rochester Institute of Technology) is established in 1829 in Rochester, New York.

Kate and Margaret Fox are sent to nearby Rochester during the excitement—Kate to the house of her sister Leah (now the married Leah Fox Fish), and Margaret to the home of her brother David—and the rappings follow them.

Amy and Isaac Post, a radical Quaker couple and long-standing friends of the Fox family, invite the girls into their Rochester home.

Immediately convinced of the genuineness of the phenomena, they help to spread the word among their radical Quaker friends, who become the early core of Spiritualists.

In this way appears the association between Spiritualism and radical political causes, such as abolition, temperance, and equal rights for women.

The University of Rochester is founded in Rochester, New York on January 31, 1850.

The school traces its origins to The First Baptist Church of Hamilton (New York), which was founded in 1796.

The church established the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York, later renamed the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, in 1817.

This institution gave birth to both Colgate University and The University of Rochester

Its function was to train clergy in the Baptist tradition.

When it aspired to grant higher degrees, it created a collegiate division separate from the theological division.

The collegiate division had been granted a charter by the State of New York in 1846, after which its name was changed to Madison University.

John Wilder and the Baptist Education Society urged that the new university be moved to Rochester, New York.

However, legal action prevented the move.

In response, dissenting faculty, students, and trustees defected and departed for Rochester, where they sought a new charter for a new university.

Madison University will eventually be renamed as Colgate University in 1890.

Asahel C. Kendrick, professor of Greek, is among the faculty that had departed Madison University for Rochester.

Kendrick serves as acting president while a national search was conducted.

He will reprise this role until 1853, when Martin Brewer Anderson of the Newton Theological Seminary in Massachusetts is selected to fill the inaugural posting

The University of Rochester's new charter is awarded by the Regents of the State of New York on January 31, 1850.

The charter stipulates that the university have $100,000 in endowment within five years, upon which the charter will be reaffirmed.

An initial gift of $10,000 is pledged by John Wilder, which helps catalyze significant gifts from individuals and institutions.

Classes will begin in November, with approximately sixty students enrolled, including twenty-eight transfers from Madison.

The Fox sisters demonstrate their spiritualist rapping at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester on November 14, 1849.

This is the first demonstration of spiritualism held before a paying public, and inaugurates what will be a long history of public events featured by spiritualist mediums and leaders in the United States and in other countries.

The Reverend C. Chauncey Burr will write of the Fox sisters in the New-York Tribune that by cracking toe joints the sounds are so loud, they can be heard in a large hall.

In the same year three investigators Austin Flint, Charles E. Lee and C. B. Coventry from the University at Buffalo examine the raps produced by the sisters and conclude they are produced by cracking their bone joints such as toes, knees, ankles or hips.

From a control, they discover the raps do not occur if the sisters are placed on a couch with cushions under their feet.

Mrs. Norman Culver, a relative of the Fox family, admits in a signed statement in 1851 that she had assisted them during their séances by touching them to indicate when the raps should be made.

She also claims that Kate and Margaret had revealed to her the method of producing the raps by snapping their toes and using their knees and ankles.

Western Union is founded—as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company and organized in Rochester, New York by Samuel L. Selden, Hiram Sibley, and others—with the goal of creating one great telegraph system with unified and efficient operations.

Frederick Douglass delivers his famous speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", in Rochester, New York, addressing the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society on July 5, 1852.

While referring to the celebrations of the American Independence day the day before, the speech explores the constitutional and values-based arguments against the Slave trade within the United States.

Douglass suggests that positive statements about American values, such as liberty, citizenship, and freedom, ware an offense to the enslaved people of the United States because of their lack of freedom, liberty, and citizenship.

As well, Douglass refers not only to the captivity of enslaved people, but to their merciless exploitation and the cruelty and torture to which they are subjected while enslaved.

Douglass compares the treatment of slaves to that of American colonists under British rule and urges them to help the slaves like they helped themselves when breaking free.