BEST OF WNY: A-Z JOSEPH ELLICOTT Ellicott Creek. Ellicottville. The Joseph Ellicott Preservation District. Ellicott Square. The Ellicott Square Building. Every day we walk in a world largely created by Joseph Ellicott and yet we scratch our respective heads when we are asked who he was. Joseph Ellicott and George Washington shared a common trait: their occupation as land surveyors. In the age before the Industrial Revolution, land was more than rocks, trees, and soils but a barometer of wealth and a vehicle for sustenance. The majority of Americans were farmers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and land was invaluable for crop production, timber, and game. Land surveyors played a vital role, as they do today, in establishing property lines. When people routinely fought and died for land, the importance of a good land surveyor was paramount. Joseph Ellicott was such a surveyor. He was known for his meticulous work and industrious nature. He was hired by the Holland Land Company in 1797 to conduct the Great Survey, the surveying and division of 3.3 million acres of land purchased from Robert Morris west of the Genesee River to the shore of Lake Erie. His mission also was to determine the specific boundaries of the Seneca Indian reservations. The Senecas were not fond of Ellicott, calling him Skin-in-do-shah, Mosquito, because he was always “buzzing in their ears for more land.” The Great Survey began in March of 1798 with a party in excess of 130 men and ended in October of 1800. In addition to determining property lines, the surveyors were also required to keep detailed records of their findings so as to determine the worth of the land the Holland Land Company had acquired. It was rich in natural resources, and the agents soon determined the Company had made a valuable purchase. Impressed by the work of Major Pierre L’Enfant and influenced by his brothers who were also surveyors and had established a radial street plan for Washington D.C., Ellicott applied the same system to Buffalo, with Niagara Square as a hub and a series of streets laid out at acute angles. Ellicott committed suicide in New York City in 1826, but his legacy lives on in the streets of Buffalo and the layout of Western New York. Ellicott’s original 1804 plan for the City of Buffalo is stillrecognizable today. —Lou Petrucci Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top