Before 1776: The French in Chautauqua County

Chautauqua County Historian Norman Carlson will present “Before 1776: The French in Chautauqua County” this coming Thursday, July 16th at 7 pm, in the Chautauqua Town Hall meeting room, 2 Academy St, Mayville. The program will be hosted by the Chautauqua Town Historical Society.

Carlson will illuminate through anecdote and historical detail, the fascinating if somewhat forgotten role that the French played in the first century or so of Chautauqua’s history leading up to the events of 1776.

Although the first European settlers in Chautauqua County did not establish permanent residence until 1796, some two decades after the Declaration of Independence, the earliest European presence preceded this by almost two centuries.

The French began to enter the area in 1615 when Etienne Brule travelled through portions of Chautauqua County with a band of Huron Indians. French missionaries and voyageurs from Quebec followed through the rest of the 17th century, but another century passed before French military expeditions began to traverse and explore the trails and waterways of the County. In 1739 Baron Longueuil led the first military expedition over the Portage Trail between Barcelona Harbor and Lake Chautauqua. This was meant to provide access to the Mississippi Valley via the Lake Chautauqua-Chadakoin-Conewango-Allegheny-Ohio-Mississippi fluvial corridor for operations against the Indians in the lower Mississippi Valley. This expedition effectively established the Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico route connecting French Canada with French settlements in the Mississippi Valley. While never heavily utilized or fully realized, it did constitute a major potential international corridor for commerce, settlement and military operations.

But by the 1750s the French and British had become embroiled in a global struggle for dominance in many contested colonial territories. Control of the Ohio Valley became the main objective of the so-called French and Indian War, part of the global Seven Years War 1754-1763. With the British victory, and the French loss of Canada, the potential global geopolitical importance of Chautauqua County largely evaporated. However, what was to become Chautauqua County, and the future of lands west of the Alleghenies, played an important if indirect role in the contentions that ultimately resulted in the American Revolution.