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Title: | Schooner Seizure Letter |
Inclusive Dates: | 1817 |
Quantity: | 1 folder (SC) |
Abstract: | Letter regarding the seizure of the schooner Laura of Genesee for smuggling. |
Language: | English |
Repository: |
Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries 222 Waverly Avenue Syracuse, NY 13244-2010 https://library.syracuse.edu/special-collections-research-center |
Pultneyville is a hamlet in Wayne County, New York, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario; it is approximately thirty miles from Rochester, where the Genesee River flows into the lake. Nathan Sage, signer of this letter, was Collector for the Port of Oswego. Smuggling was rife in the Great Lakes area, due to its proximity to Canada; a later letter from Sage laments that "several acts of smuggling [have been] committed by some of the most respectable men in this and a neighboring district...I have long been satisfied that they were daily accumulating large fortunes by their constant and successful violation of the revenue laws." ["Extract from a letter of Nathan Sage, Esq., Collector for the District of Oswego, dated April 22, 1824," in Volume V ("On Finance") of Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States from the First Session of the Eighteenth Congress to the First Session of the Twentieth Congress (1859), p. 224.]
The Schooner Seizure Letter contains a single letter from Nathan Sage, Collector for the District of Oswego, to Roger Skinner, District Attorney of the United States for the Northern District of New York. The letter concerns the seizure of the schooner Laura of Genesee at Pultneyville for "breach of the Revenue Laws." Sage is urging a speedy trial so that the vessel can be confiscated, since he believes she could be sold for "a neat and handsome sum."
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Preferred citation for this material is as follows:
Schooner Seizure Letter,
Special Collections Research Center,
Syracuse University Libraries
Unknown.
Created by: MRC
Date: 10 Apr 2017
Revision history:
Correspondence | |||||||||||
SC 802 | Sage, Nathan to Roger Skinner, Esq. 5 Nov 1817 - regarding seizure of schooner Laura of Genesee |