At the beginning of the bloody days of the French Revolution, a group of citizens wished to find shelter by founding a colony in an alien land.  The new republic of the United States seemed to offer an ideal refuge, and, to that end, Pierre Chassanis, citizen of France, on August 31, 1792, purchased from William Constable, acres of land in the northwestern part of the State of New York, between the Black River, and the forty-fourth degree of latitude, in the region where the towns of Greig, Brantingham, Lowville, Castorland, Carthage, Great Bend, Black River and Watertown, in the counties of Lewis and Jefferson are situated today.  The purchase was made for fifty-two thousand sterling, by an agreement signed before Master Rene Lambot, notary at Paris, the money to pass to the seller on presentation of a certificate of valid title to the French Consul at Philadelphia. 

In the following month of October a prospectus was issued to those who would be interested, dividing the six hundred thousand acres in six thousand lots of one hundred acres each, at a price of $152.28 a lot, fifty acres to be paid for immediately and fifty at the end of seven years.

The subscription having reached nearly a third of the capital  offered, a meeting of forty-one leading subscribers to eighteen hundred and eight portions took place at the home of Chassanis, No 20 rue de Jussienne, in Paris, June 28, 1793, and the constitution of the society was adopted under the name of the "Company of New York," with a seal representing a maple tree nibbled by a beaver and the word "Castorland", in exergue.

It was stated in the constitution that two hundred thousand acres of the land acquired by Pierre Chassanis in New York State on the borders of Lake Ontario and the Black River were retained by him for the account of the company thus formed, of which the duration was fixed at twenty-one years from the first of July 1793.  The management was given to Chassanis for the whole term and to four trustees living in Paris and eligible for election every three years, meanwhile the administration of the property was delegated to two other trustees in America who were obligated to give a bond of forty thousands livres for fidelity in the exercise of their duties.

The four trustees associated with the director at Paris, were the citizens Guyot, Mailot, Guinot, and La Chaume and the two assigned to the colony were Pierre Pharoux and Simon Desjardins; the first were not entitled to any salary but were to receive two " tokens of presence," of the weight of four to five gros in silver (about fifty cents) for each meeting they served, while those in America had the right to an annual indemnity of six hundred dollars to compensate for the expenses of a change of residence and installation there, besides a commission of the profits if their work gave satisfaction.

Pharoux and Desjardins embarked at Havre on the following eighth of July, on board the American ship "Liberty", of one hundred and eighty tons capable of accommodating a dozen passengers, but there were forty really, most of whom were returning to Cuba by way of New York.  Many of them formed family groups which were quite picturesque.  After many visits of the national guard at the moment of departure, the encounter with pirates near the heights of Bordeaux, near the  Bermudas, and even in the Bay of New York, the attempt at suicide by a lady of Palais-Royal who was numbered among the passengers, and many other incidents related by Desjardins in his diary, they landed on the seventh of September, 1793.

The trustees departed immediately for their destination by way of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers without knowing exactly where they would find the territory which was the object of their journey...part of which was between the Black River and the forty-fourth degree of latitude.  But they had the good fortune to meet at Albany one of their compatriots, Marc Isambart Brunel, a famous engineer (and, at the time, a political exile) who greeted them most cordially and was of much assistance.

Having engaged four woodland guides, procured by a Canadian named Baptiste, they left Albany on the twenty-seventh of September in a boat under the guidance of a German called Simon, with baggage that consisted of tents, provisions, arms, and surveying instruments, rowed up to the Mohawk river to Fort Stanwix, descended, through Wood Creek and Fish Creek, to the Oswego River, then to the Stoney River, then to Hungry Bay, and reached the mouth of the Black River on the 20th of October.

As the season was advanced , they did not wish to run the risk of having to spend the winter under a tent in that place, and so they decided to return to Albany after having taken note of the geographical situation , and the topography and geology of their territory.  They crossed Oneida Lake and arrived at New-Rotterdam where Mr. Van der Kemp regaled them with a banquet of bear meat which they found "delicious even though somewhat unsavory," and Colonel Wisher had them dine with him at Schoharie, excusing himself for wearing his hat at the table " because he had been scalped by the Indians".

It was necessary , meanwhile, to look after the title to the property.  Pharoux and Brunel went as soon as possible to Philadelphia on this account.  They were not received very cordially by the Secretary of the Treasury and with even less courtesy by the Secretary of State.  " Mr. Jefferson, " so says the diary, " did not even ask us to be seated, and when we told him that very large numbers of out countrymen intended to seek refuge in America, he made a very significant grimace."

On their return to Albany, Desjardins and Pharoux asked the Legislature of New York State to recognize the title of Pierce Chassanis, director of their society and chief owner of two hundred thousand acres, in view of the fact that the political situation in France prevented his coming to the country, and they demanded the same privilege for those who intended to remain there permanently.  That authorization was accorded the petitioners by the law of March 27, 1794, but refused to their representative because he was an alien.

The returned to Castorland on the thirteenth of May, passing the home of Baron Steuban who received them very cordially, and on the fifteenth of June they commenced to build a log house and various other works incident to residence.  But the question of title ownership was not regulated , and Desjardins was compelled to return hastily to New York on this account.  During his absence, the little colony was decimated by a malignant sickness which forced those remaining to return to Albany, which they reached after having endured a hard journey.

The courage of the colonists was, nevertheless, superior to suffering.  They started back to Castorland on the first of June 1795, and, reaching it on the twentieth of the same month, they built a mill, a forge, a canal , and other works during the course of the summer, but still greater misfortune to test their strength fell on them soon.  Pharoux crossing the river, with seven companions, for the purpose of surveying land, on the twenty-first of September was whirled on the raft  into Long Falls. He was drowned, with two other men, and all their geodetical instruments, clothes, and provisions vanished into the water.  Sickness broke out anew in the colony, and snow commenced to fall on the seventeenth of October and at the same time provisions were exhausted.  Desjardins decided to return to Albany with his fellow workers and leave the colony to the care of Mr. Robinson and  Canadian family for the winter.

In the following spring (1796) Desjardins retraced his way to Castorland with other colonists , but found that a large number of domestic animals had died of hunger during the winter while others were lost in the woods.  These reverses, meanwhile, did not daunt his courage.  "Accustomed to disappointment in all we undertake," he said," I am concerned solely with the remedy."  For to increase the bad luck, a stranger whom whom he had hired for temporary work, stole the money of the company on the night of June twenty-eighth, escaping in a canoe with six hundred dollars in silver and bank notes, besides important papers contained in a small trunk.  The thief was pursued, caught and arrested, but Desjardins was the most surprised man in the world to see , at the finish of the examination, the accused enter the tavern with the constable who guarded him, and chat familiarly with the magistrate who was to render sentence.

The summer was devoted to the preparation of a map of the territory of the colony which was forwarded to the society's headquarters in France.  Without taking into account some irregularities in the land, the trustees at Paris laid out lots, also the streets which passed at times through marshes and under impassible precipices, but as the instructions were peremptory, the colonists had to conform to them.

But this was not all.  At the end of September a new leader, by the name of Rudolph Tillier, "member of the supreme council of Berne," arrived on the property to carry on the duties in place of Desjardins.  His salary, which was six hundred dollars yearly, began the first of July, 1796, and he was given a commission on the lots he sold , and , also, the right to pass four months of the winter in New York for personal affairs.

He was a intriguer who had succeeded in imposing himself on the company through the influence of Swiss financiers who had loaned money on the real estate, and Chassanis, the director , discouraged by the bad results of the enterprise, clung to him as a savior who would retrieve the losses.  Tillier brought with him, probably, the coins of Castorland of which we have spoken at the beginning of this article, and intended to distribute them when he took charge of the property.  Chagrined beyond measure, Desjardins turned over to his successor the papers and other goods of the colony to which he had given the best part of his life, and on the second of November he left  Castorland "with the presentiment," he said, " that he would never return."

Tillier, who had expected to accomplish wonderful things, real marvels, was no more fortunate than his predecessors.  He sought, but without any more success, to obtain from the Legislature of New York, the ratification of the titles of Chassanis.  With very heavy expense for agricultural tools and implements, animals and provisions, he established twenty Parisian families on the banks of the river Castor where they knew all the privations and sufferings of pioneers in the virgin forest.  It was an enterprise destined for inevitable failure.

The integrity, too, of Tillier's administration seems to have been questioned, for, about two years after his arrival in America, Chassanis asked Gouverneur Morris, former Ambassador of the United States to France, whom he had known in Paris, to take control of the affairs of the company, examine Tillier's accounts of all new expenses.

In order to circumvent the impossibility of obtaining title to the property in his own name, Chassanis was authorized, by a meeting of the stockholders held on May 14, 1798, to have in transferred to his brother-in-law , Jacques Donatien Le Roy de Chaumont, who was an American citizen and whose father had entertained Benjamin Franklin during his sojourn in Paris.  Le Roy got in touch very soon with Morris to whom to whom he sent Father Pierre Joulin, cure of Chaumont, who had refused to take the constitutional oath of the French Republic and who seized with alacrity the chance to escape the guillotine.

But Tillier retaliated with audacity.  By a notification published in Albany newspapers, on the eighth of January 1800, he requested the public " not to put any trust in the envious reports of Gouverneur Morris, Pierre Joulin, or their agents; to wit, Richard Cone ( named to succeed Tillier), Jacob Brown ( land agent), Patrick Blade (constable of notary Lambot) or any other persons acting against himself in the name of the New York Company  or of Pierre Chassanis or Jacques Le Roy."  In the following month of October, he published a virulent pamphlet attacking Chassanis, to which the latter deemed it necessary to respond by a written justification that he addressed to the stockholders of the Company.  Morris instituted an action at law for an accounting and reclaiming of titles to land from Tillier, and Tillier countered with a demand for $22,493.92, which he offered subsequently to reduce to $2,000.00 payable in real estate.  He was last heard of in Louisiana.

Chassanis dies in Paris, on the 28th of November, 1803, and the lands of the New York Company were sold, little by little, to American colonists, who more inured to the kind of life and the climate of the country, made the territory prosper. The memory of the pioneers lived meanwhile in the names given to the localities in the region, such as Castorland, Le Roy, French River ( today the Oswegatchee) and Beaver Creek.  A native poet, Caleb Lyon, of Lyonsdale, has dedicated a poem to that courageous adventure.  He has alluded to the commemorative coin, of which we have spoken, in these lines:

"There was struck a classic medal by visionary band; Cybele was on the silver, and beneath was Castorland;  The reverse a tree of maple yielding forth its precious store, SALVE MAGNA PARENS FRUGUM was the legend that it bore."

The company was dissolved at the expiration of the term of twenty-one years, fixed for the duration of its operation, on July 1, 1814. It owed 561,766 livres to its Swiss creditors who acquired its assets at a public sale, on liquidation.  Le Roy took charge of the considerable interest , and directed affairs on the property, but he became bankrupt ten years later, and his son, Vincent took his place, with success.

Thus ended a bold enterprise, which was repeated, nevertheless, with the same results, in the colonization of Champ d'Asile, provoked by analogous events, the following year.