His father had left to him and his three brothers, among other property, about six thousand acres of wild land in the present town of Duanesburgh. By the death of two of his brothers, and by purchase from the third and by other purchases, he subsequently became owner of nearly the whole of that township then also wild. In 1765, before his purchases were all made, after some previous feeble efforts, he commenced active measures for its settlement. Finding the New Yorkers prejudiced against the country by the representations of Sir William Johnson's agents, and perhaps by himself, who was settling Jand also, Mr. Duane entered in March, 1765, into contract with a company of twenty Germans from Pennsylvania, of whom about sixteen came on the tract, and they made the first permanent settlement in that now flourishing town.

On the 13th of March of the Same year, he had procured the erection of these lands into a township, called Duanesburgh, with the usual privileges to the inhabitants of choosing town officers and making town laws.

The King in council having decided in 1764, that the territory, now called Vermont, was part of the colony of New-York, Mr. Duane in August, 1765, made his first purchase in that district, and in about two years had extended these purchases to

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about sixty-four thousand aeres, which cost him upwards of eight thousand dollars, and subsequently large additional sums for surveyors' fees and other expenses, of which neither he nor his heirs obtained anything but the small dividend of the $30,000, which Vermont agreed to pay when New York signed off the rights of her citizens. The bargain was made by our politicians to obtain a new state to overbalance southern influence, and in this paramount object with them, compensation to the comparatively few landholders among her citizens was almost entirely overlooked.