Farmers Loan and Trust Company records

The Farmers Loan and Trust Company records give the history of the various trusts it formed between 1835 and 1856. The records include abstracts of title, agreements of sale and articles of trust, copies of the deeds and the contract schedules used to transfer title, detailed maps of townships where the transfers took place, resolutions by officers of the company, powers of attorney to company agents, schedules of land and of mortgage foreclosures, bills of costs, accounts of cattle received in payments on mortgages, and other material relating to the management of the business. The volumes include accounts for the Batavia and Buffalo Land Offices (1838-1842, 1848-1852, 1852-1855), land tables for the Batavia Land Office (1842-1857), a register of deeds for the Farmers Loan and Allegany Counties (1833-1857), a register of deeds for the farmers Loan and Trust (1841-1866), schedules for mortgages for Cattaraugus and Allegany Counties (1833-1857), and appraisals of lands in Wyoming County (1847-1848). The microfilmed copies of the first five letterbooks of the presidents of the company cover the period from the creation of the parent organization, the Farmers Fire Insurance and Loan Company, in 1832 to 1854; include hundreds of letters to agents, attorneys, and others, among them being Herman J. Redfield, Benjamin Pringle, Junius A. Smith, and John Lowber of Batavia, Washington Hunt of Lockport, Truman Lewis of Orangeville, Wyoming County, and Stanley N. Clarke of Ellicottville, Cattaraugus County; and touch upon every aspect of the business, land sales, mortgage payments, foreclosures, defaulting, acceptance of payments in kind on land debts, and the like. Many of the letters in these volumes from the presidents, Henry Seymour, Lewis Curtis, R. C. Cornell, Dow D. Williamson, and from the secretary, R. K. Delafield, throw light on conditions in the money and security markets of New York, and show how the company gradually shifted its emphasis from land as a field of investment to state securities and to railroads. Included are letters to Horatio Seymour, Erastus Corning, James S. Wadsworth, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, Charles Butler, George B. Upton, Bostonian railroad officials Charles Williams of Philadelphia, Whiting and Adams of Detroit, and to foreign firms, the Rothschilds, Thomas Wilson and Company of London, and Hope and Company of Amsterdam.