Even before the industrial revolution waxed and waned in the bucolic Cotswolds, a more violent revolution shaped the future of England’s colonies of New York and Pennsylvania. Before the war, the northern half of Pennsylvania, and most of New York – except for Long Island, the Hudson Valley and some of the Mohawk and Schoharie Vallies – were under control of England’s allies, the Iroquois Confederacy. British troops and Iroquois warriors kept settlers out of most of that area.
But the Rev. War destroyed the power of the Iroquois and allowed settling of lands the colonists had long coveted. And the war left the Continental Congress and the colonial governments with colossal debts. Congress and the state legislators gave some of the veterans land instead of back pay or pensions. An ordinary soldier whose grant request was approved received 100 acres. The higher the rank, the more land. A Brig. General could receive 1,100 acres.
But most of the newly available land was given to Philadelphia financiers to pay off the war bonds the latter had purchased. Along the central part of Pennsylvania’s northern tier of counties and New York’s southern tier of counties, much of the land went to William Bingham (for whom Binghamton is named and who is buried in Bath cathedral, not far from Gloucestershire) and James Strawbridge (who’s family later went into the department store business).
Bingham, Strawbridge and the other financiers hired land agents to find buyers for land parcels and to help them form settlements. More than 30 million acres of wilderness was for sale – cheap. So when news of this reached Gloucestershire, many saw opportunity — including the Rev. John Hey.