Westward Expansion
Mr. Luvera
Chapter 7: New Yorkers Move West
Unit 3: A Time of Change
Life of Settlers
 Frontier: edge of a settled area
 Pioneer: person who is among the first of
non-native people to settle a region
 Genesee Road: once a trail used by Native
Americans, led thousands of settlers to
western New York
Big Tree Treaty
 In 1797, representatives of the Holland Land
Company and the Seneca leaders met at the village
of Big Tree called Geneseo today.
 The Holland Land Company signed the Big Tree
Treaty with Seneca leaders to purchase a large area
of Seneca land in western New York.
 Shortly after, people settled Buffalo and Rochester.
War of 1812
 From 1790 to 1820, Great Britain and France were at
war.
 The British navy needed sailors. British ships began
stopping American ships near Canada, and began
forcing American sailors to serve in the British navy.
(New York borders Canada.)
 In June of 1812, the United States declared war on
Great Britain.
 American army invaded Canada in December 1813.
They burned its capital, York, which is now Toronto.
Battle of Lake Champlain
 In September 1814, Sir George Prevost and 11,000
British soldiers crossed Lake Champlain on several
ships. About 1,500 American soldiers led by
Brigadier General Alexander Macomb and a small
fleet led by Commodore Macdonough defeated the
larger British force.
 This forced the British to withdraw to Canada.
 Soon after this battle, a peace agreement was
reached.
List 3 events from the War of 1812 in
the order they occurred.
America burned the capital, York (now Toronto).
America defeated Britain at Lake Champlain.
America and Great Britain signed peace treaty to
end the War of 1812.
Westward Expansion
 View a film of New Yorkers moving west:
http://www.mhschool.com/ss/ny/big_idea_vid
eo/NY_Unit_3.swf
Transportation Revolution
 Robert Fulton invented the Steamboat that
could transport goods and people, named the
boat Clermont in 1807.
 Gov. DeWitt Clinton thought of building a
waterway to connect to western New York,
named the Erie Canal in 1825.
 Peter Cooper started a railroad and used
locomotives, a steam-powered engine that
pulls railroad cars in 1831.
What was the effect of the Erie Canal
on New York City?
Cause
ERIE CANAL
Effect
New York City became the
largest port and a center
for new arrivals to the
United States (able to
transport goods from the
west to the east).
New York Grows and Changes
 Industry: all the companies that make one
kind of goods or provide one kind of service
Examples:
 Syracuse quickly became the center of the salt
industry in New York.
 Gloversville (Fulton County): Leather for gloves
and shoes come from animal skins. The skins
treated by tanning, a method of scraping and
soaking the skins to make them soft and
workable
Industrial Revolution
 Almost every industry changed from
handwork in homes to machine work in
factories.
 Isaac Singer invented the sewing machine.
Clothing was made faster and cheaper.
Art Revolution
 James Fenimore Cooper wrote stories about life on
the New York frontier.
 Washington Irving wrote about New York, including
American classics, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
and “Rip Van Winkle.”
 Thomas Cole and Frederick Church developed a
beautiful style of painting landscapes – paintings that
show the landforms of an area. Their style became
known as the Hudson River School of painting. Visit
Olana, home of Frederick Church.
Thomas Cole, View on the Catskill, Early Autumn, 1837
Looking for a Better Life
 Immigrants: people who come to a new country to
live
 In 1853, New York State a law requiring all children to
go to school. Lawmakers hoped that children would
go to school rather than work in factories.
 In the 1840’s, the women’s rights movement began.
Leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia
Mott helped organize the first women’s rights
convention at Seneca Falls in 1848.
Carolina cotton mill, 1908
Children working as coal miners in Pennsylvania, 1911.
Breaker boys in a coal mine were often prodded with sticks or kicked if they fell behind
Italian peanut vendor, 1910
Italian shoe shine boys in
N.Y.C.
Children worked alongside their parents.
Oyster shuckers in a canning factory often worked 13 hours a day.
Little girl working in a cotton mill
Boy working in a glass factory
Early life on the frontier
 Watch this film on a one-room school house:
http://www.macmillanmh.com/ss/ny/artifacts/One_Room
_School.swf
Labor Leaders (Ch. 9)
 Many employers, or business owners, made
workers spend long days in dangerous
conditions for low wages.
 Samuel Gompers helped organize labor
unions, groups of workers who try to get
better working conditions.
 They used strikes, a refusal of all the
workers in a business to work until the
owners meet their demands.
Factories Change (Ch. 9)
 Some industries produced their work in sweatshops, dark and
dirty workshops where immigrant workers were paid low wages
and worked long hours.
 On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory in New York City. Most of the immigrant workers were
Jewish and Italian teenagers. These women made shirtwaists,
a popular type of women’s blouse.
 Flames and smoke spread quickly through the crowded building.
Owners of the factory had locked the doors because they
thought their workers were stealing. 146 women died because
they were unable to escape from the building.
 Reforms and regulations in other areas were occuring at this
time, known as the Progressive Era (early 1900’s).
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
fire in New York City
An Age of Inventions
 Alexander Graham Bell invented the
telephone in 1876.
 Thomas Alva Edison invented more than
1,000 practical inventions, including the
development of the electric light bulb.
 George Eastman invented paper-backed film
for cameras
Other New York
Inventors
How did our state grow in the early 1800’s?
Transportation
Industry
Art
The Empire State
 View a film on Industries:
http://www.mhschool.com/ss/ny/big_idea_vid
eo/NY_Unit_4.swf
 View a film on A Changing New York:
http://www.mhschool.com/ss/ny/big_idea_vid
eo/NY_Unit_5.swf