In 1792, Colonel John Lincklaen, who was an agent for the Holland Land Company, went to central New York to see some of the company tracts of land, including the present township of Cazenovia. Colonel Lincklaen made a temporary encampment at the foot of Cazanovia Lake, and later founded a village on this spot. There, in 1807, he built a federal mansion called "Lorenzo." He and his wife, the former Helen Ledyard of Aurora, New York, had no children, but they adopted Mrs. Lincklaen's brother, Jonathan Denise Ledyard (1793-ca.1874) and made him their heir. After the death of Colonel Lincklaen, Jonathan Ledyard took over the management of the Holland Land Company's affairs and eventually purchased their interests and property. Jonathan married Jane Strawbridge of Philadelphia and their eldest son was named Lincklaen Ledyard. In an attempt to perpetuate the name of the family benefactor, he had his name legally reversed to Ledyard Lincklaen, but his only child was a daughter, Helen Lincklaen, who married Charles S. Fairchild, the secretary of the treasury under President Grover Cleveland. On the death of Mrs. Fairchild in 1931, Lorenzo was willed to her cousin, Mrs. Eliphalet Remington, who died in 1953, leaving it to her brother, George S. Ledyard, the present occupant with his son, John Ledyard.
Microfilm of correspondence and other papers of the Ledyard family of Cazenovia, Madison County, New York, especially of Jonathan D. Ledyard. Includes account books, maps, correspondence with agents of the Holland Land Company, tenants and mortgagors of the Cazenovia lands and the Cazenove family in France; business and personal letters; journal of a visit to Cuba and Mexico (1850); an incomplete typewritten autobiography of Judge George Strawbridge; wills and agreements, accounts, inventories, assessments, deeds, abstracts, and other miscellaneous papers. Also includes a microfiche copy of the CALENDAR AND INDEX OF THE LINCKLAEN/LEDYARD PAPERS in the collection of the Lorenzo State Historic Site.
Ledyard family papers, #1912. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
All the material in the collection may not be covered by this guide.