THE FRISWELL PATENT

TOWN OF PLATTSBURGH
CLINTON COUNTY, NEW YORK

By: David C. Glenn
March 16, 2009

The Friswell patent encompassed 2,000 acres at the mouth of Mill Creek (Salmon River) in the southeast corner of the Town of Plattsburgh. It included some 9,000 feet (1.7 miles) of Lake Champlain frontage and is an important portion of the Town. The Friswell Patent was set out and surveyed for John Friswell, late a Lieutenant in the British Navy at the reduction of Quebec in 1759, by order of the Province of New York on May 6, 1765.

William Gilliland, or Will as he called himself, then a merchant in New York City with dreams of manorial land holdings, immediately bought the Patent from John Friswell August 7, 1765.  Will settled it in September of 1766 just a little over a year after he, with his band of mechanics, farmers, craftsmen and domestic help, had settled Willsborough in what became Essex County.

Will named the area at the mouth of the Salmon River “Janesborough” which included the lands in both the Friswell and adjacent Stuart Patent. The 2,000 acre Stuart Patent lays immediately south of the Friswell Patent and is now entirely in the Town of Peru. By 1845 the name Port Gilliland came into use to identify the area and continued to be in use until shortly after 1900.

In 2002 the Town of Plattsburgh erected a blue and yellow New York State historic marker to commemorate the site which reads as follows: