Migration
This chapter explains explain why migrants to western New York like the Ranney family looked farther west and bought parcels in Michigan even as they began making new farms in Phelps. It explores the pattern of sparse frontier settlement that extended all the way to the French village and British garrison at Fort Detroit. It also discusses the acquisition of western lands that highlighted the competing agendas of rural settlers and urban speculators. The chapter talks about brothers Andrew, Nahum, and Archibald Burnett, who moved to Phelps after 1813 and became the source of the first peppermint planted in Western New York. It also deals with peppermints that were simultaneously planted and distilled around Phelps as it became economically important in Ashfield.