Guy Park

About this property

Guy Park, also known as Guy Park State Historic Site or Guy Park Manor, is a house built in 1774 in the Georgian style for Guy Johnson, the Irish-born nephew and son-in-law to Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet, the British Superintendent for Indian Affairs in colonial New York. Built of limestone, the house was originally situated on a square mile of land on the north side of the Mohawk River and near it for access to water transportation. Born in Ireland, Guy Johnson emigrated to New York as a young man, moving to the Mohawk Valley where his uncle had his base. Johnson married Mary (also known as Polly), one of the senior Johnson's daughters with his first common-law wife, Catherine Weisenberg. In 1773 the senior Johnson gave his nephew and daughter a square mile of land near the Mohawk River as a wedding present. They built their first house there but it burned the next year after being struck by lightning. Guy Johnson commissioned a limestone house in the Georgian architectural style, which was built in 1774. After his uncle William Johnson died in 1774, Guy was appointed by the Crown to succeed him as British Superintendent for Indian Affairs. His priority was to keep the powerful Iroquois nations on the side of the British in the face of increasing colonial tensions. As a Loyalist Johnson risked imprisonment, because of the hostility of local settlers who favored independence in the coming American Revolutionary War. He gathered allies and friends and left the area in 1775 for Canada, abandoning his mansion. His wife Polly died in Oswego, New York during the journey. From 1776 to 1778 Johnson lived in British-occupied New York City. By 1779, he had established headquarters in Niagara, Ontario, from where he directed military forces against the rebels in the Mohawk Valley. After the war, he returned to London, where he died in 1788. The house was built in 1774 of limestone in the Georgian architectural style. It is two stories tall. In 1779 the new governments of the United States and New York declared as traitors those Loyalists who had gone to Canada, and the state confiscated their properties. The state sold Guy Park to a private owner. A steady flow of migrants moved along the road in the plain by the Mohawk River as part of the European-American settlement of former Iroquois lands. At this time, the state and speculators were selling millions of acres of land to the west; thousands of migrants from New England crossed the state seeking such lands; some veterans were awarded grants of land in lieu of pay. Guy Park was used for years in the early nineteenth century as a tavern and stagecoach stop, as it was on the Mohawk Turnpike next to the river, the two main transportation routes across the state. The Erie Canal was completed in 1825, and a lock is located near the house. Later, the house was sold and served again as a private residence for many years.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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