Daniel Penfield Land Agreement

Daniel Penfield was born April 25, 1759 in Guilford, Connecticut. s a young man, he served in the Commissary Department of the Continental Army under Oliver Phelps. Following the war, he married Mary Fellows in 1784; they had five children: Henry, Harriet, Charlotte, Mary Jane and George. He opened a general store in Hillsdale, New York but lost it to the fire during a mob attack at the time of Shays' Rebellion. The family moved to New York City around 1789 and Penfield quickly became a successful merchant in Manhattan as part of the "Tontine Association" that met in the Tontine Coffee House on Wall Street. He began speculating in the lands of the Phelps & Gorham Purchase; buying tracts in modern Wayne County in 1790 and Perinton, Monroe County, in 1792. It was on February 4, 1795 that he purchased his first land in modern Penfield. Penfield also opened a new general store in Claverack, New York while maintaining homes in Hudson and in New York City.

Penfield's businesses thrived until the Embargo Act of 1807 damaged his commission business. He decided to move out to his frontier holdings in 1809, bringing out carpenters from Albany to erect a home that still stands at 1784 Penfield Road in 1811. He built a series of successful mills on Irondequoit Creek, ranging from a grist mill and a saw mill to an ashery and a coffee mill. The town bearing his name was chartered by New York State in 1810. His final project, a five-story flour mill erected in 1835, collapsed in the Panic of 1837. Penfield died on August 24, 1840, and was buring in Oakwood Cemetery.