Loses Land Holdings and Home
Despite vast land holdings that were worth a fortune, changing money values on mortgages held on the tracts of land sold and a depressed land market caused Phelps to get into financial difficulty. In about 1800, the reverses forced him to sell his Suffield home and his interest in the Hartford National Bank and Trust Co. Phelps moved to Canandaigua, where he built a grist mill and endowed an academy. He was also appointed the first judge of Ontario County.
After additional entanglements in western real estate ventures which resulted in "personal embarrassment" and, for a time, the prospect of debtor's prison, Phelps settled down in Canandaigua in 1802.
His troubles were not over, however. Purchasers of his land had continued difficulty paying off the mortgage loans which he held. He was generous in extending terms to them, to his own detriment.
Read more about this topic: Oliver Phelps
Famous quotes containing the words loses, land, holdings and/or home:
“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 26:8.
“Polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies; and when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one color or form or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Unpleasantness outside is easy to bear, but nagging at home is hard on the ear.”
—Chinese proverb.