Template:Wp-Clinton, Oneida County, New York-History

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Part of Coxe's Patent, 6th division, Clinton began in March 1787 when Revolutionary War veterans from Plymouth, Connecticut settled in Clinton. Pioneer Moses Foote brought 7 other families with him to the area. The new inhabitants found good soil, plentiful forests, and friendly Brothertown Indians in southern Kirkland along with Oneida who passed through on trails. Named after New York's first governor, George Clinton, an uncle of Erie Canal builder, DeWitt Clinton, the village had a gristmill on the Oriskany Creek on College Street the first year and slowly developed as a farming and mercantile center.

In 1793, Presbyterian minister Rev. Samuel Kirkland founded Hamilton-Oneida Academy as a seminary to serve as part of his missionary work with the Oneida tribe. The seminary admitted both white and Oneida boys. Kirkland named it in honor of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who was a member of the first Board of Trustees of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy. The Academy became Hamilton College in 1812, making it the third oldest college in New York after Columbia and Union, after it expanded to a four-year college curriculum.

Originally in the Town of Whitestown and then the Town of Paris, Clinton became part of the newly formed Town of Kirkland in 1827, and became an incorporated village in April 1843 with its own board of trustees, officials, employees, and status as a taxing jurisdiction.

Elihu Root, secretary of war and state under presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, was born in a building on the Hamilton College campus, and is probably Clinton's most famous son.

Although never a factory town, Clinton did have the Clinton Knitting Company on the site of the Clinton House Apartments on Kirkland Avenue in the first half of the 20th century as well as the Clinton Canning Company to process local vegetables in the late summer and fall.

The pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb began as the Clinton Pharmaceutical Company in 1887 on the second floor over the current CVS drug store at 3-5 West Park Row and moved to Syracuse after three years. Both founders, William Bristol and John Myers, graduated from Hamilton College.