USA > New York > Chemung County > Chemung County, its history > Part 10
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Elmira Heights has many industries:
Eclipse Machine Division, the Bendix Corp. American Bridge, Division of the United States Steel Co. Elmira Knitting Mill Ward LaFrance Eastern Metal Co. B.M.T. Tool Shop
Bordering industries are: Elmira Floral Products Thatcher Glass Manufacturing Co. Hankins Container Co., Division of Flinkote Co.
Though times have changed and Elmira Heights no longer depends as much on the railroads for shipping, the Heights is still an industrial center from which many people receive their incomes. Its population in 1960 totaled 5,157.
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TOWN OF SOUTHPORT
In April, 1822, the Town of Southport was formed from the Town of Elmira in old Tioga County. It was probably so named because its lands were on the south side of the Chemung River. Since it extended from the River to the Pennsylvania State Line, the early settlers of Elmira's Southside and of the Town of Ashland were residents of the Town of Southport.
Many of the pioneers came from Orange County, New York; some from Pennsylvania, and a few from New Jersey and Dela- ware. The first settlements were along the River and Seely Creek. John McHenry, Abraham Miller, David Griswold, John Fitzsimmons and Caleb Baker built some of the first homes on the River Lots. Before 1800, Abner Hatfield, the Seelys, John and Timothy Smith, and John Waeir were clearing farms along Seely Creek from Southport Corners toward Pine City. Charles and Walter Dense of South Mountain; John Kelly of Kelly Hill; Patrick McNaney, Joshua Conklin and the Comforts of Christian Hollow; John Smith and the Marvins of Bird Creek; John Bower, Noah Tyler and the Gardner families of Dutch Hill; and Hiram Woolf and Archillus Dailey of Hendy Hollow, were among the first to clear hill farms. As late as 1860, settlers were living in log cabins and clearing their lands in the southern part of the township.
The first, and for many years the most important, industry in the Town of Southport was its mills. The first sawmill was erected by Abraham Miller about 1798, its site is now in the Town of Ashland. Before 1803, James Seely had built another on Seely Creek, near Pine City. Later, dozens of sawmills sprang up at different locations on the large creeks and even on the smaller streams. Portable mills, used for sawing wood for fuel, were to be found well into the 1900s.
The earliest gristmill was built by David Griswold about 1800. It was near the site of Notre Dame High School and water was brought to it from Seely Creek nearly a mile away. By 1807, a gristmill had been added to James Seely's sawmill and others followed-at Webb Mills, at Seely Creek, and on South Creek, just south of Bulkhead. One of the most widely known was the Bulkhead Mill, built in 1877, and operated until 1960.
The woolen mill established at Bulkhead by Silas Billings about 1820, and later owned by Charles Evans, made thousands of yards of woolen cloth and hundreds of "coverlets" before it burned in 1877. For a while, Philo Jones had a fulling and carding mill at Seely Creek.
A plaster mill, also at Bulkhead, provided the ground limestone used to make the plaster for the early frame homes. From the expression "sowing plaster" it seems that some farmers used this ground limestone on their fields. The limestone was im- ported to Elmira over the Chemung Canal.
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The construction of a number of buildings in Elmira during the late 1800's used stone from the large quarry in Christian Hol- low, or the smaller one near Pine City. The Dalrymple Sand and Gravel Company was established near Bulkhead some fifty years ago.
As lumbering declined, farming became the chief industry. Some of the farmers supplied fruits and vegetables to a small canning factory near the corner of the Pine City and the Bird Creek Roads. Tobacco was the major crop on the farms along the River and Seely Creek flats, and Webb Mills had a tiny tobacco factory in which two or three men made hand-rolled cigars. Many dairy farmers had milk routes in Elmira, while others sold their milk to a cheese factory at Webb Mills. Some farmers were also butchers who sold their fresh-killed meats from door-to-door. The owners of "sugar bushes" sold gallons of maple syrup and pounds of maple sugar each spring.
Manufacturing was not as important in the early Town of Southport as it is to today's inhabitants. Although the Ameri- can LaFrance, the Payne Iron Works, and the Kellogg Bridge Company were built in the town, the Elmira city limits were soon extended beyond them. This expansion also included a part of the Northern Central (Pennsylvania) Railway yards and shops, which, since 1867, have been an extensive enterprise. In 1935 the Morrow plant was purchased by Elmira Industries, Inc., for Remington Rand. Many citizens gave money which made this purchase possible because they wanted to provide work for many people affected by the depression. The Rem- ington-Rand Division of Sperry-Rand is another factory which extends over the City Line into the Town. One of the oldest businesses is the small Minchar Company on the South Creek Road. It is locally called the "mud-mill" because years ago it utilized a peculiar clay (found in two swamps just over the Pennsylvania Line) to make the water filter manufactured there. The Wells and Hammond Tannery, located down the creek from the Pine City bridge over Seely Creek, was a large and very prominent business of its time. The Stadelmaier Rendering Works, at Bulkhead, was a smaller but similar concern.
The Elmira & Williamsport (later the Pennsylvania) Railroad and the main line of the Erie hurried across the Town of South- port without pausing, but the beloved "Old Tioga" branch of the Erie stopped where it crossed the South Creek Road. There was no station, but there was a siding for cars of supplies for nearby businesses. Mail for the Southport Post Office was here received from the trains, and it was a convenient stop for passengers. The only actual railroad station was Wells Station, now the "Old Depot Inn", between Pine City and Webb Mills.
The Elmira, Corning and Waverly Railway served the Maple
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Avenue section, and a branch of the city street car system was extended to Southport Corners the summer of 1911. The present bus line encloses the square from Elmira to Southport Corners, Bulkhead, and back over town.
In the beginning days of air travel the Caton Avenue Airport (1927) operated for some time before the construction of the Chemung County Airport, and the contestants at the first Elmira Glider Meets were launched on their flights from a field on nearby South Mountain.
Of the main roads leading through the township, the Plank Road, from Elmira by way of Pine City to the State Line, is the most famous. It was a toll road and had collection gates on Pennsylvania Avenue near Beecher Street, on the Pine City Road near Shappee's bridge, and at Webb Mills. The road was thirteen feet wide and made of hemlock planks. Stage coaches ran over it to Mosherville, as well as south over the dirt road to Troy and Williamsport.
Taverns were necessary to the stage-traveling public, and there were several small inns which did not survive after the stage lines were discontinued. However, the larger hotels at South- port Corners, Pine City and the State Line continued in busi- ness. Except for a short time during World War I, Bulkhead had a hotel from the 1820's, when Solomon Smith established an inn, until 1960, when the New Arlington Hotel was de- molished to make way for road construction.
In 1957 the Southport School Districts were consolidated with those of Elmira, but previously, one-room schools had been scattered over the township. One of the earliest was built about 1800 near the corner of Maple and Caton Avenues, and a few years later another was erected on Pennsylvania Avenue, just west of Bulkhead.
There have been a number of churches in the Town of South- port, and church services and Sunday school were held in some of the schoolhouses. The Reverend Thomas K. Beecher con- ducted church in the Rosstown School, and the Reverend Ru- dolph Viewig, of the German Evangelical Church in Elmira, preached for years in the Dutch Hill School, as did the Reverend William Kemler. Itinerant preachers or "circuit riders" held services in homes or schools from time to time, and lay preachers like Charles Evans, Benjamin F. Bird, and Seneca Ham led prayer meetings. The Southport Presbyterian is the oldest church building in the Town. The First Methodist Episcopal Society held its meetings in a "chapel built on the site of the old schoolhouse at Bulkhead". This early Society probably merged with an Elmira church, but the Methodist Church at Webb Mills was erected in 1855, and another at Southport Corners is now in the process of moving into its new church near
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Bulkhead. Although the pioneer Baptists also transferred to a church in Elmira, the Pine City Baptist Church is over 100 years old. The Catholic Church organized on Dutch Hill in 1878 has. long since been discontinued.
The Pioneer Cemetery at Fitzsimmons' Corners (the intersec- tion of Maple and Caton Avenues) is the largest cemetery in the town. There are other graves of early settlers in the Ross- town Cemetery and in the one at Pine City, also in the cemetery on Dutch Hill and in the Webb Mills churchyard. At least three small family plots have been all but lost since the disintegration of their markers-one in Christian Hollow and two on the Pine City Road. Two that were in evidence within the past fifty years have now disappeared, one was on the bank of Seely Creek near Pine City and the other on the Bird Creek Road. Three unmarked graves on a South Mountain farm have been undisturbed by the thoughtful owners of the farm.
Place names in the Town of Southport are not as romantic as those of some of the other towns, being mostly either "naturals" or for early families. Seely Creek and South Creek are the two larger streams, Seely carrying the name of the family whose land patent it crossed, and South, of course, flowing into the Town from that direction. In some early instances this was termed "Smith Creek", since the Smiths owned some land along its banks. Hendy Creek and Bird Creek are named for the pioneers, John Hendy and Benjamin F. Bird. Dry Run and Christian Hollow Creeks are their own explanation. Mud Lick is a name to be pondered upon.
South Mountain's first name was "Dense Hill"-Walter and Charles Dense had farms there. Green Hill was thickly covered with pine and hemlock trees and was green the year around. Miller Hill, Kinner Hill, Kelly Hill and similar others were named for early land owners; this is probaby true of Christian Hollow also. Dutch Hill is for the German (Pennsylvania Dutch) pioneers. Mount Zoar is another puzzle like Mud Lick.
The Town of Southport has its full share of what Clark Wilcox so aptly termed "Hazy Hamlets". Never very large, the grow- ing population has so connected some of them that today's traveler does not realize he is passing from one community to another. Others have almost entirely disappeared.
Southport Corners took its name from the Town and from the intersection of roads there. Among its first settlers were Nathaniel Seely, Jr., the hatter; and Abner Hatfield, who lived on "the road to the graveyard". Bulkhead's name was grad- ually acquired from the bulkhead, or dam, built to supply water to the mills and to the Elmira Water Works. This small busi- ness center has moved from the south to the north side of the Pine City Road due to the reconstruction of Routes 14 and 328.
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The Town Hall, the Southport Shopping Center, the Dixie Bowling Alleys and three gas stations have replaced the old mills, blacksmith and wagon shop, store and post office, and the hotel. Pine Woods, so called from the surrounding dense pine forest, has become Pine City, after unsuccessful attempts to name it Judsonville and Mechanicsville. Webb Mills continues the name of the Webb families who operated mills there, Seely Creek, which takes its name from the creek, was locally termed "Jones's" in the days when Philo Jones had two mills on the site of the Satterlee farm and a store across the road. Wells Station was just that-the Tioga Railroad station, near the Wells Tannery and the homes of three Wells families. Ross- town, (on the Christian Hollow Road) which was named for "Uncle Charlie" Ross, a prominent early settler, has become a mere intersection of roads. Dutch Hill designated both the hill and the community. Hendy Hollow as a hamlet included a store and a post office of which Hiram Woolf was the first post master.
As the population of the town increased, organized fire pro- tection became necessary and three volunteer fire companies have been formed. The Pine City Fire Department, which was founded in the 1930's, and became active about ten years later, has its own fire house and several pieces of equipment, as does the Webb Mills Fire Department. The Southport Volunteer Firemen, organized in 1943, assumed active protection of their fire district in 1952 when the fire house was built at Southport Corners.
As Elmira has grown in manufacturing importance, more and more Southporters have become employed in the city. There are very few farmers and dairymen left, as the agricultural Town of Southport is rapidly becoming a suburb of industrial Elmira.
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INDEX
American Airways
26
American Bridge Co. 38
American LaFrance 37
Arnot, John
65, 73
Arnot, Matthias H.
26, 44ff
Arnot Art Gallery
44ff
Artistic Card Co.
38
Ashland
91ff
Automobile, First
24, 25
Aviation
26
Baldwin
9, 94ff
Battle of Newtown
6, 9
Big Flats
9, 26, 75ff
Brees, John
31
Breesport
25, 78
Brule, Etienne
1, 75
Business Schools
33
Canal R.R.
22
Canals
13ff
Catlin
81ff
Central Schools
34
Chemung (Town)
97ff
Chemung Canal
13ff
Chemung County
9
Population
52
Government
54
Schools
32
Chemung County Airport
26, 77
Chemung R.R.
21
Chemung River
3, 5, 6, 53
Chronology
60ff
Churches (Early)
11
Civil Defense
49
Civil War
28ff
Company K
28
Military Depot
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne See Twain, Mark
Clinton, James 5ff
Company L
50
Corning, N. Y.
22, 23
Corning & Blossburg R.R.
21
Corning Glass Works
77
Cowles, Augustus
33
Delaware, Lackawanna &
Western R.R.
23, 38
De Witt, Moses
10
De Wittsburg
10, 64
Eaton, Warren
27
Eclipse Machine Division,
37
Education
31ff
Eldridge Park
41
Electric Railways
23ff
Elmira (City)
History
64ff
Population
52, 55
Boundaries
52
Employment
54
Trade
54
Elmira (Town)
9, 72ff
Elmira & Seneca Lake
(Electric) Rwy.
24
Elmira Airport Corp.
26
Elmira & Williamsport R.R.
21
Elmira & State Line R.R.
22
Elmira College
33, 55
Elmira, Corning & Waverly
Rwy. (Electric)
24
Elmira, Cortland & Northern R.R. 22
Elmira Heights
100ff
Elmira Knitting Mills
38
Elmira Prison Camp
29
Elmira Reformatory
55, 67
Elmira Water, Light & R.R. Co.
24
Erin
9, 20, 22, 25, 79ff
Fall Brook Rwy.
22
Feeder Canal
2]
Fire Departments
67
First Settlers
10ff
Folk Stories
57ff
Fort Niagara
3
French and Indian War
1
General Electric Co.
38
Hardinge Bros.
58
Harris, Henry
27
Harris Hill
26
Hartley, Thomas
4
Hendy, John
9, 72
Highways
19, 20
Hilliard Corp.
38
Hoftrup, Lars
46
Holding Point, Horseheads
49
Hollenback, Matthias
11, 18
Horseheads (Town)
9
107
INDEX
Horseheads (Village) 6, 13, 20, 22ff, 84ff
Hospitals
66
Hotels and Taverns
65
Howell, F. M. Co.
38
Hungerford, Daniel J.
26
Hungerford, Floyd S.
26
Indians
1 ff
Industries
36
Iroquois
3
Jesuit Missionaries
9
Johnson, Sir William
2
Jones, John
29
Junction Canal
16, 98
Kennedy Valve Co.
38
Kirkland, Samuel
3
Korean War
48ff
Langdon, Jervis
29
Lehigh Valley R.R.
22, 23, 71
Lockwood, Charles A.
26
Manufacturers
37
Marvin, Ross Gilmore
64
Millport
15,88
Mohawk-Oneida Expedition
2
Moore Business Forms
38
Morrow Plant
68
Murray, J. Ralph
33
Music
41
National Homes Corp.
38
New York & Erie Rwy. 21, 22, 23, 24, 38
New York Central R.R.
22, 23
Newspapers
39, 64, 65
Van Etten
9, 22, 70ff
Veteran
9, 88ff
Ward LaFrance Truck Corp.
38
Washington, George
3, 7
Watkins & Havana Glen Rwy.
24
Water Travel
18
Wellsburg
24
Westinghouse Electric Corp.
37
Pine City
19, 25
Post Offices (Early)
11
Railroads
21ff
Recreation
47
Remington Rand
37
Retail Trade
89, 54
Revolutionary War
3, 9
See also Sullivan-Clinton Expedition
Roads
11, 19
First Hard Surfaced
20
Rorick's Glen
40
Route 17
16, 53
Runonvea
75
St. Joseph's Hospital
33, 66
School (First)
11
See also Education
Sculptors
45 ff
Schweizer Aircraft Corp.
27, 38
Seely Creek
19
Smith, Leon "Windy"
26
Southee, Earl
27
South port
32, 102ff
Spanish-American War
51
Stage Coaches
19ff
Steele Memorial Library
41ff
Suburbia
52
Sullivan, John
4, 6, 7
Army
9
Sullivan-Clinton Expedition
3 ff
Sullivanville
89
Swartwood
70
Thatcher Glass Mfg. Co.
37
Theaters
40ff
Tioga Point
3ff
Tioga R.R.
22, 23
Transportation
18ff
Twain, Mark
43
Utica, Ithaca & Elmira R.R.
22
Newtown
9, 32, 64
North Chemung
25
Northern Central Rwy.
21
O'Meara, Jack
27
Otsego Lake
5
Park Station
22
Parochial Schools
33
Pennsylvania R.R.
21, 23, 26
Wholesalers
38, 54
Wisner, Henry
10, 64
Wisnerburg
10, 64
World War I
48ff
World War II
48ff
108
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