USA > New York > Wayne County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 27
USA > New York > Cayuga County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 27
USA > New York > Seneca County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 27
USA > New York > Ontario County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 27
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Fillmore's term of office was also marked by the Lopex ex- pedition against Cuba, reduction of the prohibitive postage rate of twenty-five cents to three cents, and introduction of the first bath tub into the White House. He was one of the eight presi- dents who did not have a college education.
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Fillmore's family was poor and he was apprenticed to learn the tailor's trade at the age of fourteen, after meagre instruction in reading, writing and spelling, with the simplest branches of arithmetic. But in 1819 the youth conceived the idea of studying law, and entered the shabby little office of Judge Walter Wood in the hamlet of Montville, a half-mile northeast of Moravia, Cayuga County.
While in this study he achieved his first local distinction by delivery of a Fourth of July address in a grove on the premises now owned by Dorr Burgess near the "Gulf." Some of the hear- ers prophesied that he "would make his mark" and perhaps be- come a judge. The little desk where Fillmore studied is now in possession of James D. Harris, who resides on Chestnut Ridge road in Moravia. It has been in the Harris family since 1839, when William Harris, Sr., received it from Judge Wood.
When Fillmore entered the Wood office, he had two years of his wood-carving apprenticeship still to serve and agreed with his employer to relinquish his wages for his last year's work and promised to pay thirty dollars for his time. He received his board from Judge Wood for work in the office. In 1821 Fillmore set out on foot for Buffalo to study law further, arriving there with four dollars in his pocket. He obtained permission to study in a lawyer's office and supported himself by teaching school and assisting the postmaster.
His political life began when he was elected to the State Legislature, where he served for three years. In 1832 he was elected to Congress as a Whig and retained his seat with due intermission until 1843. He became state comptroller in 1847 and the following year was chosen vice president by the Whigs on the ticket of Zachary Taylor. Upon the latter's death in 1850, he succeeded him. Fillmore died in Buffalo March 8, 1874.
Today a rude marker stands at his place of birth, erected by Leonard H. Searing, former president of the Finger Lakes Asso- ciation. A state bill has passed appropriating $10,000 for a state marker and bills have been introduced of late years by Congress- man John Taber of Auburn, asking federal grants to honor by a monument Fillmore's memory. Two acres, embracing the site
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HISTORY OF CENTRAL NEW YORK
of his cabin birthplace, have been deeded to the Cayuga County Historical Society to hold until such time as state or nation cares to take over the land as a patriotic shrine.
In ancient St. Matthew's Church, Moravia, Fillmore was united in marriage to Miss Abigail Powers on Sunday evening, February 5, 1826. In it is a memorial tablet to the country boy who studied by light of fireplace in a home where candles were too costly, and then rose to the greatest office in the land.
Not far distant from his birthplace is the big state park, named after Fillmore, at the suggestion of the late Dr. Charles Atwood of Moravia.
A one-time principal of the Moravia Institute at Moravia, Cayuga County, is credited with having fathered legislation which resulted in admission of Washington to the Union and appropriations to build the Puget Sound Naval Yard at Brem- erton and the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle. This erstwhile Central New York pedagogue was Watson Carvosso Squire, a governor of Washington Territory and one of the first pair of United States senators elected in the state. He left Moravia to enlist as a private in the Civil War and a year later raised a company of Ohio Sharpshooters that was known as Gen- eral Sherman's Bodyguard. He was brevetted colonel. He was the only senator to be re-elected in Washington from the begin- ning of statehood in 1889 until Wesley L. Jones duplicated that feat in 1914.
Women of America today enjoy equal suffrage largely be- cause of the pioneer work of Elizabeth Cady Stanton of Seneca Falls, Seneca County, who called the world's first woman's rights convention there in 1848. This mother of five sons and two daughters was born November 12, 1815, in Johnstown, marrying on May 1, 1840, Henry B. Stanton, an anti-slavery orator and lawyer, who removed with his wife in 1847 to Seneca Falls to reside in an inland climate because of his health.
The laughter of the nation was excited when Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martin Wright and Mary Ann McClintock called the woman's rights convention. Mrs. Stanton's father, Judge Daniel Cady of Johnstown, when he heard of the convention,
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thought his daughter demented and visited Seneca Falls to learn of her condition.
In 1854 Mrs. Stanton addressed the Legislature on the rights of married women and in 1860 in advocacy of divorce for drunk- enness. In 1868 she was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. She was editor of "The Revolution" and author of "The History of Woman Suffrage," "Eighty Years and More," "The Woman's Bible" and other works. She died in 1902, having resided in Seneca Falls until 1861. Her home was at the northwest corner of Fall and Mynderse Streets.
In three humble homes in Central New York, John D. Rocke- feller spent the first fourteen formative years of his life, earn- ing his first money, learning to swim, play the old cat, hoe potatoes and do all the chores of a lad on a primitive woodland farm, in the days when deer ran wild in the forest. Though Rockefeller amassed a fortune in oil, his first business venture was in turkeys, when he was a boy of eight. Though he resides in a palatial mansion, he lived for years in a home of rough planks hewn in the forest. As a barefoot boy, he often went after the cow of a frosty morning and stood to warm his feet on the spot where the animal had lain.
From old timers of Central New York today come those inti- mate tales of how little John milked, weeded the garden and chopped kindlings. They remember their parents told them how he labored hard in a neighbor's potato patch for three days and found he'd earned less than the year's interest on his turkey ven- ture the preceding season. So that he discovered that it is easier to have money work for you than to work for money.
John was born July 8, 1839, in a small, two-story house four miles northeast of the village of Richford, Tioga County. It was of beams, hewn by the axe from the forest, fastened together with pegs and clapboarded. Here he lived until four years old, so that he has left but vague memories of the tinkling brooks that met near the back door and vanished through the woods.
While deer still roamed the countryside, his family moved to his second home on a knoll a third of a mile above the waters of Owasco Lake and four miles north of Moravia, Cayuga County.
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Here young Rockefeller spent the most formative years of his life. There with his brother, the late William Rockefeller, he slept on the top floor in a room unceiled and heated only by a' stove pipe that led up from the room below. Of a winter's night, when the wind swept over Owasco, fine particles of snow sprin- kled across his coverlet from cracks in the wall. And of a morn- ing he often awoke to the creak of sleigh runners on the crisp snow, as his father started lumbering trips, with no lights but the stars and a lantern. . Near this wildwood home, the father built the first school house in that section, locating it by driving his wagon across the town and counting the wheel revolutions. Then passing back he counted to half that number of revolutions and thus found the center of the town.
In this primitive environ, young Rockefeller first practiced what he was later to do so often in other business-recovered property which otherwise would have gone to waste and nursed it into paying a profit. Here he earned his first money raising turkeys. He saw a turkey hen stealthily making for the woods. He patiently trailed her. For days he hunted her nest. When he found it, he brought home the baby chicks and fed them with scraps his mother gave him. He sold the birds in the fall in the Moravia market. The returns he placed in a china bowl over the mantelpiece, the beginning of the Rockefeller fortune. Up until a few years ago, he visited the spot yearly, showing his retinue the cold brook that murmurs among the grasses as it has murmured for ages-the brook out of which he worked so hard to keep his young turkeys.
When John was ten years old, the family moved to another domicile still standing three miles east of Owego, Tioga County. Here no farming was done, but there was a garden across which was stretched a string, with one side for John and one for Wil- liam to hoe. When eleven, the boy learned to swim in the old swimmin' hole back of a neighbor's barn and later he dared the current of the Susquehanna. He went to school in the Owego Academy, walking six miles daily back and forth. When just a lad John would go into the country to buy the family's wood sup- ply, and it was always good measure.
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Such was the training he received before going to Cleveland to work for three dollars a week and start the career that should make him millions. Today the mire trail over which little John once drove his turkeys is a paved highway from Auburn to Owego and named the Rockefeller Drive in his honor by the Finger Lakes Association.
Rockefeller was born on the Michigan Hill home four miles from Richford, he moved to the Owasco Lake home in 1843, liv- ing there until 1849 and then came back to Tioga County to live from 1849 to 1853.
Central New York played a conspicuous part in the develop- ment of the gigantic express business which today is one of the bulwarks of American business. Henry Wells, the expressman who with William G. Fargo formed the Wells-Fargo Express Company, was once a farm hand and shoemaker in the district but he became a capitalist and founded Wells College at Aurora. The determination of Wells and Fargo to develop a new idea in transportation formed one of the most striking battles to im- prove business and transportation in the nation's early history.
Wells was born in Vermont in 1805 and his father, a Presby- terian minister, moved his family to Central New York in 1814. Young Henry for three years mended shoes in Port Byron, Cayuga County, where he was an apprentice after working on farms near Syracuse and attending country school. He did not finish his apprenticeship as a tanner, however, but carried on trade by canal among farmers on Cayuga and Seneca Lakes, as a preliminary to organizing the great express company whose business extended around the globe. After his local express work by boat, be carried a carpet bag filled with packages from Albany to Buffalo. He traveled by rail to Auburn, then by stage across Cayuga Bridge to Geneva, and from there by stage and rail to Buffalo, the trip consuming four nights and three days in sum- mer and much longer time in winter.
Then he became associated with Mr. Fargo, who had com- menced his transportation business in a freight depot of the old Auburn & Syracuse Railroad, Auburn, as agent. Fargo became Wells' express agent in Buffalo in 1843 and with Wells extended
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the express line to Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis. Three years later the two opened offices in Paris and London and Fargo at a later date became president of the Wells-Fargo Express Company.
Wells merged with other little local groups and formed toward the south the Adams Express Company. Then he consolidated in 1850 with other rivals, forming the American Express Com- pany, of which he became president. Wells died in Glasgow, Scotland, December 10, 1878. Fargo died in Buffalo August 3, 1881.
Another express venture found birth in the region in 1866 when the Merchants Union Express Company was organized in Auburn. A corporation was formed and the nominal capital of $20,000,000 was fixed, upon which assessments were to be made only as necessary. The new company had Wells' com- panies, the Adams and American, as well as the United States, with which to compete. These carriers cut rates until express could be shipped almost as cheaply as freight. This swelled the express business until it embarrassed the railroads to handle it and they raised the rates upon express from 300 to 600 per cent. After a two years' war in which the young Auburn company expended over $5,000,000 and the competing lines had lost heavily, a compromise was made and the Merchants Union united with the American Express Company under the name of American Merchants Union. Later the name reverted to the American Express Company.
CHAPTER XXVI
BANKS AND BANKING.
PIONEER BANKS AND BANKING-EARLY BANKING LEGISLATION-SUSPENSION OF SPECIE PAYMENT-FIRST BANK IN CENTRAL NEW YORK-GROWTH OF BANKS -SAVINGS BANKS-SAVINGS AND LOAN ASSOCIATIONS-STATE BANKS AND TRUST COMPANIES-PRESENT-DAY FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS.
More than a century ago banks opened in Central New York communities to lend their aid to commerce and the upbuilding of an infant region. Several of the banks over 100 years old have never since opening closed their doors during banking hours. Others have been liquidated and still others today through merg- ers are doing business under different names. Today more than a hundred banks are aiding in a return to normalcy after the greatest financial depression in the nation's history during 1929- 32, during which slump not more than a half dozen banks in the area closed their doors.
In the early part of the nineteenth century there was no general banking law, but the few banks that existed were sep- arately chartered, each by separate special act. The memory of the ruin caused by the worthless continental currency still re- mained in people's minds, and there was a general suspicion of paper money and a fear of banks as probable oppressive monop- olies, as, indeed, many of them were. That oppressive monopoly could be prevented by a general grant of banking powers to any set of men putting up the necessary capital, was an idea that seems to have slowly permeated the public mind, and it was not until 1838 that the legislature enacted the free banking law,. the model on which was afterwards framed the National Bank Act. In 1817, and for some time before and after, bank charters were granted only as a special favor to specially designated per-
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sons. This favoritism necessarily threw the business of granting bank charters into politics; which ever party was in the majority was apt to limit the membership of a new bank to political friends and supporters and to see that the stock was distributed "where it would do most good." And the bank so organized was considered an appanage of the political party that gave it life, and its discounts were apt to be limited to those of its own po- litical faith.
Three times prior to the Civil war had specie payment been suspended in this state. From the fall of 1814 to the spring of 1817, all the banks of the country, except those in New England, suspended payment. A second suspension continued from May, 1837, until the following spring. On October 13, 1857, all the New York City banks, save the Chemical, suspended and the banks in the state generally did the same, but resumption soon took place.
Earliest banks were first established in rooms of hotels, in stores and sometimes in homes. They were the first steps taken by men of vision in seeking to aid industry and commerce, they gave financial stability to settlement communities and they marked the beginning of progress in the business world of Cen- tral New York.
One of the first, if not the first bank in Central New York was the old Ontario Bank in Canandaigua, chartered in 1813. Nathaniel Gorham, one of the financiers negotiating the great Phelps and Gorham Purchase, was its president. The Ontario bank had a capital of a half million, but when its charter expired in 1856, it went out of business.
The pioneer banking institution of Seneca County was char- tered as the Seneca County Bank on March 12, 1833, and on June 1 temporary banking quarters were secured in the Williams Hotel in Waterloo and business was commenced July 9, with an authorized capital stock of $200,000. It is now the First Na- tional Bank of Waterloo.
In Cayuga County the growth of the village and the large disbursements of money during the construction of Auburn Prison in 1816-17 led to organization of the first bank there.
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Enos T. Throop, later governor, was among those making ap- plication for a charter which was granted May 31, 1817, to the Auburn Bank, with authorized capital stock of $400,000. In July the bank was organized. Today, after changes in name and mergers, it occupies the third banking home on the same site where it started. It is now known as the Auburn-Cayuga National Bank and Trust Company and it claims the record of never closing during banking hours since it was opened in 1817. The Cayuga County National Bank, formed in 1833, merged with it in 1931, and Edwin R. Fay & Sons, private bankers or- ganized in 1892, united a few years before.
In the same year the Auburn bank was formed, a charter was issued March 28 to the Bank of Geneva, which had a capital stock of $400,000. This financial institution continued until 1853, when an extension of its charter expired and it closed its business and liquidated. Another bank of the same name began business January 1, 1853. In the early days of the institution it issued notes in as small denomination as five cents.
As the years passed banking laws steadily became more stringent in their provisions for protection of depositors. The Savings Banks and National Banks made their debut and then the state banks and trust companies. Generally speaking, sav- ings and loan associations and a few credit unions and industrial banking concerns were the latest financial institutions coming into Central New York. Of these latter the savings and loan associations occupy the most prominent position. Under the state banking law such an association is defined as a "domestic moneyed but non-stock corporation formed for the purpose of encouraging industry, frugality, home building, the saving of money by its members, the accumulation of savings, the lending of such accumulations to its members and the repayment to each member of his savings when they have accumulated to a certain sum."
Today there are a score of savings and loan associations in the eleven counties of this district and, despite the panic, all save those in three counties show a marked increase in resources for 1931 over 1930. Not a one has closed during the depression. A
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number are members of the State Land Bank, organized in 1915 as a mutual institution to provide funds for its member associa- tions. This is accomplished by assigning bonds and mortgages to the Land Bank, which in turn uses these bonds and mortgages as collateral security for serial bonds for public investment. It thus enables members to secure funds in emergencies and at times when such funds can be advantageously used. The Land Bank report for the year ending December 31, 1931, shows a capital of $1,147,000, loans to members of $16,110,000 and bonds outstanding in the sum of $16,439,000.
The Auburn Savings and Loan Association, which commenced business in 1920, has assets of $924,452.
The Bath Savings and Loan Association, which began busi- ness in 1890, has assets of $247,916.
In Canisteo, Steuben County, the Savings and Loan Associa- tion began business in 1921 and its assets have mounted to $148,296.
The Corning Cooperative Savings and Loan Association, which opened for business in 1889, has assets totaling $5,127,216.
In Cortland the Dime Savings and Loan Association has assets of $666,048, although it began business as late as 1911.
Elmira has two such financial institutions and one credit union : The Chemung Valley Savings and Loan Association, with assets of $5,279,561 and in existence since 1875; the Elmira Federal Employees' Credit Union, organized in 1931 and with assets of $4,399, and the Elmira Savings and Loan Association, organized in 1888 and with present assets of $3,082,988.
The Geneva Permanent Loan and Savings Association com- menced business in 1886 and has built up assets of $3,655,410.
The Savings and Loan Association of Groton was formed in 1914 and has assets of $51,120.
Hornell has two such savings institutions: the Hornellsville Cooperative Savings and Loan Association, formed in 1888 and with present assets of $144,709; and the Maple City Cooperative Savings and Loan Association, which commenced business in 1906 and now has assets of $1,440,242.
The Horseheads Savings and Loan Association began busi- ness in 1920 and its assets total $344,440.
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In Ithaca are two associations and one credit union; the Ageco Credit Union with assets of $1,944; the Ithaca Savings and Loan Association, founded in 1915, and with assets of $1,842,314; and the M. I. A. Credit Union, organized in 1930 and with assets of $674.
The Wayne Savings and Loan Association at Lyons com- menced business in 1924 and has assets of $31,414.
At Montour Falls, the Shepard Savings and Loan Associa- tion began business in 1920 and has assets of $102,026.
The Owego Savings and Loan Association, commencing busi- ness in 1921, now has assets of $26,231.
The Home Savings and Loan Association of Penn Yan, which opened in 1890, has $58,210 in assets.
The Waverly Cooperative Savings and Loan Association, or- ganized in 1902, has assets of $667,940.
At Wayland, Steuben County, the Dime Savings and Loan Association was formed in 1888 and its assets total $87,077.
All figures herein given are taken from the annual report of the superintendent of banks of the state for the year 1931.
CHAPTER XXVII
CAYUGA COUNTY.
AREA-ORGANIZATION-EARLY INDUSTRIES-LOCATION OF COUNTY SEAT- TOWNS - PIONEER SETTLERS - CHURCHES - AUBURN - AURORA - CATO- CAYUGA - FAIR HAVEN - UNION SPRINGS - MORAVIA - MERIDIAN -PORT BYRON-WEEDSPORT.
Cayuga, the twenty-ninth county in the state, was formed from Onondaga March 8, 1799. It covers 703 square miles and has a land area of 449,920 acres, 82.9 per cent of which is in farms, which number 3,865. The farm acreage totals 372,890 and the value of the land and farm buildings is placed at $21,701,- 367. Cayuga's population is 64,828.
Industrially the county is as rich as agriculturally. According to the 1929 federal figures, the last available, 120 industrial plants were listed, employing an average number of 6,774 per- sons. The county's annual industrial wages total $8,135,889; her plants pay for materials, fuel and purchased power $21,420,- 763 and the value of her industrial products yearly is $41,884,673.
Cayuga County has 1,489 miles of roads, 288 of which are of the finest paved state highway. Her motor cars number 17,796. The county's single city, Auburn, located in the geographical center, is the county seat. In addition are nine incorporated villages: Aurora, Cato, Cayuga, Fair Haven, Meridian, Moravia, Port Byron, Union Springs and Weedsport.
Cayuga has twenty-three towns, with the following popula- tion : Aurelius, 1,430; Brutus, 2,109; Cato, 1,288; Conquest, 906; Fleming, 987; Genoa, 1,407; Ira, 1,342; Ledyard, 1,235; Locke, 715; Mentz, 1,553; Montezuma, 690; Moravia, 1,913; Niles, 902; Owasco, 1,753; Scipio, 991; Sempronius, 543; Sennett, 1,524;
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Springport, 1,313; Sterling, 1,966; Summerhill, 448; Throop, 990; Venice, 1,050; Victory, 1,037.
Cayuga County, about halfway between Albany and Buffalo, is fifty-five miles long and has an average width of fourteen miles. Its drainage is in a general northerly direction.
The earliest civic division in this part of the state was Tyron County, created in 1772 and changed to Montgomery in 1784. It included the entire state west of a north and south line drawn through the center of Schoharie County. Ontario County was next formed January 27, 1789, and included all that part of Montgomery County lying west of a north and south line drawn through Seneca Lake, two miles east of Geneva. Herkimer County was formed in 1791, extending from Ontario County to Montgomery County. Onondaga was formed from Herkimer March 5, 1794, and included the original Military Tract, the present counties of Cayuga, Seneca and Cortland and parts of Tompkins, Wayne and Oswego. Cayuga when formed in 1799 then embraced Seneca and a part of Tompkins.
Towns in those days were very large. Whitestown, created in 1788, embraced the entire state west of Utica and there were less than 200 inhabitants when it was formed. The town officers were scattered from Geneseo on the west to Utica on the east.
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