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 28
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 28
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 28
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 28
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This large town was afterward divided into Mexico, Peru and Whitestown, Mexico embracing the eastern half of the Mili- tary Tract. The first town meeting in Mexico was held at the home of Seth Phelps, in the town of Ledyard, and the first general election in the town of Whitestown, was held at Cayuga Ferry on the east side of Cayuga Lake near the present Cayuga village. If the voters residing as far east as Utica came to Cayuga to vote, traversing over eighty miles of forest roads, they paid heavily in labor for the franchise. Cayuga County contributed to the formation of two other counties. Seneca was taken off in 1804 and a part of Tompkins in 1817.
Cayuga County as early as 1810 had forty-seven distilleries going full blast, according to Spafford's Gazeteer of 1813, which says: "The number of looms in the county were 1,360, pro- ducing 340,870 yards of cloth annually; there are nineteen tan-
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neries, forty-seven distilleries, forty-eight asheries, eleven card- ing machines, eleven cloth dress mills, three oil mills, an air furnace triphammer, several nail factories, six earthenware fac- tories and several hatters' shops. About 2,500 skeins of silk and 60,000 bushels of salt are made annually. The inhabitants clothe themselves principally in the products of their own families and, were it not for the exorbitant number of their distilleries, I should add, were very temperate and industrious."
When the county was organized the first courthouse was at Aurora, a structure of poles, covered with brush. There in 1803 a circuit court and court of Oyer and Terminer was held and an Indian tried for murder and sentenced to be hung. A log shack in Cayuga was authorized for a jail in 1800. The first court- house in Auburn was constructed in 1807-09 at a cost of $10,000. It was of wood and two stories high and painted white. The lower story, used as a jail, was built of large upright logs held together with iron spikes.
The present courthouse of stone was projected in 1835. In 1922 it was gutted by fire and completely restored in 1924, the same walls being used but an additional story added. The corner- stone of the present county clerk's building was laid April 17, 1882, and it was occupied the following March.
First county officers were: Seth Phelps, judge; William Stuart, district attorney; Benjamin Ledyard, county clerk; Jo- seph Annin, sheriff ; Glen Cuyler, surrogate.
Even the hamlet of Sherwood shared early ambitions to be the county seat and succeeded in 1804 in being selected by com- missioners to designate a location. But Sherwood was shorn of this glory in 1805, when the law which established it as a county seat was revoked. But Sherwood went so far as to pro- vide a jail, in the upper east room of a structure, across the windows of which iron bars were fastened. In the building, a tailor shop, courts were also held for one year.
A stone jail was erected in Auburn in 1833, two stories high, with two double and twenty-six single cells, arranged in the center of the building with a hall on three sides, open to the prisoners in the daytime. The contract for the present jail was let in 1887.
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Cayuga has one assembly district. It is in the Thirty-sixth Congressional District, the Seventh Judicial District and the Forty-second Senatorial District.
TOWNS.
Aurelius was formed January 27, 1789, and Brutus was taken from Aurelius March 30, 1802. Cato was formed from Aurelius on exactly the same date and Conquest was formed from Cato March 16, 1821.
Genoa township is in the central portion of what was orig- inally organized as the town of Milton in 1797, ten years before formation of Cayuga County. Locke was taken off in 1802 and the name changed in 1808 to Genoa.
Ledyard was formed from Scipio January 20, 1823, being named for Benjamin Ledyard, agent and clerk for apportion- ment of lands in the Military Tract.
Montezuma was formed from Mentz April 8, 1859, and Mentz previously had been formed from Aurelius March 30, 1802. At that time Mentz was known as Jefferson, its name being changed April 6, 1808.
Moravia was formed from Sempronius March 20, 1833, Niles was formed from Sempronius March 30, 1883, Ira was formed from Cato March 16, 1821.
Scipio was one of the original towns, having been formed March 5, 1794. Fleming was formed from Aurelius March 28, 1823, and Sempronius March 9, 1799.
Locke was created from Milton (now Genoa) February 20, 1802. Owasco was formed from Aurelius March 30, 1802, and Sennett from Brutus March 19, 1827. Springport was formed from Scipio January 30, 1823.
Sterling, named from William Alexander, Lord Sterling of Revolutionary memory, was formed from Cato June 19, 1812.
Summerhill, originally known as Plato, was formed from Locke April 26, 1831, and its name changed March 16, 1832. Throop, named after Governor Enos T. Throop, a resident, was formed from Aurelius, Mentz and Sennett April 8, 1859.
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Venice was formed from Scipio January 30, 1823, and Vic- tory from Cato March 16, 1821.
The first settler in Cayuga County was Col. John Harris, who came to what is the town of Aurelius in 1788 and built a log cabin near the old Indian trail westward just south of what is now Cayuga village. Nearby he established a ferry across Cayuga Lake about where Cowing's Point now is. Near this point was made the fifth and last treaty between the state and the Cayuga Indians for purchase of their last reservation, in 1795. Red Jacket and Fish Carrier for the Cayugas; John Harris and John Richardson for the state of New York were the prin- cipal negotiators. How the state paid in 1931 a claim there made is told in the chapter dealing with Indians of the region.
The second settler was Roswell Franklin, who came in 1789 and settled not far distant. Even then the Cayuga Indians, who once held supremacy over the territory now embraced by the county, still resided along Cayuga Lake. Most of the early set- tlers were soldiers, who drew lots upon the Military Tract or who had purchased soldiers' warrants. The first immigration to the county was by way of Oneida Lake and River, and from the south by way of Cayuga Lake. But in 1796 a state road from Whitestown to Geneva by way of Auburn was cut through and in 1800 the famous Cayuga Bridge was built, making the county in the direct path of the great highway of westward travel. First inhabitants were principally from New England and eastern New York counties.
At least a dozen churches in Cayuga County, outside Auburn, were founded more than a century ago. The First Presbyterian Church, town of Mentz, in Port Byron, was organized as early as 1801, as a Congregational Church and was changed to the Presbyterian form of government in 1811, when the Presbytery of Cayuga was formed.
The Presbyterian Church of Cayuga was formed May 30, 1819, in a school house and two years later erected a meeting house. The Congregational Church at Ira Corners was organ- ized July 7, 1807, and the Baptists of Fleming held their first services about 1794 in private homes. The Baptists formed the
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first church in Sempronius in 1798 and in Locke the Methodists organized in 1819. The First Presbyterian Church in Sennett was organized in 1805 as the First Congregational Church of Brutus. The Baptist Church in Summerhill came into being in 1807, the Baptist Church in Venice in 1800 and the Methodist Church in Victory in 1813. Sand Beach Church at the foot of Owasco Lake, town of Fleming, was organized as the Protestant Reformed Church in 1807 and the first church was built on the site in 1810. Present edifice was erected in 1855. The First Presbyterian Church of Genoa was organized August 13, 1798, the first structure being a log cabin a mile east and a mile south of King Ferry. A new edifice was built at the present site in the village in 1806, replaced by the present structure in 1847 and enlarged in 1871. The Reformed Dutch Church of Owasco was the first in the county, being built in 1798.
AUBURN.
Coming down the winding Indian trail from the East on a bright day in 1793, a tall, swarthy veteran of Sullivan's cam- paign, with his daughter and two negro slaves, paused in a thick hemlock forest beside the rushing waters of the Owasco River. The latent power of the stream fascinated him. For several days he explored the valley. Then upon a dry spot in the section, which was chiefly a swamp, he chose the site for his cabin. Capt. John L. Hardenbergh had found what is now Auburn.
Though originally awarded bounty land in the towns of Fabius and Cicero, Hardenbergh chose the wild Owasco Valley because of his intimate knowledge of the region and the possi- bilities for its future growth. After the Sullivan campaign, he had been a deputy under the surveyor general, when the original townships in the Military Tract were mapped. So he disposed of his award to obtain a location where he might put the power of the Owasco in harness.
His first cabin with its rude smoke hole, went up on what is now the site of the present new headquarters fire building in Market Street. A clearing appeared in the forest. With his home built, the pioneer next went at the task of controlling the
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strength of the Owasco. A log dam was flung across the stream and a gig mill, with thatched roof, rose to grind the grain which previously the Indians and isolated white pioneers had crushed with a pestle and mortar. By 1802 Hardenbergh had built a second mill, that would turn out thirty bushels of flour a day, as against the original twelve.
Auburn's industries were born. The first of the plants which were later to utilize the power of Owasco River in its fall of 170 feet within the city turned out its product.
Auburn's close association with the Sullivan campaign is re- vealed in the acquisition of lots on what is now the city, by officers in the expedition against the Iroquois. Col. Peter Gansevoort, who with a detachment in the Sullivan campaign passed east- ward from Cayuga to the foot of Owasco Lake not far from the site of Auburn, drew lot fifty-seven, retaining it until 1805 when he sold it to Samuel Swift for $4,000.
Col. Philip Van Cortlandt, another officer in Sullivan's cam- paign, acquired 100 acres, transferring it in 1799 to William Bostwick, who built a log tavern on South Street and afterward erected Bostwick's Tavern, where the Western Exchange Hotel was later built and long enjoyed a large patronage.
Three years after Hardenbergh came, Samuel Bristol arrived and opened the first tavern in a log cabin, in which a little store was Auburn's first mercantile establishment. There were then eight families in the hamlet. In all this time the Aurelius town meetings were held in the home of Hardenbergh, and the town was so small the majority of citizens had to accept office to fill the civil list.
In 1796 the first school was opened a little north of where the present Holy Family school now stands. The settlement, which had been named Hardenbergh's Corners, boasted a post office in 1800, with the mail brought on horseback every two weeks. By 1804 the service was bi-weekly and by 1808 daily. Stages ran along the old Genesee trail on weekly schedule as early as 1800, the year that the first bridge across the outlet was built at North Street. Previous to that pedestrians crossed on a tree trunk and horses waded.
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In the tiny post office Enos T. Throop, later governor of the state, was postmaster from 1809 to 1815. He was also suc- cessively Supreme Court judge, county clerk, Congressman for Cayuga, Seneca, Tioga and Broome counties, naval officer of the Port of New York and charge d'affairs to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Auburn early owed its growth to water power and secondly to the removal of the county seat to the village, land for the court house being donated by William Bostwick. In 1803 Har- denbergh's Corners became Auburn, on recommendation of a "Naming Committee." By 1810 the place gave first indications of being a real manufacturing center, with seventeen small in- dustrial plants along the Owasco outlet. Six dams provided water power for five saw mills, four grist mills, two distilleries, two carding mills, two fulling mills, one linseed oil mill and one forge.
In 1808 Auburn's first newspaper, The Western Federalist, was published by two Englishmen, holding the field without com- petition until the Cayuga Patriot made its debut six years later.
North and Genesee Streets were the first in Auburn. South and Owasco were laid out in 1795; Market, then known as Mill road, and Franklin, at first called the Genesee Road, were projected two years later. East Genesee, though in use before, was legally designated in 1802. Division Street was mapped in 1799 and Seminary Avenue in 1805. What is now Osborn Street and known before as Lumber Lane and then Mechanic Street, was not definitely located until 1821. Seminary and Fulton Streets date from 1806 and State and Chapel from 1811.
Agitation for an academy began in 1810 and several resi- dents offered to donate land for such a school. That given by Robert Dill, embracing five and a half acres on Garden Street, was accepted. By 1811 subscriptions totaling $4,090 were pledged for the academy and on January 5, 1811, the Auburn School Association was formed. That year the academy building was erected, a three-story brick structure, sixty feet by twenty feet in size. In it dark cells were provided to confine unruly boys. Fireplaces provided heat. The school opened February 3, 1812,
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but was burned in 1816 and rebuilt in 1823. The present build- ing on the site was erected in 1888. The school had been estab- lished as a High School free to children of the city in 1867, but the word Academic is still used in Auburn Academic High School in accordance with a condition of the old Dill gift of land.
The High School in the fall of 1932 became the Junior High School, with the building of a $750,000 Senior High School out Franklin Street on the site of the car barns of the old Auburn & Syracuse Electric Railroad, abandoned a few years ago. Part of the land was given the city by Fred L. Emerson, who pur- chased all holdings of the defunct transit company. The new school is one of the finest in the state, with an auditorium seating 1,500, with a gymnasium for boys and girls, with baseball dia- monds, a battery of tennis courts, three football gridirons and other novel features including a large cafeteria. The structure is the finest public building in Auburn and contrasts sharply with the original academy of 1812.
By 1815 the village had 200 houses and 1,000 population. A swamp covered that part of the business district now occupied by Dill and Water Streets, but it was being cleared and drained. The forest had not been cut away beyond where Washington Street now runs and magnificent South Street was then a mud lane. There were but five brick buildings on Genesee Street. In that year the first volunteer fire company organized and the vil- lage was duly incorporated on April 18, 1815.
Before the incorporation, the sidewalks consisted of slabs thrown down in summer and consumed for fuel in winter. But the new village administration ordered brick or plank walks eight feet wide on both sides of Genesee Street, on the west side of North and on the north side of Center Street.
It was about this time that the most striking institution in the region-Auburn Prison-was proposed. As with the acad- emy, citizens again donated the site for the penal institution known throughout the world and whose history is sketched in the chapter of this volume dealing with state institutions.
On February 4, 1818, the Agricultural Association of Cayuga County was formed and the following October the first county fair was held in Auburn.
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In 1824 Dr. Erastus Tuttle, prison physician, began a med- ical school in Auburn, continuing educational lectures to students until his death five years later. Associates sought to carry on but establishment of a medical department at Hobart College, Geneva, influenced the Legislature to deny Auburn's application for a college charter and the project died.
The first Auburn band was established in 1825, when the village population was 2,982.
Ten years later the Big Dam was built, with the idea of form- ing a canal to Owasco Lake. The cornerstone bore this inscrip- tion: "The Cornerstone of the Auburn and Owasco Canal was laid October 14, 1835." Five years later the laboriously begun canal project was abandoned, but the sponsors had given Auburn a magnificent dam twenty feet high, adding greatly to the utili- zation of the river's water power.
Because Auburn was given the state prison, the state refused to deflect the course of the Erie Canal to pass through the city and the first step in blocking the advance of a community that bid fair to be the leading metropolis of western New York had been taken. But no sooner had hopes of securing the Erie been blighted than Auburnians in 1822 proposed to construct a canal to Port Byron. Meetings were held, committees named and noth- ing accomplished. Seven years later the project was revived and the Owasco Canal Company organized and $100,000 subscribed. The company incorporated April 20, 1828. But the plan fell through, once again to be agitated within the past twenty years.
Auburn's streets were lighted for the first time by oil lamps on December 31, 1836. The following year, on January 21, 1837, occurred the most destructive fire in Auburn's early days, when fourteen buildings in the business section were leveled with a loss of $100,000.
That year was also marked by the building of the Town Hall, used as the City Hall until 1930. It was built at a cost of $30,000 and the lower floor used as a public market. Down through nearly a century it underwent many changes. In its rear was the police station and city lock-up. Up until 1930 the head-
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quarters fire company was also located in the old home of the city's founder back of the ancient City Hall.
Here it is well to digress in the chronological sequence of city events to touch upon the magnificent new structures which have just replaced the old City Hall and the fire station. The new $500,000 Memorial City Hall, dedicated April 5, 1930, was a direct result of the interest stimulated in the Osborne family for the city's welfare, because of the part members of that family had taken in advancing the community.
Memorial City Hall was the gift of Mrs. James J. Storrow of Boston and Mrs. Frederick Harris of Springfield, Massachu- setts, in memory of their father, David Munson Osborne, who was mayor in 1879 and 1880, the first in a line of three Osbornes who became the city's chief executive. The next in line was the late Thomas Mott Osborne, famed prison reformer, who was mayor in 1902 and 1904. Both held office under the old alder- manic form of government. Under Commission form, Plan C, the third Osborne, Capt. Charles D. Osborne, was mayor for a four-year term from 1928 to 1932.
The donors of the new hall chose a site opposite historic Rich- ardson Square, opposite the Woman's Union, another Osborne benefaction. The cornerstone was laid May 16, 1929, and at the later dedication former Lieut .- Gov. George R. Lunn and Mayor Rolland B. Marvin of Syracuse were among the prominent speakers.
The abandoned City Hall in Market Street was razed by the city and the handsome police and fire station of colonial archi- tecture, matching the new City Hall, was erected. It was opened in the fall of 1931, Chester J. Bills being the first police chief in charge of the station and Fred W. Washburn the first fire chief in the new central fire headquarters, to which the State Street Hose No. 3 was recalled.
Atop the old City Hall there was placed, June 17, 1881, the ancient Wheeler Bell, weighing 6,300 pounds. Until the hall was razed, it pounded out the city's fire alarms in clarion tones, its great clapper shaking the venerable building at every stroke.
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Today the bell rests silent in the tower of the new Memorial City Hall. It was named in honor of Mayor Wheeler.
Reverting to days when Auburn put up the City Hall in 1837, we find that in the fall of 1838 William H. Seward, one of Au- burn's most distinguished citizens, was chosen governor.
Two years later the village entertained two distinguished guests; Henry Clay, who was welcomed by the Whigs and Presi- dent Martin VanBuren, feted by the Democrats. John Quincy Adams was a guest in 1843.
The biggest state fair in New York up to that time was held in Auburn upon the top of Capitol Hill, beginning September 15, 1846. The street was given its name because at one time it was thought Auburn would become the state capital, and the govern- ment buildings would be located at the crest of the hill.
About this time Auburn was the center of the American silk industry, with many growers starting the cultivation of the mul- berry tree. Manufacture of silk was begun in the prison and there were only three mills in the nation employing more opera- tives than behind those gray walls. Auburn was the principal cash silk market for the country. Finally the prison suspended manufacture and the flourishing industry lived but five years.
Organization May 15, 1815, of the Fort Hill Cemetery Asso- ciation, to have jurisdiction over historic Fort Hill recalls the mystery and romance which clothes one of the most intriguing spots in the region-a cemetery originally purchased for a dollar and occupying the site of a pre-historic fortification.
To the casual visitor Fort Hill is simply a beautiful cemetery where repose the remains of William H. Seward and where a monument towers to the memory of the Indian, Logan. But to the archaeologist the antique shafts appear as milestones of the ages, recalling the eternal continuity of life from the time, per- haps, when the ancient Mound Builders worshipped their gods from an eminence in the center of the hill.
When earliest settlers came to Auburn they found an aborig- inal fortress. McCauley, the historian, visited it in 1825 and under the title, "Fort Alleghan," described it as follows: "It enclosed about two acres and had a rampart, ditch and gateway.
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It is now nearly obliterated by the plow. In its original state, or condition, it was in about 1790, the rampart was seven feet high and the ditch ten feet wide and three deep. Two persons, the one standing in the ditch and the other within the enclosure, were unable to see each other. The gateway was in the north- western side in the direction of a spring which flowed close by. The work was 350 paves in circumstance."
Shoecraft, who visited the spot in 1845 for the state, held that the fortress was the work of the Alleghans, a tribe of Mound Builders, driven out by the Iroquois. The antiquarian, E. G. Squier, after comparing the pottery, pipes, ornaments and relics of barbaric art found in the fort, with those of historic and pre- historic tribes, leaned to the belief that the fortification was con- structed by the Iroquois.
In 1852, with $7,000 appropriated by the state, work of im- proving the Owasco outlet was begun, so as to maintain a proper depth in dry seasons and a proper supply for the Erie Canal, of which the waterway was a feeder. Within two years the "new channel" was cut through at the foot of Owasco Lake, creating what is now known as the Island and forming a new artificial lake outlet.
A charter was granted to the Auburn Water Works Com- pany in 1859 and $100,000 capital was raised in 1863. The following year a pump house, dam and raceway were completed and in 1865 water mains were being laid in the city for a supply direct from the lake.
With a capital of $20,000 the Auburn Gas Light Company was organized January 11, 1850, and prepared to light the city September 1. That very night the factory burned down but the company was in operation within a month. Ten years later the company put up a plant to manufacture gas from coal, instead of from "whales foots" and from rosin as before.
In 1858 the great D. M. Osborne & Co., now the Auburn works of the International Harvester Company, commenced manufacturing reapers and mowers.
In 1848 Auburn was incorporated as a city.
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The number of wards was increased from seven to ten by the new charter signed by the governor February 28, 1879. The fol- lowing year the letter carrier system was inaugurated and, to facilitate deliveries, the Common Council ordered the streets re- numbered. It was this year that General Ulysses S. Grant visited the city.
September 17, 1880, a separate militia company was organ- ized and a year later given the name Wheeler Rifles in honor of Mayor Wheeler. On August 10 the first train over the Ithaca, Auburn & Western Railroad entered Auburn. Madison School was erected in 1883 and the first "dummy" engine made its trip over what has been known as the Owasco River Railroad, sold in 1929 to the New York Central for $75,000. On September 9 the Soule Cemetery was dedicated. Auburn's first electric lights glowed on November 28, 1883, and official lighting of the streets by electricity began December 15, 1884.
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