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 33
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 33
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 33
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 33
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The first store was opened by Abner and Henry Wells in about 1792. This was followed by another store on the opposite side of the river, by Isaac Baldwin. Daniel Brown erected the first saw mill on Bently Creek in 1830. The first grist mill was built by Isaac Baldwin as early as 1800, near Lowman. The first tavern was run by William Baldwin.
Of the religious organizations, the Wellsburg Baptist Church Society was originated in the town of Chemung in 1789, by Ros- well Goff and a few of his followers of Baptist denomination. A boulder and tablet was dedicated about a mile east of Wells-
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burg, on the Wilawana Highway, in 1931, on September 2, the anniversary of the original date, in commemoration of this early organization. This privitive church was the first organization of its kind in the Chemung and neighboring valleys.
Christ Church, Episcopal, was organized in 1869. The Meth- odist Church was organized as a class in 1839, and as a society in 1847.
CHAPTER XXIX
CORTLAND COUNTY.
ERECTED IN 1808-INDUSTRIES-NAME-TOPOGRAPHY-PIONEERS AND EARLY SETTLEMENTS-TOWNS-COUNTY SEAT QUESTION-CITY OF CORTLAND- - MCGRAW-HOMER-MARATHON.
Cortland County, embracing 503 square miles, was erected from Onondaga County, April 8, 1808, as the forty-third county in the state. It has a land area of 321,920 acres, of which eighty and nine-tenths per cent or 260,387 acres are in farms. The lands and buildings on the 1,968 farms are valued at $12,045,677. The county's population is 31,713, a little more than half of which is urban.
There are sixty-four industrial plants in Cortland County, according to the last available federal statistics for 1929. In these plants are 4,182 employes who receive $4,818,401 yearly in wages. Cortland's industries pay $13,815,277 annually for ma- terials, fuel and purchased power and the value of their products reaches $28,624,352 per year.
Cortland County has 1,047 miles of highway, of which 174 are of the finest improved state construction. There are 10,175 motor vehicles owned within the county.
Cortland, the only city, is the county seat and in addition are three incorporated villages: Homer, McGraw and Marathon.
Cortland County was named after Gen. Peter VanCortlandt, first lieutenant-governor of the state and a gentleman who in the early part of the Nineteenth Century was extensively engaged in the purchase and sale of land. It is bounded on the north by Onondaga County, on the east by Madison and Chenango, the south by Broome and Tioga and the west by Tompkins and Cay- uga. It forms a section of the high central section of the state,
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its northern boundary being on the dividing ridge which sepa- rates the waters flowing into Lake Ontario and the tributaries flowing into the Susquehanna.
Hilly ranges, broad, level plains and a plateau in the north- ern area comprise the surface of Cortland County. Three high parallel ranges of hills cut the county from north to south. On the east is the Otselic Valley and further west the Tioughnioga Valley, which spreads still further westward in a broad, undu- lating highland. Lateral valleys cut into the Otselic and Tiough- nioga from several directions, with a generally northern and southerly trend. The county's highest points are Mt. Topping, the Truxton and Owego Hills. The northern plateau has an average elevation of 1,200 feet, with some hills soaring upward to 2,000 feet.
Most of the pioneers of Cortland County came either by way of the Susquehanna, the Chenango and the Tioughnioga from the south and east or southward from Manlius through Truxton and later from Onondaga Valley. The first abode of a white man in the county was erected on the site of Homer by Mr. and Mrs. Amos Todd and Joseph Beebe, who hailed from New Haven, Connecticut. The house was built chiefly of poles and completed about 1791. There quickly followed these first pioneers, John House, James Matthews, James Moore, Silas and Daniel Miller, all of whom located near what is now Homer village.
In 1792 Joseph Chapin came into the town of Virgil and made the first permanent settlement there. It was he who ex- plored and surveyed the state road from Oxford, Chenango County, to Cayuga Lake at Ludlowville during the first season he arrived. He afterward employed large numbers of men and built the road in 1793-94. Later he brought his family to the frontier settlement.
About the same time a road was partly cut through the forest from the south, near the river, until near the present site of Marathon village. Diverging from the stream, it continued in a northerly direction, intersected the state road in Freetown and so passed on northward through the county to the Salina salt
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works, giving it the name "The Salt Road." These were the county's first roads.
Other early settlers in the several towns were: Cortland- ville, John Miller, 1792; Marathon, Dr. Japheth Hunt, 1794; Cin- cinnatus, Thaddeus Rochwell, 1793; Truxton, Samuel C. Bene- dict, 1793; Cuyler, Nathaniel Potter, Christopher Whitney, David Morse, Benjamin Brown, 1794; Preble, James Craveth, John Gill, 1796; Scott, Peleg Babcock, Samuel and Asa Howard, 1799; Solon, Roderick Beebe, Johnson Bingham, 1794; Freetown, Cyrus San- ders, 1795; Taylor, Ezra Rockwell, 1793; Willet, Ebenezer Crit- tenden, 1797; Harford, Doratus DeWolf, 1803; Lapeer, Primus Grant (colored), 1799.
Settlement of the county in great measure followed the con- struction of early roads. In 1807 the Salina & Chenango Turn- pike Co. was formed to build a road from Binghamton north. In 1811 a road was laid out from Manlius to Truxton. The Cort- land and Seneca Turnpike Company was incorporated in 1812 to build a route from Homer to Ithaca. The Fifth Great Western Turnpike Road Co. was incorporated in 1814 to run a road from Homer through Truxton into Locke, Cayuga County. A month later the Homer and Cayuga Turnpike Co. was incorporated to build from Homer through Cortland village to intersect with the Fifth Great Western Turnpike. In April, 1816, the Homer & Genoa Turnpike Co. was incorporated to run from Homer through Dryden to Genoa. In March, 1817, the Homer and Eld- ridge Turnpike Road Co. was incorporated to maintain a turn- pike from Homer through Scott, Spafford and Skaneateles to Eldridge.
In 1815 a turnpike from Homer through Cortland and Dry- den to Ithaca was contemplated. A movement was launched in 1816 for a road through Cincinnatus, Solon, Truxton, Fabius and Pompey, and in 1819 for a turnpike from Cortland through Virgil Corners and on to Owego. During the same year the Onondaga and Chenango Turnpike Co. was organized. In 1824 the Onon- daga and Cortland Turnpike Co. was chartered. The same year a road was designated from Canastota to Cincinnatus and in 1825 from Camillus to Port Watson. The old Syracuse and
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Cortland stage road was built in 1849-'51 and the time of pas- senger coaches each way was six hours.
Towns of the county were erected on the following dates: Homer, March 5, 1794; Solon, March 9, 1798; Cincinnatus and Virgil, April 3, 1804; Preble and Truxton, April 8, 1808; Scott, April 14, 1815; Marathon, Freetown and Willet, April 21, 1818; Cortlandville, April 11, 1829; Lapeer and Harford, May 2, 1845; Taylor, December 5, 1849; Cuyler, November 18, 1858.
From the beginning, Cortland settlers were zealous to provide schooling for their children. The first school in Homer was opened in 1798. In other towns the earliest schools were: Cin- cinnatus, 1797; Marathon, 1803; Preble, 1801; Scott, 1803; Solon, 1804; Truxton, 1799; Taylor, 1810; Harford, 1806.
By 1810 the population of Cortland County was divided as follows between the several towns: Homer, 2,975; Solon, 1,265; Virgil, 906; Cincinnatus, 1,525; Preble, 1,179; Truxton, 1,031; the census for Taylor, Harford and Marathon not being recorded in old papers.
The county seat question was a perplexing one in the begin- ning of the nineteenth century. By legislative act passed April 5, 1810, three commissioners were named to choose a site for a courthouse, the commissioner being residents of other counties. Previously courts were conducted in a schoolhouse at Homer, which village, with Port Watson, McGrawville and Cortland were rivals in the race to be selected as a county seat.
Residents of Cortland arranged to purchase a courthouse site, owned by Samuel Ingalls, on the hill west of Main Street, and to donate it to the county. This turned the tide in favor of Cortland. Building commissioners on March 4, 1812, contracted with Josiah Cushman of Homer to complete construction of the courthouse, the frame work having already gone up with the selection of Cortland. Work was completed by April 15, 1813, ten days be- fore which the Legislature had directed that courts be held in the new building, erected at a cost of $1,600.
Then on April 15, 1817, the Board of Supervisors was au- thorized to raise by tax a sum not to exceed $5,000 for purchase of a site for and erection of a jail. This climaxed a bitter rivalry
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between Homer and Cortland for the jail. Building of the struc- ture took place in 1818 near the courthouse. The jail was a two- story square brick structure with cells made of heavy maple planks.
The courthouse was of wood, with steeple and spire, about two blocks west from and facing Main Street. The next court- house was at the corner of Church and Court Streets. It was of brick.
With a statue of justice surmounting it fully 160 feet from the ground below, the county's present $800,000 courthouse, built in 1922, is one of the finest in the region. Visible for miles from the highways approaching from the south and east, the building, more impressive than some state capitols, lies in a park shaded by stately old elms.
The pioneer journalist of Cortland County was James Per- cival, who issued the first number of the Cortland Courier in Homer village in 1810, one year before there was a paper in Onondaga Hollow; two years before there was one at Buffalo and nineteen years before there was one at Syracuse. Percival estab- lished later the first paper in Cortland village-June 30, 1815. It voiced public opinion in fighting rival villages in securing ad- vantages through state favor.
No stronger proof of the natural advantages of Cortland County is needed than the historical fact that in a bare twenty years after the first settlement, all the villages had been estab- lished and the county was a thriving, populous industrial and agricultural community.
According to the official postal guide of July, 1930, Cortland County has the following post offices: Blodget Mills, Cincin- natus, Cortland, Cuyler, East Freetown, East Homer, Harford, Harford Mills, Homer, Little York, McGraw, Marathon, Mes- sengerville, Preble, Solon, Taylor, Truxton, Union Valley, and Willet.
CITY OF CORTLAND.
Where seven of the state's loveliest valleys come together, in the town of Cortlandville, lies Cortland, a city of about 16,000
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population and the county seat. Three of these valleys lead into the Finger Lakes Region. In early days, along the waters of the Tioughnioga River to Port Watson, now a part of the City of Cortland, came settlers who loaded their produce on scows and boats that were floated down to the junction of the river with the Chenango and then on down the Susquehanna to Pennsylvania points.
The town of Cortlandville constituted the southern part of the town of Homer until April 11, 1829. In Homer Township the first settlers were Joseph Beebe, his wife and Amos Todd, who came in 1791. A year later the first white settler in the town of Cortlandville, John Miller and his family, erected a rude hut. Although in 1793 only six families were settled in the town, four years later the number had increased to ninety-two and in 1810 the census shows Homer had 2,975 residents.
From this humble beginning the city has had a steady, sure growth. Situated on a plain 1,129 feet above sea level, it has an altitude much higher than that of many advertised health resorts. It was incorporated as a village in 1853 and as a city in 1900, when a charter was adopted that is a model for the advantages it affords. When Cortland became a city, its population was but 9,282.
Today Cortland is served by two trunk line railroads-the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and the Lehigh Valley, in ad- dition to several responsible motor truck freight lines. Terminal facilities in Cortland are sufficient to handle about 1,000 cars. Motor busses run on regular schedule to Syracuse, Binghamton, Auburn, Ithaca, Groton, Norwich, Cazenovia and New York City.
The pioneers of the original village of Cortland were Jonathan Hubbard and Moses Hopkins. In 1804 Hubbard erected his dwelling, the first on the site of the village, on what is now the corner of Court and Main Streets. Mead Merrill erected a saw mill near Port Watson, which was in operation in 1816, and was appointed surrogate in 1810 and county clerk in 1813. A tavern was built about 1818 by Nathan Luce and subsequently became the famous old Eagle Tavern. Jacob Wheeler probably was the first blacksmith, arriving in 1812. The first jewelers and silver-
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smiths were Joshua and his son, W. H. Bassett, and the first harness and saddlemaker was William Bartlit, who located prior to 1815.
Other early settlers were James Percival, who established the first newspaper, The Cortland Republican, June 30, 1815; Dr. Miles Goodyear, in the fall of 1817; Jethro Bonney in 1816; Nel- son Spencer, who, in 1820, erected a paper mill at the junction of the east and west branches of the Tioughnioga; Asahel Lyman, who in 1816 built the old Samson block, corner Main Street and Groton Avenue; Samuel Hitchkiss, who located in 1815 and who was deputy county clerk from 1815 to 1823 and clerk in 1823-35, and again in 1844-47; Edward Allen, a blacksmith in 1817; Judge Samuel Nelson in 1818; William and Roswell Randall in 1813; William Elder, who built the first tannery; William Mal- lory settled here in 1815 and was sheriff in 1800-10, county clerk 1815-19 and in 1823 was appointed judge of the Court of Com- mon Pleas.
As early as 1798 a school house had been built and classes opened with Joshua Ballard as teacher. That year a grist mill was erected, thus establishing the first trade center in the county. In 1801 two religious societies, the Baptist and Congregational, were organized.
For Cortland 1810 was a red letter year. In that year Ephraim Fish represented the county as the first member of Assembly, John Keep was appointed first county judge and the village of Cortland was designated as the county seat. In that year also the Cortland Courier, first newspaper published in the county, was established. Although a county clerk had been ap- pointed as early as 1808, the first county clerk's office was not built until 1819.
In 1818 the "Cortland Village Library" was established and the first agricultural society formed and a fair held. From the first Cortland residents were vitally interested in education. Ten years before separation of Cortlandville from the town of Homer, the Cortland Academy was chartered and for many years was maintained at private expense. In 1828 the Cortland Female Seminary was founded, with its building located on a beautiful lot facing Main Street.
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The first schoolhouse in Cortlandville stood on part of the site now occupied by the Messenger Hotel. In 1816 a school building went up on a site now forming part of the Normal school grounds. Here a few years later was organized a "Classical School for Young Men," corresponding in character and influ- ence to the Cortland Female Seminary, both of which institutions were merged into the Cortlandville Academy, incorporated in 1842. Existence of this school terminated with founding of the State Normal School, a sketch of which appears in the sec- tion of this volume devoted to educational institutions. On De- cember 11, 1866, with only ten dissenting votes, the people of Cortland voted to the state $75,000 for the erection and equip- ment of the Normal School.
The present school system was set up in 1880 by Legislative act and ward school buildings were at once built. Today the city has five ward schools, all modern, two having been erected in 1928. The Central School building, opened in 1893, had an addi- tion built in 1924 that represents an investment of over $500,000. This latter structure houses the Senior and Junior High Schools, which offer six courses of study. A faculty of about 100 teachers is employed. A parochial school in connection with St. Mary's Church has also been opened, in a new building that will accom- modate 1,000 pupils. There is a training school for nurses op- erated in conjunction with Cortland County Hospital; a Con- servatory of Music known since 1896 and a practical business school.
Cortland secured its first gas when the Homer and Cortland Gas Light Company was established in 1860, but the works burned down and were rebuilt in 1890. The Cortland Traction Com- pany now provides electric light and power, its patrons now numbering about 7,000, and the New York State Gas & Electric Corporation, who operate here a water gas system, supply the gas.
The Cortland Water Works Company was formed in 1884, with the supply coming from inexhaustible springs. Today Cort- land has its own municipal water department with a sufficient water supply to meet requirements of a city ten times its size. With a plant valued at $1,250,000, not a dollar of tax is levied for
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the department. Though service fees are maintained at a low level, the revenue returned is sufficient to care for all operating expenses and improvements, to carry the interest account and retire bonds at the rate of $8,000 annually.
The 125 acres owned by the Water Department are under- laid by great living springs that pass every test for purity. Re- forestation work has given the property a stand of more than $200,000 splendid trees.
First village paving was done under contract in 1866, when bonds were issued for $3,500 for paving Main street. In 1896 Railroad Street was paved with brick, in 1898 Main Street with asphalt and in 1899 Tompkins and Port Watson streets and Lin- coln Avenue with asphalt. This was but the start of a broad pav- ing program which has placed the city toward the top in street improvements.
Horse racing was an early sport in Cortland. The earliest track events recorded was on September 20, 1820, when three days of racing was staged on the flats in the southeasterly corner of the village on a circular mile track. A purse of $100 was awarded the winning horse on the first day, $75 on the second day and the five per cent entrance money on the purses of the first two days to be awarded to the fastest three year old colt on the third day, one mile heat.
One of the institutions of which Cortland is proud is the Free Library, erected on the site of the old courthouse. Financed by public gifts, the quota to be raised was over-subscribed in the campaign held in 1927. Although the drive among the people of Cortland called for less than $80,000, the total subscriptions at the end of a brief period reached nearly $110,000.
Another institution of wide general service is the Cortland County Hospital. It was Rev. J. A. Robinson, for many years pastor of Grace Church, who first suggested the idea of a hos- pital. The hospital association was formed February 23, 1891, and a hospital opened April 1, 1891, in a rented cottage on Clayton Avenue, with accommodations for six patients. With one woman as matron, nurse and housekeeper, with a chore boy her only assistant, the hospital carried on for a year with just
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fifteen patients. By 1899 the year's report shows 120 patients treated. On April 25, 1892, the Cortland Hospital Association was incorporated and on May 4, 1911, the name was changed to the Cortland County Hospital Association. From this small beginning, the hospital has grown, until today it is valued at nearly three quarters of a million dollars. More than 2,000 pa- tients a year are now cared for. The hospital has sixty-eight beds, twenty-four in wards, forty-four in rooms and twenty-one cribs. It maintains a registered school of nursing.
Churches of Cortland include : First Baptist, organized April 24, 1801; Memorial Baptist Church, the outgrowth of a mission started by the First Baptist May 29, 1892; First Congregational, November 10, 1881; East Side Congregational, April 12, 1895; Grace Episcopal Church, August 28, 1847; First Methodist, March 13, 1821; Homer Avenue Methodist, January 28, 1889; Presbyterian Church, November 25, 1824; St. Mary's Roman Catholic, 1871; Universalist, November 16, 1813 ; Free Methodist, 1891.
Cortland's fine post office was built in 1913, its new fire sta- tion in 1914 and the beautiful Public Library in 1927. Construc- tion operations during the past generation have been extensive, the only element of retrogression being the abandonment of the trolley connecting Cortland, McGraw and Homer in 1931, to give place to busses. But in this passing of electric transportation Cortland is but following a general change which has taken place in communities throughout the East.
The modern Cortland, 1,129 feet above sea level, today has 4,010 families, who have 5,584 telephones, 2,640 gas meters and 6,741 electric meters. Ninety per cent of the population is native white, and ten per cent foreign born with only three families of negroes. The city's 2,851 pupils attend five public grade schools, a high school and a parochial school. In addition there is the State Normal School with 925 student teachers and 334 children. The city's churches include two Baptist, one Christian Science, two Congregational, one Episcopal, two Methodists, two Presby- terian, two Roman Catholic and three miscellaneous.
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Cortland has two legitimate theaters, four moving picture houses and three other auditoriums, with an aggregate seating capacity of 6,632.
The community boasts a commercial airport of 160 acres a mile and a half from the city. There are two newspapers in Cortland, the Standard, a daily established in 1867, and the Demo- crat, a weekly, founded in 1840.
According to the last federal census of manufacturers in 1929, Cortland has 3,498 wage earners whose annual pay amounts to $4,227,475 and the value of whose yearly manufactured products mounts to $25,055,173.
Cortland has twenty-five miles of improved streets, its pres- ent water plant is valued at $1,250,000. It has forty-two miles of water mains, seventeen churches and over fifty clubs and fra- ternal organizations.
MCGRAW.
McGraw, incorporated under the name McGrawville in 1869, is a thriving village of 1,082 five miles east of Cortland. Because of a similarity of names, the Post Office Department changed the name of this office from McGrawville to McGraw on April 1, 1898. Then the railroads, the United States Express Company, the Western Union Telegraph Company and the Empire State Telephone Company adopted the new name, but the village offi- cially went under the old name until April, 1932, when Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill passed by the Legislature formally adopting the name McGraw. The matter was brought before the Legislature by the village board after a hearing on the matter revealed no opposition to the change.
Samuel McGraw, from whom the village takes its name, came to Cortland County in 1801, settling near Blodgett Mills. In 1806 he bought a tract of land a mile long and containing 125 acres, the east line of it being what is now Main Street. He built the first log house on the village site and in 1811 erected the first frame house. The history of the McGraw family and of the vil- lage are closely identified. On the death in 1835 of the pioneer, Samuel McGraw, who was father of twelve children, his son
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Harry became the head of the family and was the leading mer- chant in 1818-1849, the first postmaster in 1827-49, a member of Assembly in 1843 and a leading spirit in public affairs. When he died in 1849, his son Perrin H. McGraw, succeeded him as post- master and merchant and was elected to the Assembly in 1854. Five years later he was elected as the first Republican senator from Cortland County.
Delos McGraw, who was an Assemblyman in 1877, did the largest produce business in this part of the state, totaling over $250,000 a year. P. H. McGraw was one of the founders of the New York Central Academy in McGraw and president from its founding in 1849 until it ceased to exist. The academy was a school for the negro, but whites attended also. Male students were paid five cents and female pupils three cents an hour for labor and were charged a dollar a week for board. On the min- utes of the college debating society, May 21, 1850, is this notation :
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