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 40
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 40
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 40
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 40
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The five financial institutions of Corning as shown by 1931 data have resources of $14,425,784 and deposits of $11,462,013. The city's school property is valued at $1,000,000.
RIVERSIDE AND SOUTH CORNING.
Riverside, incorporated in 1922, lies west of Corning on the way to Painted Post. It has a population of 671, but in passing
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from Corning to Painted Post it is hard to distinguish whether the community is a part of Corning or Painted Post or a sep- arate corporation. Riverside has one small school, the students of higher grades going to the Painted Post High School. Affili- ated with Painted Post in many ways, Riverside has both fire protection and water service from that village. Efforts have been made from time to time to have Riverside and South Corning annexed to Corning, but without avail, because of the lower taxes obtainable through remaining as separate villages.
South Corning lies to the southeast of Corning and is con- tiguous with the city. It was incorporated in 1920 and had a population of 714, as against 475 only fifteen years ago. The village has a comparatively new school building for grade pupils, but most of the high school students attend Corning Free Acad- emy. Water and fire protection are supplied by Corning.
HORNELL.
Hornell, great railroad city of 16,243 in the upper Canisteo Valley, is one of the few cities which in the past two decades has shown a constantly increasing population at each succeeding cen- sus. There have been no fluctuations downward. And from the days when it emerged from the forest, its growth has been largely due to railroads.
The period of Hornell's first rapid growth began with the construction of the New York and Erie Railroad. In 1841 the road's pile driver, a steam machine combining a pile driver, loco- motive and sawmill, appeared at Hornell, then known as Hor- nellsville. It moved upon wheels, driving two piles at a time and sawing them off at a level as it passed. Running out of funds, the railroad company for a time suspended operations, but finally the road was completed and the first locomotive reached Hornell in September, 1850.
Progress of the place rapidly followed. November 19, 1851, the Hornellsville Tribune made its bow. The village was incor- porated June 28, 1852, but it was not until 1888 that it was in- corporated as a city. A branch road to Buffalo was opened in 1852, in a period when small fortunes were made in Hornells-
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HISTORY OF CENTRAL NEW YORK
ville in corner lots. Building boomed. There was not a vacant house in the community.
The first locomotive in Hornellsville was the Orange No. 4, built in Philadelphia. She was the first that ran to Attica and in fact the pioneer of the entire road. Engine No. 90 was the next, and the first to sound the steam whistle between Buffalo and Cleveland. She was taken from Boston to Piedmont on the Hudson on a schooner, then put on a scow and towed to Buffalo on the Erie Canal. There she was loaded on a ship and taken to Dunkirk on Lake Erie and ran the first train at that end of the road.
In 1851 Hornellsville had about 100 houses, two churches and two schools. Cobb's Hotel, corner of Main and Canisteo streets, was then the gathering place of travelers on the new road. Hun- dreds of inhabitants today owe their residence in Hornell to the presence of the Erie Railroad shops, which employ large num- bers. The first Erie shop (or shed) was built in 1849 and en- larged the next year to accommodate three engines and machinery for their repair. It burned in 1856. Ground was broken for new shops and an engine house and the foundation laid in 1854, as the old shops were too small. The building was completed and dedicated by a grand ball September 4, 1856. Today there are many miles of switching tracks in Hornell and hundreds of cars pass through daily. The ancient shops have given place to new ones, covering several acres.
The first merchant in Hornellsville was Col. Ira Davenport, who came in 1815 with a single wagon load of goods, driving 300 miles from Harpersfield, Delaware County. He built with his own hands the first store, a frame structure 18 by 20 feet, a building later used as a kitchen for the old Black Horse Tavern. Davenport hauled his goods by team from Catskill, New York, and later opened stores in other places.
Andy L. Smith was the first tanner, coming in 1816. Dugald Cameron, son of the agent of the Pulteney Estate, settled in Hor- nellsville in 1814, and at one time was a justice of the peace. Judge George Hornell, from whom the community gets its name, made the first settlement in the town as early as 1793, purchasing 2,000
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or 3,000 acres of land and erecting a grist and saw mill. At that time the nearest grist mill was at Elmira, sixty miles by later road but nearly 100 by the roads the pioneers were obliged to take. Journeys to that mill occupied weeks. For seventeen years Judge Hornell was the life of the settlement and the embodiment of its history.
Hornell was the town's first postmaster. Under his patron- age the first school in the town was established about 1810, in a blockhouse outside the village. The first school inside the village came in 1813. In 1833 the district purchased land for a school on the point between Canisteo and Church streets for $40 and the "Old Red Schoolhouse" was built at a cost of $200. It was 22 by 28 feet in size. Many farmers' sons attending boarded in the village.
The first village library established in Western New York was provided by the Hornell Library Association, incorporated in 1868.
St. James Mercy Hospital was established in Hornell in 1890. Bethesda Hospital was established and incorporated January 10, 1916.
Churches in the city date back a century. The First Presby- terian was organized July 10, 1832; Christ Episcopal Church, March 6, 1854; the First Baptist Church, October 17, 1852; St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church, 1849. These are the oldest.
Hornell today is a city of 4,130 families, 87.5 per cent of whom are native whites, one half per cent negroes and 12 per cent foreign born. In 1928 there were 750 in Hornell who filed in- come tax returns and in 1929 the number increased to 780. The city has 3,600 school pupils who attend five public grade schools, one high school, one junior high school and one parochial school. The city has two Baptist churches, one Christian Science, one Episcopal, three Methodists, two Presbyterian, one Roman Cath- olic and five miscellaneous.
ADDISON.
The picturesque village of Addison, on the Canisteo River in' the town of Addison, has a population of 1,528. Addison was
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named for Joseph Addison, English author and was called Tus- carora by the earliest settlers. The first settler in the town was Samuel Rice in 1791. The first sawmill was built by George Goodhue about 1793 and Samuel Smith opened the first store. Stephen Rice, son of the first settler, was the first child born in the town.
William B. Jones kept one of the first inns on the north side of the Canisteo. Solomon Curtis laid out a portion of the village on the north side and William Wombough a part on the south side about 1832. In 1830 the price of wild land in this locality was $1.50 per acre, but in two years it had raised to $2. About this time the valley became the scene of active mercantile and lumbering operations. In 1830 John Loop, Shumway & Glover, Wilcox, Birdsall & Weatherby began at Addison as lumbermen and merchants. They continued until 1832 when John and Peter Loop, Caleb Weatherby and Read A. Williams formed a co-part- nership and built a store in the lower part of the village on the north side.
The village was incorporated in January, 1854, and the char- ter was amended by special act of the Legislature approved April 12, 1873.
A post office was established at Addison as early as 1804 and in 1830 a mail was brought once a week on horseback from Painted Post.
Dr. Frederick R. Wagner settled in 1830 as Addison's first doctor. There was no lawyer in town then, except James Bird- sall, who was engaged in mercantile business, but later distin- guished lawyers went out of Addison, including Andrew G. Chat- field, later a justice of the United States Court in Minnesota and F. R. E. Cornell, late state attorney for Minnesota and Supreme Court judge.
The First Presbyterian Church of Addison was formed in September, 1832; first Episcopal services were held about 1847, leading to creation of the Church of the Redeemer; the Second Methodist Episcopal Church was organized September 3, 1835; the First Baptist Church May 6, 1869; St. Catharine's Roman Catholic Church in 1854.
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In 1847 four acres of land was bought north of the village as an academy site and a building erected at a cost of $3,600. The school continued until destroyed by fire in 1856. Subse- quently a private academic school in a brick dwelling was opened until the organization of the Union Free Academy in 1868.
Indicative of the early enterprise of the community was the construction of a plank road over the eleven miles from Addison to Elkland, Pennsylvania, in 1851, at a cost of $20,000, by a company of citizens. The south seven miles of the road was surrendered to the towns through which it passed in 1857 and the rest September 1, 1878.
ARKPORT.
The village of Arkport, incorporated as late as 1913, traces its history back as far as 1797, when Judge Hurlbut and his eldest son, John, then a boy of twelve, came from Wyoming, Penn- sylvania, and made a small clearing, planted a piece of corn and built a small log house. Today Arkport has a population of 575. Judge Hurlbut had previously purchased over 900 acres in the valley from a land speculator at $4.50 an acre and afterward had to pay for the same land a second time at the land office.
After erecting his home, he returned for his family, returning the same year. The party came up the river in flatboats, to a point a mile below Arkport, making their way the remaining distance through a forest of weeping elms. Hurlbut was the first surveyor in Hornellsville (Hornell) and was employed al- most constantly by the land office in making surveys in Steuben, Livingston and Allegany counties.
A year after arrival he built a two story log double house and began keeping tavern. In 1800 he built and launched the first ark ever run on the Canisteo and took it to Baltimore with a load of wheat. This opened a new market for surplus grain, pork and beer of the district. The same year he built a sawmill and storehouse on the east bank. Here in winter the farmers of the Genesee Valley would bring their wheat, corn, butter, cheese and other products and store them pending the time they could be moved to Baltimore by water. Thousands of bushels of grain
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were sent yearly from this port and some seasons as many as eleven arks were loaded and sent down to the Susquehanna. As early as 1804 Gen. William Wadsworth of Geneseo started from Arkport, with two boat loads of oxen and reached Baltimore.
Commerce here went on well until the building of the Erie Canal, when the tide of travel turned through that waterway. But the early days had given a name to the settlement-Arkport.
AVOCA.
Avoca, ideally situated in the valley of the Cohocton, is a village of 835 inhabitants. Its first settler was William Buchanan, whose life of early adventure is scarcely duplicated in the history of the region. When a boy of seven at Wyoming, Pennsylvania, William was captured by Indians and taken to Western Pennsylvania or Ohio, where he was adopted by the chief. His red foster-mother, however, disliked the fondness of the chief for the little paleface. So she contrived to send him away well provisioned and headed to white settlements on the Susquehanna. He spoke the Indian tongue better than English. At the age of twenty he shipped as a sailor and traveled to many lands. On his return, while the ship was anchored three miles from shore, his longing to be free of ship service and on land again prompted him to swim to shore in the dead of night. He went into the eastern counties of the state, married and brought his family to Avoca probably about 1794.
The first school was a log house erected in 1818, near where the present railroad bridge stands. George Cameron was em- ployed to teach at $8 a month, a price considered high in those days. There were only two teams of horses in the entire town by 1812, oxen being used chiefly for hauling. Indian lodges were still numerous in the town when the first settlers came. Avoca was incorporated in 1883.
BATH.
Cloistered between towering hills, Bath, county seat of Steu- ben County, is the American descendant of Bath, England. The significance of its name is revealed in an historic incident of
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Revolutionary days. A few years after the war of independence, the Pulteney Company of England, whose holdings once occupied much of Central New York, sent Capt. Charles Williamson to America to act in the company's interest. In 1792 he arrived on the present site of Bath and was entranced by the sweeping valley and its green clad hills. It reminded him of Bath, Eng- land, the home of Sir William Pulteney of the company which sent him to America. The embryo city of the West he there established was forthwith named in honor of his patron's Eng- lish home, according to some histories. McMaster's history of the county says the community was named from Lady Bath, only child and heiress of Sir William Pulteney.
As early as 1793 Bath's wide streets were laid out by Charles Cameron, who with his brother and thirty men came down the Cohocton River on a flat boat. Liberty Street, the principal busi- ness thoroughfare, is 100 feet wide, though planned at the time of Bath's founding. At the end of this street lies Pulteney Park, a miniature Boston Commons. From the first the settlement grew rapidly, soon boasting a population of 2,000, which has grown today to 4,002. The Captain, who had then become Colonel Williamson, had a race track constructed and a theater built. He gave much advertising to the district in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Bath to outsiders is today probably chiefly known because of the famous Soldiers' Home there located. A sketch of this insti- tution is given in the chapter devoted to state institutions.
Two important Indian trails once crossed each other in the valley where now run the principal streets of Bath, and these being long known to a few hunters, "Cross Roads" was the orig- inal name of the community. Williamson commenced actual set- tlement in 1793, in which year fifteen families took up their abode at Bath, a sawmill was built and a grist mill started. The first clearing about Pulteney Park was made a year later. Houses were erected as fast as thirty or forty men could build them. In- dicative of the speed demanded by Colonel Williamson, was the erection of one building 40 by 16 feet, within forty-eight hours, a feat advertised in eastern newspapers.
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Bath became the city of promise. Pioneers from the South pushed their canoes and barges up the rivers and men from the East toiled wearily through the forest with their oxen and sledges. Even planters in Virginia were attracted to Bath. Wil- liamson staged great horse races on his mile course. Though there were but a few hundred scattered cabins from Niagara to the Mohawk, sportsmen from New York, Philadelphia and Bal- timore gathered at Bath. As many as 2,000, including high bloods from Virginia, Maryland, Canada and Long Island, were there.
Then came the log theater at the corner of Steuben and Mor- ris streets with a company of players from Philadelphia as an added advertisement. At one time the pretentious little city feared an invasion from the British in Canada, because of mis- understandings about land Williamson held at Sodus, Wayne County, on Lake Ontario. Williamson was given a colonel's com- mission by the Government, sent an express to Albany for 1,000 stand of arms, several pieces of cannon and munition supplies. Blockhouses and palisades were ordered thrown up and twenty- four hour watches kept. But the scare subsided. The village was then but a year old.
Bath for years before the construction of the Erie Canal was the liveliest place in the region. Being at the head of navigation of the Cohocton River and in direct water communication with Philadelphia and Baltimore, its founder envisioned it as the com- ing metropolis of the interior. But the Erie revolutionized the state's avenues of transportation and the dream faded. The outlet for the Genesee country was not by way of the Susquehanna.
In 1804 the village contained three streets-Liberty, running north from Pulteney Square, and Morris and Steuben, running east and west. There were but twenty-five buildings in the com- munity. The village was first incorporated May 6, 1836. An act establishing a new charter was passed June 20, 1851.
The first school in the village, a small frame structure facing Pulteney Park from the west side just in front of the old log jail, was built about 1800. The next school was in a small build- ing on the east side of the square. In 1812 citizens erected the
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Academy on Steuben Street, but the school burned in 1824 and the "Red Schoolhouse" erected the following year to be used until 1848 as a school. It burned in 1849. A union school was formed in 1846 and a new school opened in the fall of 1848. It was a three story brick structure known as the Haverling Union School. It burned in 1865. Again a new school was erected. On June 10, 1868, it was voted to establish a union free school and the Haverling Union Free School was opened September 7, 1868.
The Bath Hospital was established in 1915. The Steuben County Tuberculosis Hospital, also known as Pleasant Valley San- itorium, was opened in 1917.
Admirable highways serve the community, which is also on the Erie and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroads. Latest products of Bath manufacturers include ladders, knitted goods, milking machines, piston rings, awnings, etc.
Two live weeklies serve the village-the Steuben Courier, established in 1843, and the Steuben Farmers Advocate, which dates back to 1815.
Churches of Bath include the Centenary M. E., First Church of Christ, Scientist; First Baptist, First Presbyterian, Free Gos- pel Mission, St. Mary's Roman Catholic and St. Thomas Episcopal.
CANISTEO.
In the Canisteo Valley, where the earliest settlements in Steu- ben County were made, lies Canisteo Village, incorporated in 1873 and containing today 2,548 inhabitants. Where the com- munity now stands there was once a Delaware Indian town, known in Colonial times as Kanestio Castle. It comprised some sixty hewn log houses, with stone chimneys. It was the castle of At-weet-se-ra, the "Delaware King" who in 1765, before the Sullivan campaign and the year after destruction of the place by Montour and Brandt, made a treaty with Sir William John- son at Johnson Hall on the Mohawk.
Sir William had sent an expedition under Captain Montour, in the summer of 1764 and destroyed the Indian town because its inhabitants declined to give up two murderers who had killed two German traders somewhere in the country of the Senecas.
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The inhabitants of the Indian village were a mixed set of In- dians, of different tribes, fugitive slaves and deserters from the British army. At the time the village was razed, the Indians had a considerable number of horses, cattle and swine.
The broad, fertile valley attracted the first settlers in 1788. Col. Arthur Erwin drew Lot No. 1, where the village stands, but he exchanged lots with Solomon Bennett, who was the first set- tler, opened the first store and kept the first hotel. Bennett built a log house at the Corners which soon came to be called Bennetts- burg. He also erected a mill a quarter of a mile east on Ben- nett's Creek.
The Erie Railroad, opened through the Canisteo Valley in 1850, gave the village a station on its through line between New York and Dunkirk and superseded river navigation as a means of transportation. But real community growth did not start until 1868 when the boot and shoe factory of L. Allison opened as the first real manufacturing establishment in the place.
Various planing mills, a sash, door and blind factory, a chair factory and another shoe factory and other industrial plants followed. With a population of only 342 in 1868, the place grew in the following ten years to about 2,000 inhabitants and the out- put of its factories totaled a million dollars a year.
The Canisteo Academy was chartered March 16, 1868, and a three story brick building to house it was completed in 1871 at a cost of $17,500.
COHOCTON.
Cohocton Village, incorporated in 1891 and with a present population of 838, lies in a picturesque setting in Cohocton Valley. It is the center of a rich farming area, the principal produce being poultry products, potatoes, grain, hogs, sheep and thorough- bred cattle. It is served by the Delaware, Lackawanna & West- ern and the Rochester division of the Erie.
HAMMONDSPORT.
To the world of aeronautics, Hammondsport, village of 1,063 population at the head of Lake Keuka, is known as the "Cradle
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of American Aviation," because the community and environs formed a laboratory for Glenn H. Curtiss in his development of aviation. Hammondsport's world prominence because of this one aspect of its history is sketched in the chapter of this volume de- voted to aviation. The community is in the heart of the grape belt, its famous wine cellars and grape culture being discussed in another separate chapter.
The importance of Lake Keuka for navigation early attracted attention to Hammondsport. In those days the place was known as Pleasant Valley or Cold Spring, because of the icy spring which pours forth its waters in the village park along the lake. The name Hammondsport was given the place in honor of Lazerus Hammond, who in 1810 came from Dansville to settle. The orig- inal settler was Capt. John Sheathar, who came in 1796. His land was later acquired by Mr. Hammond who laid out a portion of his farm into streets and lots and gave the public square to the village. William Hastings was the first merchant, erecting a store in 1825. That year Ira G. Smith from Prattsburgh built a store and other buildings went up around the square.
While inland villages of Steuben County were hampered by building of the Erie Canal which diverted traffic northward, Hammondsport gained by it, as a village on the lake. The Pul- teney estate agent, taking wheat and produce in payment for lands, made Hammondsport the shipping point by barges on the lake to Penn Yan, whence the produce was hauled by teams to Dresden on Seneca Lake and so reloaded there for canal ship- ment. In 1831 the Crooked (Keuka) Lake Canal was completed, linking Keuka and Seneca Lakes. The story of the canal is given in the chapter devoted to waterways. This gave impetus to build- ing warehouses and stores in Hammondsport, which became the shipping center for Allegany, and parts of Livingston, Chemung, Steuben and Tioga (Pennsylvania) counties. But the Genesee Valley Canal cut off part of this tributory territory and when the Erie Railroad came through in 1850 and the Corning and Rochester branch two years later, lake shipping diminished. A daily line of steamboats plied between Hammondsport and Penn Yan until a half century ago.
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Gen. George McClure erected the first store-house in Ham- mondsport and built the schooner Sally, the first vessel on Lake Keuka in 1803 to carry wheat from Penn Yan to his Hammonds- port storehouse. In 1832 he erected a saw and plaster mill.
The first schoolhouse in the village was built in 1827 on the site of St. James (Episcopal) Church. A large stone building was erected for an academy in 1858. The village was first in- corporated June 16, 1856, when it had 530 inhabitants. At a special election January 24, 1871, the village voted to reincor- porate, under the general law of April 20, 1870.
The religious life of the community dates back more than a century to its early church beginnings. The Hammondsport Presbyterian Church was organized September 14, 1831, and St. James Episcopal June 15, 1829. Lazarus Hammond, for whom the town was named, gave the lot upon which the Presbyterians built their first church.
The village is noted for its scenic setting. Hammondsport Glen is a great cleft in the mountain and a reservoir of perpetual coolness. The distance from the level land above to the foot of the lowest waterfall is about one-half mile. The cascades in that distance number fifteen. The fall from the table land to the entrance of the glen is 400 feet. The entrance to the ravine is shadowy and spacious. The cathedral portion of the glen is formed by the sudden widening of the gorge, and is grand beyond description.
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