Saturday, January 30, 2010

Historic Pittsford program

This coming Thursday, February 4th

Charles R. Lowe

Electric Railway Historian and Trustee of the NY Museum of Transportation
will offer a slide presentation on

Pittsford's Interurban - "The Rochester and Eastern"

at St. Paul's Lutheran Church
Lincoln Avenue, Pittsford
7:30 PM - Open to the public

Friday, January 29, 2010

OCHS Genealogical Society program

This coming Wednesday, February 3rd at 7 PM
The Ontario County Historical Society will present
Ontario County Historian
Dr. Preston Pierce with an

Introduction to Oral History Interviewing

at the Society's museum
55 North Main Street
Canandaigua, NY 14424
(585) 394-4975

Wit? Wine? Whatever!

© 2007 David Minor / Eagles Byte

English traveler John Fowler had come to New York in 1830 with the express purpose of evaluating prospects for his fellow countrymen who might be considering farming in the New World. Since his arrival, as he’s made his way across New York by steamboat and stage and written down his impressions. A western Long Island farm was, “in a high state of cultivation . . . however, wanting of wood, which greatly detracts from its value.” He was a lot less impressed when he detoured away from the Hudson River steamer into the Catskills. The cattle were inferior, the sheep common, the pigs “hideous”, the land very uninviting. The past few days he’s passed through countryside that’s been largely uncultivated but showing great promise.

As his stage approaches Canandaigua he exults, “. . . I passed over one of the finest farming districts I have yet seen in the State of New York. The land is agreeably undulated, of excellent quality, well fenced . . . and in a superior state of cultivation.” It’s late August, so the grain has already been gathered in, but his experienced eye gazes at the off-road stubble which tells him that crops have been plentiful. He’s told that several of the area farms are over 1,000 acres in size.

Fowler has obviously done his homework, having read Horatio Gates Spafford’s 1824 edition of Guide for New York Travellers covering this area, which he uses for the purpose of comparison. Spafford – “. . . in 1797 I found it but feeble, contending with innumerable embarrassments and difficulties . . . mud knee deep, musquetoes and gnats so thick you could hardly breathe without swallowing them [Fowler could certainly sympathize here] rattle-snakes and ten thousand discouragements.” It’s to be hoped that by the time he published his travelers’ guide 27 years later, his impressions were much more favorable. Probably closer to Fowler’s.

But now, at the close of August 24th, 1830, somewhere between eight and nine in the evening, Fowler’s long day – remember, he’d toured Auburn Prison at 6 o’clock this morning – nears it’s end as the coach makes its way uphill, along Main Street to Blossom's Hotel. The brick structure with its peaked roofs, multiple chimneys, and archway (through which vehicles passed into an interior coach yard), had been built back in 1815 by “Old Line” proprietor Belah D. Coe, and purchased in 1824 by William Blossom. As Richard Palmer has reported, a bell atop the building regulated most of the village’s affairs.

The scene there this evening is extremely lively. Fowler reports that the landlord – presumably William Blossom – had jut returned from an excursion to the western Great Lakes and Ohio, and many of his friends had gathered to welcome him home. “. . . the house was in a tolerable state of confusion, for the remainder of the evening,—the bar, of course, being the only general room of resort.” He makes an attempt at writing in his journal amidst all the uproar but soon gives it up and asks for a room, reporting he was, “glad to effect my escape, and leave them to feast on their wit and wine, which though abundant, were neither of first rate quality, as much and as long as they liked.”

The next morning, after a so-so night’s rest, he sets off for a quick tour of Canandaigua’s sights. We’ll tag along. Next time.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Fire Company History

This Sunday, January 31, 2010
Former Penfield Fire Chief Sid Ludwig will discuss the history of the
Penfield Fire Company over the years.

The program is from 2:30 to 4 PM, at the Penfield Public Library
1985 Baird Road, in Penfield.
Registration is required
585 340-8720
www.penfieldlibrary.org

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

1822 Canal Update

Hampden Federalist and Public Journal, Springfield Mass.,

Wednesday, June 26 1822

New York June 19.

GRAND CANAL

We are informed by a gentleman who has just returned from a visit to Buffalo and Niagara Falls,
that he traveled 160 miles in the new convenient passage boat on the Erie Canal, viz.,

from Little Falls to Utica - 22 miles

Utica to Montezuma, by Rome, Syracuse, and Weed's Basin - 96 miles

Crossing from Montezuma over the Seneca River and the Cayuga Marshes -6 miles

and up the river Clyde - 6 1/2 miles

to Blockhouse- - he again takes the canal and passing the flourishing
villages of Lyons and Palmyra to Hartswell's Basin - 42 miles

On this route are already seven passage boats with good
accommodations, and hundreds of other boats transporting
immense quantities of produce to Utica; and such is the stock in this
state, that there are now 100,000 barrels of flour alone on the banks
of the canal, that cannot be transported for want of boats- - many of
which are now building that cost from $100 to $400 each, and carry
from 150 to 400 barrels. These boats have taken freight from
Montezuma to Utica, a distance of nearly 100 miles, at the extremely
low rate of 5 cents per cwt., or one dollar per ton, which is about
one tenth the former rate of transporting the same distance by
wagons; in this case, the owners of the goods paid the tolls, which
however are very trifling.

The passage boats are drawn by three horses tandem rigged; the other
boats by one or two horses, according to the size of the boat- - a
boy rides the rear horse, and travels from three to four miles per
hour. Passengers leaving Utica at 8 oíclock, reach Weed's Basin, 87
miles, the next morning at 7 oíclock, traveling all night. The charge
is only 4 cents per mile, which includes board and lodging both of
which are as good if not better, than the taverns on the road. This
is as rapid as the stages travel, much less expensive, no risk of
life or limb, and no fatigue or dust attending.

The Grand Canal is nearly finished from Schenectady to Little Falls,
56 miles- - from Montezuma to Clyde, or Block House, 13 miles, and
from Hartwellís Basin to Genesee River, and from thence to Lockport,
70 miles- all of which it is said, will be filled, and boats allowed
to pass, on or before the first day of October next making 260 or 270
miles, through one of the richest and most valuable parts of the
state of New-York. Numerous emigrants from the hardy and industrious
northern and eastern hive are to be seen transporting themselves and
their families, at little or no expense, to settle on the lands
bordering on the canal.

Merchants residing in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington and
Louisville and in Michigan and Indiana, will soon get their goods
transported for 1/4 the price they now pay, and save as much or more
in the breakage and damage now unavoidable in wagons, besides the
saving of half or two thirds in time; which, in fact, is extending
the credit on their goods.

Emigrants and their families much prefer the canal to any other route
on every account- - expense, time, health and comfort &c.

The amount of toll already received at the office in Utica this
spring exceeds the sum paid the whole of last year, and it is
supposed it will amount 50 or 60,000 dollars.

Submitted by Dick Palmer

Monday, January 25, 2010

LIGHTHOUSE LINK

An item in today's Rochester Democrat & Chronicle mentioned the effort
to rebuild Lake Ontario's 1871 Oak Orchard Lighthouse, in Orleans County.
The light was abandoned in 1905 and destroyed by storms a few years later.

To follow up on project plans as well as those for a museum go to
www.oakorchardlighthoue.org

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Museum Thief

To Whom It May Concern

Apparently earlier this week the Big Springs Historical Society in Caledonia was "hit" by a thief again. I don't have a description of all that was taken and photos of the items. Some of that will be available later today I think. But I thought it best to get out information on the way the theft was conducted as soon as possible as the thief may still be working some of the museums in the area.

A single white male came into the museum, where there was only a single docent working. He had a story of a lost dog and a flyer to match the loss. While he was there he asked if he could look around. The museum is two floors. While he was on the second floor, alone, he cut the lock off one or more of the cases and took several items. The only item I know of...so far...was a Nazi helmet and a Civil War era surgeon's kit. We may have more details and perhaps photos to send around later.

Be aware if you are connected to a small museum that this is going on. From what I am told it is not wise to try to stop the person yourself. However, be a good witness. If someone like this comes in, while they are touring call your local police agency. Try to remember a good description of the individual that will help police, glasses, beard/clean shaven, perhaps a tattoo, the color and logos that might be on their clothing...and best of all a car license number.

Here is the statement from the museum.

On Sunday afternoon this past weekend, the Big Springs Museum in Caledonia (20 miles southwest of Rochester) was the victim of a theft which was discovered last night. The museum was robbed while staffed, of several military objects including a Civil War Era surgical Kit (Wade and Ford Set C 1861), a Nazi helmet, several WWII era medals, and two Hitler Youth knives. We are trying to locate photographs to share.

The perpetrator distracted our docent. The objects were in locked cases, and the locks were cut.

Please be on the alert for this type of event in your museum.

Thank you.

Jean Guthrie, Big Springs Museum

Les Buell
315-589-9776
lesjaneb@aol.com

Saturday, January 16, 2010

LAKE ONTARIO AND THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Submitted by Susan Peterson Gately

Gately writes and sails on Lake Ontario and has a Masters degree in fisheries science. Her first book Ariel's World dealt with the recent environmental history of Lake Ontario and was used as a supplemental text in an undergraduate course at Oswego State University. Susan sails with her husband aboard their 32 foot sloop Titania on Fair Haven Bay and she also offers boat rides and sailing instruction to the public through her seasonal business Silver Waters Sailing.

Susan’s current book is “Twinkle Toes and the Riddle of the Lake”, an experiment, a blend of fact and fiction. In it a crabby cat, a lousy navigator and an old wooden boat set out across Lake Ontario in a quest for knowledge. The main character is Twinkle Toes, a.k.a. Twink, the crabby cat, who isn’t impressed by the first half of that old ‘saw’ about Curiosty. It May have killed the cat but, “Satisfaction brought it back.”

(excerpt)

As Twink realizes, one person's actions can change history. Especially if they write a really good book. Some historians have credited Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin as being an important factor in stirring up emotions and support for the Civil War. There is a tale, perhaps not true, that when she met with President Lincoln he said “So this is the little lady that started the big war.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe was a teacher living in Maine with her preacher husband when she wrote her book Uncle Tom's Cabin, Life Among The Lowly. Her story about brave black people and cruel slave owners was the best selling 19th century novel in the world and was translated into many languages according to Wikipedia. The only book then selling more copies in America was the Bible.

Stowe wrote her story after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was passed. This was the law that required people in the north to aid in the capture and return of runaway slaves. It stirred up the passions of many southerners and northerners alike as each region tried to assert its rights and impose its laws upon the other's citizens. Stowe was partly inspired by a memoir by Josiah Henson, a runaway slave who traveled to Canada crossing the Niagara River to freedom. Here he “shook the lion's paw” as contemporary accounts put it, referring to the protection slaves received on the north shore of Lake Ontario and Erie under British law. Henson's home is still standing near a town called Dresden in Ontario. One of his descendants traveled with Peary to the pole.

We have no idea how many slaves passed through Great Lakes ports enroute to freedom. Few written records of the underground railroad exist and accounts are difficult to verify. It seems likely that thousands crossed Lake Ontario on their way to Canada. Oswego, where Gerrit Smith, a prominent and wealthy abolitionist from the town of Peterboro near Utica, had interests in shipping and harbor front properties, was a gateway to freedom for many slaves. Port Ontario and Pultneyville were also ports with known sympathetic ship captains and ship owners who helped many runaways. My own current home port of Fair Haven also apparently saw some activity. There are letters and hints in oral tradition of local runaways being smuggled aboard vessels from Little Sodus Bay and one trader from here variously identified as either a sloop or schooner was named the Wide Awake ( also the name of the then active radical abolitionist wing of the Republican Party).

Another point of departure was Sodus Point. A settlement of several dozen free blacks lived on the banks of Maxwell Creek, a few miles west of this small lake port. Undoubtedly, they sheltered runaways and helped them on their way as did the family of whites living in the cobblestone house that still stands here beside Lake Road. Local legend has it that the drumlin hill just west of Maxwell Creek (now known as Freedom Hill) was a landmark used by mariners who picked up runaways off the beach there. The Niagara Falls area was also a major crossing for runaways, with lesser numbers coming up through Ohio and crossing Lake Erie.

Harriet Tubman is one of the most famous “conductors” of the underground railroad. Some say she helped three hundred or more people to reach freedom. She lived in St. Catharines, a Canadian port at the west end of Lake Ontario where many runaways first landed for some time. She eventually settled for good in Auburn about thirty miles south of Lake Ontario, and her house there today is a museum with displays on her life and work. Besides being a guide on the underground railroad, she later served as an armed scout, a spy, and a nurse during the Civil War and was eventually awarded a tiny pension for her service to the Union. As a black woman in a time when all women's rights and freedoms were so limited, her exploits and courage seem little short of incredible.

She is probably the best known of the black conductors, but other free blacks, some of them sailors or canal boatmen also helped runaways get to Canada. In the 1830s and 1840s central New York's “burned over district” so-called because of the red hot fever of religion and reform that swept the area made the region fertile ground for abolitionists. Harriet Beecher Stowe's brother Thomas came to Elmira to serve as pastor to a church sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. Some of the most active whites in the effort to help runaways were those of the Quaker faith.

A number of runaways settled in St. Catharines Ontario, then as now, an important shipbuilding center and port on Lake Ontario. St. Catharines was the terminal for the east end of the Welland Canal and a considerable concentration of marine service businesses built up there providing work for some of the escaped slaves. Others went on to inland locations. Some settled and became successful Canadian citizens. Some eventually returned to the U.S. Life in Canada was not particularly easy for many of the runaways. An interesting account of an escaped slave's experiences in New York and in Canada is the book Twenty-two Years a Slave Forty Years a Freeman by Austin Steward 1793 to 1860. The entire text has been placed on line by the University of North Carolina.

Steward lived briefly on the shore of Sodus Bay when his white owner tried to carve a southern plantation style farm there from the virgin forest. He escaped around 1813 but lived in New York State for some time before going to Canada around 1830 where he stayed about 6 years before coming back to Rochester.

During Captain [Horatio Nelson] Throop's time on the lake, blacks worked aboard ships in various tasks and underground railroad history sug gests that more than one black sailor or steamer crew might have quietly served as a “conductor”. The character operating a canal boat in the Throop story is imaginary, but based on a historical black canal boat owner. And there is solid evidence to support the story that Throop and his neighbor Cuyler were active parts of the underground railroad.

We shall probably never know of the countless acts of heroism and altruism by both black and white people that were performed in the face of an evil institution that prevails to this day in various places around the world. They believed in a cause and they acted defying what they considered to be an unjust law.”

"Riddle" a 235 page illustrated paperback that sells for retail price of 15.95
Riddle is on sale at the Lighthouse gift shops in Rochester and Sodus Point, at H.Lee White Marine Museum and at other local historical Society gift shops. It can also be purchased on line from www.chimneybluff.com or at Village Book Mart in Palmyra, Yesterday's Muse in Webster, Old Church Mall books in Webster, Rivers End in Oswego, and at Yankee Peddler in Rochester. It can be special ordered thru Barnes and Noble.

We'll travel with Twink at another time - David

Monday, January 11, 2010

MINOR TALKS

For those of you in the Rochester area -

I will be giving several talks shortly after the middle of this month.

DETAILS

This Sunday, January 17th, I'll be speaking on early Finger Lakes
region land developer Charles Williamson at the Pittsford Public
Library on State Street in the village
2 - 3:30 PM
To register, call the library during hours at 249-5481


The following Wednesday (January 20th) I'll be speaking about the
Erie Canal at Irondequoit's Helen McGraw Branch Library
2180 East Ridge Road
7 - 8 PM

Registration is required (call 336-6060); the library will cancel
if not enough people sign up a week before the program,
so check with them earlier that day before making the trip.

Hope to see some of you there.
David

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Canal Items, from the Earliest Days

Hampden Federalist and Public Journal, Springfield Mass.,

Wednesday, June 26 1822
New York June 19.

GRAND CANAL

We are informed by a gentleman who has just returned from a visit to
Buffalo and Niagara Falls, that he traveled 160 miles in the new
convenient passage boat on the Erie Canal, viz., from Little Falls to
Utica 22 miles
Utica to Montezuma, by Rome, Syracuse, and Weed's Basin 96

Crossing from Montezuma over the Seneca River and the Cayuga Marshes 6 miles
and up the river Clyde 6 1-2 miles to Blockhouse- - he again takes the canal and passing
the flourishing villages of Lyons and Palmyra to Hartswell s Basin 42

On this route are already seven passage boats with good
accommodations, and hundreds of other boats transporting
immense quantities of produce to Utica; and such is the stock in this
state, that there are now 100,000 barrels of flour alone on the banks
of the canal, that cannot be transported for want of boats- - many of
which are now building that cost from $100 to $400 each, and carry
from 150 to 400 barrels. These boats have taken freight from
Montezuma to Utica, a distance of nearly 100 miles, at the extremely
low rate of 5 cents per cwt., or one dollar per ton, which is about
one tenth the former rate of transporting the same distance by
wagons; in this case, the owners of the goods paid the tolls, which
however are very trifling.

The passage boats are drawn by three horses tandem rigged; the other
boats by one or two horses, according to the size of the boat -- a
boy rides the rear horse, and travels from three to four miles per
hour. Passengers leaving Utica at 8 oíclock, reach Weed's Basin 87
miles the next morning at 7 o'clock, traveling all night. The charge
is only 4 cents per mile, which includes board and lodging both of
which are as good if not better, than the taverns on the road. This
is as rapid as the stages travel, much less expensive, no risk of
life or limb, and no fatigue or dust attending.

The Grand Canal is nearly finished from Schenectady to Little Falls,
56 miles- - from Montezuma to Clyde, or Block House, 13 miles, and
from Hartwell's Basin to Genesee River, and from thence to Lockport,
70 miles- all of which it is said, will be filled, and boats allowed
to pass, on or before the first day of October next, making 260 or 270
miles, through one of the richest and most valuable parts of the
state of New-York. Numerous emigrants from the hardy and industrious
northern and eastern hive are to be seen transporting themselves and
their families, at little or no expense, to settle on the lands
bordering on the canal.

Merchants residing in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington and
Louisville and in Michigan and Indiana, will soon get their goods
transported for 1/4 the price they now pay, and save as much or more
in the breakage and damage now unavoidable in wagons, besides the
saving of half or two thirds in time; which, in fact, is extending
the credit on their goods.

Emigrants and their families much prefer the canal to any other route
on every account- - expense, time, health and comfort &c.

The amount of toll already received at the office in Utica this
spring exceeds the sum paid the whole of last year, and it is
supposed it will amount 50 or 60,000 dollars.


The Advertiser, Lyons, Friday Jan. 17, 1823

Canal Navigation. The following statements shews the amount of
property which passed this village on the Erie Canal, in 1822. It
will be recollected that this section of the canal was not navigable
from the first of July till about the first of November

32,703 bbls. Flour

12,181 bbls. Salt

1,475 do. Provisions,

406 do Ashes.

7,849 bushels Wheat

92,507 feet Boards.

40,245 gallons Whiskey

14,492 lbs. Lard

87 tons Castings

349 boxes Soap
besides a great variety of articles, the amount of which in the
aggregate, is considerable. The quantity of flour and salt is large,
for the time the canal was navigable. The amount of toll collected
on this section, is sufficient to shew the increasing importance of
the "Big Ditch."


Wayne County Sentinel, Palmyra. Wed. March 30, 1825.

The Western Villages.
Under this head, some of the city papers have very properly noticed
the extraordinary growth of several of the villages on the line of the
Erie Canal since its partial completion; but we have not seen a single
word respecting Palmyra . We cheerfully respond that great
improvements are making in nearly all of our western villages, and
few present greater evidences of the fact than the one in which we
have the good fortune to be located. No speculating spirit has
hurried its march of improvement beyond the
degree which its own resources will warrant and sustain. Surrounded
as it is by a wealthy and fertile country, and an enterprising and
rapidly increasing population, it seem as if nature has heretofore
done more for its facilities and importance that the citizens
themselves. But we take pleasure in stating, that an enterprising
spirit seldom witnessed, and a disposition to "put a shoulder to the
wheel" to improve and raise up our village, is now universally
manifested by them.

We had indulged a hope that a correct census of this village,
accompanied by a minute statement of its growing condition, would be
furnished for publication before this time; but we cannot forbear to
mention, while on this subject, some of the great improvements now
going on.

New streets are laying out, and preparations for building are making.
In addition to the three large and commodious store-house already
erected in this village, three more are now building, which will
probably be finished in the course of four weeks; an excellent and
convenient wharf is also constructing by the Messrs. Thayres,
connected with Rogersí Basin. The business done on the canal last
year, at this point, proved the necessity of these conveniences. The
number of dwelling houses, merchants, and mechanics shops
&c.,&c.,&c., to be erected the ensuing season, is greater, perhaps,
than was ever before known in any season.


The Wayne Sentinel, Palmyra Wednesday, May 1,1833

The great eastern mail is now received at this place, by the way of
the Free Bridge and Vienna, from eight to ten hours earlier than it
was before the change in the route, and generally in advance of the
mail which is brought with all reasonable speed on horseback over the
old route through Montezuma and Lyons - both leaving Elbridge
simultaneously. The proprietors and the public have abundant reason
to be well satisfied with the change. The particular arrangements of
the stages over this route, we understand, will be announced to the
public by the proprietors in a few days.


Syracuse Journal, April 26, 1852

The Canals. The Oneida Lake is still blockaded by ice, and boats from
the east bound for Oswego will be obliged to come by way of this city
for the present.

Business at this point started rather sluggishly, owing to the
insufficiency of water. UP to 6 oíclock last evening there were 20
clearances ó all loaded, except one, with corn from Canton, Camillus
and Bellisle. The amount of tolls received was $543.37. The water on
the long level east was not high enough to permit the lockage of
boats. The water was not let in here until Monday night, and
consequently there have been no boats loaded.

Syracuse Journal, April 30 1852

Canal Tolls. The amount of Canal tolls received at the Collectorís
office in this city during the first ten days of navigation, ending
the month of April, the present year is $4,462.64. During the
corresponding period last year, the amount received was $5,346.33
exceeding the present year by $883.69ñ The decrease is much less than
might have been anticipated from the embarrassments that have been
experienced from scarcity of water, and from Railroad competition.
The ensuing half month will doubtless put another face on the aspect
of things.


Collected by Richard Palmer

Sunday, January 3, 2010

From Hill to Bottom

© 2007 David Minor / Eagles Byte

His stagecoach having crossed the wooden bridge across the northern end of Cayuga Lake, with no loss of life or limb (to passenger or horse), John Fowler continues his journey westward. They did build another bridge three years later, just to the north of the rickety one Fowler crossed, but the old one continued in use. That old bridge itself, collapsed in February of 1858. In our own time it was replaced with a modern steel structure, used for the east-west freight line of the Finger Lakes Scenic Railway and now runs excursion trains periodically from April to December.

Fowler mentions a lake steamer that made the trip downlake to Ithaca (which, by the way, he misspells. I can’t say much; I didn’t know how it was spelled until I was in my early thirties).

But, back to John Fowler and 1830. Three miles to the west his coach enters the settlement of Seneca Falls, which will be incorporated as a village the following year. He mentions only its 2,000 inhabitants (it seems smaller to him), a tannery, a distillery and a few mills and stores. There’s also a canal connecting it with the Erie Canal at Montezuma (today’s Cayuga & Seneca Canal). Four miles further along lies the village of Waterloo. Being English, Fowler remarks, “. . . I am no great admirer of Waterloos, nor can I, in its present state, bestow the inordinate praise upon this place which some have done.” Apart from a courthouse, jail, and several stores, “. . . it is altogether a most irregularly-built and unfinished place, and whatever importance or interest time may add to its character, I have spoken of it as it now is, and without much of either.”

So much for Fowler’s opinion of these two communities; the third made a better impression. It appeared at the end of a “highly interesting” road that traveled along the end of the next finger-like lake, Seneca. He describes his first sight of the village of Geneva, “at a considerable elevation . . . one of the principal streets running immediately down to the lake, and the other along the summit of the bank and parallel to it. Extending beyond which are many elegant private residences.” He takes note of Geneva College, founded five years earlier, which would one day become Hobart and William Smith colleges. The Geneva Female Seminary was even more recent, having been opened just last year. Unlike many such institutions for young ladies, this one stressed logic, languages, sciences and mathematics, rather than the traditional domestic subjects. These schools, like most of the finer homes, were along the upper street in the region, known as The Hill. Situated high above the lake’s northern end, they had the spectacular views. The business district at this time was in the process of moving to The Bottom, the streets down by the lake’s shore.

Fowler explored the village for an hour or so. If he spent any time wandering around The Bottom he might have spied such businesses as Thomas Burrell’s factory for the production of farm machinery, and the Ontario Glass Manufacturing Company.

One other arrival in town this year, a more permanent one, was 12-year-old Charles J. Folger, who moved here from Nantucket with his family. He would go onto study law and go into politics, eventually becoming Chester A. Arthur’s Treasury Secretary.

Meanwhile - John Fowler is moving on toward Canandaigua.

Friday, January 1, 2010

WINTER NAVIGATION

Oswego Times & Journal
January 2, 1855

The propeller St. Nicholas, Capt. Williams, arrived in this port yesterday from Toronto with 3,020 barrels of flour, consigned to Messrs. Clemow & Bloore. The flour goes through
to New York by Railroad.


Oswego Daily Palladium
Sat., January 13, 1855

An Important Fact. - The Propeller St. Nicholas arrived at this port yesterday with
3,013 barrels of flour from Toronto, consigned to Clemow & Bloore, for New York or Boston.
The Toronto House refuse to allow flour to go over the Hudson River Road, and wish
it go go east via the Binghamton road. As the Oswego and Syracuse road have an arrangement
with the Central, they decline, we are informed, to take the flour to the Binghamton road.
Under these circumstances the flour, we are told by the consignees, will be sent to Cape Vincent.
The Propeller was to leave last night at 12 o'clock.


Oswego Daily Palladium
Tues., Feb. 13, 1855

The Propeller St. Nicholas, Capt. William Williams, arrived at this port yesterday morning,
from Toronto with 3,060 barrels of flour. She left Toronto on Sunday afternoon.
The Captain says he met with no serious obstructions from ice, except in the neighborhood
of Genesee.


Oswego Times & Journal
Tues., Feb. 13, 1855

The weather is now fine, and ideas and indications begin to turn towards the opening of navigation
and commencement of another business season. The cargo of flour which arrived yesterday by the
St. Nicholas was from Port Credit, above Toronto. During the late unexampled cold weather the river
froze across between Cayuga and Van Buren streets, but vessels can now enter the lower
harbor without difficulty.


Oswego Times & Journal
Thurs., Feb. 15, 1855

We understand the St. Nicholas' cargo of flour is going through to Boston by the
Oswego and Central line, confirming what we have before stated, that the Canadians
will not ship by the Central and Hudson River Roads on account of the excessive cost
transshipment at New York by this route.