Thursday, July 18, 2013

CENTRAL / WESTERN NEW YORK TIMELINE / 1829


January
James S. Wadsworth resumes his legal studies, now at Yale.

Jan 1
Martin Van Buren becomes governor of New York State.

Jan 24                 
The Cattaraugus County town of Lyndon is formed from Franklinville.

Jan 28                 
Moses and Roxanna Bates Rathbun have a daughter, Elizabeth, in Buffalo. She is 38 years younger than her half brother, merchant Benjamin Rathbun.

February
An American scientific expedition leaves for Antarctica. Among the scientists aboard is New York naturalist James Eights.

Mar 19                 
The Sodus Canal Company is incorporated, capitalized at $200,000, to connect either the Seneca River or the Canandaigua outlet to Lake Ontario’s Great Sodus Bay. It’s partly constructed but never used.

Mar 20                 
The Town of Cheektowaga is established.

Mar 26                 
The Onondaga County towns of Elbridge and Van Buren are formed from Camillus.    **    The Seneca County town of Waterloo is formed from Junius.    **    The Niagara County village of Lockport is incorporated, made the county seat.

April
The official opening of the Oswego Canal, connecting the Erie Canal at Syracuse with Lake Ontario.

Apr 11                 
The Cortland County town of Cortlandville is formed out of Homer.    **    Construction of the Crooked Lake Canal is authorized. 

Apr 14                 
The Buffalo & Erie Rail Road is organized to connect Buffalo and Erie, Pennsylvania. Capitalized at $650,000, it will be surveyed.    

Apr 15
The State legislature approves funding for the Chemung Canal, linking the Chemung River to the Erie Canal. Construction begins later in the year.

Apr 17                 
The  Madison County Rail Road is organized. Capitalized at $70,000, and meant to link Chittenango and Cazenovia, it is surveyed but never built.    **    The Port Byron & Auburn Rail Road is organized. Capitalized at $50,000, and meant to link the two upstate villages, it is never built. 

Apr 20                 
The Wayne County town of Walworth is formed from Ontario.

Apr 23
The Ellicotts Creek Slackwater Navigation Company is organized, capitalized at $5,000, for construction in Erie County. Nothing is ever done.   

Apr 26                 
Brockport is incorporated.

Apr 27                 
The Salina & Port Watson Rail Road is organized. Capitalized at $375,000, and meant to link the village of Syracuse and the site outside of Cortland, it is surveyed but never built.

Apr 30                 
The Scottsville Canal Company is incorporated, capitalized at $15,000, to connect the settlement of Scottsville with the Genesee River.

May 1                 
The state legislature incorporates the Owasco & Erie Canal Company, to connect Owasco Lake to the Erie Canal. Nothing is ever done.

May 2                 
English barrister Henry Tudor sails from Portsmouth, England, aboard the 500-ton New York packet boat Hannibal, bound for New York.

Jul 24                 
Chautauqua Institution co-founder Lewis Miller is born in Greentown, Ohio.

Sep 15                 
Directors of the Bank of the United States vote to establish a branch in Buffalo.

Oct 9                 
The Albany canal boat Seneca Chief passes through Brockport on the Erie Canal with cargo of oysters. The toll comes to $13.59.

November        
A fire in Buffalo burns $25,000 worth of stores on the west side
of Main Street.

Nov 13                 
Daredevil  Sam Patch, in his early twenties, is killed jumping into the falls of the Genesee River at Rochester, before a crowd of 7,000.

Nov 24                 
John P. Murray of New York City writes to Yale law student James S. Wadsworth, thanking him for his advice to Murray's son on studying.

December
Daniel Webster marries Caroline Le Roy in Le Roy, New York.


STATE
The state legislature passes a measure assigning the Syracuse water supply monopoly to Captain Oliver Teall, through 1831.    **    Trumbull Cary founds Batavia’s Bank of the Genesee (later M&T), the first bank west of the Genesee River.    **    Geneva attorney Charles Butler and his wife Eliza move into a house they’ve had built on South Main Street (later the Prouty-Chew House/Museum.    **    Newell’s Settlement changes its name to Wyoming.    **     The town of Canadice is formed out of the town of Richmond.    **    Ansom M. Weed and Allen Warner buy Geneseo’s Livingston Register from James Percival.    **    The Reverend Thomas Parker becomes minister of the East Penfield Baptist Church.    **    Granville, Vermont, native Levi Steele arrives in Connewango from Genesee County, as does Grafton, New Hampshire, native Ziba Hovey.    **    Derick Knickerbocker builds the Knickerbocker Hotel health spa in Avon.    **     Bushnell's Basin innkeeper and philomath (almanac compiler) Oliver Loud dies.    **    Vermont carpenter Brigham Young settles in Monroe County.    **    A bill is passed to consolidate the Onondaga County courts at Ovid, Levana and Onondaga. Commissioners Samuel Forman, Oren Hutchinson and John Smith are named to select a location for the new courthouse, in Syracuse.    **    Farmboy Joseph Smith claims to have found golden plates buried at Cumorah Hill outside of Palmyra. He will found the Mormon religion.    **    The Alexander H. Howell House is built at 101 Gibson Street in Canandaigua.    **     Perrinsville is renamed Fairport.    **     Keuka Lake landowner John Beddoe sells part of his land to James and Rebecca Taylor. John Beddoe Stafford is born to Charlotte Beddoe Stafford (daughter of John Beddoe) and her husband George Stafford, in Branchport.    **    The approximate date Almira Fowler, younger sister to phrenologist-architect Orson Fowler, is born to Horace and Mary Taylor Fowler in Cohocton.    **    1,291,820 bushels of salt are processed at Salina (almost 131,000 more than last year). Syracuse, Liverpool and Geddes have added to the increase.    **    Total income of the canal system, including tolls and duties on salt, amount to $1,193,979.    **    Newfane pioneer James Van Horn, Sr. is elected as the third town supervisor.    **    County clerks are required to report a transcript of all convictions and sentences to the Secretary of State.    **    An inn is built along the Erie Canal near Pittsford, close to the nearby Monroe Mineral Springs. It will usually be called the Spring House.    **    The state’s statutes are revised. Among the changes is consolidation of laws concerning apprentices.    **    Politician Frederick Whittlesley served two one-year terms as Monroe County treasurer.    **    Poet and hymn lyricist John Hugh McNaughton is born in Caledonia.

Buffalo
Use of the harbor increases 20% over last year.    **    Merchants Lyman and Moses Rathbun are brought to court on assault charges.    **     With $10,000 pledged the Buffalo High School Association begins planning construction.    **    A branch of the Bank of the United States is established here. Bank president Nicholas visits the area, views Niagara Falls, and offers to pay for a circular staircase into the gorge. The structure will be used for nearly a hundred years.    **    Nathaniel B. Rochester moves from the eponymous city founded by his father to Buffalo, to manage the Bank of the United States branch there.

Rochester
The Rochester Athenaeum, a forerunner of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is founded.    **    The Reynolds Arcade is completed.    **    Packet boat builder Seth C. Jones launches the 15-20 ton Superior on the Erie Canal. The boat has a 7-foot-high cabin and scenic paintings by artist Daniel Steele.    **    Banker Abraham M. Schermerhorn finds himself the owner of the four-story, brick Eagle Tavern, when the builder is foreclosed.    **    Elisha Johnson is elected president of the community for a third consecutive one-year term.

Massachusetts
New York divinity student Orson Fowler enrolls in Amherst College, working for tuition and board.

Visitors
Englishman Basil Hall’s Travels in North America.

© 2013                        David Minor / Eagles Byte

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