1823
Jan 15
Geneva diarist Josephine Matilda deZeng is born.
Jan 29
The Wayne County town of Macedon is formed from
Palmyra.
Jan 31
The Allegany County town of Allen is created out
of Angelica.
Feb 5
Yates County is created and named after the governor.
The Town of Benton, formerly in Ontario County, becomes part of the
new county. The total county population is 11,025; all but 46 are white.
Ontario County’s population is 88,000-plus, under 750 are black.
Mar 16
Benjamin Rathbun, owner of Buffalo's Eagle Tavern,
writes to Leonard P. Crary, hoping to interest him in investing in a planned
stage line.
Mar 27
The town of Alden is formed from the Erie County
town of Clarence. The county’s Town of Erie is established. In 1831
it will be renamed Newstead.
Mar 28
The towns of Auburn and Fleming are formed out of
the town of Aurelius.
Apr 11
Wayne County, named for general Anthony Wayne, is
formed from Ontario and Seneca counties. Officers are John S. Talmadge, first
judge and surrogate; Hugh Jameson, sheriff; William H. Adams, district
attorney; Isaiah J. Richardson, clerk.
Apr 12
Wyoming's County Town of Wethersfield is formed
from the Town of Orangeville.
Apr 16
The Chemung County towns of Veteran and Catlin are
formed from Catharines.
May 11
Pastor F. H. Cuming of Rochester's St. Luke's
Church delivers the sermon The means by which the prosperity of the Church
may be promoted, printed in
pamphlet form next year by Everard Peck.
May 26
Businessman and philanthropist William Pryor
Letchworth is born in Brownville to Quakers Josiah and Ann Hance Letchworth.
May 28
The cornerstone of Rochester's Presbyterian Church
is laid.
June
The politically-motivated Erie Canal Commission
meets in Buffalo, suspends construction on the extension there, turns their
attention to Black Rock, setting off a massive counter-lobbying effort by
Buffalo. ** The Baltimore-Conewago
Canal commissioners leave Baltimore to meet with De Witt Clinton in New York
City. They hire James Geddes as their canal director. From there they continue
to Albany and take the Erie Canal route to Cayuga Lake. They take a steamboat
to Ithaca and travel overland to the Susquehanna River. Their efforts are for
nothing, their canal is not built.
Jun 15
Rochester
miller Charles J. Hill marries Salome Morgan of Massachusetts.
September
A horse-car railroad opens between Rochester and
the Genesee River landing at Carthage. ** Joseph Smith says an angel named Moroni appears
to him and shows him the site, at Hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, where tablets
containing the history of the lost tribes of America are buried.
Sep 3
On this day or the next Micah Brooks, Jellis Clute
and Henry B. Gibson contract with
former Indian captive Mary Jemison for her land on New York’s Genesee
River, except for her 2-square mile Gardeau Tract, which she reserves for
herself and her Indian family. Gibson, of Canandaigua, will settle there on the
farm known a Taborlea.
October
An aqueduct designed by David Stanhope Bates is
completed in Rochester, to carry the Erie over the Genesee River.
Oct 1
The first water is put into the completed portion
of the Erie Canal.
Oct 7
Patience Jones Rathbun, 51-year-old mother of
Buffalo tavern owner Benjamin Rathbun, arrives there from Batavia with her
husband Moses. She will die shortly afterwards and Moses will remarry within
eight months, to Batavia widow Charlotte Moore.
Oct 23
Burt Van Horn is born to miller James Van Horn and
his wife Abigail at their new brick home on Eighteen Mile Creek in New Fane
(Newfane).
Oct 28
Maryland native and Rochester co-founder Charles
Carroll dies in Williamsburg, New York (no longer in existence, near Geneseo),
at the age of 56.
November
The canalboat Mary and Hannah arrives in New York City with a cargo of wheat,
the first to arrive from Seneca Lake via the Erie Canal. The owners are
presented with an engraved urn.
Nov 21
Erie Canal commissioners sign a contract with John
W. Hayes for the construction of the river lock on Tonawanda Creek, as well as
a guard lock there and the Buffalo guard lock.
State
The first printing press in Yates County. ** The total value of
shipments out of the Genesee River reaches $807,000. ** The top floor of a Syracuse tavern is converted
into a stage. ** William Seward moves
from the town of Florida to Auburn to become Judge Elijah Miller’s junior
partner. ** William B. Rochester is
named first circuit judge of the eight district. ** Painter Susan Catherine (Moore Waters ) is born in Binghamton. ** Historian-physician William Seaver
interviews Mary Jemison. He will publish her biography this year. ** Millard Fillmore is
admitted to the Buffalo bar. He takes on partner Joseph Clary, sets up offices
in East Aurora to handle rural cases, leaving Clary in Buffalo to handle city
cases. ** English native Henry Pellit
arrives in Connewango from Onondaga County to settle. James Hammond arrives
from Chautauqua County. Jotham Metcalf arrives from New Hampshire, Ralph Williams
from Vermont. Asabel Brown arrives
from Grand Isle, Vermont. Lomis Lillie, Joseph Cunningham and Luke Ward also
settle here. Rufus Wyllys and Samuel Farlee build a saw-mill on Elm Creek.
Luther Marlow settles in Connewango, on the lot owned by Daniel Whitin. ** Le Roy lawyer Herman
J. Redfield is elected to the state senate. ** The Baptist congregation of Broome & Tioga
is organized. ** Construction begins on
Canandaigua’s Cooley Hardware Store, at 129 South Main. ** The Reverend Robert
Hubbard, a Presbyterian minister, holds the first religious services in
Allegany County’s West Almond, at the house of Daniel Dean. ** 15-year-old Geneseo
student James Wadsworth is kicked out of Hamilton College for his unstudious
ways. **
New Hope Mills is established on the west side of Skaneateles Lake,
begins producing pancake flour.
** Wyoming
County's Town of Eagle is formed out of the Town of Pike. ** Livingston and Monroe
counties petition the state legislature to improve the Genesee River between
St. Helena (at today’s Letchworth Park) and the north end of the rapids at
Rochester. ** Under Auburn State Prison
warden Captain Elam Lynds and his assistant John Cray the system of having
prisoners work in contractors’ shops, under strict silence - the silent system
- is adopted. ** The 1817 steamboat tax,
established to help pay for the state’s canal system, is discontinued. Over its
lifetime it brought in $73,509.99. ** Livingston County judge Moses Hayden is elected
to the Eighteenth U.S. Congress. He will serve two terms, ending in 1827. ** Captain Samuel Erwin
builds a sawmill on the Conhocton River at Painted Post.
Batavia
Batavia becomes a village. ** The Eagle Tavern is built
on Main Street.
Erie Canal
The canal opens from Rochester to Albany, where a
basin is being built able to handle a thousand canal boats. Brockport becomes
the temporary western terminus. ** Genesee Valley business interests petition the
New York legislature for a valley canal to connect the Erie Canal with the
Allegheny River
** Samuel
Wilkeson and Dr. Ebenezer Johnson of Buffalo supervise the construction of a
dam and a lock at the mouth of Tonawanda Creek in North Tonawanda, the first
work done on the western end of the Erie. The dam deepens the creek’s level to
4-and-a-half feet.
** A culvert is
built at Medina to carry the canal over a road. ** The approximate date Elias and Gould
Richardson convert the old Pardee building along the Erie Canal in Bushnell’s
Basin into an inn and public house.
Monroe County
A man with a slashed throat in Parma becomes the
county's first official murder victim. ** The first fair in the county is held.
Penn Yan
The Yates County Medical Society is founded by Dr.
Andrew Oliver and others.
** Surveyor
Joseph Jones draws up a gaol liberties map, showing the confines of those under
house arrest for debt.
Rochester
The village celebrates the local opening of the
Erie Canal. ** A 14-foot Genesee River
waterfall at the site of Ebenezer “Indian” Allen’s mill of the 1790s is blasted
away as part of the aqueduct construction project. The first pier of the new aqueduct is carried away by spring floods. **
Willis Kempshall becomes a partner of Ira West in a dry goods
store. ** The village drops
property-owning as a requisite for voting. ** The First Baptist Church is built. ** The village on the east
bank of the Genesee River is incorporated into the village limits. ** Backed by Stephen van
Rensselaer, geologist Amos Eaton makes a study of the lands flanking the Erie
Canal, including Rochester's Genesee River Gorge. The study is concluded next
year. ** Construction is begun on
Washington Street for the home of Colonel Nathaniel Rochester. ** New Englander Nathaniel
Hayward settles in the town of Brighton and buys seventy acres. ** Charles J. Hill is appointed quartermaster of
the Twenty-third Division New York militia, responsible for reviewing a brigade
annually. ** A catholic church, the
first in western New York, is built by an Irish congregation, at Fank and Platt
streets. ** Everard Peck and Company
publishes local physician John G. Vought's "A Treatise on Bowel
Complaints" and "The Speeches of Charles Phillips".
© 2012 David Minor / Eagles Byte
