Monday, May 28, 2012

CENTRAL / WESTERN NEW YORK TIMELINE / 1824



1824
Jan 24                       
During an Ontario Canal Company meeting at Canandaigua's Mead’s Hotel, nine directors are elected. The canal is never built.

Feb 2                       
The Niagara County town of Lockport is formed from Cambria and Royalton.

Feb 9                       
New York Secretary of State J. V. N. Yates presents a report to the state senate , advocating houses of employment for each county for the poor and for orphaned children.

Feb 19                       
Rochester's first bank, the Bank of Rochester, is chartered.

Mar 23                       
The Tioga County town of Barton is formed from the Town of Tioga.

Mar 29                       
The Broome County town of Conklin is formed from the Town of Chenango.

Mar 30
Oswego businessman Henry Milton Ames is born in Mexico, New York, to Leonard and Minerva Peck Ames.

April
Manhattan Company superintendent John Lozier issues a report, lowering his estimate of possible new customers to 1,000, and offering an uninterrupted supply of water. At an annual rate of $12 few sign up.

Apr 3                       
Samuel Young is nominated by a state caucus for governor.

Apr 12                       
De Witt Clinton is deposed as an Erie Canal commissioner.

May 11
The cornerstone of Rochester’s St. Luke's Church Church - to be in the Gothic style - is laid.

Jun 1                       
The Erie Canal Commission signs a second, overlapping contract with Samuel Wilkeson and Ebenezer Johnson, for building the dam at Tonawanda.

Jul 12                       
Horatio Gates Spafford registers his A Pocket Guide for the Tourist and Traveller along the Line of the Canals and the Interior Commerce of the State of New-York with R. R. Lansing, the Clerk of the Northern District of New-York in New York.

Jul 23                       
Western New York land agent Paolo Busti dies at the age of 74.

Aug 4
Rochester lumber dealer William B. Morse is born.

Aug 24                       
Syracuse builder and salt manufacturer Amos L. Mason, is born in Onondaga, to Cyrenus and Martha Harroun Mason.

September
Spafford’s “Guide . . . “ is published in Troy, New York.

Sep 11                       
Holland Land Office agent Joseph Elliott gives his nephew and accounting clerk David E. Evans power of attorney for conducting the office's business.

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 the central Genesee River, except for her 2-square mile Gardeau Tract, which she reserves for herself and her Indian family.

Oct 26                       
The cutting of the western end of the Erie Canal at Lockport, to Lake Erie, is completed.

Oct 28                       
The Reverend Joseph Penney preaches the dedication sermon at the opening of his Presbyterian Church in Rochester. The sermon will be printed by Everard Peck.

November           
De Witt Clinton is again elected governor of New York, partly a backlash due to his ouster from the canal commissioner's post by Van Buren's colleagues.

Nov 8                       
Cayuga Lake ferryboat operator, politician, and militia colonel John Harris, dies in Bridgeport at the age of 64.

Nov 11                       
Orleans County is created out of north central Genesee Country.

Nov 25                       
The Onondaga Canal Company is organized, to connect the Erie Canal to Onondaga Hollow. Nothing is ever done.

Nov 27                       
New York State authorizes the establishment of county poorhouses, to be run by superintendents.

December
Final engineering measurements are made at Lockport, the work is found completely satisfactory.


State
John Beardslee, founder of Beardslee City, dies.    **    Syracuse is incorporated as a city.   **    The approximate year editor Benjamin Smead turns Bath’s Farmers’ Advocate and Steuben Advertiser over to his sons.    **    The Naples Village Record begins publication.    **    Hector pioneer Mrs. William Wickham dies at the age of 82.     **    Charles Butler is admitted to the bar, begins practicing in Lyons. He will move to Geneva after a few months.    **    James Seaver, MD's The Life of Mary Jemison, from her own words, is published.    **    James Fenimore Cooper accompanies four English noblemen (including future prime minister Edward Stanley) on a tour of Saratoga, Ballston, Lake George, Ticonderoga and Lake Champlain. While in Little Falls he decides to write Last of the Mohicans.    **    The 7th Regiment of the New York State Militia takes the title National Guards.    **    Evangelist Charles G. Finney begins his career, in western New York.    **    The steamboat Martha Ogden is built at Sackets Harbor, financed in part by Rochester merchants.    **    Richard McDaniels settles in Connewango.    **    Ebenezer Mack, publisher of Ithaca's Seneca Republican, takes on William Andrus as a partner.    **    The late land agent Paolo Busti is replaced by John J. Vander Kemp.    **    H. G. Spofford’s Gazetteer of the State of New York is published.    **    When Troy hardware merchant John Spencer dies partner Erastus Corning buys out Spencer’s heirs to become full owner.    **    Legislation is passed calling for the final sale of all unassigned patent lands in the state.    **    Buffalo businessman Benjamin Rathbun successfully sues Samuel E. Barnes for $75. Barnes is defended by "Counselor" John Root; Rathbun retains Millard Fillmore partner Joseph Clary.    **    Farmer John Nicholas Rose purchases over a thousand acres of land on Keuka Lake from Captain John Beddoe.    **    New York City mercantile worker David Piffard settles in the central Genesee Valley, buying 600 acres of land.    **    Newfane holds its first town meeting in James Van Horn’s mansion.    **    Construction begins on Skaneateles’ Lake House (later the Indian Queen).    **    The approximate date James Brown opens a public house in Scottsville, later to become the Oatka Inn.    **    Reuben Hyde Walworth is named the last chancellor of the state.    **    The approximate date the present basic structure of Pittsford’s Phoenix Hotel is completed by its owner – either M. Kempton or the former inn’s next owner John Acer.    **    A stone house is built in Clinton County. In the 1920s it will be purchased by industrialist William H. Miner’s wife Alice, to store her artwork collection.

Auburn
The Auburn system of prison management is implemented, ending universal solitary confinement.The prison in enlarged.    **    William Henry Seward marries Frances Miller, daughter of his senior law partner Judge Elijah Miller. Miller gives them a house.

Canandaigua
The second County Court House (later City Hall) is completed.    **    A. N. Phelps begins publishing the Canandaigua Republican. He soon sells the paper to Thomas B. Barnum who runs it for a short time.    **    The home of Dr. E. Carr at 50 Gibson Street is completed.    **    Boston architect Francis Allen’s home for Alexander McKechnie is completed.    **    David E. Evans becomes a director of the Ontario Bank and the Western Insurance Company.

Chautauqua Lake
A bursting dam destroys Robert Miles’s log canoe, used for freighting on the lake since 1806.    **    Elisha Allen builds a horse-boat scow for the Chautauqua to Maysville passenger run. Powered by two pair of horses alternating hourly, the run takes ten hours.    **     Wine is first produced in the Chautauqua region.

Erie Canal
Professor Amos Eaton’s report on the rock formations along the route of the future Erie Canal, A geological and agricultural survey of the district adjoining the Erie canal, in the State of New-York, commissioned by Stephen Van Rennselaer, is published. It contains a 4 1/2 foot profile of geology between Boston and Buffalo. Eaton is designated senior professor of the Rensselaer School (later Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute) in Troy, founded by Van Rensselaer, who donated $300, and himself.   **    The inhabitants of Cayuga, Onondaga, Ontario, Seneca, Steuben, Tioga, Tompkins, Wayne, and Yates counties petition the Legislature to ask further navigation improvements from Cayuga and Seneca lakes to the Erie Canal, including the draining of the Cayuga Marshes. An act is passed to have a state engineer to do a feasibility study; the drainage of the marshes does not get beyond the survey stage.    **    A weighlock is built at Syracuse.

Penn Yan
The approximate date Alexander Heimup builds a house at 200 Main Street.    **    The Yates County Court House is built.    **    The 1801 grist mill is destroyed by fire.    **   Birkett Mills is built.

Rochester
The village gets its first theater.    **    A visitor is robbed of $1,800 at a gambling shop.    **    St. Luke's Episcopal Church is built.    **    The wooden Main Street bridge across the Genesee River is replaced by a new wooden one on stone piers, - designed by Elisha Johnson -  at half the cost of the previous, 1812 one.   **    The aqueduct is completed.   **    Nathaniel Rochester’s home at Spring and South Washington streets is completed. He is named president and a subscription manager for the new Bank of Rochester, which he co-founded.    **    Thurlow Reed becomes editor of the Telegraph.    **    The First Presbyterian Church is built.    **    Printer H. Leavenworth publishes David Rogers' The American Physician. and Lewis W. Covell's An Account of the Destruction of the City of Jerusalem , by the Roman Army Under Titus.    **    Joshua Bradley's An Address to the Masons, on the Importance and Utility of forming Associations . . . is published.    **    The Rochester Magazine and Theological Review, edited by the Reverend John Samuel Thompson, is printed by L. W. Sibley.    **    Lumberman Sanford Hunt builds the canal boat Hazard at the Lower Falls of the Genesee site known as the Old Rafting Place. He will use it to transport timber, potash and pearl ash to Albany via the Erie Canal.    **    Dr. Douglas Bly is born in West Henrietta.

©  2012    David Minor / Eagles Byte

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