CENTRAL/WESTERN NEW YORK TIMELINE / 1831

Mar 1
Naomi Wolcott Wadsworth, wife of James Wadsworth and mother of James S. Wadsworth, dies in Geneseo, at the age of 53.

Mar 4
Rochester lawyer Frederick Whittlesley begins serving as the city’s representative to the 22nd and 23rd U.S. Congress. He will resume his practice in 1835.

Mar 24
The Bath & Crooked Lake [Keuka Lake] Rail Road is organized, to connect the two upstate localities, capitalized at $20,000. Nothing is ever done.

Mar 26
The New York state legislature incorporates the Rochester Canal & Rail Road Company, capitalized at $30,000. to connect the city to Lake Ontario, the route bypassing the falls of the Genesee River. Only the railroad is built, just as far as the steamboat landing.

Mar 28
Cornelia Wadsworth, 18-year-old daughter of James and the late Naomi, dies in Geneseo.

April
Construction begins on New York’s eight-mile-long Crooked Lake Canal, connecting Cayuga and Seneca Lakes.

Apr 18
The Cattaraugus County town of Burton (later Allegany) is formed from Great Valley township. ** The Tioga County town of Arlington (later Richford) is formed from Berkshire.

Apr 21
The Rochester Savings Bank is incorporated.

Apr 23
The Syracuse & Pulaski Turnpike is completed.

Apr 25
The Tully & Syracuse Turnpike is completed.

Apr 26
Weedsport is incorporated. 

 May 17
Rochester pioneer Colonel Nathaniel Rochester dies after a protracted illness in Monroe County, at the age of 80.

May 18
School commissioners in Lafargeville lengthen the school year to one five-month term, running from November 1st to April 1st.

June
A fire destroys William Campbell's stone mill on the banks of the Genesee River in Rochester. The Aqueduct House is badly damaged.

Jul 5
Suffragist and physician Cornelia Agnes Greene is born near Lyons to farmers Jabez and Phila Cooke Greene.

Aug 18
De Tocqueville arrives in Niagara Falls after touring to the west.

Sep 26
An Anti-Masonic convention in Baltimore nominates William Wirt of Maryland for President and Pennsylvania's Amos Ellmaker for his running mate. Politicians William Seward, Francis Granger, Timothy Childs and Millard Fillmore take part. It's considered the first national political convention. James Wadsworth and son James S. Wadsworth attend as observers.

Oct 29
Paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh is born in Lockport, New York.

Dec 15
Downtown Buffalo buildings at "Kremlin Corner", owned by William Peabody, are destroyed by fire.

State
217 vessels put in at Carthage Landing on the Genesee River, over a third of them Canadian. ** Captain Oliver Teall’s Syracuse water monopoly, unused, reverts back to the village trustees. ** President Trumbull Cary and other officers of Batavia’s Bank of the Genesee occupy a building - begun in 1829 - at the corner of East Main and Bank streets. ** Ezra M. Parsons is elected Sheriff of Monroe County and becomes one of the original trustees of the Rochester Savings Bank. ** Mary Jemison leaves the Genesee Valley along with her daughter Polly and grandson David, and moves to the Buffalo Creek Reservation in Erie County. ** Wellsville, reportedly named after someone named Wells who missed the organization meeting, is settled. ** Charles A. Terry, a friend of James S. Wadsworth, mentions to him that he met a Mary Craig Wharton in Philadelphia. ** Luther Tucker begins publishing the journal "The Genesee Farmer". ** Branchport landowner Lynham Beddoe marries Eleanor Cuyler Cost. ** The Bank of Geneva moves from Pulteney Park to The Bottom, closer to Seneca Lake, as the business district shifts downhill to that area. The Pulteney Park' site becomes the home of the Geneva Women's Club. ** Skaneateles cabinetmaker Spencer Parson builds a house on East Genesee Street, next to the original First Presbyterian Church. ** A religious revival movement sweeps across the central and western part of the state. ** Pittsford’s brick Methodist Church is built on land donated by Ebenezer Sutherland on the western block of Lincoln Avenue. ** Eighty-nine residents of the Town of Aurora subscribe to a fund to build the First Methodist Church, most pledging materials and labor, a small number promising funds. ** English immigrants Richard Reading and his son arrive in the Town of Aurora's West Falls via the Erie Canal, buy 375 acres of woodland and clear them. Their farm will survive into the millennium. ** John Magee, president of the Steuben County Bank, has a home built in Bath. ** A Congregational Church is organized in Le Roy. ** The Niagara County village of Mountain Ridge, near Lewiston, changes its name to Pekin. ** Burgoyne Kemp sells his Olcott lakeside property to Jacob Albright. ** Orchard Park hotel owner Job Taylor is born. 

Binghamton
Daniel Stevens Dickinson arrives from Goshen, Connecticut, to practice law. ** A local newspaper item offers a one-cent reward for a runaway indentured farming apprentice. 

Brockport
The approximate date a second home - designed by Henry Davis - for Brockport pioneer Hiel Brockway and his family, at Utica and Erie streets, is completed. ** Inventor and future Brockport resident Cyrus McCormick begins work on a reaper. A lack of methods of mass production will prevent him from reaching his goal until his arrival here in the 1840s. ** The Congregational Church completes a new church - begun the year before - on State Street land donated by Jams and Mira Seymour. It will later become a Presbyterian Church.

Buffalo
The Colored Methodist Society, the city's first African-American congregation is founded. Its church, St. Luke’s AME, will be renamed Durham Memorial AME Zion Church, after its second pastor the Reverend Henry Durham. ** The approximate date Benjamin Rathbun sells the Eagle Tavern and its building to Isaac R. Harrington.

Pittsford
The brick Methodist Church is built on land donated by Ebenezer Sutherland on the western block of Lincoln Avenue. ** Congregational Church pastor Asa Mahan leaves to become pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. ** Doctor Rufus Reynolds arrives from his 1806 birthplace in Herkimer County.

Rochester
The new public market opens on the city's west side. The east side's Market Street is renamed Clyde Street. ** Charles J. Hill begins a milling operation in the stone mill on Water Street. ** Loud and Peck's Western Almanack contains a piece arguing against "ardent spirits". Everard Peck begins publishing his Temperance Almanac, devoted to the promotion of temperance. ** Property at 13th South Fitzhugh Street is deeded to the school district. ** Former South Carolinian John Chattin and his New Jersey-born wife Elizabeth buy 55 acres of land in Brighton for $660, to start a farm. ** The three Presbyterian churches sponsor a Charles Grandison Finney religious revival meeting in the city. ** Edward Bush opens an inn and tavern on West Henrietta Road. Much later it will become the Cartwright Inn.

Schenectady
Printer S. Wilson publishes The Traveller's Pocket Directory and Stranger's Guide; Exhibiting Distances on the Erie Canal and Stage Routes in the State of New York.

© 2014 David Minor / Eagles Byte