TIMELINE 1830-1831

1830

Jan 1
Total state canal debt reaches $7,706,013, which includes construction costs on the Cayuga, Oswego and Seneca canals. [nysbsnengnrwtrn]    **    Lodi farmer Philip S. Lott begins keeping an account book; he will make entries for more than fifty years.    

Jan 20

Native American Seneca (Wolf Clan, his mother's) orator Red Jacket (aka Otetliani/Sagoyewatha) dies in the Buffalo, NY, area at about the age of 80 (exact c. 1750 birth date uncertain). His remains will be buried in an Indian cemetery. On Oct 9, 1884 he is reburied Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Feb 3
Cohocton's Congregational Church, built on land donated by deacon Thomas Crosby, is dedicated.

Feb 22

New York's Allegany County Town of Amity is formed from the town of Angelica and Scio.

Mar 24
The Buffalo Journal and General Advertiser announces that businessman Nathaniel Rathbun will build the local headquarters of the Bank of the United States branch, at Main and South Division streets.

Apr 16

The Allegany County Town of Genesee is formed from the Town of Cuba.

May

New York's Dansville Village Chronicle advertises the opening of a daily stage line of mail coaches between Oswego and Rochester, leaving Oswego every day at 2 AM, passing through Elmira, Painted Post, Cohocton, Dansville and Geneseo, making the trip in two days.

Jul 12
Very heavy rain begins falling in western New York and continues through the next morning.
Jul 13
Mid-day, the heavy rains cause a break in the Erie Canal in Bushnell's Basin near Pittsford's Great Embankment. A culvert gives way a mile-and-a-half west of Pittsford and damage is done as far as Fairport.

November

Evangelist Charles Grandison Finney addresses Rochester, NY's Third Presbyterian Church, tells them that if Christians dedicated their lives to the task they could convert the world and bring the millennium along in three months.

Nov 11

Massachusetts native Glover Perrin dies in Pittsford, NY, at the age of 68. The nearby Town of Perriton will be named for him.

New York State
The population of Pittsford reaches 1,831 which is up from 1,582 recorded in the 1820 census.    **    Escaped slave  Austin Steward, backed by a number of Rochester, New York, liberals including Everard Peck, establishes a black colony at Wilberforce, Ontario.    **    The weekly Dansville Village Chronicle begins publication, continues through 1832 when it becomes the Dansville Chronicle.

Rochester, NY

Financed by Abraham M. Schermerhorn, the Eagle Tavern is built at the northwest of the city's Four Corners.

1831

January

Law apprentice James S. Wadsworth receives a letter in New York City from his father James in Geneseo, informing him that his mother is ill and requesting that he pick up his sister Elizabeth at her Philadelphia boarding school, stop in Harrisburg to conduct some business, then bring his sister home.

Feb 25

Teacher, Daughter of the American Revolution, and future newspaper publisher Melinda Wheeler Bennitt is born in Urbana to Obediah and Olive Woodward Wheeler, settlers from Vermont.

Mar 1

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

Mar 3

Inventor George Mortimer Pullman is born in Brocton.

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, as far as the 

steamboat landing.

Apr 1

Construction begins on THE 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 26

The New York State legislature abolishes debtor imprisonment.    **    Weedsport is incorporated.

May

An organizational meeting for the Rochester Savings Bank is held.

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.

Dec 15

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

New York 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 begin erecting a building at the corner of East Main and Bank streets.    **    Ezra M. Parsons is elected Sheriff of Monroe County.    **    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.    **     State courts convictions for the year total 957, down from last year.    **    Daniel Stevens Dickinson comes to Binghamton from Goshen, Connecticut, to practice law.    **    Luther Tucker begins publishing the journal The Genesee Farmer.    **    The Bank of Geneva moves from Pulteney Park to The Bottom, closer to Seneca Lake, as the business district shifts downhill to that area.    **    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.

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.

Connewango

Farmer Ezra Amadon moves to a different lot, begins a new farm.    **    Brothers James and Charles McGlashen build a large hotel and store.    **    William Hollister, Jr. arrives from Granville, Vermont, soon builds a tannery and opens a shoe shop.

Pittsford

The brick Methodist Church is built on land donated by Ebenezer Sutherland on the western block of Lincoln Avenue.    **    After spending some time in New Orleans, Louisiana, local doctor Hartwell Carver goes to London, England, to study more medical techniques then travels through more of Europe. He will return to Pittsford in 1853 and resume his medical practice.

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.