Journalism, it has been said, is the first rough draft of history. Today’s story in the newspaper, 10, 20 or 50 years from now, becomes a chapter in a history book or, in today’s world, an entry on Wikipedia.
I left the Finger Lakes Times at the end of August of 1985 and moved to the Los Angeles area. I was very lucky as I knew only one person in the Southern California area, and she had worked for me at the Times but had no connections in the world of photography.
The first time Managing Editor Don Hadley offered me a job at The Geneva Times, I turned him down. I was graduating from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications in 1975, and the idea of being the Phelps-Clifton Springs bureau reporter and working alone, out of my apart…
With a population just under 25,000, Yates County is the third least populated in New York state. The small populace, and the fact that there are no cities or highways, makes Yates County a somewhat overlooked area of the Finger Lakes. But no other county has twice become a haven for religio…
Due to the coronavirus and stay-at-home order in northern Virginia, I’ve had time to remember my early days as a sports reporter for the Finger Lakes Times, inducing cringes and shudders as memories come flooding back.
I started at age 23, in August of 1978, as a copy editor and editor of the new weekend section, “Good Times.” Copy desk chief Phil Beckley handled all copy editing, handing our team of five copy editors the unedited stories, photos that needed captions written, and blank layout grids. We als…
(Editor’s Note: This story originally ran in the Finger Lakes Times on Jan. 29, 2014 to note Ontario County’s 225th anniversary)
The 1950s and ’60s in Geneva were a period of change. The 1957 opening of Town & Country Plaza signaled a trend toward being modern. The plaza stores were concrete, steel, and had lots of fluorescent lighting. Aisles were wide and shoppers made their own selections, rather than relying o…
(Editor’s note: This article originally ran as a “Looking Back” column in August 2019)
SENECA FALLS — Jimmy Carter was president and Mario Cuomo was New York’s governor when stories about the Cayuga Nation began appearing in the Finger Lakes Times and other upstate newspapers.
It may seem to the average person that Finger Lakes wines are a Johnny Come Lately, based on the accolades the region has been receiving from consumers and critics over the past 20 years.
High on Seneca’s fertile slopes;
As the Finger Lakes Times looks back on 125 years of reporting the news to the citizens of Geneva, I thought I would let Times readers know about some of the Geneva events covered by the paper.
For a local kid, growing up in Geneva, the arrival of the Finger Lakes Times on your porch every afternoon was a key part of small-town life. From the birth announcements through the Police Beat and onto sports and the obituaries, Geneva, we now more fully appreciate, was blessed with an agg…
When I arrived in Geneva in the summer of 1976, I was not happy to be there. I had spent the previous year working at a magazine in New York City and the two years prior teaching English in Nigeria, West Africa. Big-city journalism was my goal, not a small, provincial newspaper that printed …
SENECA FALLS — Walt Gable was a Mynderse Academy social studies teacher in September 1999 when then President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton — who were vacationing on Skaneateles Lake — visited Seneca Falls and Waterloo.
The Finger Lakes Times and its predecessors have been very important in keeping area residents informed about happenings in Seneca County. There have been many quite important events in the county over these 125 years — too many to deal with them all in this article.
To encapsulate 125 years of local sports history in the space of one story is an immense task. It could be argued that a single article cannot do all of those years proper justice, and that assessment would not be inaccurate.
First, let’s establish that I was not at the Finger Lakes Times for 125 years.
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The Peace statue in Pulteney Park is a beloved, and sometimes decorated, part of Geneva. Did you know she has a twin sister in North Carolina?
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A few years ago I was doing research in old issues of the Chronicle-Express from 1936-42. I was preparing an article on the mood of the Yates County community in the years before Pearl Harbor, and then the local reaction to the Japanese attack.
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Many comparisons have been and will continue to be made between the 1918 “Spanish influenza” and the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic. Historians across the country have been scouring the pages of old newspapers looking for parallels between the century-old disease and that of today. Ther…
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Most stories of Thanksgiving history start with the harvest celebration of the Pilgrims and the American Indians that took place in the autumn of 1621. Although they did have a three-day feast in celebration of a good harvest, and the local American Indians did participate, this “first thank…
One of the recently refurbished historic markers in Seneca County is the Frisbie’s Ferry marker on Route 89 in the town of Romulus. That ferry was operated by Captain Abel Frisbie. Before he operated that ferry, his life was marked by seafaring tragedies and his wife having two husbands.
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The pandemic has shown that our health care workers are incredibly valued in communities and nationwide. When thinking about the different cogs in patient care, the ambulance serves a vital role in the community.
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Ontario County was created in 1789 and comprised at that time all of New York state west of the Old Preemption Line.
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It’s hard to believe 30 years have passed since the first Lyons Peppermint Days.
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In mid-September 2020, I was given some “Excerpts from the Life of Jacob R. Menges During the Civil War,” as well as several artifacts associated with his service. Those excerpts help us understand some of the deviousness, hardship, humor and luck that soldiers experienced in that war. What …
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Many communities have a public square, but Geneva has two.
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My uncle grew up in Penn Yan in the 1930s. He once told me a story about him and his friends as teenagers walking on the Court Street sidewalk alongside the old Yates County Jail. One of them would holler “What kind of birds can’t fly?” and then all of them would holler “JAILBIRDS!” Then the…
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With the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, one of the greatest champions of progress for “the fairer sex” in U.S. history, it seems a perfect time to “Look Back” at some of the progress women have made over the last 150 years, both inside and outside of Wayne County.
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Have you ever wondered how some streets in your community got their names? Having lived in Seneca Falls — what is now the former village — for nearly 40 years, I have had this question. I can share with you the origins of some (but only some) of the street names of the former village.
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This past spring, the Geneva Historical Society created a video to honor the Rev. Dr. Alger Adams, Hobart College’s first African-American graduate in 1932. Although he was given a scholarship, the college refused him a room on campus when officials saw he was Black. There is little informat…
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Driving across historic New York state, we often take for granted the many unique bridges that pass over waterways, ravines and thoroughfares. Steel, cement and wooden structures that span many difficult crossings are truly engineering marvels. If we think back to our early ancestors’ challe…
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As you drive through the Seneca County hamlet of East Varick on Route 89 you will not see any remnant of the rather famous Burroughs House, a hotel that lured throngs of visitors for fine dining and dancing for many years. It was one of the first summer resort hotels on the west shore of Cay…
PENN YAN — The Yates County History Center has begun to post its educational events to the video hosting platform, Vimeo.
The Geneva Daily Times‘ 30th anniversary edition in 1925 featured a large article on the “Splendid Women’s Organizations in Geneva,” commending the groups as a big addition to social and cultural life in the community. The article listed about 12 groups which contributed their “proportionate…
There was much discussion this year about Juneteenth — June 19th, the celebration of the day that slaves in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865.
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The Museum of Wayne County History is located in the former Wayne County Jail and sheriff’s residence. It is in a residential section of Lyons, where many prominent and wealthy Lyons residents have lived.
(Editor’s Note: This is the conclusion of Walt Gable’s piece on Seneca Falls native Grace Woodworth, best known for taking the last photograph of Susan B. Anthony. The first installment appeared on Page 8A on Saturday, Aug. 1.)
By this point, it has been well publicized that this month of August 2020 marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing woman suffrage and that this amendment is commonly referred to as the “Susan B. Anthony amendment.”
Let me start by saying that I LOVE ice cream! I guess I am not alone, either.
“Dedicated to tolerance, promotion of good order and religion” — these few words sum up the reason for the building of the non-denominational Union Church in Pultneyville beginning in 1825.
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Although it no longer exists as a congregation and the church building is gone, the Kendaia Baptist Church (formally known as the First Baptist Church and Society of Romulus at least until 1898) was the first church organized in Seneca County.
Recently someone stopped me and asked, as a historian, how I liked living in a historical moment. I said I prefer my history in the past, looking back at it.
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Gordon Granger was born in 1821 in the small hamlet of Joy, N.Y. — which is located south of the village of Sodus in Wayne County. Little is known about his early years other than he taught in 1840 during the first year of the Pre-Emption schoolhouse in Sodus.
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Like many people during this pandemic, my wife and I have been binge watching television.
How did people connect 100 or more years ago, before the age of the “smart phone?”
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From 1881 until 1911, “Cap” Quick (that is what friends called him) crossed Cayuga Lake more than 40,000 times piloting ferry boat passengers and cargo between Kidders and King Ferry on his boat “The Busy Bee.”
About a year ago, Walworth Town Historian Gene Bavis and Wayne County Historical Society Executive Director Larry Ann Evans were appointed co-chairs of the Wayne County Bicentennial Committee by the Wayne County Board of Supervisors. Also assigned to the committee as an advisor was County Hi…
Weather in Geneva has been interesting at times over the years. We’ve seen floods, ice, snow, hurricanes and tornadoes cause a big stir in the past, just as they do today.
As many of us find ourselves staying at home and away from the COVID-19 virus, I thought it might be a perfect opportunity to share what is happening in Macedon Center. As your Town Historian, I also hold the role of secretary of the Macedon Historical Society. Our organization has been incr…
First settled in 1789, Lyons was formerly known as “The Forks” because of the confluence of the Canandaigua Outlet and Ganargua (Mud) Creek that formed the Clyde River.
The oldest Presbyterian Church in Seneca County is the Romulus Presbyterian Church. By looking at the early years of its history, we get an appreciation for the importance of religion at the time.
The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1919, allowed women all across the country to vote in the presidential election 100 years ago. An amendment to the New York state constitution extended the vote to women two years earlier. In 1917, New York became the first eastern state to grant full voting r…
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Our favorite restaurants of the past may be gone, but they are by no means forgotten. They served up good food as well as memories, in the company of family, friends and the employees we would come to know.
Amelia Jenks Bloomer was born to a family of modest means on May 27, 1818 in Homer, Cortland County. She received only about two years of formal grammar school education, but at age 17 began a brief stint as a schoolteacher. She decided to relocate and moved in with her newly married sister …
Schools closing, churches canceling Sunday services, public events canceled, panic buying, concern about the capacity of the health system to handle the number of sick people — we have been here before, but it’s been 102 years.
Women cartoonists have always been an industry minority. Mary Flanigan Gauerke was a successful freelance cartoonist from the 1950s to the 1980s and may have been the only woman to sell cartoons to Hugh Hefner and William F. Buckley Jr. at the same time.
CANANDAIGUA — A diverse community group has created a local podcast to share efforts to support and promote local history and the arts.
On Aug. 20, 2019 the 225th anniversary of the Battle of Fallen Timbers was commemorated in Maumee, Ohio.
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Of all the signers of the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments, only Rhoda Palmer lived to vote. Her story seems an appropriate way to launch Women’s History Month in 2020 — the centennial year of ratification of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing U.S. women the legal right to vote.
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First reports of a “circus” coming to Geneva appear in the Geneva Palladium in 1827 when a group of equestrian riders made the journey to the small village. Trick equestrian riding was typically the main attraction for early circuses, whose modern origins were less than 60 years old at this …
Editor’s note: This piece first appeared in the Finger Lakes Times in 2013.
The first postal service came to be in America by a grant from the British King William and Queen Mary in February 1692!
Black History Month, according to the history.com website, is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history.
HURON — A William G. Pomeroy Foundation Historic Marker Grant was awarded in 2019 to the Town of Huron. Pomeroy Foundation grants fully fund the acquisition of historic markers for municipalities, historical societies and other organizations seeking meaningful ways to commemorate sites of hi…
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If only walls could talk. Many times as a historian have I wished that the walls of a building could divulge the events that happened inside.
During the 1790s New York moved to seize the vast lands belonging to the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The situation was only slightly complicated by the fact that at most only four of them fought during the war on the British side; just as it was by the new federal law stating th…
