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    Around Brockport
    Around Brockport
    Around Brockport
    Ebook206 pages55 minutes

    Around Brockport

    By William G. Andrews

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    About this ebook

    The first settlers came to the Brockport area soon after 1800. Located some twenty miles west of Rochester, the towns of Sweden and Clarkson, the village of Brockport, and a college were organized between 1814 and 1835. The Erie Canal, farm implement manufacturing, and higher education fostered their growth and prosperity in the mid-1800s. At Brockport, the United States became a continental nation, the Industrial Revolution came to agriculture, and popular literature came to American women. Today, Brockport is a remarkably well-preserved Victorian village on a revitalized Erie Canal, Clarkson and Sweden are havens for farming and commuting, and the college is an 8,500-student unit of the State University of New York. Around Brockport presents more than two hundred thirty images from private and public collections, many from glass negatives. They depict such aspects of the area's history as farm life in early Sweden, stately homes at Clarkson Corners, industrial plants in Brockport, and student activities at the normal school.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 9, 2002
    ISBN9781439611418
    Around Brockport
    Author

    William G. Andrews

    William Andrews is a retired college professor, member of the Western Monroe Historical Society, founding president of the Brockport Historical Museum, a chair on the Brockport Historic Preservation Board, and a village trustee since 2012.

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    • 4/5
      William G. Andrews’s Around Brockport, as part of the Images of America series, uses photographs and historic drawings to tell the story of a community, in this case the communities that made up the Triangle Tract purchase west of Rochester. Andrews, an historian of Brockport, focuses on the towns of Sweden and Clarkson, the village of Brockport, and the college in Brockport, later part of the State University of New York. Photographs focus on historic figures, buildings, landscapes, and technology, with several side-by-side comparisons to show a century or more’s worth of change. Like Andrews’s Brockport Through Time, this consists primarily of photographs with explicatory captions and will appeal to residents of Brockport and its surrounding communities and will also make a nice gift for recent graduates from the College at Brockport.Andrews has written several previous books about Brockport’s history, including Early Brockport (2005, published on the occasion of the village’s 175th anniversary), Civil War Brockport: A Canal Town and the Union Army (2013, part of the History Press’s Civil War Series), and Brockport in the Age of Modernization: 1866-1916 (2018, part of the America Through Time series). For those interested more specifically in the history of SUNY Brockport, The Campus History Series’ State University of New York at Brockport by Mary Jo Gigliotti, W. Bruce Leslie, and Kenneth P. O’Brien will make an equally appealing read.

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    Around Brockport - William G. Andrews

    settlement.

    INTRODUCTION

    This pictorial history covers four communities on the western edge of New York’s Monroe County. The town of Sweden includes the village of Brockport and the State University of New York at Brockport. The town of Clarkson abuts Sweden and Brockport on the north. Sweden (1814) and Clarkson (1819) were created from the Triangle Tract, pictured on the opposite page. Brockport was laid out in 1822 and incorporated in 1829. The antecedents of the college date to 1830.

    The 87,000-acre Triangle Tract was 28 miles long and 9.5 miles wide along Lake Ontario. It lay in the town of Northhampton, in Ontario County, with a county seat at Canandaigua. It resulted from an apparent fraud attempted by the Phelps and Gorham land speculators. They had bought from the Seneca Indians an enormous expanse of central New York, including a 12-mile-wide strip along the west bank of the Genesee River. However, the surveyor ran its western boundary due north from the present site of the village of Leroy rather than parallel to the river as had been agreed. The Senecas discovered the error, reclaimed the land, and sold it to Robert Morris and associates. In 1793, they resold it to Herman Leroy, William Bayard, James McEvers, and Matthew Clarkson, who opened it to settlement in 1801. Leroy, Bayard, and Clarkson were sons-in-law of a wealthy New Yorker, Samuel Cornel. McEvers was a cousin of Bayard.

    In 1807, the Triangle Tract and the land west of it separated from Northhampton to become the town of Murray. In 1814, the towns of Leroy, Bergen, and Sweden were formed in the southern part of Murray. Sweden then included what became the town of Clarendon to its west in 1821, and Murray covered what are now the towns of Clarkson, Hamlin, and, in Orleans County, Murray.

    In 1802, the proprietors opened Lake Road by widening to 64 feet a Native American trail that ran north from Leroy to Lake Ontario. Ridge Road was built c. 1810 across Clarkson from east to west, again following a Native American trail. Both towns were originally farming communities. However, the 1823–1825 construction of the Erie Canal across the northern edge of Sweden added industrial, commercial, and transportive dimensions to Brockport’s character. The founding of an institution of higher education in Brockport in 1835 made it a learning center as well.

    We devote a chapter to each community, in chronological sequence by founding date: Sweden (1814), Clarkson (1819), Brockport (1822), and the college (1835). As far as practicable, the images on each pair of facing pages form a topical group; for example, Hiel Brockway, the Gordon family, industries, churches, and so forth. As Brockport has had the largest population, been the principal focus of communal activity for all but the first 18 years, and is more diverse economically and socially, it gets more attention than its neighbors. Also, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the economy of the area was the most thriving and diverse and produced a rich store of relevant and interesting images. Thus, a disproportionate share of images concern that period. Therefore, this survey is neither comprehensive nor balanced, but it does, we hope, present an interesting and revealing selection of glimpses into our communities’ pasts.

    Many generous friends have assisted on this project. Foremost are my collaborators. Eunice Chesnut, historian of the Western Monroe Historical Society, helped select the Brockport images and drafted half of their captions. Kathy Goetz, town of Sweden historian, selected the images for that community and drafted their captions. Hazel Kleinbach, town of Clarkson historian, helped select the Clarkson images and drafted some of their captions. Jennifer Quigley and Mary Jo Gigliotti, State University of New York Brockport librarians, selected the college images and drafted their captions. I rewrote all captions for uniformity in style and format. The final draft was reviewed for accuracy by Louie D. Smith Jr., former Brockport village clerk; Jacqueline Morris, village of Brockport historian; Mary Smith, town of Hamlin historian; Dr. David G. Hale, Brockport Sesquicentennial Celebration Committee member; and my collaborators. Pam O’Neil was our patient and supportive editor.

    The images came from many collections: the village of Brockport and towns of Clarkson and Hamlin historians’ offices; the Emily L. Knapp Local History Museum and Library (Mary Lynne Turner); the Seymour Library (Mark Jacarino); the State University of New York’s Drake Memorial Library; the Western Monroe Historical Society; Brockport Volunteer Fire Department (Scott Warthman); Rochester Public Library (Shirley Iversen); Rochester Historical Society (Ann Salter); Brockport Post (Sally Beer); Louie D. Smith Jr.; Margaret Johnson; Estel Lewis; Helen Massar; the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church (Noel Myers, Karen Holzschuh); college photographer Jim Dusen; and my personal collection. Also, we have drawn both information and images from a number of published sources, including Rochester and Monroe County New York (1908); William F. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County New York (1908); History of Monroe County New York (1877); William F. Peck et al., Landmarks of Monroe County New York (1895); W. Wayne Dedman, Cherishing This Heritage (1969); Charlotte Elizabeth Martin, The Story of Brockport (1930?); Hazel Kleinbach, Highlights of Clarkson History (1988?) and Chronicles of Clarkson (1992); David G. Hale, Village of Brockport (1979); Brockport Fire Department: Our History (2001); Wilbur W. Hiler et al., History of the Town of Sweden (1964); Eunice Chesnut, And Papa Cried Hoorah! (1987), Hoe Cakes to Hamburgers (1993), A Path Through the Years (1995), That Reminds Me . . . (1998), Sewing for the Heathen (2000), and The Canal and the Castle (2001).

    One

    TOWN OF SWEDEN

    The town of Sweden is six miles north to south and five-and-three-quarter miles east to west, covering about 22,000 acres. The first settlers arrived

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