A few weeks ago an older couple came into the Steuben County Historical Society headquarters at Magee House in Bath; they wanted to look at Bath-Haverling yearbooks.
After perusing them for a spell, the lady asked to buy several issues from our duplicate stock. I got them for her, she paid us $20 apiece, and they left happy.
The next morning they came rushing back in, greatly excited. “Do you know what you did?” she asked. “You sold me my own yearbook back – 61 years later.”

While it’s well-known that Steuben County Historical Society dedicates a lot of time and effort to documenting almost 400 one-room schools — we have a whole shelf of town-by-town binders for that purpose — many people don’t realize what a tremendous resource our yearbook collection is.
This occupies almost an entire wall in the Reading Room at Magee House, and runs to about 800 volumes. Though we have a few junior high yearbooks, our focus is collecting yearbooks (or earlier equivalents) from Steuben County secondary schools graduating a senior class.
Interesting, you may say, and even impressive, but is it useful? The answer is yes. Among the projects we have used our yearbook collection for:
*Using the ads to establish Liberty Street businesses for the Heritage of Bath bicentennial book.
*Providing photo scans of an athlete for a birthday present.
*Helping reunion planners find classmates.
*Determining World War II dead to create the Hammondsport School Gold Star memorial wall.
*Helping two branches of a family locate each other.
*Using the ads to identify an optometrist whose name was found on a turn-of-the-century eyeglass case.
*Checking the dates that particular administrators have served.
*Putting together a presentation on Corning in the 1950s.
*Information on school athletics, including what opportunities are available for men and women.
For any issue, we try to keep the best copy we can find in the collection. Any extras become sales stock, with the proceeds helping support the society, or trading stock to obtain missing issues. A few schools pass on a copy of each new issue.

Here are some interesting items about our collection.

Oldest issue Bath-Haverling, 1891
Longest complete run 95 years for Bath-Haverling, 1905-2000
Longest gap Canisteo, 1923-1956
Oldest hardcover Hornell Volcano 1932
Recent important acquisitions: a nearly complete set from Christian Learning Center/Corning Christian Academy; 36 Hornell volumes from the duplicates at Hornell Public Library; a 1926 North Star (Corning Northside) from Corning Community College.

Some curios
The 1952 Anovas from Savona is printed in Bath on single sides, from typing rather than typesetting. Typed originals are fairly common for small schools until the 1950s.
The 1963 Poster from Painted Post is the final issue for that school.
The 1949 Poster has a space travel theme.
The 1939 Hornell Maple Leaf has a New York World’s Fair cover. Hornell’s yearbook was titled Volcano until 1932.
Noted comic book artist Dick Ayers made his first publications in the Hammondsport Vintage during the late 1930s.
Someone in Bath was keeping an eye on current events at the turn of the century. Titles of senior publications include The Columbian Senior (1893 — year of Columbian Exposition in Chicago); The Senior X-Ray (1896 — X-rays described and named in 1895); The Haverling Radium (1910 — radium isolated as a pure metal that year); The Blue and the Gray (1912 — semi-centennial of Civil War); The Haverling Bugler (1917 — US enters World War I); The U-18 (1918 — u-boats menace shipping); NC-19 (1919 — Navy-Curtiss flying boat NC-4 makes first flight across the Atlantic)

If you have Steuben County yearbooks you’re not sure what to do with, check with us to see whether they’re copies we need! The information in your donation might make a big difference. Or, if you’re missing a copy, maybe we’ve got a duplicate for sale!