In 1817, folks in Steuben and around the Northern Hemisphere were overjoyed to learn that the disastrous 1816 “Year Without a Summer” had been an aberration.

There were 11 towns within today’s boundaries of Steuben County — Addison, Bath, Canisteo, Cohocton, Corning (then called Painted Post), Dansville, Howard, Prattsburgh, Pulteney, Troupsburg, and Wayne. But in 1817 Steuben County stretched all the way to Seneca Lake, and further up Keuka Lake, so there were towns (Barrington, Reading, Tyrone) that are now in Yates or Schuyler Counties.

Steuben County had 21,989 people in the 1820 census, and 179 of them were nonwhite. Of them, 46 were slaves.

John Magee, who had only recently arrived in Bath, was farming for Adam Haverling at eight dollars a month. He would parley this into a banking, mining, and transportation empire, several fine mansions, and two terms in Congress. Ira Davenport, a pioneer merchant in what’s now Hornellsville, was laying the foundation of his own fortune. Joel Pratt was 73 years old, and Silas Wheeler was 67. Both men had fought in the Revolution, as had James Monroe, who became our fifth president on March 4th.

Up in Rome, work got going on the Erie Canal. Although a great thing in general, the canal, once opened, collapsed the economy of the Southern Tier, which depended on the Conhocton-Canisteo-Chemung-Susquehanna River chain. That would also kill Bath’s prospects for becoming the great metropolis of western New York. But Bath already had its beautiful boulevards and its open squares, and keeps them to this day.

In Hartford, Connecticut, the American School for the Deaf opened. Henry David Thoreau was born, and Jane Austen died. Robert E. Lee was about 10 years old, and Abraham Lincoln a year or two younger. The Lincolns had just moved from slaveholding Kentucky to the free territory of Indiana. Ulysses S. Grant was not yet born. John Brown was at a co-educational college preparatory school in Connecticut. Twelve-year-old Joseph Smith had just arrived in the Finger Lakes.

No one had ever heard of Charles Darwin, James Fenimore Cooper, Davy Crockett, or Edgar Allen Poe. A trip from Bath to Dansville would cost you a couple of days. Husbands had complete control over their wives’ income and assets. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was two years old.

Mississippi became the 20th state in 1817. Louisiana was the only state west of the Mississippi River. America did not yet include Texas, the southwest, or the Pacific coast. No steam ship had ever crossed the Atlantic. Telegraphs and cameras wouldn’t exist for another 20 years.

Here in New York, Allegany County already existed, but Schuyler, Livingston, Yates, and Chemung did not. DeWitt Clinton became governor, and George McClure was sheriff of Steuben County. The 1824 gazetteer reported that Steuben had 18 post offices, 156 school districts, 40 grist mills, 102 sawmills, two oil mills, an iron works, two textile mills, 30 distilleries, 30 asheries, and 22,600 “neat cattle” — just about one per resident!