Methodism started out as a movement within the Church of England, or Anglican church… here in America called the Episcopal church, or Protestant Episcopal church… “episcopal” referring to church government by bishops.
*When Methodists started separating into their own churches they called themselves Methodist Episcopals. Church leader John Wesley had opposed the American Revolution, and in the early days of the republic American sneered at anything British, so Methodism didn’t really gain traction in America until after 1800 or so, by which time memories had faded.
*The 1836 state gazetteer lists five Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) churches in Steuben County. But church splits arose during the run-up to the Civil War, and in 1844 a pro-slavery Methodist Episcopal Church, South appeared in the southern states.
*A year earlier, Methodists who wanted the church to take a stronger stance against slavery split off to form the Wesleyan Methodists. The 1860 gazetteer mentions 37 Methodist churches (probably all M.E.), and two Wesleyan Methodists. Even once slavery was abolished the “Wesleyan” branch continued, with five congregations in 1879 and three in 1891. It has evolved into what is now the Wesleyan Church. Houghton College is an affiliated institution.
*The year 1860 brought forth the Free Methodist churches, with three noted in 1879 and two in 1891. This church was “free” because it opposed slavery, but back then many churches, including the main Methodist branch, supported themselves in part by “pew rent” – a sort of assessment on the well-to-do, where you essentially supported the church by paying a set fee, in exchange getting dedicated use of a particular pew. Free Methodists considered this to dismissive of those members who were not so well off, so in their churches all seating was free. There’s a Free Methodist church today in Hornell, and there was one for many years in North Cohocton.
*Appearing in the early 1800s was the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church AMEZ, or A.M.E. Zion), which, as the name indicates, was a denomination specifically for African Americans. Bath had a congregation as far back as 1838 or so, and several pastors there rose to become bishops. The congregation petered out in the early 20th century, but the building is now the Grange hall. (It was originally the site of the “colored” school, which was given to the church once schools were integrated in 1867.) There was also a congregation in Corning.
*(There are several other historically black denominations including Methodist in their names, but I’m not aware of any having operated in Steuben.)
*Back in 1828 a group of Methodists who wanted congregational governance, rather than rule by bishops, formed the Methodist Protestant Church. Arkport’s church was once Methodist Protestant, and is the only one I know of in Steuben.
*In 1939 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and (most of) the Methodist Protestants re-merged with the main line, creating a new denomination named the Methodist Church. In 1968 a merger with the Evangelical United Brethren created the United Methodist Church, which is the main Methodist body (both locally and nationally) today.
*So a church simply described as Methodist is likely to be Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) until 1939; the Methodist Church from 1929 to 1968; and United Methodist (U.M., or U.M.C.) since then.
*From their earliest history Methodists tried to plant churches in even the smallest communities (Wheeler alone had four at one time), often sharing a single “circuit-riding” pastor. Steuben County references show 37 Methodist churches in 1860, plus two Wesleyan Methodist; 42 in 1879, plus five Wesleyan Methodist and three Free Methodist; and 43 in 1891, plus the five Wesleyan and back down to two Free Methodist congregations. In both of the latter years Methodists had as many churches as the next two highest groups (Baptist and Presbyterian) combined.
*In some cases (Harrisburg Hollow) the churches in small communities have disappeared. In some cases they’ve coalesced with other Methodist churches, and in others (Hartsville, Savona, Painted Post) they’ve formed “union churches” with congregations of other denominations.
*Current United Methodist churches in Steuben include: Addison, Arkport, Avoca, Bath (Centenary), Campbell, Canisteo, Caton, Cohocton, Coopers Plains, Corning (First), Corning (Grace), Greenwood, Hammondsport, Hornell, Jasper, Kanona, Mitchellsville, Painted Post, Prattsburgh, Presho, Rathbone, Risingville, South Canisteo, South Corning, South Dansville, Troupsburg, Wheeler, and Woodhull.
*Current Wesleyan churches in Steuben include: Buena Vista, Canisteo, Cohocton, Haskinsville, Hornby (Shady Grove), Hornell (New Hope), Painted Post (Victory Highway), Wallace, Wayland (Lighthouse), and West Jasper.
*We know of one Free Methodist church currently in Steuben, at Hornell.
*There are other Methodist denominations, such as Bible Methodists and Primitive Methodists, but United Methodists (and predecessors), Free Methodists, Methodist Protestant, Wesleyan Methodist, and A.M.E. Zion are the only ones that we know of as having operated in Steuben County.
Monthly Archives: September 2018
Eighty Years Ago — the 1938 Hurricane
A few years ago I was researching some Bath newspapers for 1938, and came upon a display ad from some utility… I guess the telephone company… thanking customers for having been so patient as they sent trucks and crews to help with the disaster.
*Well, I wasn’t around back then, but as I write it is eighty years today that the Great New England Hurricane exploded without warning onto the people of Rhode Island, Long Island, and Connecticut. A few hours later, almost 700 of those people were dead.
*Landfall made seismographs jump in Alaska, and a sixty-foot tidal wave drowned desperate people who had fled to their attics. Actress Katherine Hepburn fled her Connecticut home through waist-deep water. In Westerly, RI, ten members of the Mothers Club at Christ Episcopal Church were lost at once. The day had started out warmly and nicely, if a little breezy. Lots of people made one last trip to the beach for the season. No one had any warning at all.
*My mother wasn’t in school yet, but HER mother was terrified for my aunt (now 90, and still going strong), and insisted that my grandfather drive to school and get her, but he couldn’t get through for the fallen trees. A school bus finally got her home by a roundabout route, and a male teacher carried her in because the wind carried her away.
*My father was just short of 13; he and HIS father crawled on their bellies across the road (the wind being too strong for them to stand upright) to check on an older couple there. My grandfather was a chicken farmer, and each of his henhouses rested on sledge runners so that they could be moved from time to time, rather than let the guano foul a given spot. As the wind rose the hen houses moved… then flew… then flindered, littering the ground, the wreckage, and the trees with dead chickens. And that was the end of the poultry business.
*Providence flooded. New London burned. A lucky handful literally rode their houses across Little Narragansett Bay from Rhode Island to Connecticut. Phones were out. Power was out. Roads and railways were blocked, bridges were gone, boats were wrecked. No one knew where their loved ones were. In many cases, they’d never know.
*It would have been far, far worse, but it roared through quickly. Even in Vermont it was still a Category One hurricane, derailing a train, killing five people, and blocking 2000 miles of roads. My father-in-law, near the Canadian line in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, remembered finding sea salt in the rain and the spray.
*The devastation of my grandfather’s farm of course was bad news in the Great Depression, but he was also a carpenter, and those same minutes that had destroyed the henhouses created years of repair work for carpenters.
*Others would get years of work hauling all the treefalls out of the forest, converting them to lumber, charcoal, or firewood. The Hurricane stimulated commercial air travel, which was suddenly the only way to get between New York and Boston. Two pilot friends of ours now had plenty of work flying photographers, meticulously documenting the altered coastline so that it could be remapped. (They used a Curtiss Robin – see one at Curtiss Museum.)
*The Hurricane’s very destructiveness paradoxically created opportunity. One writer stated that the Hurricane effectively ended the Depression in Rhode Island and Connecticut. That’s probably an overstatement, but it must be pretty close to the mark.
*New England hadn’t had a major hurricane since the War of 1812, but from 1938 on they’ve visited every few years, and in some seasons every few weeks. From what I can see only two U.S. storms since have had higher death tolls: Hurricane Maria last year, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
*The connection with western New York is slight, I know. But it was a major national event, and those who survived it included people I loved. I thought they were worth remembering.
Four-Month Canal Journey Climaxes at Watkins Glen
Darn that busybody DeWitt Clinton! His Erie Canal was one of the most spectacular successes of the age, but it was a disaster for the Southern Tier.
*Up until then the Chemung-Susquehanna River system was the great highway of western New York, with its connections to the Tidewater, Baltimore, and Chesapeake Bay. Bath, with its green squares and broad boulevards, was laid out to be the region’s great metropolis.
*That all slammed to a halt when the great canal opened in 1825. There were conventions and mob actions down here as crop prices and land values crashed instantly, leaving people with mortgages they could never pay off. The Land Office finally negotiated a revaluation.
*Meanwhile, little no-account shanty towns like Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester started to boom.
*Things improved for us when the Crooked Lake Canal opened in 1831, making Hammondsport a true port and putting Steuben-area farmers back into the game with a connection to the Erie system. Two years later Chemung Canal opened, eventually linking Corning and Elmira with Watkins Glen and Seneca Lake.
*All of that helped, but completion of the Erie Railroad in 1851 linked the Southern Tier with New York, Lake Erie, and Rochester. At that point, business truly started to revive.
*By 1868 those railroads had caught the attention of officials at the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works. The Erie gave Corning a major east-west mainline, and a major branch up to Rochester. The Fall Brook brought up coal, wood, sand, and charcoal from Pennsylvania. Raw materials could come in by rail, and finished products go out, and many costs were lower than they would be in Brooklyn. Corning could be a VERY attractive spot for relocation, and the decision was soon made.
*But while the railroads were a major consideration, another key factor was the canal. The Glass Works would lose some time, but save a good deal of money, shipping their factory equipment by canal.
*Barges loaded up at Brooklyn were towed up the Hudson to Albany, then transitioned into the Erie Canal as far as Montezuma, and junction with the Cayuga and Seneca Canal. Thence they made their way to Geneva and up Seneca Lake to Watkins, into the Chemung Canal, then a few rods on the Chemung River itself to Monkey Run and their new home along the waterfront of the Southside… just where so many of us recall the Glass Works always being.
*And that was in 1868 – exactly 150 years ago! Brooklyn Flint Glass Works became Corning Flint Glass Works, then Corning Glass Works, the Corning Incorporated (but still CGW on the stock exchange).
*To celebrate the sesquicentennial, GlassBarge (from Corning Musuem of Glass) and canal schooner Lois McClure (from Lake Champlain Maritime Museum) set out from Brooklyn back in May, accompanied by 1930 tug W. O. Ecker and 1964 tug C. L. Churchill. Like their predecessors they traveled up to Albany, but this time went the enture length of the Erie Canal to Buffalo, before reversing course to pick up the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, heading for Geneva, Seneca Lake, and Watkins Glen – as far as you can get, nowadays, by barge – to complete their odyssey.
*Art Cohn of Lake Champlain Maritime Museum observes that the new company’s arrival by a line of barges apparently didn’t attract much attention in Corning, though of course we now know that it was a historical thunderbolt. But this year’s little flotilla should get more notice as it opens to the public, at Watkins, from 11 to 6 on Friday through Sunday, September 14-16. I wouldn’t miss it. Maybe I’ll see you there.
“Back to the Baby Boom”
On one day in 1946, there were 32 infants in the maternity ward at Corning Hospital… part of the first cohort of Baby Boomers. What was our region like in the days of the Baby Boom?
*The period of the 1950s saw monumental changes in our area. More changes would come following the 1972 flood, and still more as Corning Incorporated changed the focus of its local activities. But in many ways, the area we know was largely formed in this period, by such significant events as these.
*Corning introduced zoning of January 1, 1950. Painted Post Indian statue installed, 1950. The current statue in Painted Post is the fourth in a series — the first two were flat sheet metal. A fully-rounded statue was blown down and broken during a 1948 windstorm, and the current statue installed two years later. All three earlier Indians are at the Erwin Depot Museum.
*Corning Glass Center/Corning Museum of Glass opened, 1951. It’s been through several major revampings and expansions (not to mention a major flood), but the Museum of Glass came in with the new decade.
*Erie Railroad tracks moved north Corning, 1952. Until than, multiple tracks ran right through the city. People in Corning lived with the noise, the smoke, the danger, and the snarled traffic until the lines were moved to what’s essentially their current routes. The yards were moved down to Gang Mills at the same time.
*In 1953, polo was epidemic in Steuben County.
*Erie Avenue becane Denison Parkway in 1954. With the tracks all torn up and removed, the street was renamed to fit with its new identity as a business district. Governor Tom Dewey came for the dedication.
*Corning-Painted Post School District was approved in1954. The proposal sparked fierce controversy, but the area was still served by 62 districts, most operating a single one-room school… and scarcely half the one-room students went on to high school. Even the referendum sparked bitterness. Because of a quirk in the law, folks in the Southside District 9 were not allowed to vote. Folks in the rural towns were angry that there was only one polling place, and they had to come into the city in order to vote. Then it snowed. But the proposal passed, new modern facilities started going up, and the last set of one-room schools finally closed in 1957.
*Watkins Glen International opened its dedicated track in 1956. After an accidental death on a crowded sidewalk, the auto races moved for several years to rural roads in the Town of Dix. In 1956 the new closed course was opened, with enthusiastic drivers voluntarily taking their chances on a surface that was not yet cured.
*At this time there were 300 dairies in the Town of Bath, half-a-dozen of them within the Village limits.
*Watson Homestead opened in 1957. A year before his death in 1956 Thomas Watson established a Declaration of Trust for the old family farm (his birthplace) and started working with an architect. In 1957 the retreat and conference center opened its doors for the first time.
*In 1958 the Courier and Advocate newspapers merged in Bath and became a general newspaper, ending over a hundred years of partisan newspapers operated on behalf of political parties.
*Corning Community College opened in 1958. The old School 3 on Chemung Street was home to 118 students and ten faculty (six of them full-time). Also in 1958, the Davenport Home for Girls closed.
*At about the same time, Steuben County Fair switched from a September date to an August date.
*Southern Tier Library System opened in 1959.
*The sixties, of course, continued the theme of great change.
*Ira Davenport Memorial Hospital opened in 1960, helped along by assets transferred from the defunct Davenport Home.
*Reportedly the Gardiner Road School in Bath closed in 1961. That’s the latest date I’ve seen for a one-room school operating.
*A 1962 meeting at Keuka College formed the Finger Lakes Trail Conference, and began building what is today a thousand-mile trail system. That same year, Glenn Curtiss Museum opened up in the old Hammondsport Academy building.
*The Southern Tier expressway was coming into existence by fits and starts. The Erie Railroad merged with the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in 1960, and passenger traffic for Steuben County ended in the 1960s.
*In 1963 a multi-day forest fire raged above Bath between Cameron Road and Babcock Hollow Road. In the following year the Village began the process of buying land and creating Mossy Bank Park.
*BOCES came into existance in 1965, and in 1968 we switched from a Board of Supervisors to a County Legislature.
*Much of that didn’t matter much if you were a kid. Life revolved around school – very likely shiney and new – Scouts, Little League, TV, drive-ins, toys, games, music on the radio – it was, in many ways, a very child-centered age. All in all, there were worse ways to grow up. We’ll be talking about those days in our September presentation, “Back to the Bay Boom,” 4 PM Friday, September 7, at Bath Fire Hall. It’s free and open to the public – we hope you’ll join us!