It’s Fair Week in Steuben County. In fact, August is the month for county fairs all over this part of the state.
County fairs got started with state funding and encouragement, back in the 1800s. The Legislature was anxious to improve agriculture in what we now call the Empire State, and they figured that fairs were one way to do it.
How so? Well, put yourself in the shoes (assuming they had any) of a farm family in western New York, right after the War of 1812.
First of all, you were probably somewhat isolated. Travel was miserable back in those days, and besides, who had the time to do it anyway, if they were trying to farm for a living?
On top of that a noticeable number of farm folks were illiterate, or inadequately literate. Here in the northeast that was actually uncommon, but there were still too many to disregard. Even if you COULD read, there were no magazines to speak of, and… out here, at any rate… not enough postal service to be very helpful.
But once things settled down in the fall, maybe you COULD make a family trip to the fair, possibly sleeping in (or under) the wagon for a night or two. And at the fair, you could learn about better farming techniques.
You could find out about better strains of crops.
You could inspect tools and equipment, brought in by vendors who would never have made the journey out to your lonely farmstead.
Even the prizes awarded for everything from pies to pumpkins to squash to succotash – from horses to hens – from sheep to goats, from bread to needlework – were created to encourage improved production and techniques.
Of course the fair also provided opportunities to socialize, to politic, to be entertained, and to be separated from your money. All in all, a fair back then had just about everything that a fair has now.
As the agricultural population has shrunk to microscopic levels, the need and purpose of the fair comes into question. It still provides everything it used to, but in different proportions.
And while the full-time professional farmer still can learn and benefit from the fair, maybe it’s even more important to the hobbyist, specialist, or small operator. Here you can learn to improve your beekeeping, or your sugaring, or your cheesemaking. These operations don’t have the impact of the old small general farm, or the new large specialized farm, but they are in fact important… to the consumer, but especially to the operator. For these specialists, what they learn at the fair, or at least the contacts they make at the fair, can be vital.
Back in 1901 Hammondsport businesses closed down during Fair week, because the customers were gone anyway. Photos from 1908 show people shoulder-to-shoulder in the Fairgrounds. And the Fair was in September.
Nowadays the Fair is firmly set during school vacation. It’s not the attraction it once was. It’s not as significant, even to the farm family, as it used to be. But it still meets all the purposes that the Legislature had in mind over two centuries ago.
Steuben County Fair got its start in 1819. While there were two break periods (when state funding was dropped), the Fair has run continuously starting in 1853, and continuously on the same site since 1854. That includes the years of the Civil War, two World Wars, Vietnam, the COVID, the Spanish influenza, polio outbreaks, the Great Depression, the flood of 1935, the flood of 1972, AND the dramatic dwindling of the agricultural population. Hooray for the never-failing Ag Society!
One MODERN function of the Fair, not thought of back in 1819, is the “history corner” – the one-room school, the pioneer museum, the log cabin museum – not to mention the exhibit of old-time farm equipment on the upper level of the Fair House. Steuben County Historical Society operates the one-room school, and helps operate the rest of the history corner. Please stop in and see us!