Tag Archives: 1869

Celebrate 150 Years With Bath’s Library

Bath’s library is celebrating its sesquicentennial… a hundred and fifty years of bringing pleasure, information, and services to the community. They’ll have an open house from 2 to 5 on Saturday, September 7… next-door Steuben County History Center (the old library) will also be open, and the library will unveil its new musical playground! (You’ve got to see/hear it to get the full effect.)

*Back in 1869 the library was in the Steuben County courthouse (then just nine years old). But in 1893 library trustee Ira Davenport, Jr. bought the 1831 Magee House, and lent it to the library.

*John Magee had built the place when he retired from Congress and married his second wife, and their children grew up there. (Considering that Bath was only 38 years old at the time, it must have been a staggering pile.) At one time it had two fountains (now in Pulteney Square) an Italianate design, and an extension… maybe a summer kitchen… out into what’s now the parking lot. That was the BACK in those days, and the side facing Cameron Street was the front.

*Erie depot was right across Conhocton Street, and I imagine that travelers between trains may have stepped over to sit down quietly and do a little reading.

*In 1904 Ira Junior passed away, leaving the place to the library, which now named itself Davenport Memorial Library. His widow donated the large fountain, at the point where the four streets meet, in her husband’s honor.

*Like much of the rest of the village, and much of the rest of the region, the library was flooded in 1935.

*By the late 1990s, Davenport Library was on the National Register of Historic Places, but it was also getting cramped and outdated. Publisher Henry Dormann and his wife Alice offered to fund a new structure, and in 1999 elementary school students joined other community members to pass the books from hand to hand across the parking lot and into the new Dormann Library.

*Mr. Dormann rounded up autographed books from Bill Clinton and from every living ex-president. He brought in Walter Cronkite, Gerald Ford, and Defense Secretary William Cohen for the opening ceremonies.

*Ira Junior’s contribution was not forgotten, as the site was designated the Davenport-Dormann Learning Campus. The “old library,” renamed the Magee House, became the Steuben County History Center, making a home for the County Historian, the County Historical Society, and the Elm Cottage Museum. A state historical marker now describes the building’s history.

*A later wing added to the library became home first to BOCES, and now to Head Start.

*Creation of Dormann Library triggered a boom in regional library improvements. Since then Hammondsport, Pulteney, Branchport, and Dansville have built new facilities. Prattsburgh, Avoca, Savona, and Cohocton have moved to new locations, while Penn Yan and Corning have had major renovations.

*Bath’s library is seven years older than the telephone, 19 years younger than the City of Hornell, and 21 years older than the City of Corning. Thirteen of the fifty states were created after the library was… the same is true for a whale of a lot of the world’s countries. And the library’s still going strong. You should come check it out.

1869 — Bath’s Library is Born (Among Other Things)

Bath’s Library opened its doors in 1869 – this is its sesquicentennial year! (The library’s first location was in the county courthouse.) But what ELSE was going on at that same time?
*Here in Bath, St. Thomas Episcopal Church laid the cornerstone for the monumental Liberty Street edifice that we all know today. (It’s the oldest church building in the Village.) The Methodist church building was dedicated in Campbell, and First Baptist Church was organized in Addison.
*Over in Rome, the First Vatican Council got under way.
*Our County Fair had its 50th birthday in 1869, but they’d only been using the fairGROUNDS since 1854. They started permanent construction around 1863, creating the fair house, the gatehouse, and the track… all of which were brand-new in 1869, and all of which we still enjoy today.
*Down in Washington, D.C., General Ulysses S. Grant became president, succeeding Andrew Johnson.
*Elizabeth Cady Stanton became the first woman to testify before a Congressional committee, and the Territory of Wyoming became the first U.S. entity to adopt universal suffrage, accepting men and women alike as voters.
*The transcontinental railroad was completed with the driving of the golden spike. Andrew Joseph Russell took the famous photo of that event. Mr. Russell had painted a view of Bath just ten years earlier. The painting, now on exhibit in the Magee House, shows that house, which would be home to Bath’s library (then called the Davenport Library) for 106 years… from 1893 to 1999.
*Over on the other side of the world the Suez Canal was opened. When combined with the transcontinental railroad, the canal would soon make it possible to go “around the world in 80 days.”
*Celluloid, the first plastic, was patented. Jesse James robbed his first bank. Leo Tolstoy published War and Peace. Jules Verne began serializing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Charles Dickens published a collection of short stories. Mark Twain was editing the Buffalo Express.
*Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 in the first intercollegiate football game. The Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first all-professional baseball team.
*The elder Theodore Roosevelt (father of the future president) joined with J. P. Morgan and a dozen other men to found the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. (The younger Theodore would later be a founder of the Bronx Zoo.)
*Without President Grant’s knowledge, Erie Railroad magnates Jim Fisk and Jay Gould used their connections in Grant’s administration to try and corner to gold market. They failed, provoking the “Black Friday” financial panic… in part because Grant, once he realized what was going on, took steps to break the conspiracy.
*Austin Steward, who had escaped slavery in Bath to become a wealthy Rochester businessman, a memoirist, an abolition crusader, and an associate of John Brown and Frederick Douglass, passed away in 1869.
*Births that year included Rasputin, whose corruption helped lead to the Bolshevik revolution; Neville Chamberlain, whose appeasement helped ease the way for Hitler; Mahatma Gandhi, who led India and Pakistan to independence; and Typhoid Mary.
*Theodore Roosevelt was 11 years old, and Woodrow Wilson was 13. Henry Ford was 16. Deacon White of Caton was in his second year of professional baseball, catching barehanded for the Cleveland Forest Citys.
*It would be seven years before the telephone was invented, nine years before Glenn Curtiss was born. Neither Germany nor Italy yet existed as countries.
*There were still people living who had fought at Waterloo or New Orleans, or who had known George Washington. Slavery had ended just three years earlier.
*Corning Flint Glass Works was in its first full year in Corning, and Davenport Female Asylum was five years old. Neither Corning nor Hornell had become cities yet… but they wouldn’t have long to wait!