Tag Archives: Ian Mackenzie

“Railroads Remembered”

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I’ll take a leaf from Andy Rooney’s book, and tell you what bugs me.

*It bugs me that when I want to take the train to Rhode Island, I have to start out by driving from Bath to Rochester – 75 miles in the wrong direction. Which, even once I finally board, makes a trip longer, costlier, and much more tiresome than it need be.

*If I could start out by going to Binghamton… let alone Elmira, Corning, or even (wonder of wonders!) Bath, the trip would be a LOT nicer.

*The glory days of rail are not coming back anytime soon, but railways were vital to development of the Southern Tier. The Conhocton-Chemung-Susquehanna chain used to be a key transportation route, and the Southern Tier was the growth region.

*The Erie Canal, opened in 1825, crashed that growth. DeWitt Clinton, rounding up support for his “big ditch,” promised a future major transportation project for the Southern Tier. Over time that morphed into the Erie Railroad, which opened in 1851. The economy started growing again.

*At Steuben County Historical Society we have a set of diaries in which an Avoca person describes going to Painted Post to get the train… then to Bath… and finally being able to board right in Avoca itself.

*Going from Dansville to Bath on foot would be a hard two-day struggle… about the time it takes now to drive to Omaha. Once the railroad came in, Bath and Dansville were practically next-door neighbors.

*Soon after the Erie opened, the Steuben County sheriff was ordered to take two vagrants to New London, Connecticut, and sign them on board a whaling vessel – a project practical only thanks to the railroad.

*Steuben County has two cities and 14 incorporated villages. Apart from the Village of Hammondsport, every one lies along what was once the route of the Erie Railroad… and even Hammondsport was at the end of a short line eventually taken over by the Erie.

*The grape-and-wine businesses on Seneca and Keuka Lakes probably would have existed without railroads (in Penn Yan, Hammondsport, Watkins, Geneva) to haul out product, but on a much smaller scale.

*Those same lines turned Keuka and Seneca into tourist destinations, as families of the growing middle class rode out from the big cities for summer fun.

*Glenn Curtiss couldn’t have developed his airplane and motorcycle businesses… or at least, he couldn’t have done it in Hammondpsort… without the rail connections.

*Brooklyn Flint Glass Works moved to Corning (150 years ago this summer) to take advantage of its rail connections (though they moved their equipment by canal).

*Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and Charles Evans Hughes all campaigned in Steuben County, delivered to the spot by rail.

*Aggressive use of rail was key to Union victory in the Civil War. Local men went by rail to Elmira or Rochester, where they were mustered into regiments and given what passed for basic training, then shipped out by rail.

*World War I draft contingents left home by rail. On November 11, 1918, a group that had just left Bath was stopped at Addison. After a few tense hours they got the good word: Go home – the war is over.

*Monthly draft contingents for World War II were sworn in at Steuben County courthouse in Bath, then marched (no doubt very badly) to the DL&W station, whence they were taken off to begin their military life. Joe Paddock was sent to Buffalo, and from there forwarded on via a train that took him – right back through Bath. He gathered some of his new friends on the platform of the observation car, and gave them a “tour” of his home town as the train chugged slowly through.

*Rails have been vital to the life of the Southern Tier. Ian Mackenzie, author of “Railroads Remembered: The History of Railroads in Western New York and Western Pennsylvania,” will give a presentation on the topic at 4 PM Friday, Feb. 2, in Bath Fire Hall, and books will be available for purchase. This is part of the Steuben County Historical Society Winter Lecture Series, and is free and open to the public. We hope we’ll see you!

“Our One-Room Schools”

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*There’s a memory that’s still vivid in many local hearts and minds – the memory of the one-room school. For many people even in their mid-sixties, one-room school was part of growing up.

*The population in New York has kept going up, but the number of school districts has been going down for 150 years! Mostly this is because better transportation (especially cars and buses) makes the little local one-room schools unnecessary.

*Number of school districts in New York – remembering that in the early days, a district had a single one-room school.

*1865 11,780
*1900 11,000
*1925 9,950
*1960 1,292
*1999 705

*Once upon a time there were 400 or so schools in Steuben County alone. This seems impossible until you think about 34 cities and towns, in an area larger than Rhode Island, with all the students making their way on foot. The numbers varied over the century and a half that the schools were in use, but here are some sample towns with the number of their schools at the height of one-room days.

*Bath 24
*Caton 11
*Jasper 14
*Wayne 5
*Wayland 14

*Any town might have twenty or more school districts, each with its little one-room school. Each district had an elected school board, which hired the teacher, set the taxes, and maintained the building. The minute book for Bath District 15 (Freeman Hollow) is very exacting with specifications for purchase of firewood (type, length, diameter, seasoning, stacking), but just records “hired Miss so-and-so” for teachers.

*This record also shows minutes of a meeting to decide whether to bother rebuilding the school after the old one burned down. They agreed to do so, and probably couldn’t have avoided it without breaking state law.

*In 1956, consolidation of 62 school districts formed the Corning-Painted Post School District. Some students there still attended one-room schools until 1957, and in Bath until 1961.

*One-room schools are having a revival in Steuben County and its neighbors. Conservative Anabaptist (Amish or Mennonite) communities have their own schools. Though operated like the schools of days gone by, they are private religious schools, rather than public schools.

*Although we speak of one-room schools in the rural districts, some in fact were larger. Stephens Mill had a two-room school, and Pleasant Valley had a lovely four-room structure.

*School years and school terms were shorter back then. Some districts shut down entirely during Fair Week. We also have records of schools being closed for grape picking, hay cutting, potato digging, and berrying – quite possibly they also closed for sugar making and any number of other seasons. Of course the kids were put to work on the family farm during these busy spells, but often the teacher hired out as well, for extra income.

*Steuben County Historical Society is kicking off its Winter Lecture Series on January 8 with a presentation, “Our One-Room Schools,” by Ian Mackenzie. Ian authored a book on the subject mainly covering the region that became Corning-Painted Post School District, but Friday’s presentation will be more wide-ranging. It’s free and open to the public at 4 PM in Bath Fire Hall. I hope to see you there!