We very reasonably begin the Steuben County story with Charles Williamson establishing Bath in 1793. But of course people had been living here for thousands of years, and in particular European-descended people were already living here before Williamson arrived. Europeans had been living in Canisteo for five years before anybody around here ever heard of Williamson.
*The main Iroquois cities were up at the north end of the lakes, but there was a substantial Seneca town here well before Europeans stared muscling in. There’s a long-standing story that Marquis de Denonville marched down from Montreal and burned the town in 1690. Actually in that year he would have been marching from France, so it’s more likely to have been during a major expedition that he led in 1687, BUT despite the antiquity of the story, many scholars are pretty sure that he never got anywhere near this far.
*There’s another story that “Kanestio Castle” was a fortified town populated by local Indians, refugee Indians, white renegades, and escaped slaves, and was broken up in the 1700s. It’s quite possible that something along that line did in fact happen.
*By 1796 Canisteo was well-populated enough that it became one of the six original towns of Steuben County. I call these “supertowns” – Canisteo gave rise to another half-dozen current towns, plus Hornell and part of Allegany County.
*From an early date Canisteo was was an important point for road and river travel. Stages and mail came overland, while arks and rafts were poled downstream to Chesapeake Bay, carrying the produce of the region. Taking advantage of the same natural paths, the Erie Railroad came through in 1850. The nearby unincorporated hamlet of Hornellsville (today’s City of Hornell) started to boom with Erie work, and neighboring Canisteo grew along with it.
*In later years the New York & Pennsylvania railroad reached Canisteo, as did an electric trolley line linking to Hornell, and also circulating through each community. The Village incorporated, and became the market and business town for the surrounding countryside.
*The rail lines guided pioneer aviators, who made Canisteo a stop on long-distance flights. Cal Rogers cane through when he made America’s first coast-to-coast flight (1911, seven weeks elapsed but only 84 hours in the air). Canisteo at one point in the 1800s even had its own professional minor league baseball team.
*In 1933 Canisteans laid out the living sign on a hillside – 260 pines spelling out “Canisteo.” It was reported in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was recreated last year… eight decades takes its toll.
*The 1935 flood inundated the whole downtown area knee-deep, and also killed off the New York & Pennsylvania, which was already on its last legs. Two years later, with New Deal help, the community built a fine modern school that’s still in use. A fleet oiler, USS Canisteo, served in the US Navy from 1945 to 1989.
*We’ll be exploring the village in a historic walk (free and open to the public) at 4 PM Friday, May 6, sponsored by Steuben County Historical Society. We’ll meet at Kanestio Historical Society (23 Main Street). We hope you can join us!