Our sister paper in Bath… the Steuben Courier… traces its history back to 1816… so this is their bicentennial year! Those were the days when many newspapers were political party organs — an age that came to an end in 1958 when owners of the Republican Courier bought the Democratic Advocate and created the general-interest Steuben Courier-Advocate. What was life like in that year of 1958?

*Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. Averell Harriman was governor of New York, and Nelson A. Rockefeller was elected to succeed him. Frank E. Nicklaus was mayor of Bath, and Ford Hotaling was town supervisor. Charlie Reynolds was county sheriff.
*Charles De Gaulle became president of France, and Pope John XXIII was installed.
*Snow drifted up to fifteen feet from a major storm in February — kids in Prattsburgh could touch the telephone wires.
*Bobby Fischer won the U.S. chess championship at the age of 14. Baseball star Roy Campanella was paralyzed in a car crash. The U. S. launched its first satellite, and Mohawk hired America’s first African American flight attendant. The peace symbol was designed, and first used. Elvis Presley was drafted. To counter this augmented U. S. military, Nikita Khrushchev became premier of the Soviet Union.
*Vice-president Nixon’s car was stoned in Venezuela. The Beatles (then the Quarrymen) cut their first record. The Nautilus passed under the North Pole. NASA was created. The John Birch Society was founded. Ellen DeGeneres was born, as were Ice-T, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Sharon Stone.
*The Salk Vaccine was available, but the Sabin Vaccine and the birth-control pill were not. There were no vaccines for mumps, measles, rubella, or chicken pox, and children lost a week or so of school for every one of them. They might have missed reading about Dick and Jane.
*You might do business at Cohn’s, Bath Plumbing, Murphy’s Appliances, Longwell Lumber, Grand Union, Taggart Insurance, or W. T. Grant, or Rockwell’s. You might eat out at Molly’s Diner, or at Chat-a-Wyle, or at Rambler’s Rest.
*No one had ever heard of Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or Supergirl. People DID know about Agway, Western Auto, Ben Franklin, Woolworth, and J. J. Newbury. On TV you might watch Jack Benny, Lassie, The Restless Gun, or American Bandstand. The Huckleberry Hound Show debuted for kids. Romper Room, Howdy Doody, and Captain Kangaroo were going strong, but Ding-Ding School was in reruns. IF you even got TV!

Our sister paper, the Steuben Courier in Bath, is celebrating its bicentennial. Because of mergers the Courier story goes back to 1816, and last week we looked at what life was like 200 years ago. But the paper actually called the Courier dates to 1843. What was the world like then, when The Steuben Courier first hit the streets?

*John Tyler was president — the first “accidental president” who succeeded to office on the death of his predecessor. Queen Victoria was ruling in Great Britain. (Believe it or not, Tyler still had two living grandchildren at the end of 2015.)
*There were 26 states. William C. Bouck was governor of New York. Robert Campbell, Jr. was Town Supervisor, and Benjamin Smead was Mayor of Bath. Town population was probably a little under 6000.
*Steuben County had 46,138 people in the 1840 census. 288 of them were non-white.
*Edgar Allen Poe published “The Gold-Bug” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” in 1843. Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, and Londoners sent the first Christmas cards.
*Ulysses S. Grant graduated from West Point. Future President McKinley was born, and Francis Scott Key died. So did Sequoyah, and so did Noah Webster.
*The Town of Avoca was formed on April 12, taking land from Bath, Cohocton, Howard, and Wheeler.
*Keuka, a crude double-hulled vessel with a central paddlewheel, was operating on Keuka Lake. It was the first steamboat in Steuben County. The Corning-Blossburg short-line railroad ran through the southeastern part of the county. The Erie Canal, Crooked Lake Canal, Chemung Canal, and Chemung Feeder Canal were all busy.
*There was no Catholic church in Bath, but the Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches were already here.
*Schuyler County did not yet exist.
*The map was peppered with names that would have been familiar to 1843 readers, but not to us: Crooked Lake (Keuka Lake); Little Lake (Waneta Lake); Mud Lake (Lamoka Lake); Poor Lake (Loon Lake); Liberty (Cohocton); Bloods Corners (North Cohocton); Bartlets Mills (Bradford); Kennedyville (Kanona).
*Washington Street was still called St. Patrick’s Street, but the name would change by 1850, possibly because in the interim a Catholic church DID open in Bath. Many people were hysterical about immigrants in those days, especially IRISH and CATHOLIC immigrants. There was a whole political party — very active locally — dedicated to keeping them out. Their official name was the American Party, but most folks called them Know-Nothings. For excellent reasons.

Our sister paper in Bath, the Steuben Courier, is celebrating its bicentennial this year! Through a series of mergers the life of the Courier goes back to a paper called The Steuben and Allegany Patriot, which later became the Farmer’s Advocate, and then the Steuben Advocate. The Patriot began publishing in Bath in December of 1816. What was the world like back then?

*James Monroe had just been elected President, succeeding James Madison. Monroe had crossed the Delaware with Washington, and been wounded at the Battle of Trenton. Since then he’d been a governor, a senator, a diplomat (he and Robert Livingston worked together negotiating the Louisiana Purchase), and Secretary of State. The Louisiana Purchase, and America, stopped at the Rocky Mountains, and Florida was still Spanish.
*Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were seven years old. Queen Victoria was not yet born. Monroe would be our sixth president since the Revolution, but George III was still King of England. Napoleon had just finished his first year of exile on St. Helena.
*Bath became a legally incorporated village in 1816. Elisha Hanks was Bath Town Supervisor. John Taylor was governor. Pioneer prophetess Jemima Wilkinson still ruled her flock near Penn Yan. The courthouse was a frame structure on the same location as today’s.
*Indiana became the 19th state in the same month that the Patriot began publication.
*Mary Shelly created the story of Frankenstein in 1816, but only published it three years later. Lord Byron and Dr. Polidori created the first vampire novel at the same storytelling session, and also published in 1819.
*Schuyler, Chemung, Yates, and Tompkins Counties did not exist. Steuben County went all the way to Seneca Lake, and stretched well up the East Branch of Keuka Lake.
*There were no railroads in America, and no steamboats on Keuka Lake. The Erie Canal had not yet been approved, let alone begun.
*Within Steuben County’s current borders there were 11 towns; now there are 32 towns and two cities.
*Steuben County’s population was growing fast, from 7,246 in 1810 to 21,989 in 1820. The county’s slave population peaked at 87 in 1810, and was down to 46 a decade later. (Slavery ended in 1827.)
*Despite this growth, a week of court sessions would strip Bath bare of provisions. Riders would scour the countryside, buying whatever the farmers would spare at whatever prices they asked!