Tag Archives: Painted Post

Steuben County — 225 Years!

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Happy birthday, Steuben County! Steuben was created 225 years ago, by separating territory from Ontario County. Land agent Charles Williamson, founder of Bath and a tireless promoter, had pushed the project through the legislature.
The County was much bigger back then, but it only had six legal municipalities – officially Towns, or as I sometimes call them “supertowns,” since all the municipalities of Steuben… and parts of four other counties! – were created from these original six.
BATH originally included what’s now Bath, Urbana, Wheeler, Prattsburgh, Pulteney, and Avoca, plus parts of Cohocton and Howard. This is the area that gave us Glenn Curtiss and several of our U. S. Representatives, besides hosting the county seat and county fair, giving birth to our grape and wine heritage, and becoming an incubator of fish culture.
CANISTEO included today’s Canisteo, Greenwood, West Union, Hornellsville, Hornell City, and parts of Jasper and Troupsburg, not to mention Almond, Alfred, Andover, and Independence (all in today’s Allegany County). This was the beating heart of railroading for our region, and is still significant in that field.
DANSVILLE covered our modern Dansville, Fremont, and Wayland, with parts of Howard and Cohocton along with North Dansville and Ossian (Livingston County) plus Burns (in Allegany). Here we find the gorge of Stony Brook, and much of our rich muckland.
FREDERICKSTOWN (now Wayne) was spelled just about any way you wanted. All that’s left in Steuben County are the Towns of Wayne and Bradford. But it also included what we know as the Schuyler County Towns of Tyrone, Reading, Orange, and some of Dix, AND the Yates County Towns of Barrington, Starkey, and the part of Jerusalem covering most of Keuka Bluff. Keuka, Waneta, and Lamoka Lakes largely bound Wayne and Bradford.
MIDDLETOWN is now Addison. Back then it stretched over today’s Addison, Cameron, Rathbone, Thurston, Tuscarora, and Woodhull, plus parts of Troupsburg and Jasper. With Major General W. W. Averell, and the men of Troupsburg who suffered exactly 50% casualties, “Middletown” contributed mightily to saving the nation in the Civil War.
PAINTED POST is now the Town of Corning. Besides that Town it covers our Hornby, Campbell, Erwin, Corning City, Lindley, and Caton. Besides being the seat of our glass industry, old Painted Post also has our only institution of higher education, SUNY’s Corning Community College.
And that ain’t all! Our sheriff’s office is also 225 years old! Some of our sheriffs have been very prominent men, including Dugald Cameron, for whom a Town was named. John Kennedy and John Magee were heroes in the War of 1812. Magee, who also served two terms in Congress, was the last sheriff to be appointed and the first to be elected… not to mention building the 1831 Magee House, formerly Davenport Library and now the Steuben County History Center. When WVIN radio host Dave Taylor-Smith was blocked by his doctor, Sheriff Jim Allard stepped up on less than 24-hour’s notice, and became the first person other than Dave to “jump in the lake” (Salubria) to raise “Tyrtle Beach” funds to support youth programs.
And don’t stop yet! Benjamin Patterson Inn also got its start in 1796. Charles Williamson had it built and installed “Hunter Patterson” to run it, offering a hostelry that would prove a key link in the European development of the area. It’s now Corning’s oldest building, at the heart of Heritage Village of the Southern Finger Lakes, showing local life in days gone by – all the way back to when George Washington was president. I’m a member! Have been for twenty years! You might like it. I sure do.

Old-Time Depots (and Where to Find Some!)

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“Millions of people in this country still couldn’t find the airport, Lyndon. But they sure as hell know where the depot is.” – Harry S. Truman, 1964.

Harry Truman’s long-ago advice to President Johnson is, well, long ago. For almost a hundred years this country’s economy rose or fell with the railroad, just as it rose or fell with the car for most of OUR lifetimes. Nowadays, though, the railroad doesn’t mean what it used to.

But the train still runs, and even where it doesn’t, our region is still dotted with the stations and depots where travelers once huddled from the rain, checked their ticket for the dozenth time, bought a magazine to read along the way. For many military personnel, the depot was the last sight of home. For far too many families, the depot was the last place they ever hugged their son or dad or husband, the last place his voice was ever heard, in the town that heard his very first cry.

For most soldiers, they knew their war was finally over when they jumped off the train and raced back into the oh-so-familiar hometown station, not even pausing in their rush to the street beyond.

Some depots are pretty uninspiring, but others are worth a little trip. The DL&W depot in PAINTED POST (277 Steuben Street) is in the pagoda style – a very early example of company branding, with the roof flared out on both long sides, and braced by elegant external buttresses. This depot was actually prefabricated, shopped out by rail in sections, and assembled on site! It was a makeshift morgue after the 1972 flood, and it’s Now home to the Painted Post-Erwin Museum at the Depot. All three metal “Indian” figures that preceded the current Chief Montour statue are on exhibit here.

The Erie Depot in HORNELL (111 Loder Street) is now creatively called the Hornell Erie Depot Museum. “Hornellsville” was a modest unincorporated settlement when Millard Fillmore and Daniel Webster came through on the ceremonial first Erie Railroad train, connecting Lake Erie with New York City. The company decided that Hornell (as we know it) would be a great spot for their main repair and maintenance shop. The Maple City started to boom as an industrial center. Railroads are still big business in Hornell, and the historic depot reflects that.

As far as I can tell, the B&H depot on the waterfront in HAMMONDSPORT (7 Water Street) was a pretty routine piece of work until World War I or later, when it took on the railroad gothic form that’s now been the beloved village symbol for decades. The swooping spire, weathervane, deep overhang, and rows of buttresses seize the memory, along with the background of Keuka Lake and the Depot Park. Glenn Curtiss and Alexander Graham Bell knew this place, which helped make feasible their early experiments in airplanes and motorcycles. This was the northern terminus of the Bath & Hammondsport Railroad – the entrance to the Lake, or the portal to the world. (It’s now the Village offices.)

The 1905 Lehigh Valley station in ROCHESTER (99 Court Street) is now home to Dinosaur Bar-B-Que! The squat tower, and its position above the falls of the Genesee River, make it unmistakable. Both the station and the 1892 Court Street Bridge are on the National Register of Historic Places… as is the Painted Post depot.

While you’re in ROCHESTER, stop by at Amtrak’s Louise K. Slaughter Rochester Station (320 Central Avenue). This modern 2017 intermodal facility is a reminder that trains… indeed, PASSENGER trains… are still a part of our life and our economy. Long may they wave!

Painted Post — a Village of Monuments

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Painted Post is a village of monuments, and North Hamilton is a street of monuments.

Some communities do this deliberately – gathering their various unrelated statues, plaques, boulders, and horseback-riding generals from their original sites into one location. In Painted Post, it seems to have grown more or less organically. And that has fortuitously created a nice, comfortable walking loop.

The most obvious, of course, of course, and surely the best known, is the 1951 “Chief Montour” statue that has become a symbol of the village. This harks back to the original “painted post” which gave its name to the whole region. It anchors a knot of monuments at Water and Hamilton Streets, close by the Village Square shopping center.

Last week in this space we looked at Painted Post monuments relating to the Native peoples of the region, so this week we’ll just summarize them, and concentrate on the OTHER monuments. In addition to the statue itself, the BASE of the statue bears a large and lengthy plaque, giving the history of the original “painted post,” and the three 19th-century “Indians” that preceded the current statue.

Right nearby is a 1966 plaque commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Painted Post, which more-or-less stabilized arrangements between the Iroquois and the U.S. (Guess who came out best.)

Also nearby are two plaques celebrating the Village recovery from the catastrophic “Hurricane Agnes” flood of 1972. The whole Village Square center occupies a neighborhood that had to be demolished – it’s remarkable that the community came back as it did. The NYS Urban Development Corporation dedicated one plaque to “Painted Post and its citizens in recognition of their courageous and determined recovery… may the Village enjoy a long and prosperous future.” The other plaque is FROM the citizens, “to all the people and organizations, far and near, who unselfishly gave of themselves to assist the Village in its hour of greatest need.”

The next knot of monuments starts at the post office, and spills over both sides of Chemung Street and the railroad tracks. The post office lobby, as we saw last week, includes a New Deal mural of an imaginary event from Seneca days.

Painted Post has two fully-rounded statues in close proximity, which may be unusual among communities of similar size. Besides the Chief Montour statue down the street, we find a Civil War soldier on the post office grounds. This monument “to the soldier dead of the Town of Erwin” was dedicated in the 50th anniversary year of Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Two small cannon nearby are the focal point of Memorial Day observances.

Cross the tracks to the hard-to-notice World War Memorial Park, dedicated in 1930 (that’s World War ONE), but not comprising much more than a plaque, a mortar, and a flagpole. Across Hamilton is the sesquicentennial marker for the Sullivan expedition (invasion) during the Revolution.

Walk on up to Pulteney Street, turn left, and (once things are open again) cross Pulteney at Steuben to the Painted Post-Erwin Museum at the Depot. Here you can find all three of the “Indian” monuments that preceded today’s statue.

Cross back over on Steuben to the Village office building, and the first thing you’ll see is a memorial for deceased fire fighters, going back to 1867. Behind that, more powerful for being understated and unostentatious, is a memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001.

Walk south to Chemung, take a left, and look at the bell in its little tower. The bell rang out from the Methodist church on the spot, demolished after 1972 and now part of the nearby United Church – a union of congregations, since the Presbyterian church was wrecked at the same time.

Go into the shopping center and find the gazebo in the middle. This Centennial Pavilion went up in 1993 to mark a hundred years of incorporation as a Village.

Keep headin’ south, and cross Water Street into Hodgman Park. At the lacrosse field is a touching memorial to former player Michael Joseph Tammaro, 1989-2016. And finally, just a few steps away, check out the James A. Hogue memorial scoreboard. Are there any monuments that we missed?

Painted Post Monuments Follow Society’s Views of Native Americans

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The “Chief Montour” statue (originally set dead in the intersection of Water and Hamilton Streets) has become a symbol of Painted Post. This harks back to the original “Painted Post” which gave its name to the whole region.

According to Cornplanter it was a memorial to a Seneca leader of note, whose name he declined to divulge, in accordance with cultural conventions. The post weathered away with time, and white inhabitants of the early 1800s replaced it with a sheet-metal silhouette (for which they paid the maker one cow), theoretically depicting an Indian. This was replaced decades later by a more elaborate version, and then by a fully-rounded metal statue, which blew down and broke in 1948. (You can see all three of these in the Town of Erwin Museum at the Depot.)

The current fully-rounded model, executed by a local art teacher and erected around 1951, is the most artistically-impressive of the series. It incorporates a representation of the “painted post” itself, along with a respectful portrayal of Chief Montour, acknowledging the early owners of the land, muscled out in the 1790s. A large plaque on the base of the statue summarizes this history.

Two other nearby pieces are little more outdated, or at least one-sided. “Recording the Victory” is a New Deal mural in the post office, seeming to conflate the original painted post with the capture of Boyd and Parker, which took place about a hundred miles away.

That capture marked the westernmost penetration of the “Sullivan Expedition” (actually, the Sullivan INVASION), designed to demolish Iroquois life during the Revolutionary War. A tombstone-like monument on the east side of Hamilton, just north of the railroad track, is one of dozens that were scattered throughout the region in 1929 ( 150th anniversary), commemorating the “expedition.”

This was the largest independent command that George Washington ever authorized. SOME Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) sided with the British, raiding, burning, and killing down into the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. Sullivan was to respond in kind, BUT with no attempt to sort out pro-British, neutral, or even pro-American. Everything was to be burned, everybody killed or expelled.

The invaders, of course, were considered heroes at the time. But the monument is an interesting relic of the early days of auto travel, when such markers were sort of checkpoints for tourists and drivers.

A 1966 marker, back near the statue, commemorates the 1791 Treaty of Painted Post… although as I understand it, the conference actually took place in today’s Elmira. Timothy Pickering represented the U.S., while Red Jacket and Cornplanter were among those negotiating for the Six Nations and others (1,800 of whom actually attended). The result, predictably, was a disappointment for the Haudenosaunee, but it did at least mark a general unenthusiastic acquiescence on both sides, normalizing arrangements at last.

The point where the Conhocton and Tuscarora form the Chemung… the point in which a town flourished, and on which the original painted post stood… was a key point for Native peoples and for the white invaders. The succession of markers and monuments here show a course beginning with Native life; then a 19th-century view of “the Indians” as exotic curios; then an early 20th-century age of growing concern for history, contaminated with white supremacy and flag-waving patriotism; and then a late 20th-century groping toward a more truthful and more respectful approach. We can find all of this with little more than a five-minute walk in Painted Post.

Join Us for a Walking Tour of Painted Post!

Once upon a time, there was a painted post.

*This was a shaped and embellished tree trunk, standing in a Native American town where the rivers (Conhocton, Canisteo, Tuscarora) came together to form the Chemung. European folks called it the Town by the Painted Post, and the surrounding space they called the Painted Post Country.

*When Steuben County was erected in 1796, Painted Post was one of six “supertowns” that were each eventually subdivided into half a dozen smaller towns. When that process was pretty much done, the Town of Painted Post changed its name to the Town of Corning, after the major landowner.

*The old name passed into history, until a Village was incorporated within the Town of Erwin (part of the original supertown, and also named for a major landowner). The Painted Post name came officially back onto the map, and there it has stayed ever since.

*The rivers were highways back in the early days, and also power sources, as the nearby “gang mills” demonstrated. Painted Post’s position where eastbound/southbound traffic came together… or where westbound/northbound traffic divided… made it a perfect point to stop, to rest, to do business.

*Unfortunately, of course, it was also a perfect spot for flooding. And flood it did, repeatedly, until one flood did away with what remained of the original “painted post.”

*To commemorate that landmark, villagers commissioned one of their neighbors to create a sheet-metal Indian in two-dimensional silhouette… they paid him one cow. This figure watched over the community for decades until a newer version was created. In the late 19th century came a fully-rounded cast-metal statue that actually looked like an Indian, or at least like what someone in a factory THOUGHT an Indian looked like.

*After that statue blew down and got damaged during a 1948 wind storm, a local art teacher created the statue that we know today. Like its predecessor, the new statue stood right smack in the middle of Monument Square, tangling traffic on Water and Hamilton Streets.

*That space (and much of the rest of the village) had flooded in 1901, and catastrophically in 1935, 1946, and 1972. After that last flood the river was moved, and so was the statue, finally out of traffic to the northwest corner of the Square, by the urban-renewal Village Square Shopping Center, replacing a couple of blocks lost to Hurricane Agnes.

*ALL THREE of the 19th-century Indians are in the Painted Post-Erwin Museum at the Depot, which doubled as a makeshift morgue in 1972, accomodating the remains of 14 of the 19 Steuben County residents lost in that terrible night.

*When the Erie Canal opened in 1833, the river routes became quaint memories, making Painted Post a sleepy little place. But that changed in 1851 when the Erie RAILROAD came through, connecting Lake Erie with New York City. A few years later Painted Post also became the start/end point for the Erie’s Rochester Branch. Routes 15 and 17… now succeeded by Routes 415, I-86, and I-99… continue Painted Post’s history as a major transportation hub.

*“I have fallen in love with American names,” wrote Stephen Vincent Benet. “Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman’s Oast, it is a magic ghost you guard. But I am sick for a newer ghost: Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post.”

*We love Painted Post too, and at 4 PM on Friday, June 15, I’ll be leading a historic walking tour of the Village, starting in the Museum at the Depot (where we’ll see those three early Indian figures), winding down to Water Street and Monument Square before making our way back to West High Street Cemetery, where we’lll hear from our own “Cemetery Lady,” Helen Kelly Brink. This free Steuben County Historical Society walk was postponed from June 1, when we had torrential downpours. We hope to see you June 15 – weather permitting!