Last week we looked at the makeup of Keuka Lake towns back in 1835, and in 1860, thanks to statewide gazetteers published in those years. This week I thought we’d get a handle on how people live and worked in those days.
Farming and herding were overwhelmingly how people supported themselves, AND it’s the main thing that the gazetteers take notice of.
For instance, in 1835 the six towns had 13,194 cattle; 4275 horses; 53,674 sheep; and 13,445 swine. To look at it another way, the total human population (13,418) stood comfortably between the populations of swine and cattle, but was dwarfed by the flock of sheep.
This isn’t surprising, considering that many people, even if employed off the farm, still maintained some livestock as a sideline or for home consumption. It would be interesting to know how those cattle broke out — how many each for beef, draft, and dairy.
In most cases, any of the Yates towns beat each of the Steuben towns for numbers. Milo and Jerusalem usually took the lead, suggesting that local prosperity gravitated to the railroad, the Outlet and the canal.
The 1860 report covers the same categories, but this time distinguishing “working oxen and calves” from “cows.” Town by town breakdowns give us the bushels of grain produced (winter and spring), tons of hay, bushels of potatoes, bushels of apples, pounds of butter, and pounds of cheese. There’s no report on grape or wine production, each of which was just getting started in a big way. The Pleasant Valley Wine Company, for instance, was just incorporating, but for all anybody knew back then, this would prove to be just a flash in the pan. Ohio’s nascent industry had just been wiped out in a blight (which left winemakers available for jobs in the Finger Lakes).
The report DOES tell us about yards of domestic cloth produced, with a high of 846 in Urbana and a low of 230 in Barrington. Cloth production reverses the pattern of livestock and population; any of the Steuben towns tops any of the Yates towns.
While the facts-and-figures reporting is pretty straitjacketed, the 1860 gazetteer permits itself a little more latitude in the descriptive section. Urbana is “noted for the production of a superior quality of fine wool,” and “finely adapted to the culture of the grape.” Jerusalem “is well adapted to both pasturage and tillage.”
Perhaps without recognizing their significance, the gazetteer compilers take haphazard note of other forms of commerce. Milo has two newspapers and a bank. Urbana has “several manufacturing establishments.”
They wake up a little to the significance of transportation, noting a daily line of steamers between Penn Yan (in Jerusalem) and Hammondsport (in Urbana), along with a storehouse at Gulicksville landing in Pulteney. Penn Yan “is an important station on the Elmira, Jefferson & Canandaigua R.R.,” but there’s no mention at all of the Crooked Lake Canal, not even thirty years old and already overshadowed by the train. Hammondsport will not have rail service (the B&H, connecting it to Bath) until 1878.
While the 1860 gazetteer still makes no mention of grapes, an 1868 directory shows 110 vineyards in the Town of Urbana alone! Wayne has 10, and Pulteney 31… in fact, grapes were said to be the first thing Pulteney residents ever found to justify the taxes on their land. Oddly, the Pulteney folks are almost always described as “grape growers,” rather than vineyardists.
Many of these vineyards are small, and many owners were also farmers, lawyers, or ministers. But the wineries wrought radical change in Keuka’s economy and environment — in less than a decade.