Jan 7
Rochester's Daily Democrat carries its first display advertisement.
February
New York City tailors go out on strike. When the National Guard
is called out and the strikers are denied the right to organize,
30,000 protestors gather and call for a new political party.
Feb 18
Narcissa Prentiss of Prattsburg marries missionary Marcus Whitman
in Angelica.
Feb 20
The Steuben County Town of Jersey is annexed by Schuyler County
and renamed Orange.
March
Members of lower Manhattan's Bowery gang clash with Irish street
cleaners in the North American Hotel at Bowery and Bayard. They
express resentment toward the immigrants to Alderman James Ferris
and a few constables when the officials arrive afterwards.
Mar 28
U. S. Civil War colonel Patrick Henry O'Rorke is born in County
Cavan, Ireland.
Mar 29
Chemung County is formed out of Tioga County. Joseph L. Darling
is named First Judge; Lyman Covell, Surrogate; Albert A. Beckwith,
Sheriff; Isaac Baldwin, County Clerk; and Andrew K. Gregg, District
Attorney.
April
New York's Auburn & Rochester Railroad is chartered, to link
Canandaigua and Geneva to Rochester.
Apr 4
Rochester machine shop owner William Gleason is born in Borrisokane,
Ireland.
Apr 10
Richard P. Robinson murders famed New York prostitute Helen Jewett.
Because of her profession few complain when a bribed jury acquits
Robinson and he goes free.
Apr 14
New York City's Atlas Marine Insurance Company, capitalized at
$350,000, is incorporated as a stock company.
Apr 15
The New York State legislature passes an act calling for a geological
and natural history survey of the state, to be divided among four
teams.
Apr 20
A Canadian company is incorporated to build a suspension bridge
over the Niagara River.
May
James Fenimore Cooper and his family move from New York City
to Cooperstown.
May 20
The Town of Oswego annexes part of the Town of Granby.
May 21
New York's Lockport & Batavia Railroad is organized. It's
never built.
May 31
New York City's Astor Hotel, built by John Jacob Astor, opens
its doors.
Jun 7
New York City businessman and art patron Luman Reed dies.
Jun 17
Author and newspaper editor Paul Dudley Sargent and others found
New York's exclusive Union Club which begins meeting at the New
York Athenaeum at Broadway and Pine. They elect City Superior
Court judge Samuel Jones as president.
August
Batavia newspaper owner Frederick Follett sell his Spirit of
the Times, to go to fight along with the Texas revolutionaries.
He will not arrive in time. ** Rochester gives birth to the Young
Men's Moral Reform Society, to "...prevent and eradicate
the vice of licentiousness."
Aug 1
James Dickson, Montezuma II, Liberator of All Indians, departs
with his army from Buffalo to liberate New Mexico and California.
Aug 13
A climbing party including chemistry professor Ebenezer Emmons
and geologist William G. Redfield, attempting to scale the yet-unnamed
Mount Marcy, in the Adirondacks, leaves Cedar Point.
Aug 14
The Emmons-Redfield party arrives at the Clear Pond home of sawmill
innovator Israel Johnson.
Aug 15
The climbing party, lead by Adirondack guides John Cheney and
Harvey Holt, leaves Clear Pond and heads for Mount Marcy.
Aug 17
Bad weather forces the climbers to abandon the Marcy climb.
Aug 25
Author-poet Francis Bret Harte is born in Albany.
September
John Bloomfield Jervis becomes chief engineer of the Croton Aqueduct.
Sep 14
Former U. S. Vice-President Aaron Burr 80, dies in Port Richmond.
Subsequently Tammany Society sachem and Burr crony Matthew L.
Davis will burn a number of letters of Burr's from and to various
mistresses.
Dec 7
Martin Van Buren, defeats William Henry Harrison and is elected
President of the United States, the first "machine"
politician to achieve this. He carries New York City by a margin
of only 1,124 votes.
City
The new Merchants' Exchange is built. ** Winter snows pile up
in some streets to a height of six or seven feet. ** A company
is formed to build a canal at 106th Street in northern Manhattan
for a marble quarry, but the project's abandoned when the stone
turns out to be inferior. ** Nathaniel Currier founds a lithography
business. ** The New York Women's Anti-Slavery Society bars blacks
from membership. ** During a fire at Ann Street a businessman
named Bennett hands out copies of that day's Morning Herald
to close to 2,000 spectators at Beekman and Nassau streets,
for publicity purposes. ** Sections of Cherry, Grove, Stone, John
and Pine streets and Maiden Lane are widened. ** The area between
the Bowery, Art and Eighth streets, and Lafayette Place is made
into a public space. ** The Reverend R. H. Collyer denounces conditions
in the Irish tenements. ** Former Mayor Philip Hone sells his
lower Broadway home across from City Hall Park. Hone and his friends
form the Hone Club, to meet in each other's homes and take turns
providing dinner. ** Seventeen year-old Daniel Sickles speaks
at a political rally in Brooklyn supporting Martin Van Buren.
** Political ward worker Fernando Wood is invited to join the
Tammany Society at the age of 24. When a Merchants' Exchange Bank
error results in a $1,750.62 credit to his account he knowingly
spends it and refuses to make restitution until ordered to do
so by the courts.
State
The railroad reaches the western part of the state. ** The Allegany
Republican and Internal Improvement Advocate becomes the
Angelica Republican and Allegany Whig, but is soon bought
by William Pitt Angell, who changes it to the Angelica Reporter
and Allegany Republican. Samuel C. Wilson will later run it
as the Angelica Reporter ** Orville L. Holley, editor of
the Western Repository and Genesee Advertiser absorbs the
Canandaigua Freeman. ** Cohoes' Harmony Manufacturing begins
production. ** Farmers in the western part of the state riot against
the policies of the Holland Land Company. ** A Greek Revival mansion
is built at 600 South Main Street in Geneva. ** The first grain
shipment from Chicago reaches Buffalo to be shipped down the Erie
Canal. Work is begun to enlarge the canal. The channel is enlarged
to 7' x 70' and the locks to 18' x 110'. ** John Henry Martindale
resigns his Army commission when he is unable to get into the
Corps of Engineers. He will become a lawyer in Genesee County.
** Little Yankee Hill's song "Corn Cobs Twist Your Hair"
is published. ** New Jersey's Morris Canal is extended to the
Hudson River. ** 36,000 tons of goods are transhipped via the
Erie Canal at Buffalo. ** Ohio now produces more grain than New
York. ** Former congressman and New York governor Nathaniel Pitcher,
Jr. dies in Sandy Hill in his late fifties. ** Part of the Cayuga
County town of Springport is formed from the town of Aurelius.
** The Ontario County town of Canadice loses a section east of
Honeoye Lake to the Mother Town of Richmond. ** Schoharie County
annexes a portion of Greene County. ** The Cattaraugus County
town of Humphrey is taken off the town of Burton (later Allegany).
** Buffalo's Michigan Street Baptist Church is organized. ** Captain
Asa Newlon builds the United States Hotel on the former site of
the Hosmer's Stand inn in Avon. ** Batavia's Holland Land Office
becomes the Farmers Loan & Trust Company. ** The Montgomery
County seat is relocated from Johnstown to Fonda after a subscription
of $4500 is raised, and a site for a courthouse is donated to
the county. Dissatisfaction with the change leads to the 1838
division of the county, creating Fulton County. ** Lewiston is
connected to the horsedrawn Lockport and Niagara Falls R. R. **
A Spring landslide at Troy, caused when lake bottom clays destabilise,
crushes 3 houses and several barns. 5 people and 16 horses are
killed. ** J. Tenney begins publishing The American Patriot,
at Franklin Village (later called Fabius), Onondaga County. The
paper will last for the next three years.] ** When speculators
promoting a canal, between the Erie Canal at Lyons and Lake Ontario,
take land belonging to the Shakers at Sodus Bay's Alasa Farms,
the community moves to the Williamsburgh (Groveland) area. The
125 members make the move by sled and wagon, take the Indian name
for the site - Sonyea. ** Financier Jay Gould is born in Roxbury.
** Traveler Thomas S. Woodcock's New York to Niagara , describing
a journey on the Erie Canal, is published. ** A railroad is incorporated
to be built across Staten Island, to connect with the Camden and
Amboy Railroad. ** The Albany Exchange erects a headquarters at
State Street and Broadway, opposite the Albany Museum. ** Repairs
to Cohocton's school house cost $5.00. ** The Erie Canal commissioners
decide it will be feasible to eliminate the Jordan and Nine Mile
locks by eradicating Onondaga County's Jordan Summit. ** The Schenectady
& Troy Rail Road is chartered. ** The Town of Tonawanda is
incorporated.
Rochester
Front Street is moved to the west. ** Only three of the steamboats
regularly stopping at the Genesee River visit this season. 398
ships are using the Port of Rochester facilities. Imports are
valued at $235,701, according to a brochure issued by the recently
opened Tonawanda Railroad. ** Mount Hope Cemetery is founded.
** Dr. Augustus H. Strong is born. ** The city annexes the William
Pitkin farm, increasing its own size to 7.321 square miles. **
Future lumber manufacturer Thomas Parsons moves here from the
town of Wheatland. ** The Democrat & Chronicle publishes
an editorial announcing it's adherence to the principles of the
Whig Party. ** 500 townspeople sign a temperance petition urging
Congress to address the alcohol problem. ** Construction begins
on the new Erie Canal aqueduct over the Genesee River. ** Silas
O. Smith builds an arcade building on West Main Street, between
Irving Place and Exchange Street.
Utica
William Goodell begins editing The Friend of Man, a publication
of the N. Y. State Anti Slavery Society. ** A steamboat for use
on Oneida Lake is reported under construction at Utica, but never
materializes.
Architects
Rochester architect Henry Robinson Searle is born to architect
Henry Searle and his wife.
© 2005 David Minor / Eagles Byte