February
Ada Harland and Lisa Weber leave Lydia Thompson's burlesque company in New York City to form their own troupe.

Feb 3
New York City's Booth Theater, at 23rd Street and 6th Avenue, opens with a production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Mar 1
Temperatures in New York City drop to 4 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

Apr 27
Rochester's Odd Fellows celebrate their semicentennial.

May 1
The New York Stock Exchange consolidates with the "government department".

May 2
Rochester's First Presbyterian Church on Fitzhugh Street is destroyed by fire. The city will build a City Hall on that site.

May 8
With both sides doing equal amounts of business the New York Stock Exchange consolidates with the Open Board of Stock-Brokers. James Mitchell is named Chairman.

May 15
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton break away from the Equal Rights Association, found the National Woman Suffrage Association, in New York City.

June
The New York Clipper trade newspaper notes a falling off of burlesque business at Niblo's New York City theatre.

July
British theatrical manager Alexander Henderson having leased James Wallack's Broadway Theater in New York City for a summer season of burlesque and pantomime, relinquishes the lease to follow his wife Lydia Thompson on tour at the end of the month. The troupe will return to various city theaters for the next eight years.

Jul 6
Engineer John Roebling is injured at the Brooklyn Bridge construction site.

Sep 24
The Black Friday market crash on Wall Street occurs after an attempt by Jay Gould, Jim Fisk and Abel Rathbone Corbin to corner the New York gold market.

Oct 16
Hired hands working for New York State farmer William "Stub" Newell, cousin of Binghamton cigar maker George Hull, "discover" a stone Giant while digging a well at his farm near Cardiff.

Oct 17
New York Herald owner James Gordon Bennett gives Welsh-born journalist Henry Morton Stanley the assignment of finding missionary David Livingstone, lost in central Africa.

Oct 18
The first newspaper accounts of the discovery of the Cardiff "giant" appear.

Oct 23
George Hull sells quarter shares of the Giant.

Nov 5
The Cardiff Giant is exhumed and moved to Syracuse.

Nov 6
The Rochester Opera House is destroyed by fire.

Nov 14
Former stage line owner John Butterfield, 48, dies in Utica.

Nov 26
The Cardiff Giant appears at Albany's Geological Hall.

Dec 6
P. T. Barnum's American Museum displays a copy of the Cardiff Giant.

Dec 10
George Hull admits to the Cardiff Giant complicity.

City
A group of independent fish merchants form the Fulton Market Fish Mongers Association, to build a permanent market on South Street. ** Architect Louis Burger enlarges the German-American School. ** 142 East 18th Street's Stuyvesant House apartment building designed by Richard Morris Hunt, is completed by builder Rutherford Stuyvesant. It is the first apartment house in the city. ** The American Museum of Natural History is founded. ** The population reaches 769,000. ** Jay Cooke and Company becomes the financial agent for the Northern Pacific Railroad. ** Thomas Edison patents an improved stock ticker. ** Black composer Will Marion Cook is born. ** Lydia Thompson leaves New York to take her burlesque company on a U. S. tour. ** A group of commercial buildings on the waterfront between Main and Docks streets is destroyed by fire. ** Lyman Abbott resigns as pastor of the New England Congregationalist Church. ** ** Ophthalmologist-educator Cornelius Agnew is made clinical professor at the Eye and Ear Infirmary's College of Physicians and Surgeons. ** Lawyer William Collins Whitney marries Flora Payne.

State
Chili Seminary publishes its first catalogue. ** The first "skew arch" bridge is built, over Silver Creek's Jackson Street for the New York Central tracks. ** A blast furnace opens at Charlotte. ** The Erie Railroad abandons its Dunkirk car shops. Division superintendent Horatio Brooks leases the buildings and founds the Brooks Locomotive Works. ** The State Line Railroad is organized to bring Pennsylvania coal to Rochester. ** William Medill leaves his job as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. President Grant appoints Civil War officer Ely Parker to take his place, the first Native American in the post. ** The Mohonk Mountain House is founded by Albert E. and Alfred H. Smiley, twin brothers. ** Cornelius Vanderbilt consolidates the New York & Hudson River Railroad with the New York & Harlem Railroad to form the and the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, gaining monopoly control of the tracks between New York City and Buffalo. Passenger service shifts to Grand Central Terminal. ** Utopian planner John Humphrey Noyes tells his followers it's time to begin an experimental community at Oneida. ** Martin V. Heller builds the Port Jervis & Monticello Railroad. ** Connewango's Axeville Creamery is erected for Robinson & Spore. ** Women of the collar workers' union in Troy go on strike for three months. They reject an offer of help from the Iron Molders Union. The manufacturers settle and the women go back to work. The Collar Laundry Union is dissolved. ** The steam yacht Minnie V is built at Black Rock. It's sailed to Bayfield, Wisconsin, to be used as a ferry on Chequamegon Bay. ** Abolitionist and Temperance supporter Garritt Smith publishes his address to a Temperance convention in Chicago and a letter to Prohibition foe philosopher John Stuart Mill. ** The cornerstone is laid for Le Roy's new St. Mark's Episcopal Church. ** John Thompson Hoffman is elected governor. ** Mary Paul buys Canandaigua's 142 South Main Street Building to house the Paul A. D. & Company drugstore.

Rochester
The Rochester Theological Seminary begins its campus at the southeast corner of East Avenue and Alexander Street. ** John F. Montgomery establishes a boatyard at Holley Street and Cayuga Street (now Byron Street and Clinton Avenue). It's in operation for about a year.

Jan 15
The first cartoon to use a donkey as a symbol of the Democratic Party is published in Harper's Weekly, drawn by Thomas Nast.

Jan 13
Rochester's Veterans of the War of 1812 meet in the Court House.

Feb 1
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York is organized.

Feb 2
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) marries Olivia Langdon, in Elmira. ** The Cardiff Giant is discovered to be carved of gypsum.

Feb 10
The Chicago Tribune publishes the Cardiff Giant sculptor's letter detailing the hoax.

Feb 26
The New York City subway system opens.

April
Sioux chief Red Cloud makes peace with the whites, visits Washington, D.C. and New York City. ** Lydia Thompson returns to Niblo's Garden in New York to appear in the burlesque Pippin; or, The King of the Gold Mine. ** Showman P. T. Barnum debuts his Museum, Menagerie and Circus, in Brooklyn.

May 24
Volunteers who left Rochester to join a Fenian uprising in Canada are turned back at the border.

May 31
Over the past year the Doran Dry Dock at Durhamville has performed 230 jobs.

Jun 26
The Rochester city court issues an order permitting the sale of the First Presbyterian Church in the rear of the court house.

Nov 27
The New York Times first refers to baseball as "The National Game".

Dec 1
Rochester's Democrat merges with the Daily Chronicle, becoming the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.

Dec 3
Artist Edwin Austin Abbey has his debut in Harper's Weekly with illustrations for The Puritans' First Thanksgiving.

Dec 26
The Democrat and Chronicle's offices at Main and Graves streets are destroyed by fire and the paper moves into a new building to the rear.

City
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is incorporated. ** The Atlantic Basin dock area, developed by the Atlantic Dock Company, is completed. ** Art collector Thomas Jefferson Bryan dies aboard the Lafayette, en route from Europe to New York. ** Photographer Jacob Riis emigrates from Scandinavia, to the U. S. ** Banker Jay Cooke begins promoting the idea of a railway, to be built by the Northern Pacific, through Canadian territory north of Lake Superior. ** Empire Stores begins construction in Brooklyn between Main and Docks Streets. ** The American Tract Society appoints Lyman Abbott editor of its new periodical The Illustrated Christian Weekly.

State
Seth Green founds the first state fish hatchery, at Caledonia. ** Cohoes is incorporated. ** A son, Pierrepont, is born in Oneida to the utopian colony's founder John Humphrey Noyes. ** Ira Carpenter's wooden bridge across the Genesee River near Rush is replaced. ** Waterloo becomes the permanent site of the Seneca County Agricultural Fair. ** Lewisboro's Lake Waccabuc is tied into the Croton reservoir system. ** The Syracuse City Waterworks Company builds Wilkinson Reservoir to hold water to be drawn from Onondaga Creek. ** Melrose industrialist Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich arrives in Akron, Ohio, to build a factory for the manufacture of fire hoses and other rubber products. ** Palmyra's Presbyterian Church is completed. It now has a church on each of the four corners of the main intersection. ** Finger Lakes photographer Fred G. Amsbury is born to Edward Amsbury and his wife. ** A station is built in Tonawanda for the New York Central Railroad.

Connewango
The Connewango Creamery, owned by Bigelow & Gardner, opens. ** The approximate date Samuel Farlee's mill on Elm Creek closes.

Rochester
The Democrat newspaper threatens to publish the names of men who make remarks as women walk past. ** The state census counts 16 Italians out of the city's 50,940 inhabitants. ** Glen House is built in the Genesee River gorge, below the lower falls. ** Buffalo Street is renamed West Main Street. ** The wife of merchant Edwin Scrantom and sister of Hiram Sibley, dies.

Jan 3
Henry Bradley of Binghamton patents oleomargarine.

Jan 26
Author Samuel Hopkins Adams is born in Dunkirk. ** Temperatures in New York City drop to 1 degree F, lowest here for this date. ** A proposal is put forward for a Sodus Bay, Corning, and New York Railroad.

Feb 2
Peter H. Bitely of Jerusalem, David S. Wagener of Pulteney and Calvin S. Baxter of Potter form a committee to consider plans for the Sodus Bay, Corning, and New York Railroad.

Mar 9
Sodus Bay, Corning, and New York Railroad directors meeting at Penn Yan, favor a route through Wayne. Judge William S. Briggs certifies that the Town of Milo is bonded for $100,000, with citizens Ebenezer B. Jones, Melatiah H, Lawrence and John C. Scheetz assigned to execute the process.

Mar 20
The new vessel Gilbert Mollison is brought downriver into Oswego from the Mitchell Brothers and M. Murphy shipyard.

April
Prattsville pioneer Zadock Pratt is buried in the town's cemetery, rather in his tomb in the hills that was never completed, due to the density of the rock.

Apr 8
The first vessel of the Lake Ontario season arrives at Oswego from Sackets Harbor.

Apr 28
A section of the Erie Canal's banks collapses at the Ox-Bow, in Fairport. The barge Bonnie Bird is carried a mile away from the canal by the escaping waters. The crew and a team of horses are unhurt.

June
Syracuse's St. John the Baptist Church at Park and Court streets is dedicated.

Jul 8
The N.Y. Times publishes an expose of the Tweed Ring.

Jul 12
New York actor Guglielmo Ricciardi is born in Sorrento, Italy, to merchant captain Antonino Ricciardi and Cristina D'Apreda, the mayor's daughter.

Aug 24
Sodus Bay, Corning, and New York Railroad directors meet at Lyons, agree to let an immediate contract for tracks between Savona and Penn Yan.

Sep 5
Augustin Daly's Divorce, featuring John Drew, opens at New York's Fifth Avenue Theatre, runs for 200 performances.

October
Horsecar service begins between Elmira and Horseheads.

Nov 21
A daughter, Ellen Herndon Arthur, is born to New York City Collector of Customs Chester A. Arthur and Ellen Herndon Arthur - their first and only daughter.

Nov 24
The National Rifle Association is organized in New York City.

Dec 26
Financier Jacob Barker dies in Philadelphia at the age of 92.

City
President Grant names Chester A. Arthur as Collector of Customs. ** George Armstrong Custer visits the city in an unsuccessful attempt to find an alternative to military service. ** Steam locomotives are put into service on lower Manhattan's elevated lines. ** Quakers form the New York Colored Mission, to aid freed slaves. ** The first Dutch ballplayer, Rynie Wolters, joins the New York Mutuals. ** Members of the New York Stock Exchange draw up a charter of incorporation. Tammany boss William M. Tweed has false names substituted on the charter and gets it passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. Members of the exchange refuse to accept the charter or to pay Tweed for getting it passed. ** Former Canadian premier Sir Francis Hincks meets with Jay Cooke, convincing him that a U. S. line through the Canadian North West could work. ** Cornelius Vanderbilt completes construction on Grand Central Depot. ** Future drama professor Brander Matthews graduates from Columbia University. His adaptation of a French farce is given a single performance at the Indianapolis Academy of Music. ** A carousel is installed in Central Park on the east side near 65th Street. ** Arthur D. Gilman's St. John's Episcopal Church is built at Bay Street and New Lane on Staten Island.

State
The Syracuse City Waterworks Company begins drawing water from Onondaga Creek, an unsafe source, polluted by glue factories and tanyards. ** Kingston's population exceeds 10,000. ** Le Roy druggist Schuyler C. Wells, Sr. begins marketing the Shiloh brand of patent medicine. ** George Mason opens Connewango's Rutlege Creamery. ** The Seneca River Towing Path of the New York State Barge Canal, connecting Mud Lock on the Oswego Canal to the outlet of Onondaga Lake, is discontinued. ** The canal boat A. D. Hoyt, loaded with rock salt, sinks at Lock 8 of the Erie Canal. ** A plan, backed by businessman and politician Erastus Corning, is announced for Albany's All Saints Cathedral for the Episcopal Diocese of Albany. ** Corning's son Edwin Corning dies. ** Arad Thomas' Pioneer History of Orleans County. ** Future artist-architect Harvey Ellis attends West Point through next year. ** Clothing peddlar Elias Straus is swept over the tannery dam to his death at Wells Outlier on the Sacandaga River.

Canandaigua
Hugh King builds a house at 129 Howell Street in, for Judge William H. Adams. ** St. John's Episcopal Church, designed by New York City architect E. T. Litrell and built by De John Builders of Newark, New York, is completed, at 183 North Main Street. It replaces a smaller building on the site which the congregation has outgrown.

Geneseo
Old Main, the first building of the Normal School teacher training institute opens, under principal William Milne. ** The First Baptist Church on Wadsworth Street is completed.

Geneva
The Phi Beta Kappa chapter, Zeta of New York, is established at Hobart College. ** A High Victorian Gothic home is built at 512 South Main Street.

Rochester
Andrew Jackson Warner's new First Presbyterian Church is built, replacing the one destroyed by fire in 1869. ** The common council votes to demolish downtown's public market. ** The approximate date the Orthodox Berith Kodesh congregation becomes Reform. ** Charles W. Briggs is elected mayor. ** The city school board acquires the Monroe Avenue site of East Cemetery, later to become Monroe High School. ** Thomas Leighton founds the Leighton Iron Bridge Company.

Jan 15
Businessman William A. Reynolds, owner of Rochester's Reynolds Arcade, is buried.

Feb 10
New York City's Metropolitan Museum opens.

Mar 4
Temperatures in New York City drop to 6 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

Mar 5
Temperatures in New York City drop to 3 degrees F, again lowest here for the date.

Mar 6
A third daily record is set in New York City when temperatures reach 5 degrees F.

Apr 5
George Bing releases 100 English sparrows in Rochester parks. He will be reimbursed by citizens' subscriptions.

Apr 8
Industrialist Erastus Corning dies in Albany at the age of 77.

Apr 23
Temperatures in New York City drop to 29 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

May 7
During an argument in Ted Sweeny's saloon in Buffalo's canal district another saloon keeper, John Gafney, shoots and kills local resident Patrick Fahey. Gafney s arrested.

May 16
A jury sentences Gafney to be hanged.

Jun 6
Susan B. Anthony is fined for voting in the national elections in Rochester. She never pays it.

Aug 24
Twenty Lake Ontario schooners transport the apple harvest on the lower Genesee River.

Sep 4
The New York Sun exposes the Credit Mobilier scheme.

Oct 10
Former U. S. Secretary of State William Henry Seward dies at the age of 71 in his Auburn home.

Nov 2
The news of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher's affair with Mrs Tilden breaks out in Woodhull and Clafflin's Weekly.

Nov 7
The Mary Celeste sails from New York City, bound for Genoa, Italy.

Nov 28
Editor Horace Greeley dies in Pleasantville.

Dec 6
Dobbs Ferry lawyer-preservationist Messmore Kendall is born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Dec 21
Temperatures in New York City plunge to -2 degrees F, lowest temperature for here for this date.

Dec 26
New York City receives 18 inches of snow, the fourth largest snowfall in its history.

Dec 27
Temperatures in New York City drop to 6 degrees F, the lowest temperature here this date.

City
The J & C Johnson department store moves into Broadway's Mortimer Building. ** Two-time former mayor (1845-1846; 1848-1849) William F. Havemeyer, running on the Republican ticket, defeats Liberal-Republican A. R. Lawrence and Apollo Hall Democrat James O'Brien, to win a third term as mayor, serving 1873-1874). ** Attorney Marshall S. Bidwell dies. ** William Cullen Bryant edits Picturesque America. ** The wife of Universalist preacher Edwin H. Chapin opens the Chapin Home for the Aged and Infirm. ** The main Hudson Rail Road Line is rerouted to run south of Spuyten Duyvil, with connecting lines to the Harlem Line and Grand Central Terminal.

State
James Annin opens a fish hatchery in Caledonia. ** Kingston is incorporated as a city. ** An 1814 stone arsenal near Batavia is demolished. ** The village of Perry builds a rail connection to the Erie Railroad at Silver Springs. ** Jacob Westerman builds a sawmill on Penfield's Irondequoit Creek. ** The fifteen-mile Dansville Mount Morris rail line is completed. ** A second grandstand is erected in Bath on the Steuben County Fair site. ** A Council Chamber is carved out of the second and third floors of Yonkers' Philipse Manor Hall.

Buffalo
The screw-propelled canal boat William Newman is built.

Cohoes
The Green Island shops of the Rennselaer and Saratoga Railroad are completed. ** Harmony Manufacturing Mill No. 3 (Mastodon) is enlarged.

Erie Canal
17 boats sink on Section I this year.

Rochester
The Common Council invests $600,000 in the new State Line Railroad. It also requires all railroad companies to post a flagman at every street crossing. ** Susan B. Anthony, president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, returns home from a series of rallies in support of Grant's reelection. ** Lumber mill co-owner Cornelius R. Parsons is elected to the common council for a third (non-consecutive) term. ** Captain John Burns buys the Charlotte property where Marty McIntyre has sold whitefish suppers since 1861, builds the 72-room Spencer House resort on the site.

© 2001 David Minor / Eagles Byte

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