January
New York City's Middle Dutch Church at Cedar, Liberty and Nassau Streets is converted into a post office.

Jan 23
New York's Italian Opera Company reopens, to continue its second season.

Jan 28
The widening of New York's Broadway between 25th and 45th street is completed.

Jan 29
Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven appears in the New York Evening Mirror.

February
New York State pioneer Moses Van Campen is stricken with paralysis.

Feb 12
The New York City coroner rules that 30-year-old black woman Isabella Banks died of pneumonia.

March
Erie Canal Enlargement contractor Hubbard Burdick petitions the State for contract concessions due to the speeded up pace on the work for the Jordan level. His men had walked off the job on the March 5th.

Mar 4
President James K. Polk and Vice-President George M. Dallas are inaugurated. Former governor William L. Marcy is named U. S. Secretary of War.

Mar 5
Burdick's crew stops work on the Jordan level; New York takes possession of the work.

Apr 2
The showboat Temple of the Muses debuts in New York City's North River.

Apr 15
The Ulster County town of Lloyd is formed from New Paltz.

May 2
The Westchester County town of Ossining (sic), Indian for 'stone on stone', is formed from Mount Pleasant. ** The first amendment is made to Rochester's 1844 consolidated Charter. ** The New York coroner rules that Duane Street sugar house worker Harman Bottjar, in his mid-forties, died from drowning.

May 8
The Brooklyn City Hospital is incorporated.

May 14
The Chemung Rail Road Company is formed to build a line from Watkins Glen to the New York & Erie Rail Road near Elmira.

May 15
The Italian Opera Company goes bankrupt, closes.

May 21
Rochester's anti-gambling society is formed.

Jun 7
Storekeeper Samuel Dill of Camillus applies to the visiting Erie Canal appraisers for compensation, for having to move his store from the old ditch to the new canal site and for loss of business due to the construction of a feeder canal. His claims are denied.

July
A fire destroys twenty shops on Rochester's Front and Works streets. Volunteer firemen save the Reynolds Arcade and the steeple of St. Paul's Church. ** John Munn of Natchez, Mississippi, visiting Buffalo, New York, attempts to free his
elderly slave nurse Rena, traveling with him, but she turns the offer down because of her advanced age. ** Joseph Palmer is born to Mary Palmer aboard the steamer Great Britain en route to New York.

Jul 16
AT&T president Theodore Newton Vail is born in Morristown, New Jersey.

Jul 21
Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) James, brother of writers Henry and William James, is born to Henry and Mary Walsh James, in New York City.

August
William Rockefeller borrows the first installment of a $1,000 loan from his father-in-law John Davison.

Aug 28
The New York coroner rules six-week-old Joseph Palmer has died of disorder of the stomach and bowels.

September
American Temperance Union lecturer John Bartholomew Gough goes to New York City to give a series of lectures. He disappears and is found seven days later, drunk in a "house of ill repute" on Walker Street. He claims he was kidnapped and drugged, and is believed.

Sep 20
A tornado sweeps across northern New York State. There are no casualties.

Nov 10
Albany's whale-oil street lights are replaced with gaslights. ** The New York coroner concludes that 27-year-old French-immigrant Catharine Brets, wife of Peter Brets, has died of "congestion of the brain from excessive drinking and exposure".

Dec 3
Several Seneca Indian chiefs send a memorial to Congress complaining of the cessation of Phelps and Gorham land rentals, unpaid since 1837. No action will ever taken by the government.

Dec 9
Sophia Beatty Rochester, widow of Rochester founder Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, dies at the age of 77.

Dec 13
Editor-critic Hamilton Wright Mabie is born in Cold Spring.

City
Fort Schuyler, on Throgg's Neck overlooking Long Island Sound is completed, named for American Revolution general Philip Schuyler. ** James Wrigley becomes a publisher. ** George Templeton Strong becomes a partner in his father George Washington Strong's law firm. ** Sugar dealer William F. Havemeyer defeats Native Party mayor James Harper and Whig Dudley Selden to become the Democratic Party mayor for the next year. ** The Rainbow, the first clipper, is launched by John W. Griffiths. ** The law firm of Howland & Aspinwall sues the Federal government for the restoration of 15 tons of rum seized by Customs for having been imported in small casks. ** Jakob Uhl buys the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, the paper he's worked for since 1835, and renames it the Staats-Zeitung. ** A fire in a warehouse where saltpetre is stored, burns an area to the north of Bowling Green, between Broad Street and Broadway. Firemen standing on the roof ride it to the ground, unhurt, when the building collapses. ** Actress-singer Catharine Lee Suggs Hacket dies. ** Two young men begin the Wall Street maritime insurance firm of Johnson & Higgins. ** Rabbi Samuel Adler attends a Rabbinical Reform Conference at Frankfort-am-Main, Germany. ** Surveyor Alexander J. Cartwright organizes a progenitor of baseball in a meadow. ** The city appoints six jail matrons. ** The New-York Historical Society advocates changing the name of the United States to the Republic of Allegania. ** Young Henry and William James and their parents return to the city from two years in Europe. ** Population: 371,000. The population of the Five Points neighborhood reaches 19,343. ** The city has 245 houses of worship. ** A home is built at Gramercy Park at Irving place for Illinois Central Railroad president Stuyvesant Fish. ** The approximate date inventor Antonio Meucci, friend of Garibaldi, builds a cottage/candle-making factory on Staten Island.

State
The state legislature authorizes Utica entrepreneur Edward Brodhead to construct a log aqueduct to bring water to the city, but the system is never built. ** Congressman Zadock Pratt hires an itinerant stonecutter to carve a bust of him on a bolder near his village, Prattsville. ** The state now has 661 miles of railroad track. ** Captain Harry Whitaker navigates the steamboat United States between Buffalo and Detroit, Michigan, for the entire winter, the first boat to do so. ** The population of Genesee County reaches 28,845. ** Daughter Anne is born to Abolitionist John Brown, in North Elba. ** Canandaigua Lake's second steamboat, the Ontario , is built at Woodville. ** Silas Wright is elected governor. ** The family of Warren Adams purchases the inn at Braddock's Bay from the heirs of innkeeper-trader Joseph Thompson. ** Fultonville merchant Myndert Starin dies. His son John leaves his medical studies in Albany and returns home to help his two brothers manage their father's various businesses. ** A second daughter, Mary Ann, is born to William and Eliza Rockefeller, in Moravia, New York. ** William W. Wadsworth is elected village president of Geneseo for the year. ** Lake and canal trade through Oswego amounts to $7,951,409. ** Cannery owner Edgar Curtice is born in Webster.

Albany
Construction begins on the Albany County Penitentiary.

Buffalo
Elbridge G. Spaulding builds the five-sided Spaulding's Exchange office-business complex on "Daly's Corner". ** Abolitionist Samuel H. Davis is ordained at the Michigan Street Baptist Church. ** Russell Heywood builds the Merchants Exchange Building on Prime and Hanover streets. The Board of Trade holds its first meeting in the building.

Erie Canal
The new Jordan Level, between Montezuma and Camillus, goes into operation.

Rochester
Mason Street is renamed Front Street. ** Susan B. Anthony arrives, to teach school. ** The family of three-year-old future mayor Cornelius Parsons moves to the Fourteenth Ward from York, Livingston County. ** More than 5,000 bushels of wheat are raised within the city limits. ** Three-fifths of the population originated in New England and eastern New York State.

Syracuse
Alexander Jackson Davis's Charles B. Sedgwick house is completed.

January
Fultonville patent medicine manufacturer John Starin marries Laura M. Poole of Oriskany.

Jan 12
The Monroe County Horticultural Society holds its first exhibition.

Jan 16
The New York coroner's office rules that Irish immigrant John Brady, 20, fell to his death from a ladder.

Feb 2
A news item is sent out from Albany to Utica, the end of the telegraph line. It's transferred to mail and sent on to Rochester, becoming the first wire story published in the city's Daily Democrat.

Feb 4
A Mormon party under Samuel Brannan leaves New York City by the ship Brooklyn for Yerba Buena (San Francisco).

Feb 15
The sailing freighter John Mintun is wrecked at New Jersey's Squam Beach while headed to New York from New Orleans. Over 30 people die.

Feb 26
John Mintun passenger Theophylact Bache, of the city, is certified drowned by the New York coroner's office.

Mar 4
The New York coroner rules that 72-year-old Jacob Ackerson dies of eating pancakes laced with arsenic. There are no suspects.

Mar 20
Herman Melville's Typee is published in New York City.

April
The Albany County Penitentiary begins receiving prisoners.

Apr 4
The Schoharie County town of Wright is formed from Schoharie.

Apr 20
Isaac Van Amburgh's circus arrives in New York City.

Apr 22
The Putnam County village of Coldspring is incorporated.

Apr 24
Edwin T. Christy's "Ethiopian Minstrels" open at New York City's Palmo's Opera House.

Apr 25
Susan B. Anthony receives an offer to teach in Canajoharie.

May 1
The Rochester building at the corner of Main and State streets housing the Daily Democrat newspaper burns. The offices move to the rear of the nearby Reynolds Arcade.

May 9
The Prison Association of New York is incorporated.

May 15
Wallace Sibley, future Monroe County coroner is born in Cuba, New York.

Jun 1
Rochester receives its first press dispatch by telegraph.

Jun 3
56-year-old Irish immigrant Catharine Farrel arrives in New York aboard the ship Emanuel from Liverpool.

Jun 14
The New York Coroner's office rules that Catharine Farrel has died of debility from old age and seasickness.

Jun 19
The first recorded baseball game in history is played, between the Knickerbockers and the New York Nine, at Hoboken. New Jersey. The Nine wins, 23-1. Umpire Alexander Cartwright fines one player 6¢ for cursing.

Jun 27
New York theatrical manager Henry Eugene Abbey is born in Akron, Ohio, to clockmaker Henry Stephen Abbey and Elizabeth Smith Abbey.

Jul 12
The New York coroner rules that 47-year-old Abram Blauvelt, Jr. died of the heat.

Jul 20
New York's coroner rules that 39-year-old Captain Zeplein of the German barque Doris drowned.

Sep 4
Chicago architect Daniel Hudson Burnham is born in Henderson.

Sep 26
Colonel Stevenson and his volunteer settlers sail from New York for California.

Oct 20
New York's coroner rules that black woman Malinda Bruce, aged about 60, died of a disease of the stomach.

Nov 12
New York's coroner's office reports that schooner Nicholas Campbell sailor Lawrence Van Cot of Long Island died of heart disease at about 60 years of age.

Dec 1
The New York coroner determines the cause of young German teenager John Raal's death was disease of the stomach and bowels. Raal had recently arrived on the ship Empire out of Liverpool.

Dec 28
New York's coroner rules that a Mrs. Tabor has died from dropsy of the chest, shortly after having arrived with her husband and children from Holland aboard the barque Mayflower.

Dec 29
The ship Olcon arrives in New York from Le Havre, France.

City
The city charter is revised. ** Richard Upjohn's new Trinity Church is erected at Broadway and Wall Street. ** Tobacco tycoon Andrew F. Mickle, running on the Democratic ticket, defeats Whig Robert Taylor and Native Party candidate William B. Cozzens for the office of mayor. ** The city's jurisdiction over underwater lands is extended. ** William Kirkland, editor of the New York Evening Mirror and his own The Christian Inquirer, near-sighted and deaf, accidentally walks off a pier and drowns. ** A local historian determines that the 60 guilders Peter Minuit paid for Manhattan Island would translate to $24. ** Rabbi Samuel Adler attends a Rabbinical Reform Conference at Breslau, Germany. ** Philologist George Adler is appointed professor of modern languages at New York University. ** Frederic Jones, oldest brother of author Edith Newbold Jones (Wharton) is born in New York City to prominent city landowner George Frederic Jones and his wife Lucretia Rhinelander Jones. ** The third Trinity Church is built. ** Walt Whitman becomes editor of the Brooklyn Eagle and Kings County Democrat. ** James Renwick, Jr.'s Grace Church (Episcopal), at Broadway and Tenth Street, is completed. The architect is a parishioner. ** A. T. Stewart builds a luxurious, new, marble dry goods store on Broadway between Reade and Chambers streets. After several months sales will reach $10,000 a day. ** A pair of adjoining row houses, with cast-iron verandas attributed to Alexander Jackson Davis, is completed at 3 and 4 Gramercy Park West. ** British architect Joseph C. Well's First Presbyterian Church at 48 Fifth Avenue is built. ** Jewish immigrants from Bohemia form Congregation Ahawah Chesed, on the lower East Side.

State
Riga Academy is founded. ** A press festival of printers and newspapermen is held. ** J. K. Richardson is elected surrogate judge of Seneca County. ** Portions of Allegany County become part of Wyoming and Livingston counties. ** Horace E. Purdy begins publishing Oramel's Republican Era. ** Dr. Ebenezer Emmons begins publishing the report of the New York State Agricultural Department. ** Millard Fillmore becomes the first chancellor of the University of Buffalo. ** George Brinton McClellan graduates from West Point. ** George Westinghouse, Jr. is born in Central Bridge. ** Mrs. Daniel Newcomb dies on her husband's farm outside Connewango. ** Samuel Rich builds a lumber mill along Irondequoit Creek in Penfield. ** A new constitution is adopted. It calls for corporations to be formed under general laws rather than under special legislation. ** Automotive inventor George Baldwin Selden is born in Clarkson to Judge Henry Selden and his wife. ** The approximate date the waste weir at the north end of the Tonawanda Dam is completed. ** Elias Metcalf is elected village president of Geneseo. ** Michael Weekman moves into a house owned by the Hyde family in Hydesville, as a tenant, lives there for a year, reports hearing strange knockings. ** James Fenimore Cooper's The Redskins. ** Whitesboro writer Frances Miriam Berry (later Whutcher) begins publishing an anonymous series of sketches, featuring the Widow Bedott, in "Neal's Saturday Gazette".

Rochester
Vessel tonnage operating out of Rochester reaches 3,074 tons. Eleven boatyards produce 210 boats, at an average cost of $1,300. ** Congress Hall opens on Mill Street. ** A Liberty Pole is erected on East Main Street. ** A traveling circus draws a crowd of 1500.

Jan 13
A number of members of New York's Sketch Club found the Century Club, at 495 Broadway.

Jan 18
Rochester newspapermen celebrate the 141st anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth by holding a banquet and collecting reminiscences of printing in New York State, to be published in pamphlet form.

Jan 23
The New York coroner concludes that 1-year-old German immigrant George Yorke, a passenger on the Olcon, along with his mother Maria Katherine Yorke, that arrived at the end of December from La Havre, died of inflammation of the lungs.

Jan 28
New York City socialite Robert Ray gives an entertainment at his home, newly moved far uptown (Twenty-eighth Street and Ninth Avenue).

February
Showman Phineas T. Barnum and Charles Sherwood Stratton (General Tom Thumb) return from a three-year European tour.

Mar 25
The Oswego & Syracuse Railroad is fully organized.

Mar 31
The state legislature passes a bill organizing seven schools in Lockport into a district, the first union school district in the U. S.

Apr 17
The ship Crogen arrives in New York City from Liverpool. Among the passengers are Judah McAnany and his daughter Catharine, from Ireland.

Apr 20
The New York coroner rules that 2-year-old Catharine McAnany, a passenger on the Crogen, died of a disease of the bowels resulting from the sea voyage.

Apr 27
The legislature passes "An Act to Provide for the Incorporation of Rural Cemetery Associations", to regulate burial sites. ** An earthquake is felt in Mount Morris, during the evening.

May
The American Bank, of Mayville, opens for business.

May 1
Herman Melville's Omoo is published, in New York City.

May 8
New York State is divided into 8 judicial districts.

May 10
The New York Fire Insurance Company of the City of New York changes its name to New York Fire & Marine Insurance Company. ** A part of Hamilton County's town of Lake Pleasant is annexed by the town of Hope.

June
Spaulding's Monster Circus plays Rochester. ** The Atlas Bank of New York is chartered at Clymer. It fails later in the year.

Jun 7
Former U. S. Representative Daniel Cady becomes a justice of the New York State supreme court, fourth district.

Jun 27
New York City and Boston are linked by telegraph.

Jul 1
The first U. S. adhesive postage stamps are sold, in New York City.

Aug 1
The New York coroner rules that Anna Burke, employed by James Milnes of 286 Pearl Street, died of exhaustion from disease of the liver at about age 30.

Aug 4
Herman Melville marries Elizabeth "Lizzie" Knapp Shaw, daughter of chief justice of the commonwealth of Massachusetts Lemuel Shaw, in New York City. The newlyweds will live with his mothers, sisters, brother and sister-in-law at 104 Fourth Avenue.

Aug 27
Governor Silas Wright dies in Canton, New York, at the age of 53.

October
Indianapolis preacher Henry Ward Beecher takes over Brooklyn's Plymouth Congregationalist Church at 75 Hicks Street.

Oct 3
New York's coroner rules that local seaman John Wallagher of the ship John Jay drowned.

Oct 20
New York's coroner rules that 50-year-old Irish immigrant Patrick Collins died of apoplexy.

Oct 27
New York's coroner rules that nine-month-old German immigrant John Uniker, recently arrived on the ship France from Rotterdam with his mother Joanna, died of disease of the bowels.

November
The Liberty Party meets in New York City, nominate New Hampshire's John P. Hale and Ohio's Leicester King. ** New York State lieutenant governor Addison Gardner is appointed to the newly formed state Court of Appeals; Hamilton Fish is elected to serve out the rest of Gardner's term.

Nov 11
The steamer Phoenix, loaded with Dutch immigrants, leaves Buffalo onto Lake Erie.

Nov 18
Five-year-old German immigrant Henry Sack arrives in New York City aboard the schooner Flood.

Nov 20
The Phoenix.leaves Manitowac, Wisconsin. ** New York's coroner rules that young Henry Sack has died of a ruptured blood vessel near the heart.

Nov 21
The Phoenix burns; 207 immigrants die. ** The New York coroner rules that 24-year old William Clark died of intemperance and exposure.

December
The Erie Railroad arrives in Port Jervis.

Dec 3
Frederick Douglass, newly arrived in Rochester, begins publication of the abolitionist paper North Star.

Dec 7
The state legislature passes "An Act to provide for the Incorporation of Villages".

Dec 11
The family of blacksmith John D. Fox moves from Newark, New York, to Hydesville.

Dec 14
New York senator D. S. Dickinson introduces resolutions relegating slavery in the territories to the legislatures concerned (popular sovereignty). The resolutions are affirmed. ** Syracuse is incorporated as a city.

Dec 18
New York's coroner rules that 13-year-old Patrick Quinn died of debility from a sea voyage, having recently arrived aboard the ship New York from Liverpool with his mother Catharine.

City
The approximate date Frederick Newbold Lawrence builds a mansion in Queens' future Oakland Gardens, names it the Oaks. ** Whig fiscal conservative William V. Brady defeats Democrat J. Sherman Brownell and Native Party candidate E. G. Drake to become mayor, serving a one-year term. ** John Larkin founds Xavier High School, a Jesuit school for boys, in Holy Name Church, at the intersection of Elizabeth and Walker streets. ** Caroline Matilda Stansbury Kirkland, William Kirkland's widow, becomes editor of The Union Magazine. ** Violinist Camillo Sivori performs. ** The Fall River Line of steamboats goes into business, running Long Island Sound routes between the city and Fall River, Massachusetts. ** The first steam-operated grain elevator in the city goes into operation at the Atlantic Boat Basin. ** John S. Dye begins publishing Dye's Wall St. Broker. ** The Bethel Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church is founded in Brooklyn's black Weeksville community. ** U. S. ocean mail service is begun between the city and Aspinwell, New Grenada (today's Colon, Panama). The contract calls for the 2,000 mile trip to be made 24 times a year. Mail service is also inaugurated between New York and Havana, Cuba, under the same conditions. ** The Free Academy (a forerunner of City College) is established. ** Crawley, Milne & Co. begins publishing the Echo and Military Literary Chronicle. ** Young William and Henry James move back to the city from Albany with their parents, who take up residence st 58 West 14th Street. ** The Century Association is founded by painters Asher B. Durand and John F. Kensett, poet William Cullen Bryant, and others. ** Manhattan businessmen Eddy and Hart build a pavilion at the western point of the Coney Island beach. A sidewheeler steamer begins bringing day tourists from Manhattan to a small pier jutting out into Gravesend Bay. ** Construction begins on Martin E. Thompson's arsenal in Central Park at Fifth Avenue and East 64th Street. ** The approximate date Asa W. Twitchell paints a portrait of Herman Melville. ** Several Boston investment houses fail. The industry will shift here. ** Melville attends the opening of the new quarters of the Art Union. Through a friend, Edvard Duyckinck, he meets poet William Cullen Bryant and painter William Sidney Mount.

State
Perfectionist John Humphery Noyes visits his disciple Jonathan Burt's colony at Oneida Creek. Noyes gets the idea for his own utopian colony ** Subscribers raise less than $38,000 for the Utica Water Works Company, only about half of the required amount. Engineer Thomas Hopper raises the rest. ** The state Court of Appeals is established. ** Tonawanda's first steam-powered lumber mill opens. ** Canandaigua Lake's financially-troubled steamboat Ontario is destroyed by fire. ** Canal construction resumes in the state. ** John Young is elected governor. ** Tanner-farmer Eliakim E. Sherrill is elected to Congress from the Ulster district. ** John Bloomfield Jervis is appointed chief engineer of the Hudson River Rail Road. ** Long Island historian Silas Wood dies in his late seventies, and is buried in Huntington. ** The citizens of Martinsburgh build an office for the Lewis County clerk. ** John D. Rockefeller's sickly younger sister Frances dies in Moravia, just sort of her second birthday. ** Washington County's Town of Fort Edward is incorporated under the General Act of 1847. ** 2,725 boats use the Erie Canal this year. ** Allen Ayrault is named Geneseo's village president for the year. ** Buffalo doctor Frank Hastings Hamilton proposes skin grafts.

Rochester
St. Andrew's Church's minister Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey is born in Fairmont, Ohio, to a Cincinnati lawyer and his wife. ** Tom Thumb makes an appearance. ** A balloonist named Wise makes a public ascension. ** The mayor is given the power of appointment of law officers.

Syracuse
Construction begins on a fourteen-mile plank road. It's completed next year.

January
New York City's Holy Name Church is destroyed by fire. Xavier High School, located in the building, moves to quarters in St. James Church.

Jan 28
Saratoga County's Town of Corinth annexes part of the Town of Moreau.

Feb 8
The New York legislature passes 'An Act to authorize the formation of Companies for Mining, Mechanical, and Chemical Purposes'. ** Painter and Hudson River School founder Thomas Cole dies.

Feb 10
The Orange County village of Middletown is incorporated.

Feb 16
The state passes 'An Act to authorize the formation of Gas Light Companies'.

March
Young Maggie and Kate Fox fake rappings on the floor of their bedroom in Hydesville, to fool their parents John and Margaret Fox.

Mar 21
The city of Auburn is incorporated.

Mar 29
Millionaire John Jacob Astor dies in New York City, leaving an estate of $20,000,000, and $350,0000 to found a public library. ** Ice blocks the mouth of the Niagara River, which runs dry for 30 hours.

Mar 31
The Fox sisters again fake rappings, fooling their parents into thinking spirits communicate with their daughters. A number of neighbors are called over to observe the phenomenon.

April
The Lake Ontario steamer Niagara is nearly wrecked. ** Late in the month Canandaigua editor E. E. Lewis prints a pamphlet presenting eyewitness accounts of the Fox Sisters' rappings. He offers $50 to anyone who can solve the mystery.

Apr 1
The Onondaga County settlement of Elbridge is incorporated.

Apr 4
The Rochester Daily American challenges its readers to solve the mystery of the Hydesville rappings. ** The Clinton County town of Schuyler Falls is formed from Plattsburgh.

Apr 12
The Essex County town of North Hudson is formed from Moriah.

May
Leah Fish, older sister of Maggie and Kate Fox, learns of the rappings from the Daily American, takes the Erie Canal packet boat from Rochester to Newark, then goes to her brother David's Hydesville home, where she talks to her sisters, and learns their secret, as well as how to reproduce the rappings.

May 1
William Rockefeller, father of John D., is alleged to have raped hired girl Anne Vanderbeak on this date, in Moravia. ** A snakehead rail thrusts up through the floor of a train in Rochester, causes a serious accident.

May 19
The Rochester Gas Light Company (later Rochester Gas and Electric) is chartered.

June
Congregational minister Lemuel Clark of Worcester, New York, attends a Fox sisters seance at Leah Fox's house in Rochester. Among the spirits contacted are the murdered Hydesville peddlar, (self-named as Charles Rosna) and Harriet, dead daughter of the hosts Mr. and Mrs. Lyman Granger. ** A new Ontario steamboat is launched.

Jun 2
The Liberty League convenes in Rochester, nominates New York abolitionist Gerrit Smith and Michigan's Charles E. Foote.

Jun 9
The Whigs nominate Zachary Taylor and New York's Millard Fillmore.

Jun 22
The Barnburners, a group of radical Democrats in New York state, meet at Baltimore and nominate Martin Van Buren and Wisconsin's Henry Dodge.

Jul 2
Bishop Hughes lays the corner-stone of Albany's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Jul 9
Elizabeth Cady Stanton meets with friends Martha Wright and Mariane McClintock at the Seneca Falls, New York, home of Jane Hunt, for a tea in honor of Philadelphia Quaker minister Lucretia Mott. They decide to hold a woman's rights convention in town.

Jul 19
The first Women's Rights convention in America is held in Seneca Falls, chaired by Mott and Stanton. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass attends, supports the Declaration of Sentiments (based on the Declaration of Independence). It passes, signed by 68 women and 32 men.

Jul 26
The new enlarged lock on new York's Erie Canal at Tonawanda, along the south side of the original lock, is put into service.

Jul 28
Douglass writes approvingly of the Seneca Falls women's suffrage convention, in his Rochester North Star.

August
A followup Women's Rights Convention is held in Rochester, passes a resolution to have the word "obey" struck from the marriage vows. A letter from abolitionist Gerrit Smith is read, expressing his support.

Aug 6
The first suspension bridge over the Niagara River, built by Charles Ellett, opens.

Aug 9
The Free Soil Party meets in Buffalo, nominates Martin Van Buren and Massachusetts' Charles Francis Adams, on the platform "Free soil, free speech, free labor and free men."

Aug 17
A fire destroys much of the business section of Albany.

Aug 19
New York's Herald is the first eastern paper to report the discovery of gold in California.

Sep 22
Circus impresario Sig Sautelle is born in Luzerne, New York.

October
Berith (later B'rith) Kodesh, Rochester's first synagogue, is built.

November
Rochester diarist Cyrus Paine and a friend walk out Buffalo Street {today's West Main Street) to the 'Mimger Tract', one of the proposed sites for Madison (today's Colgate) University, which was then considering a move to Rochester. ** Eliab Capron of Auburn attends a Fox seance, hears rapping, claims to be convinced of their authenticity.

Nov 6
Rochester holds pre-election parades by the Whigs and the Barnburners.

Nov 7
Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore are elected President and Vice-President of the United States.

Nov 21
Rochester merchants hold a meeting at the Court House to discuss closing stores at an earlier hour in the evening.

Nov 24
Rochester merchants illuminate their buildings and a bonfire is built, to celebrate the recent Whig victory.

Dec 1
A writ is issued by the New York State Supreme Court ordering the immediate improvement of the Jefferson County jail at Watertown, as a result of official complaints about the condition of the building.

Dec 13
Some Rochester merchants begin heating with coal gas.

Dec 16
A fire destroys New York City's Park Theatre.

Dec 24
Noyes and his disciples move in to the new community room at the Oneida Perfectionist colony.

Dec 25
Alexandre Dumas' play Monte Cristo opens at New York City's Broadway Theatre.

City
Alexander T. Steward founds the first department store, on Broadway. ** City University is founded. ** Former Democratic mayor William F. Havemeyer is elected once again, defeating Whig mayor William V. Brady by 928 votes, out of 46,280. ** High Bridge over the Harlem River is completed. ** New York and Chicago are linked by telegraph. ** The Public School Society begins evening schools. ** A group of city newspapers organize the Associated Press. ** Future lawyer Smith Edward Lane graduates from the University of the city of New York. ** The Reverend Edwin H. Chapin is named head of the Universalist congregation at Fifth Avenue and 45th Street. ** Jordan L. Mott lays out land in the Bronx he purchased from Gouverneur Morris. It will become the Mott Haven neighborhood. ** Williams Brothers begins publishing The Yankee. ** Brooklyn's Williamsburgh is incorporated as a town.

State
The Utica Water Works Company begins operations, with engineer Thomas Hopper as president. ** The Rochester & Tonawanda and the Auburn & Rochester railroads replace their unsafe strip rails with the new T-bar rails. Rochester & Tonawanda profits reach $57,000 while the Auburn & Rochester makes $96,000, both railroads paying dividends of 8% to stockholders. ** Perfectionists lead by John Humphrey Noyes establish a socialist community at Oneida. He publishes his pamphlet "Bible Communism". ** The location of the Seneca County Agricultural Fair begins settling in the town that raises the most money, finally settles in Waterloo in 1870. ** The Political Investigator, a monthly newspaper, begins publication at Angelica, runs for a short time. ** The New York & Hudson River Railroad is extended to Fishkill. ** Mrs. W. G. Bryan opens a music school for young ladies in Batavia's Ellicott Mansion. ** The railroad reaches Whitehall. ** Syracuse architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee is born. ** Chester A. Arthur graduates from Schenectady's Union College. ** Canajoharie school teacher Susan B. Anthony reads about the recent Seneca Falls convention. ** A Lyons farmer dies from a pig bite. ** A grist mill is built on Irondequoit Creek in Penfield, west of The Hollow. It will one day become the Daisy Flour Mill Restaurant. ** Part of Bristol is annexed to Richmond. ** Miss R. S. Ingalls opens the River Side Seminary for females, in Binghamton. ** Harvey Baldwin is elected as the first mayor of Syracuse. ** Having contributed $86,282 to a bank safety fund, 11 insolvent banks have withdrawn $2,577,927. ** Fultonville businessman John Starin is named postmaster, serves into 1852.

Albany
Dr. Amos Pillsbury assumes the directorship of the Albany County Penitentiary. ** The Shaker meeting house at Watervliet is built.

Corning
The village, with a population of about 850, is incorporated. ** A wholesale and retail store, later Millspaugh and Drake, opens at the corner of Market and Pine.

Rochester
William A. Reynolds hires Burlington, Vermont, architect Henry Searle to design a meeting place across Works Street from his arcade, for gatherings of the Athenaeum & Mechanics Association. Columns on the front of the building will give it its name - Corinthian Hall. ** The Rochester Gas Company is chartered. ** E