Feb 3

Cohocton's Congregational Church, built on land donated by deacon Thomas Crosby, is dedicated.
March

The U. S. Supreme Court settles the dispute over the estate of New York City's Captain Robert Richard Randall in favor of a trust he established to provide a retirement home for sailors, on Staten Island (Sailors' Snug Harbor). The property is purchased.
Mar 25

The Oswego County town of Amboy is formed from the Town of Williamstown.
Mar 26

Joseph Smith begins selling The Book of Mormon in Palmyra's Grandin Building bookstore.
April

A 27-foot-high stone tower is completed on New York's 13th Street. Work continues on an iron tank within to act as a reservoir to hold 230,000 gallons of water.
Apr 6

The Mormon church (Church of Latter Day Saints) is organized by Joseph Smith, Jr. in Fayette, near Cayuga Lake. Hyrum Smith, schoolteacher Oliver Cowdery, David and Peter Whitmer, and Samuel H. Smith comprise the founding committee. ** The electors of Canadice convene for the first time and elect town officers.
Apr 11

Refinery operator Hiram Bond Everest is born in Pike.
April 17

The Clinton County town of Ellenburgh is created from Mooers. ** The St. Lawrence County town of Depau (later Hermon) is formed from Edwards and De Kalb. ** The Otsego County town of Huntsville annexes part of the town of Milford, changes its name to Otego.
May 6

New York City physician Abraham Jacobi is born in Hartum, Germany.
May 9

The Rochester-built steam-powered canal boat Novelty, recently towed on the Erie Canal to Utica to be fitted out with its engines, passes through to Lake Ontario on the Oswego Canal.
May 27

Contractors Charles Cook, Samuel Farwell, George Spencer, Asa Cady and others sign an agreement with the Canal Commission to construct sections 1, 2, 5, 11, and 28-35 of the Chemung Canal.
June

The backers of the Mohawk and Hudson Rail-Road advertise for contracts.
Jul 12

Very heavy rain begins falling in western New York, continues through the next morning.
Jul 13

The heavy rains cause a break in the Erie Canal in Bushnell's Basin near Pittsford's Grand Embankment . A culvert gives way a mile-and-a-half west of Pittsford and damage is done at Fairport.
Jul 15

Contractors' proposals for the Mohawk and Hudson Rail-Road are received.
July 17

Mohawk and Hudson Rail-Road contracts are signed for the grading, stone and timber.
Aug 8

Ophthalmologist Cornelius Rea Agnew is born in New York City to shipping magnate William Agnew and his wife Elizabeth Thomson Agnew.
Aug 12

Ground is broken at Schenectady for the Mohawk and Hudson Rail-Road. Backer and lawyer C. C. Cambreleng address the crowd.
Aug 14

Joseph Weld Corning, son of Troy hardware merchant Erastus Corning and his wife Harriet, dies at the age of 17 months and six days.
Sep 11

English traveler John Fowler, examining agricultural prospects for immigrants, arrives in Poughkeepsie, tours the town.
Oct 24

Attorney Belva Ann Bennett (Lockwood) is born in Royalton.
Nov 2

The Best Friend of Charleston, the first steam locomotive used as a public carrier, manufactured at New York's West-Point Foundry Works, is tested on South Carolina's Charleston and Hamburg Railroad.
Dec 1

The Albany Museum moves from the third floor of city hall to Thorp & Sprague's Marble Column Building at State Street and Broadway.
City

Population - 202,000, 9% foreign-born. ** The city's jurisdiction over underwater lands is extended. ** John William Hill paints a watercolor of Broadway and Trinity Church. ** Charles Fearson Durant flies to South Amboy, New Jersey by balloon. ** The approximate date attorney and amateur rose grower George Harison finds a hardy yellow variety growing in his back yard. It's named Harison's Yellow. It will eventually make it's way to Texas, where it will gain the appellation Yellow Rose of Texas. ** Tompkins Market opens on Third Avenue between Sixth and Seventh streets. ** The approximate date brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, believers in colonization for U. S. slaves, begin to come around to the belief in abolition. ** Eleventh Street is laid out except for the section between Broadway and the Bowery, site of Henry Brevoort's home. Most of Beth Haim, the Jewish burial ground, is displaced. ** A letter writer to the Post complains that nothing's being done to tear down slums in the Five Points area. ** The population of Five Points (the 6th Ward) reaches 13,570. ** Burials within the city's limits below Canal Street are forbidden, except is special cases. ** The city has 43 public cisterns to provide water. ** The Johnson brothers and other pirates scuttle the captured brig Vineland off Coney Island. Two parcels containing about $500 worth of silver are buried near Rockaway Beach. Winter storms cause one of the parcels to be lost, the brothers return to carry off the other. ** Common Council committee chairman Samuel Stevens accuses the Manhattan Water Company of failing to meet its charter obligations, asks Albany to limit the company's banking operations.
State

Ira Carpenter builds a wooden bridge at the Cox Ferry site on the Genesee River near Rush. ** Batavia editor Frederick Follett merges his Spirit of the Times with Daniel P. Adams' People's Press. ** The Republican Aegis and Allegany Democrat is published at Angelica. ** British actor Tyrone Power visits America, tours upstate. ** The Watervliet Shakers build a Trustees Office. ** Hugh White, brother of Canal engineer Canvass White, builds a home at Waterford. It will become the Waterford Historical Museum. ** The approximate date Augustus Porter, brother of General Peter B. Porter, builds a house in Buffalo, at the intersection of Amherst and East streets. ** Civil War general Henry Hopkins Sibley graduates in the lower third of his West Point class. ** A tavern is built at Gainesville, near Warsaw. ** Buffalo's population reaches 8,668?). ** Episcopal bishop John Henry Hobart dies. ** Hamilton businessman Lathrop S. Bacon moves to Le Roy with his father, soon opens a general merchandise store. ** Vincent, a hamlet in the town of Bristol, becomes the largest processor of mutton in the country for the next twenty years, gaining the nickname Muttonville. ** James B. Jervis becomes the new chief surveyor of the Mohawk and Hudson Rail-Road, completing his work by year's end. ** The population of the Ontario County Town of Canadice peaks at 1,386. By 1890 it is down to 730 people. ** The Catskill and Canajoharie Railroad, capitalized at $600,000, is incorporated, linking Cooksburgh and Catskill. The road costs $400,000 to build. ** Naturalist Constantine Rafinesque revisits the Albany area while touring the Catskills. He meets with scientists Lewis C. Beck, James Eights, and Amos Eaton, and Rensselaer School (RPI) Secretary Moses Hale. He delivers a series of lectures at the college. ** A total of $1,066,922 in tolls is collected on the state's canals. ** This year state ports clear 280,918 tons of domestic goods and 33,797 tons of foreign goods. ** The town of Mendon's population climbs to 1,922. * State courts convictions for the year total 1,058. ** A state loan of $500,000 from 1786, distributed back then among a dozen counties, is retired. ** The registration of steam vessels for foreign trade is begun. ** The first church in the Allegany County town of Allen is founded, by the Presbyterians. ** Troy journalist Nathaniel P. Willis angers Dutch residents of Albany when he makes disparaging remarks about the city. ** Seneca chief Sa-go-ye-wath-a (Red Jacket) dies, in his early seventies. ** The last wolf is killed in Monroe County. ** The approximate date a house built by Augustus Porter at North Main Street and Scotland Road in Canandaigua is moved to 91 Gibson Street. ** The Cohocton school district votes to spend $2.00 to repair the schoolhouse. Firewood is put out to bid at 81¢ a cord. ** A 35-foot-high, natural gas-powered lighthouse, the first to be so operated, is built On Lake Erie at Barcelona Harbor south of Fredonia.
Rochester

Businessman Edwin Scrantom and his wife join Brick Presbyterian Church. He writes about a number of travelers who have come to see the aqueduct. ** John Chattin purchases 55 acres of former Iroquois land south of the city for $660 from a speculator. ** The evangelist Charles Grandison Finney brings revivalism to the city. Thousands come to hear him; 635 join the city's three Presbyterian churches; 203 join the First Baptist Church; the Methodists build a church with seating capacity of 2,000. ** William A. Reynolds and Michael Bateham start the city's first seed business at the corner of Sophia and Buffalo Streets.

Jan 2
Writing for a New York City magazine, Elizabeth Cady Stanton alerts women that the language of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, referring to male inhabitants and male citizens, threatens to disenfranchise women.

Jan 29
Eliphalet Nott, president of Schenectady's Union College dies at the age of 92.

February
David M. Smith, a telegrapher in the Ellenville D & H Canal office, fails to show up for work. He's never seen alive again.

Feb 26
The State Legislature forms the New York City Metropolitan Board of Health. ** Charlotrte Strong Spaulding, daughter of former Buffalo mayor Elbridge Gerry Spaulding, marries Franklin Sidway, son of merchant Jonathan Sidway, at First Presbyterian Church. Several hundred guests attend a reception at the Spaulding mansion at Main and Goodell.

Mar 1
William Dean Howells having moved from New York to Cambridge, Massachusetts, becomes assistant editor on the Atlantic Monthly magazine.

Mar 7
After a Fenian mass meeting in New York City threatens an invasion of Canada, 10,000 militiamen are placed under arms.

Apr 10
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is incorporated in New York City by Henry Bergh; the first humane society chartered in the U. S.

Apr 16
New York passes the State Normal School Act.

May
The tug Wellington carries a reel of telegraphic cable from Kingston, Ontario, to Garden Island, to be used in the underwater telegraph between Kingston and Cape Vincent, New York.

May 1
The leasehold on Trinity Church property once rented by Aaron Burr and John Jacob Astor, expires.

May 8
Physician-educator Charles Dettie Aaron is born in Lockport.

May 10
The Woman's Rights Society, meeting in New York City, changes its name to the American Equal Rights Association, with Lucretia Mott as its president.

May 29
U. S. general Winfield Scott dies at West Point at the age of 69.

May 31
800 Fenians under John O'Neill cross into Canada at Buffalo. They take Fort Erie, cut telegraph lines as well as the railroad, and advance.

Jun 2
O'Neill's Fenians defeat two Canadian armies, the first under Alfred Booker at Ridgeway, Ontario, the second under John Stoughton Dennis, back at Fort Erie. Ten Canadians are killed and 44 wounded in the two engagements.

Jun 3
The Fenians return to New York State, escaping the main Canadian force under George Peacocke.

Jun 6
New York City cafe owner Pasquale T. Ronca is born in Solofra, Italy.

Jun 8
McKee Rankin performs at the Arch Street Theatre for the last time. He marries actress Caroline Henri in Philadelphia around this time. She will be signed to open at the Brooklyn Theatre in the fall.

Jul 4
Financier John Jay, speaking in Paris, promises to build a National Institution and Gallery of Art in the U. S. It will be founded as New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870.

Aug 27
New York Central System president Dean Richmond, 62, dies at the home of Samuel Tilden on New York City's Gramercy Park.

Sep 10
Canadian-born actor McKee Rankin completes his run at Boston's Continental Theatre, playing Hotspur in Shakespeare's Heny IV Part I, then acccompanies his lover Caroline Henri to New York, for her engagement at Brooklyn's Park Street Theatre.

Sep 12
The Black Crook, the first appearance in North America of the Europe import, burlesque, opens at Niblo's Garden in New York City. Others will open in the next few weeks; some will be shut down for indecency.

Sep 14
Rankin makes his New York City debut at Mark Smith and Lewis Baker's New York Theatre as the comic libertine Hugh de Brass in John Maddison Morton's A Regular Fix.

Sep 25
Jerome Racetrack opens on Long Island.

Oct 5
The approximate date Rankin plays an English fop in the two-act comedy A Fine Old English Gentlman at the New York. With lackluster prospects, he will begin looking for roles elsewhere.

Oct 8
Rochester's post of the Grand Army of the Republic is organized; the first in the state.

Oct 30
McKee Rankin plays Johnny Reilly in Dion Boucicault's The Long Strike at New York's Olympic Theatre.

Dec 3
Brockport and four other New York State towns are chosen as Normal Schools sites.

Dec 8
The Long Strike ends its run. Rankin will move on to Boston.

City
Wood's Minstrels disbands. ** Cholera spreads to the U. S. from Russia and Europe, killing 50,000 this year, including 2,000 here. ** The first graving dock at Brooklyn's Erie Basin is completed. ** Lyman Abbott is named pastor of the newly organized New England Congregationalist Church on 41st Street. ** Freight forwarder John Starin devises the car float, a short-haul barge equipped to transport railroad boxcars. ** D. C. Hayes is named Treasurer of the New York Stock Exchange. The price of a seat on the exchange is increased from $3,000 to $10,000. ** Brothers Adam and JohnWorth fail in thier attempt to rob the Atlantic Transportation Company safe at Liberty Street.

State
Benjamin Titus Roberts arrives in North Chili, where he founds Chili Seminary (Roberts Wesleyan College) - the first Free Methodist educational institution in the U. S. He buys the local tavern and closes it. ** Bergen is damaged by a fire. ** Architect Claude Fayette Bragdon is born in Port Ontario. ** Promoter William West Durant begins construction on his first Adirondacks Great Camp, Camp Pine Knot. ** Allegany County gets its first horse-car line, between Fredonia and Dunkirk. ** William McKinstry, editor of the Fredonia Censor, begins a movement to get one of the state's four normal schools for the town. ** Reverend Doctor Samuel D. Burchard becomes chancellor of Le Roy's Ingham University. ** Stanford Gifford paints Twilight on Hunter Mountain. ** Samuel Colman paints Storm King on the Hudson. ** The U. S. House of Representatives censures Democrat John W. Chanier for insult to the House. ** Samuel J. Tilden becomes chairman of the State Democratic Committee. ** Connewango farmer James Hammond dies. ** Thomas Carr sells his hotel, in Seneca Falls. ** Digging in Cohoes for the foundation of Harmony Mills plant No. 3 workers uncover the skeleton of a mastodon. It will go on display at the state museum in Albany. ** The race horse Dexter sets a record at Avon - 2 minutes and 31 seconds. ** The head gatehouse of the Cohoes Company is built. ** Horsecars begin running on Albany's Pearl Street. ** Elbridge Gerry Spaulding founds Buffalo's Farmers and Mechanics National Bank. He will serve as president for forty years. ** Stone and Stewart produce a map of Erie County.

Corning
George W. Preston starts a boiler and steam engine factory. ** The Reverend Dean Colgan completes the building of St. Mary's Church.

Geneseo, New York
The Big Tree (later the Livingstons) baseball team is organized. Main Street suffers its second devastating fire in two years.

Rochester
James Vick buys the driving park on the city's east side to operate a seed farm on the property, which will one day become Vick Park A and Vick Park B. ** The Vacuum Oil Company is founded. ** The Henry R. Brewster home on Spring Street is conveyed to the William Burke family. ** The subsidized Rochester Water Works Company begins construction of a 16-mile conduit to bring Hemlock Lake water to the city. The company will fail and go bankrupt. ** Businessman and politician Thomas Parsons is elected to the state senate.

January
A group of New York investors form the New-York Bridge Company, to oversee construction of a bridge between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Engineer John A. Roebling is hired to supervise the project. His son Washington A. Roebling is named assistant engineer.

Jan 1
Comedian Lew Fields (Lewis Maurice Schanfield) is born in New York City.

February
An ice dam builds up at the piers of Rochester's Erie Railroad bridge, diverting waters of the Genesee River into the Genesee Valley Canal and flooding parts of the 3rd and 8th wards.

Feb 2
Rochester pioneer Oliver Culver dies at the age of 88.

Mar 1
Lucille Western's theatrical company opens for a three-day run at Brooklyn's Academy of Music, in Dion Boucicault's The Long Strike. McKee Rankin co-stars with Western as the Irish sailor Reilly.

Mar 5
Western's company begins an engagement at Troy's Griswold Opera House. Rankin appears as Captain Maguire in Morris Barnett's The Serious Family and The Stranger in Boucicault's Dot.

Mar 9
Rochester's Board of Trade is established.

Mar 21
Brockport Collegiate Institute disbands and the Brockport Normal and Training School is created. ** McKee Rankin encounters fellow actor Barton Hill, a member of Edwin Booth's company, at New York's Metropolitan House Cafe. Hill convinces Rankin to sell him John Wilkes Booth's wardrobe trunk.

Mar 22
Rankin relinquishes the trunk. He learns that night that Hill bought the trunk for Edwin Booth.

Mar 23
New York's first Winter Garden Theatre, where Booth is presenting Shakespeare's plays, is destroyed by fire, as is, presumably, the trunk

April
The state legislature appropriates $250,000 for a new Albany state capital building. ** The New-York Bridge Company is chartered by the state.

Apr 16
The New York State legislature establishes a free public school system for the state.

Apr 17
Brockport Normal and Training School opens.

Apr 30
Incorporation papers are signed for the village of Fairport.

May 9
Lucretia Mott convenes a two-day convention of the Equal Rights Association in New York City.

May 14
New York State enacts the first tenement house law.

May 22
Leonard Grover's theatrical extravaganza The Treasure Trove opens at New York's Olympic Theatre. ** G. G. DePuy of Ithaca, keeping a journal of a trip from Newburgh to Buffalo on the Erie Canal, describes losing two teams into the canal; only one of which they are able to save.

May 23
DePuy substitutes three horses; all fall into the canal soon after starting out but are rescued.

Jun 15
Rankin rejoins the Olympic Theatre Company, currently in its fifth week of The Treasure Trove, in the newly-created role of Mr. Haywood. The cast also includes George Clark, Stuart Robson, Belvil Ryan, and J. M. Ward. At the same time Rankin advertises the availability of Tom Robertson's new play, Ours, which he's purchased the production rights to.

Jun 29
The Treasure Trove ends its run at the Olympic.

July
Not having booked all the cities in which he is licensed to present Ours in, Rankin again advertises the play's availability.

Jul 9
McKee Rankin opens as the title character in Henry H. Milman's poetic drama The Italian Wife (Fazio) at the Broadway Theatre, opposite Julia Dean. Milman is not aware of the use of his drama.

Jul 25
A New York State constitutional convention continues to deny the vote to women.

Aug 13
Augustin Daly's melodrama Under the Gaslight opens in New York City.

Sep 3
McKee Rankin plays Badger in Dion Boucicault's Streets of New York in Cleveland, Ohio.

Sep 10
Major-General Daniel E. Sickles arrives in New York from Charleston, South Carolina, aboard the steamer Manhattan, accompanied by his daughter, as well as Brevet Colonel E. W. Dennis and Captain J. W. Claus, both members of his staff. He checks into the Brevoort House, then goes to Abingdon Square to visit his parents. ** The fifteenth annual meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association opens in New York.

Sep 11
The account of John A. Roebling regarding the Brooklyn Bridge project, is reported in the New York Times. ** New York's Union Republican General Committee and honorably discharged members of the Excelsior Brigade meet at their respective headquarters to plan welcoming ceremonies for Sickles. Delegates from the Committee and from the Third Army Corps wait upon Sickles at his hotel. He declines an offer to address the citizen of the city.

October
Stage line owner John Butterfield suffers a stroke in New York City.

Oct 3
Sewing machine inventor Elias Howe, 48, dies in Brooklyn.

Oct 7
Rankin opens a two-day run as Raphael Duchalet in Charles Selby's The Marble Heart, or, The Sculptor's Dream, at Troy's Griswold's Theatre.

Oct 11
Rankin plays Chalcotte in Ours.

Oct 14
Rankin opens at Rochester's Opera Theatre as Eccles in Tom Robertson's Caste.

Oct 18
Rankin appears in the role of Fagan in Oliver Twist, for a Friday night benefit, repeats the performance the next day.

December
John Darling, Connewango's first town supervisor, dies on his farm at the age of 81.

Dec 2
English novelist Charles Dickens gives his first reading in New York City, drawing huge crowds.

Dec 5
Geologist, botanist, minister and educator Chester Dewey dies in Rochester at the age of 83.

Dec 10
When the annual shareholders' meeting of the New York Central is held in Albany, majority shareholder Cornelius Vanderbilt has president Erastus Corning and his board of directors ousted.

Dec 18
An earthquake is felt in Rochester.

Dec 19
A train plunges off a bridge and burns at Angola, killing 44 people in the ensuing fire - the Angola Horror.

Dec 29
The New York City brokerage house of Groesbeck & Company is the first firm to use a telegraph ticker.

City
The Ninth Avenue elevated railroad line goes into service, the first in the U. S. ** A pedestrian overpass is built over Broadway, south of City Hall. ** Pomeroy Tucker's Origin, Rise and Progress of Mormonism is published. ** Paris, France, hosts a second International Exposition. The new lenses by Augustin Jean Fresnel are awarded a prize. A light tower containing the lenses is purchased by the U. S. for $30,000., as a beacon for the Atlantic Highlands of the Navesink, overlooking New York City harbor. ** The Tammany Society moves from Nassau and Frankfort streets to Fourteenth Street.

Brooklyn
The Kings County Savings Bank (later the American Savings Bank) on the corner of Broadway and Bedford Avenue, is completed. ** The Long Island Historical Society buys land on the corner of Pierrepont and Clinton streets. ** Businessman James A. Church closes his Vulcan Spice Mill and goes into his father's baking soda manufactory, bringing his arm and hammer logo with him. ** Glassmaker John Hoare moves to Chatham, New Jersey.

State
Temperance leader Frances Willard brings her ailing father back to Churchville, where he dies. ** Binghamton is incorporated as a city. ** Montour fruit farmer George C. Wickham raises a $2600 crop, the largest income ever received by a single person for a fruit crop. ** The U. S. House of Representatives censures New York Independent John W. Hunter for insult to a representative. ** Palmyra's Methodist Church is completed. ** Furnaceville's Clinton Iron Company is destroyed by fire. ** Cornelius Vanderbilt gains control of the New York Central Railroad, from Buffalo to Albany, replacing he late Dean Richmond. ** Former governor Washington Hunt dies in New York City in his mid-fifties. ** Former governor John Alsop King dies in Jamaica, New York. ** Henry and Sales Standish build the wood-burning Canandaigua Lake steamboat Ontario II. ** Montaukett Indian and Civil War veteran Stephen "Talkhouse" Pharaoh is photographed. ** Tonawanda processes its first shipment of lumber from the midwest. ** Geneseo's Wadsworth Library opens.

Buffalo
The State University of New York at Buffalo is founded. ** Street numbers on Main Street are changed.

Canandaigua
St. John's Episcopal Church builds an addition onto its North Main Street building. ** Brewers J. and A. McKechnie launch the 110-foot long sidewheeler Canandaigua on Lake Canandaigua as a passenger-freight service. Naples brothers Henry and Sales Standish launch the 120-foot steamer Ontario in competition.

Corning
The First Presbyterian Church is completed. ** George Heermans become a partner in George W. Preston's foundry, now Preston & Heermans.

Rochester
Lumber mill co-owner Cornelius R. Parsons is elected to the common council. ** The Ellwanger Garden on Mt. Hope Avenue opens to the public.

Syracuse
Construction begins on the Gridley Building on Genesee Street, to house the Onondaga County Savings Bank. ** Horatio N. White's St. John the Baptist Church at Park and Court streets is built by contractor Amos L. Mason. New York City's Morgan Brothers create the building's stained glass windows.)

Jan 27
The ceiling of Rochester's First Presbyterian Church collapses a second time.

Feb 16
The Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks is formed in New York City.

Mar 3
P. T. Barnum's second museum burns in New York City.

Mar 10
English novelist Charles Dickens visits Rochester.

Apr 20
Dickens gives his farewell New York City reading at Steinway Hall.

June
Cigar maker George Hull selects Iowa gypsum for the statue of a giant and ships it to Chicago.

July
John Sturla becomes the first child born to Italian parents in Rochester.

Jul 4
The Democratic National Convention opens, in New York City.

Jul 9
The Democrats close their convention after nominating Horatio Seymour of New York, with Missouri's Francis P. Blair, Jr. as his running mate.

Jul 23
The Lake Ontario steamship North King experiments successfully with coal as fuel.

Aug 3
Deacon Abner Huntley of Cuba, New York, joins the Gold Templars, at the age of 101.

Aug 24
Philologist George Adler dies in New York City's Bloomingdale Insane Asylum in his late forties, and will be buried at St. George's Episcopal Church on Bloomingdale Road.

Oct 7
Cornell University is founded, in Ithaca. Andrew D. White is its first president.

Oct 22
The Corning Flint Glass Works begins operations in Corning.

November
Hull's stone giant is transported by rail and wagon to Cardiff, New York, and buried on Stub Newell's farm.

December
Western explorer Ferdinand Hayden, returned to New York City, writes up his explorations for 1868, including glowingly optimistic reports of the mineral and agricultural potential for the Colorado area.

Dec 19
Rochester's Eagle Hotel Building burns down forcing the Democrat to move to a building at Main and Graves.

Dec 28
The Rochester City Council adopts The Seal of the City of Rochester.

City
T. Coman serves as acting mayor. ** Former District Attorney Abraham Oakey Hall, a Democrat, defeats Republican Frederick A. Conking for the office of mayor, serving 1869-1872. ** Henry De Marsan's monthly two-penny New York City newspaper Henry De Marsan's Comic and Sentimental Singers' Journal begins publication. ** Democrat politician Andrew Green proposes consolidating Manhattan with the City of Brooklyn, Staten Island and parts of Long Island and Westchester County. ** Bronx developer James L. Wells earns his Master's degree.

State
Wells College is founded. ** William West Durant's Adirondacks Camp Pine Knot, is completed. ** Harmony Manufacturing Mill No. 3 (Mastodon) is built at Cohoes. ** The Genesee County Poor House in Bethany contains 170 paupers. The average weekly expense is $1.32 per inmate. ** Industrialist Frank J. Tone is born in Bergen. ** The first steamboat to use the canal, the Edward Backus, arrives in Rochester, carrying a load of coal from Ithaca. ** The U. S. House of Representatives censures Democrats E. D. Holbrook of Idaho and Fernando Wood of New York, for offensive utterance. ** Lake Ontario's American Line of steamboats sells out to Canada's Royal Mail Line. ** Collar ironers in Troy strike, win concessions. ** Abolitionist Gerrit Smith writes of his college experiences at Hamilton College in the mid eighteen teens, for the Hamilton Alumni Quarterly. ** Connewango farmer Ralph Williams and his wife move in with their son George A. Williams. ** Philipse Manor Hall becomes the Yonkers Village Hall.

Batavia
Owners Collins and Andrews change the name of the Eagle Tavern to the St. James.

Rochester
Domenico Sturla becomes the city's first Italian immigrant to apply for citizenship papers. ** The Enos Stone building is destroyed by fire and replaced by Cook's Opera House. ** High Street is renamed Caledonia Street. ** The Rochester City & Brighton Railroad Company, in financial trouble, is sold twice this year. The final purchasers, a group of investors from Pittsburgh, turn the company around. ** The Rochester Street Railway Company puts coal stoves on its cars. ** Businessman Thomas Parsons is named collector for the port of Genesee. ** Junius Judson begins manufacturing steam governors in the Brown's Race building formerly occupied by the Seyle fire engine plant. ** Cornelius R. Parsons is elected to the common council for a second term. ** Illustrator Maud Humphrey, mother of film star Humphrey Bogart, is born. ** Hiram Sibley, Alexander Lindsay and John Curr open a dry goods store at East Main and St. Paul streets.

© 2004 David Minor / Eagles Byte

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