Summer 2000

About the Summer 2000 Issue

Note from the Editors

The issue starts with more car stories by John Rezelman; remember "Starting Model T Fords" in TCLR #71 and "A Winter Driving Vignette" in #103? This time he tells about car breakdowns he has endured and the mechanics who got him going again. Read about Henry Kleckler, Red Odell and other ingenious heroes of automobile repair.

Gary Emerson recounts the early business ventures of John Magee in chapter three of his biography of Magee. John Magee engaged in flour milling, stage route operations, contract mail carrying, and banking and financing. He apparently influenced Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Chase, to promote a national monetary policy of requiring banks to lend money to the government that led to the issuance of "Greenbacks."

Joan Hayward retraces the story of the Burning Spring in Bristol from the time La Salle, the great French adventurer, was shown the "water that burns" by the Senecas in 1669. She tells of the period of gas well drilling, the celebration and pageant in 1937, and her recent revisitation to a favorite school picnic site. Mrs. Hayward supplied a copy of the commemorative program and narrative written by Alexander Stewart.

Part IV of Richard Palmer's series "Remembering the Genesee Valley Canal" continues in this issue, and includes an old print of the Frances at Oramel from Capt. H. P. Marsh's 1914 book Rochester and Its Early Canal Days. The article contains reminiscences of Marsh. Along with the article is a profile of the Genesee Valley Canal and a table of the locks and their heights prepared by Daniel Mordell some years ago for the canal society. Richard Palmer also writes about the Genesee Canal Greenway.

The fifth installment, "From Wilkes-Barre to Towanda," from Retracing the Route of the Sullivan Expedition Through Pennsylvania by Thomas D. Cornell continues in this issue. Tom notes the geology along the route, quotes accounts of soldiers, describes and photographs the scenes along the way as he assimilates the ambiance of the terrain with its whole intimate history.

In Naples the restoration of the Morgan Hook and Ladder Company's firehouse building is nearly complete. Beth Flory, president of the Naples Historical Society, relates the history of the business district of Naples from the time Simeon Lyon allowed a channel to be dug across his land to carry water to power mills. The residence he built became a firehouse in the 1890s but was later abandoned. Now Lyon's house has been reconstructed by the efforts of many local people into a firehouse museum and home for the Naples Historical Society.

Two more years, 1805 and 1806, of David Minor's New York Timeline appear in this issue.

Donovan Shilling reports on visits of The New Society of the Genesee to the Magee House, the new home of the Steuben County Historical Society, and the Veterans Affairs Historical Museum, both in Bath, and the Antique Wireless Association's Museum and the East Bloomfield Historical Society's Museum in the old East Bloomfield Academy in Bloomfield.

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