Spring 2006

About This Issue

Note from the Editors

This issue of The Crooked Lake Review begins with the last two installments of Genesee Vignettes, Thomas D. Cornell's series of eighteen essays about his explorations in the Valley of the Genesee River from Lake Ontario southward and upward to its sources. Tom describes not only the geologic formation of the watershed and the present terrain and land use including many photographs, but also personal reflections on his ongoing experiences with the river and its valley. Essay XVII, "A Triple Divide," describes an elevation 2520 feet above sea level in northern Pennsylvania from which water flows to the St. Lawrence River, to Chesapeake Bay and to The Gulf of Mexico. The final essay is about finding scenic Rose Lake and Tom's thoughtful musings about history and storytelling.

Next comes Bill Treichler's review of Bill Kauffman's new book, published in May, Look Homeward, America: In Seasrch of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists. This is Bill Kauffman's sixth book and follows Dispatches From the Muckdog Gazette published in 2002 in which he related much of the real history of his hometown, Batavia, New York. Look Homeward, America is about the people who came from or chose to live in small towns and rural homesteads all across America. Bill writes about authors and artists, originators and builders, entertainers and prophets who wished to pursue their own visions. Bill Kauffman lives in Elba, Genesee County, New York, with his wife and daughter, and writes regularly for prominent national publications.

David Minor in his Eagles Byte Timeline scripts for the year 1828 has been following the travels of Scotsman James Stuart and his wife in New York State. Stuart was waiting for a murder rap resulting from a duel in Britain to cool. He was a keen observer and commenter on life in America then. Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams were acrimoniously contesting for the presidency that year. Stuart noted that when the election decided the race the political recriminations ended and good feeling between most people resumed. The Stuarts visited Earl Stimson's flourishing 800-acre farm in Galway, Saratoga County, and on their way to Boston stopped at the Shaker Community in Lebanon Springs. David always provides many online sources to visit for even more information.

Richard Palmer contributes three items to this issue. First, is his article Arks Once Sailed the Canisteo, Conhocton and Chemung Rivers which tells of floating cargoes downriver to the Susquehana and all the way to the Chesaapeake during seasonal high water. The second is another in his series Early Transportation Trivia with items from regional newspapers about water transit before canals, total shipments of 1818 from the Port of Genesee, and a horseboat ferry across Lake Cayuga. Dick also sent the announcement by Terry Toscano Shenfield for the exhibit at the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse about who build the canal. Dick lives in Syracuse and writes articles for a chain of newspapers along Route 20, is a senior editor and contributor to "Inland Seas" of the Great Lakes Historical Society, and is historian of the Central New York Chapter, National Railway Historical Society.

Ongoing in John Sheret's Mendon the Early Years collection, is his account of Albe C. Allen's drugstore. Allen had come in 1835 from Lebanon, New Hampshire, to the village of Norton's Mills which later became Honeoye Falls. He was soon running a general store with partners in a stone building erected in 1830. Later with his brother, a doctor, who had preceded him to Norton's Mills, he opened a drugstore in the same building in 1849. Drug store enterprises continued at the same location through many later owners and several fires until 2001. The building has lately been remodelled into upper-story apartments and first floor businesses. The restoration work led to John's research into the history of the site.

A Tilted Saucer of Delight continues in this edition with more of Grace Fox's recollections of her childhood, school days, married life and her many, many relatives, neighbors and friends who lived in the area around Avoca in Steuben County, New York.

Beth Flory has collected from newspaper accounts in the Naples Record the vineyard activities, holiday celebrations, musical events, accidents and fishing stories for the months of April, May and June in the years 1906 and 1956 for her "Glancing Backwards" column that appears monthly in the Record and quarterly here.

Look back one-hundred-and-sixty-four years with Timothy Meigs Younglove's diary and read what he and his farm helpers were doing in the spring months of 1842: surveying property lines, building fences, plowing and sowing oats and barley, shearing sheep, spreading plaster (lime), preparing to plant corn as well as visiting neighbors and the sick.

Donovan Shilling has prepared reports of three meetings of the New Society of the Genesee. In April, the Society members visited the Yates County Genealogical and Historical Society in Penn Yan and were shown the rooms and collections in the Oliver House and the L. Caroline Underwood building. They ate lunch together at the Essenhaus and later visited falls sites on the Keuka Lake Outlet. In May, members visited the Morgan-Manning House in Brockport, ate at the Merchant Street Smokehouse along the Erie Canal and went on a tour of the main street buildings with SUNY professor emeritus Bill Andrews. The June trip was to Skaneateles and a visit of the Creamery Museum there and a lunch tour on Skaneateles Lake.

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