October 1989

About this Issue

Note from the Editors

This issue begins with two articles by Bill Treichler about Franklin Academy in Prattsburgh. The first article reports on the program of the Society on September 11, and the second article describes some of the people responsible for starting Franklin Academy. Information for the article came from Norma Lenker and Gloriette Kingsley of Prattsburgh and from a fascinating book, The Reverend John Niles, by Sarah W. Parker. Richard Sherer supplied the book written by Sarah Parker and published in 1958. Dick Sherer also furnished the picture showing the academy building and the original church building. It was taken January 22, 1923, just five weeks before they both burned on February 28, 1923. Mrs. Kingsley supplied the picture of Robert Parker's handsome residence which is now the property of Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley.

The Prattsburg Community Historical Society put on a program on September eleventh commemorating the Franklin Academy which opened in Prattsburgh in 1824 and gained a wide and splendid reputation. The Society also featured the Academy in their publication The Prattsburgh News. In it is the prizewinning student essay written by Eliza E. Lewis, Franklin Academy, the Old and the New. There is in the same issue a letter written in 1874 by Charles P. West recalling the first day of school in Franklin Academy on August 24, 1824, when he carried into the building the first school books used.

For this issue there are two short and related chapters from Mrs. Kirkland's A New Home. Her husband, William, was a relative of Samuel Kirkland who instituted the Hamilton Oneida Academy at Clinton, New York, where John Niles and Robert Porter who both later came to Prattsburgh, were the first preceptors. William Kirkland was teaching there after it had become Hamilton College. When Caroline Stansbury's father died in 1822, she persuaded her mother to move from New York City to Clinton. Caroline wished to be near that wonderful Mr. Kirkland. They were married January 10, 1828. They moved then to Geneva and started a girl's school where they both taught. Their first four children were born in Geneva.

In 1835 he became head of the new Detroit Female Seminary. Caroline taught there and had another child. The next year they moved on to Pinckney and she wrote her book that "opened a new vein in our national literature."

Bill Treichler contributes an article about Yates County Historian, Virginia Gibbs

Another installment on the mills of the Keuka Outlet by the Assistant Yates County Historian, Fran Dumas, which is one of the projects she and Virginia Gibbs have worked on.

This month marks the end of the grape harvesting season and Shirley McNulty tells what the grape harvest was like on Bluff Point in the 1900s. She moved there when she was two years old in 1900.

Also appropriate for October is another Ed Harris story from his book Harpending's Corners. This one is about his Uncle Deak Florance and filling a silo.

CLR Blog | Site Map | Contact CLR