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Introduction to the First IssueNote from the EditorsThis paper is to be a review of the accomplishments of the men, women and families who settled here, built homes, cleared farms and started businesses. It is also to be a review of the present work and aspirations of the people who were born here or who came here to live in this beautiful region. Martha and William Treichler For an introductory period The CROOKED LAKE REVIEW will be delivered without charge to homes and businesses within convenient walking distance. The CROOKED LAKE REVIEW will also be available for purchase at local museums, libraries, and historical society meeting rooms. The entire payment for each copy of The CROOKED LAKE REVIEW will go to the society where it is purchased. This first issue of the Crooked Lake Review begins with a brief history of the Hammondsport Herald and selections from its first issue. Additional excerpts from the early issues of the Hammondsport Herald will be published in future editions. A series or articles form the Hammondsport Herald, 100 Years Ago In the Hammondsport Herald, begins in this premier issue of the Crooked Lake Review. Other features of this paper will be reports of programs of local historical societies, museums and libraries; reports of projects of organizations and undertakings of individuals in the Crooked Lake area; and a calendar of public events scheduled for the season ahead. Future issues of The Crooked Lake Review will carry articles about the people and events, the houses and buildings, the farming and ventures of this area, as well as observations about the whole human economy. The next issue of The Crooked Lake Review should appear on May 27th and on alternate Fridays following, depending on the success of the paper. For an introductory period the paper will be delivered free, locally. It will be available for purchase from historical societies, museums and libraries with the entire payment for each copy going to the society where it is purchased. In the spring of 1874 two Hammondsport women, Melinda Wheeler Bennitt and Carrie Fairchild published the first issue of a weekly paper in Hammondsport. The new publishers titled their paper, Hammondsport Herald, and described it as "An Independent Local Newspaper." The first issue bore the printed date of Tuesday, April 28, 1874. The paper may not have appeared until more than a week later. On the copy of the first issue preserved on microfilm in the Curtiss Museum the printed date is lined out and May 7 is written in pen above it. However, an item at the bottom of page 3 stated, "We send out this first number of the Hammondsport Herald before we at first intended, rather as a sample copy than otherwise. Two weeks from today the next number will be issued, and regularly every Tuesday morning from that time . . ." So, perhaps the beginning issue did come out at the time of the printed date. The paper carried a short introductory statement and an announcement reprinted from the Penn Yan Democrat: "A new paper to be edited by Mrs. B. Bennitt and Mrs. F. B. Fairchild, is about to be started in Hammondsport. The name of the paper will be the Hammondsport Herald, and will be published weekly. The editresses are ladies of ability and fine literary tastes, and will furnish the residents of the village of Hammondsport, and all others who may feel inclined to help on their worthy enterprise by patronizing it, with a good, sprightly and interesting little paper." Their paper was literary in style. The first issue began with a poem, "The Old, Old Story", and was followed by "A Ghost in Court", a story that took up nearly five columns of the front page. Inside, the paper carried more poems and stories, a promotional write-up of the Hammondsport Glen, and a temperance lecture. Under "Local Items" appeared this line: "The women's crusade and Pleasant Valley wines are driving out impure liquors in the West." There were other local items: —Husbands and fathers, beware! Lewis I. Rose, J. W. Davis, Frank Hastings and G. W. Nichols are going to New York for Spring goods. —Frank Hastings and wife are nicely settled in their new house. —The sons of Jacob Fry, of this village have fallen heir to a large property in California. —A lady of this village a short time since received applications for nine summer boarders in one day. —Dr. Hall has purchased the house and lot owned for some time by John Wager, Sheather St., as fine a location as we have in the village. Bits of information and humor appeared in other columns: —Iowa has a dozen newspapers conducted by lady editors. —Two women are at work 'down in a coal mine' in Pennsylvania. —Danbury has a girl of fourteen who never chewed gum or used musk. —Southern women consume almost two million pounds of snuff annually. —Old style handkerchiefs, big enough for any sort of nose, are coming in fashion again. —When an enthusiastic Southern editor described a bride as 'bonny', his exasperating compositor set it up as 'bony'. —The new bonnets are peculiar, and as a rule, not at all becoming no matter how much trimming is put on. Stately matrons look absurd in the spring headgear, and young girls altogether too jaunty to be genteel. The content of their paper was a pleasant mixture of stories, sentiment, hometown promotion, congratulatory local news, humorous bits and mock serious remarks. The first issue of the HAMMONDSPORT HERALD presented a very dignified appearance—certainly what the two ladies desired for their genteel newspaper. The paper was entirely handset in the printing rooms of the Fairchild Bros, and exhibited exceptional typesetting style. The text columns were set with straight left and right margins with few distracting white lines running through the text. There were very few typographical errors. To produce the paper each tiny letter, punctuation mark and word space was picked by hand from a type case and placed in a composing stick where each line of type was filled with shims between the type pieces to make all the lines the same length. Columns were separated by vertical lines. Poems were printed with narrower margins and with certain lines indented. Even the single line items were arranged to look pleasing and neat. The headings were uniform, usually all in capital letters. The paper achieved elegance by its handsome appearance. Mrs. Bennitt and Mrs. Fairchild must have enjoyed their new enterprise: selecting romantic stories and sentimental poems to put in their paper, finding bits of news to inform and comments to amuse their readers, writing elevating editorials, cajoling merchants and professional people to support them with advertising. Their names always appeared as Mrs. Bennitt and Mrs. Fairchild, as befitted proper matrons and the wives of a local lawyer and businessman. Their paper revealed women's tastes in reading: love stories and poems and news items about women and women's moral crusades. The Herald was probably read more by women than by men. By the end of the first year the name had become the Hammondsport Herald and the issue of April 28, 1875, carried their editorial "The Close of Volume First". The present number closes the first volume of the HAMMONDSPORT HERALD and it is with some degree of pride that we point to its establishment and prosperity. This first year of trial and ultimate success has shown the HERALD to be the voice of the people, and it will continue to utter the sentiments of a community of which it is the exponent. The general favor with which it has been received makes it(s) success no longer doubtful. Our citizens have not been backward in their expressions of appreciation of the newspaper enterprise, and it has been by their hearty co-operation that a steady interest has been maintained. Our business houses have given substantial expressions of interest in the newspaper welfare in the way of advertising, and we trust that "bread they have cast upon the waters" has been returned to them four fold. Our aim has been not only to build up a business interest that might accrue to the benefit of all concerned, but that the HERALD might earn a reputation that would reflect credit upon the people of the community. The soil of this and adjacent regions is emphatically the basis of prosperity and so far from its being made a monopoly, we doubt if elsewhere in the United States the tenure of the lands is in the hands of so many agriculturists as throughout trie lake region. Trade, occupation or profession are not in the way of a successful management or cultivation of an orchard or vineyard and in the feminine portion of the community are not wasting instances of successful management of extensive vineyards. The large amount of capital invested, and of intelligent industry engaged in fruit culture, especially the grape, renders it not only a subject of local interest, but of wide spread importance. We have, therefore, given much of space to the treatment of this subject of general interest. We have collected, arranged and published for the benefit of the orchardist and vineyardist much of useful information in regard to this fine art, and much of ripe horticultural experience of those interested in grape culture of this region has been set forth in the columns of the HERALD. The effect of which has been that inquiry has been stimulated and discussions invited, which have thrown much light on this subject of general interest. We continue to invite correspondence on the culture of such fruits as may be grown successfully in this and adjoining regions. The products of the dairy are not among the least of the interests of the people, but on the contrary is of grow(ing) importance, and in some localities promises to be a leading pursuit. We therefore invite a free expression from those interested in this useful branch of husbandry. Let the business be magnified, for it is said "the best farmer is the most intelligent man," and a community of knowledge is one of the strongest ties that can bind and bless society. The steamboating season with its wonted life and pleasure trips has commenced, and the completion of the railway which is to place this vicinity in more direct communication with the great thoroughfares is close at hand, and as a result, an impetus to business and generally increased prosperity is confidently looked for in the coming season. Every new business or pleasure advantage will add to the interest of the HERALD as we shall endeavor, as heretofore, to place before our readers news of local as well as general importance. In 1875 Mrs. Bennitt sold her one-half interest to Mrs. Fairchild who edited and published the paper by herself for awhile and then together with L. H. Brown for a year and one half. Llewellyn Brown became the sole owner, the editor and publisher in 1877. He continued in this role for 38 years. By 1903 THE HAMMONDSPORT HERALD boasted that it "undoubtedly has the largest circulation of any country newspaper issued from any village in the state the size of Hammond-sport." With a circulation of 2250 it was the third largest weekly in Steuben county. The paper claimed to reach more people in the Lake Keu-ka region than any other two papers in Yates or Steuben counties. THE HAMMONDSPORT HERALD was an eight page, six-column paper that reported news of national importance on the front page and carried local news and advertisements on inner pages. The paper was printed in the Herald Building that had been erected in 1891. Lew Brown continued publishing THE HAMMONDSPORT HERALD until 1915 when it was taken over by a former Rochester newspapermen, Lyman J. Seely. Arthur Baggerly became editor. In 1930 the paper was purchased by Merrit Landon who had started the KEUKA GRAPE BELT in competition the year before. THE HAMMONDSPORT HERALD was combined with the KEUKA GRAPE BELT which twelve years later combined with the BATH ADVOCATE. Eventually all the papers were absorbed by a daily paper in Hornell. (Information about THE HAMMONDSPORT HERALD came from copies of the paper in the microfilm file at the Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, from the Laura Swarthout book, "A History of Hammondsport to 1962" first published by the Coming-Painted Post Historical Society and later reprinted by the Crooked Lake Historical Society, and from "A Century of Hammondsport in Miniature, a Supplement to the Hammondsport Herald", printed in 1903, that has also been republished by the Crooked Lake Historical Society.) HAMMONDSPORT, N. Y.: TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 1874. INTRODUCTORY. With the increases of wealth, population and the branches of industry, arises a corresponding demand, not only for an increase but a variety of literature and intelligence. "Necessity is the parent of invention," says the proverb. But nothing is real until it is experienced, and a proverb is no proverb until it is illustrated by life or circumstances. The apparent need of a cheap and attractive journal, that would faithfully represent the interests of the people, has given rise to the enterprise of establishing a weekly newspaper that will contribute to the general good of the community. Labor whether of the hand or the brain, is the price at which whatever is valuable in life must be earned. The more intelligent and cheery that labor, the greater the advantages to every industrial pursuit of life. Free from sectarianism and partisan strife, the conductors of this journal will endeavor to make the HAMMONDSPORT HERALD a pleasant companion for the household, a counselor for the fruit-grower, and an advertising medium for the various branches of trade and occupation. By the especial aid of those interested in local advancement, we hope fully to launch our newspaper craft, willing thereafter to trust to the waxes of public sentiment to carry it along. A hearty cheer of patronage at the outset will be fully appreciated by those who will labor through the columns of this journal for the prosperity and well being of the community of which we hope to be the trusted representative. May 13, 1988 Number 1 100 Years Ago in The Hammondsport Herald April 25, 1888 In Hammondsport the Steuben House had just been repainted and work had started at Fairchild House to replace lead water pipes with iron pipes. The stages between Gibson's Landing and Prattsburgh had commenced regular trips. Both Rev. E. P. Roe and Mark Twain had earned more than $20,000 a year by writing. May 2, 1888 The circulation was the largest yet. The May 2nd issue began the fifteenth year of the paper with a third and new sheet added. On the front page was a long account of the Battle of Chancellorsville. Suitable clay had been found on the property of Keuka University to make bricks for their proposed buildings. May 9, 1888 The Lulu was out of the water and its hull was being repaired. The maple sugar yield was large.
A New HomeIn 1839 A NEW HOME was published and brought almost instant recognition to a new author, Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland. Her stories of her real experiences with her husband and family in a new settlement in Michigan described the pioneers as they really lived. Caroline Matilda Stansbury was born in 1801 in New York City into a socially prominent family. A precocious and popular young girl, she was educated by her aunt, Lydia Philadelphia Mott, who ran a succession of schools. Caroline was not only accomplished in music and dancing but she spoke Latin, French and Italian and read German. She also taught in her aunt's schools. After her father's death in 1822, she persuaded her mother to move to Clinton, NY, so she could be near her fiance, William Kirkland, a young classics professor at Hamilton College. His family had founded the college. In 1828 they were married. The new couple moved to Geneva and started a seminary where they both taught. Their first four children were born in Geneva. In 1835 they moved to Detroit. William Kirkland became the principal of a new female seminary there and Caroline continued to teach. At that time Detroit was booming. By 1836 there were 5000 inhabitants and steamboats were bringing 1000 immigrants a day. It was a period of great expansion and people were travelling westward by the Erie Canal and by the overland trails from the south. Caught up in the great adventure, William Kirkland resigned his position in 1836 and bought 800 acres of land for development in Livingston County, Michigan, 60 miles northwest from Detroit. The next fall the family moved to Pinckney, the name Mrs. Kirkland had chosen for the new settlement Caroline Kirkland was probably one of the best educated women in America when she moved to the Michigan forest and swamp lands with her husband and children and wrote her sketches of frontier life. She did not romanticize pioneer life, but wrote of living in the clearings realistically and accurately. A New Home was published in 1839 and brought her acclaim in this country and England as the originator of a new American style of realistic writing. Poe said, "Unquestionably she is one of our best writers." However, when copies of her book got back to Pinckney, her neighbors resented her stories and Mrs. Kirkland felt their bitterness and hostility. She insisted the rest of her life that her experiences in the settlement had developed her own character and that she would always regard her frontier neighbors with great respect for their essential qualities. Their business venture was not successful financially and in 1843 the Kirklands returned to New York City where she opened a school for girls and her husband went into the newspaper business. Three years later at the time of his tragic death—he walked off a pier and drowned—he was editor of the New York Evening Mirror and of his own paper the Christian Inquirer, as well. On their return Mrs. Kirkland was taken into the leading literary circles in the city and became an admired hostess of literary personalities. She travelled twice to Europe where she met Dickens and the Brownings and became a corresponding friend of Harriet Martineau. For eighteen months she was editor of a quality literary publication, the Union Magazine. Mrs. Kirkland died in April, 1864, and already her books were being forgotten. Literary fashion was changing. Crisp, satirical, accurate writing went out of favor in the Victorian era. Beginning in the next issue of THE CROOKED LAKE REVIEW you can read yourself the writing of this brilliant, perceptive woman who was a teacher, a mother, a partner in adventure with her husband and the intellectual companion of literary celebrities. ITEMS FROM THE MAY 20, 1874 HAMMONDSPORT HERALD Balloon Ascension. -On Thursday afternoon, at half-past 5 o'clock, Hammondsport was amazed at the appearance of a balloon in the direction of North Urbana. Its bearing was in a southeasterly direction, and showing a decided tendency for earth. Henry Kleckler, living near Wayne Four Corners, states that it came within hailing distance while passing over his and other farms; that some of the occupants of the car attached to the balloon signified a wish to alight; that Henry Crantz seized hold of the rope attached to the aerial vehicle, but the impelling power proved too much for his feeble efforts, and not being in readiness for the novel trip, he loosened his hold of the rope lines in time to avoid loosening his hold of earth. The car of the balloon is said to have contained Prof. Donaldson and his party, and ascension was made from Geneva. The next morning (Friday) the balloon was again discovered, this time directly over H'port, and at an estimated height of full 3,000 feet. It was evidently on its return trip to Geneva. -The Donaldson balloon took the direction of Corning after being hailed by the Urbana people on Thursday. A small boy remarked that it was going in the right direction, for if it was necessary to inflate again, there was plenty of the commodity balloons were inflated with in Corning. -The announcement that the balloon was directly over the village on Thursday could hardly draw the attention of the ladies looking at those cheap ribbons at Frank Hastings' Store. heads of families" never found their places of business as inviting as now. "Anywhere, anywhere out of the dust." And the children are glad when school time comes. Such an amount of cleaning, papering, painting, white washing, taking up old carpets and putting down new ones, as is being done here now, is unheard of in the annals of Hammondsport. Next week everybody is going to "make soap." After that there is to be a season of comparative quiet until canning time comes. Who wouldn't be a housekeeper? Excursion.-On Saturday next a fine excursion is to take place, on the Steamer Steuben, under the auspices of the famous Richings-Bernard Concert troupe. The boat will not make her trip as usual, but will leave Penn Yan at 10 a. m., for Hammondsport. She will in the afternoon convey passengers from here and along the lake to attend the grand Costume Concert of the troupe at Penn Yan that evening, returning with such passengers the same night, immediately after the concert. Excursion rates only will be charged. A very pleasant time may be anticipated, as the entire troupe will accompany the excursionists. -It is a pleasure to note the taste displayed in laying out and keeping up the flower gardens in this village. Charley Harvey is in constant demand at this season of the year, and in a very short time gives the most forsaken looking yard a neat, fine appearance. -The father of Fred French, Esq., of this village, has set a good example to all other fathers in presenting him with a beautiful pony and phaeton. House cleaning. -House-cleaning is the order of the day. The "saddest days of all the year" have surely reached us. "The -A. A. White has recently completed two houses. He does not intend occupying more than one himself, however. Mastodon.-A Dansville man, while digging a ditch through a swampy place on his land, discovered two large teeth and a portion of a tusk, undoubtedly belonging to the fossil remains of a mastodon. Further excavations have been made, and additional remains discovered. Moles.-M. Fleurens and other French naturalists have experimented with moles to ascertain their true habits. It has been found that they will starve to death in presence of abundant vegetable food, refusing to touch it, but that they will greedily devour cutworms, earthworms, mice, and even small birds, when nearly starving in an inclosed jar. Of the birds they only devoured the inside, but they devoured indiscriminately their own weight each day of snails, insects, larvae, crysalides, caterpillars, adders, slow worms and lizards. Mr Carl Vogt relates an instance of a land proprietor in France who destroyed every mole upon his property. The next season his fields were ravaged with cutworms and his crops totally destroyed. He then purchased moles of his neighbors and stocked his fields, and afterward preserved them as his best friends. -Of course they will. Already in Baltimore, Williamsport, &c, parties are making up for the summer trips, via. the Northern Central to Penn Yan, "doing" the Havana and Watkins glens on the way-then by steamer "Yates" or "Steuben" over the blue waters of Lake Keuka to Glen Grove. After a delightful time of quiet or sightseeing, as each one may desire, spent there, by steamer again to Hammond-sport, when the glen here is to be visited. Then by rail to Rochester. Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and the tour of the lakes is then in order on the home return, go the fancy may dictate. Who can find a more delightful route than this? The Old Charger's Well-Kept Trust.The following story is strange enough not to be true, but as we are constantly reminded that truth is stranger than fiction possibly we had better swallow it, as the horse did the silver box, and say nothing about it. The story first appeared in 1850, and now it is taken from the "scrap book" of Dr. Robert Chambers: "The contractor for slaughtering horses at Montfancon purchased, a short time ago, a lot of old worn-out animals, including several which had belonged to the army. In cutting up one of the aged military horses, a man named Matelot was astonished to find a small silver box, in which were a cross of the Legion of Honor and a paper, in a perfect state of preservation, containing the following lines: 'As I cannot survive the defeat of my Emperor, and, as I have neither wife nor child nor cousins, I am about to get myself killed in a last charge against the English, and as I will not let them have my cross, I will make my faithful horse, Chateau Margot, swallow it. He will give it up when he can. Pierre Dardenne, Sargeant in the Second squadron of Red Lancers.' Matelot took the things to the commissary of police of the district, and that functionary allowed him to keep the silver box. As for the cross, it was sent to the Grande Chancellerie of the Legion of Honor. From documents published by the professors of the Ecole d'Alfort, it appears that certain horses have lived to the age of forty-five; that which Charles XII rode at the battle of Pultowa attained that age. The white charger of Napoleon lived twenty-nine years. Chateau Margot is supposed to have been about forty. He had been made to swallow the box at the battle of Waterloo, in which his master willfully perished. The box had accordingly been in his stomach thirty-five years." --The old gentleman who spent a fortune in endeavoring to hatch colts from horse-chestnuts is now cultivating the egg plant with a view to raising chickens from it. -Placards on the St. Louis street cars declare that "This car can't wait for ladies to kiss good-bye." -An instructor asked a French girl why beer in French was feminine. She replied that it was probably owing to the fact that the boys like it so well. -Why is a retired carpenter like a lecturer? Because he is an explaner. Coming! in the next issue of THE CROOKED LAKE REVIEW A True Story of A Woman, A Little Boy and An Old Horse in The Great Orient Buckboard Race And The Progress of the Crooked Lake Historical Society from Beginning to Date Further Items from the second and third issues of the HAMMONDSPORT HERALD We remember reading of the young man desirous of gaining literary honors, who sent his manuscript to Mark Twain, the editor of a Buffalo paper, asking his opinion of its merit, and also wishing advice in regard to eating fish. He had been told that fish was good for the brain. Mark wrote to him, returning the precious manuscript, also telling him that fish was good for the brain, and as he was going into the business, he advised him to eat a whale—not the largest size, perhaps, but a good, fair-sized one, that might make up deficiencies. We were reminded of the story by receiving the following "verses," written for the Herald by a youth of this village, who is also desirous of being a second Byron or somebody. He was exploring the Hammondsport glen, and he says that on his return home he sat down and wrote them "without any effort whatever." Here they are: TO A FRIEND. Oh, don't you remember the glen, my friend,
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