May 27, 1988

About this Issue

Note from the Editors

This second issue of the Crooked Lake Review begins with a report of the progress of the Crooked Lake Historical Society from the first general meetings to the present.

In this issue we begin reprinting Mrs. Caroline Kirkland's 1839 book A New Home. The first chapter describes her trip with her husband in a horse-drawn carriage to the site of a new village settlement in the then timber and swamp country of southern Michigan. Mrs. Kirkland uses the pseudonym, Mrs. Clavers, for her book, hence she refers to herself in the book as Mrs. Clavers.

Martha Treichler contributes the tale of the race between her grandmother in a horse-drawn buggy and her grandfather in a new Orient Buckboard. Her grandparents lived in Pennsylvania, but Orient Buckboards were common in Hammondspor, too. According to Laura Swarthout's History of Hammondsport to 1962, the first three cars in Hammondsport in 1902 were all Orient Buckboards. Linn D. "Kelly" Masson and J. Seymour Hubbs "simultaneously introduced the first 'native' automobile traffic to our streets." O. H. Younglove purchased a third Buckboard shortly thereafter. An Orient Buckboard is on display at the Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. Go see what a bare-bones vehicle it was.

In addition to the regular feature of 100 Years Ago in The Hammondsport Herald , there is more about the Hammondsport Glen that was being developed as a tourist attraction at that time. This item and the one with it on the back page titled Fine Legal Distinctions came from the first issue of the Hammondsport Herald. There it was titled Five Legal Distinctions.

One thousand copies of the first issue were printed. Copies are available for purchase at the Curtiss Museum, the Hammondsport Library, the Oliver House, the Penn Yan Library and the Davenport Library. Each of these institutions receives the full 50 cents for every copy they sell.

Coming in the next issue of The Crooked Lake Review is a feature article on the Curtiss Museum. The next chapter in A New Home is "Mr. Mazard, The Land-Shark." Read it and learn how Mrs. Clavers picks a name for the new settlement.

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