| |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
History of Tompkins CountyBy Carol Kammen, Tompkins County HistorianTompkins County is divided by Cayuga Lake, the second longest of the glacially created Finger Lakes. The lake, with its headwaters at the southern end, is fed by streams that make their way through gorges cut in the underlying shale and limestone of the county's geologic base. The county today consists of 476.1 square miles, the southern end dominated by rugged hillls with the highest, Connecticut Hill, reaching 2,095.97 feet. The northern portion has a more gentle and fertile terrain. Before European settlement, this area was home to the Cayuga Indians, one of the five - and later six - tribes that made up the Iroquois Confederation. They used the land lightly, placing semi-permanent settlements near the sources of fresh water, cultivating patches for produce and orchards. In 1779 George Washington sent Major General John Sullivan into Iroquoia to drive the Indians west and out of the conflict raging between the colonies and Britain. Sullivan directed Colonel Henry Dearborn down the west side of the lake, and Lieutenant Colonel William Butler, along the east side of Cayuga Lake, to destroy Cayuga villages and crops. Butler's forces burned Coreorgonel, a Tutelo town set within the Cayuga sphere. Following the Revolutionary War, Simeon DeWitt, the State Surveyor General and later founder of Ithaca, included the northern portion of what became Tompkins County in the New Military Tract, those lands to be given to veterans in payment for their military service. The southern portion of what became Tompkins County fell into the Watkins and Flint Purchase, a private land development company with headquarters in Owego. Exploratory visits to the headwaters of Cayuga Lake began in 1786. Settlement followed the 1790 dispersal of Military Tract lots, probably beginning in 1792. Some were squatters willing to take a chance on the land; others came seeking their military allotments. Some traveled from the east through the dense forest, or came up on rough roads cut into the wilderness by order of the state. Settlers taking up the southern portion of the land were New Yorkers, such as John Cantine, who received state land in payment for services, or southerners looking for new land on which to graze horses. The latter group bought tracts of land in numbered towns, such as Town #11, which later became Caroline. Following the first settlers came ministers, lawyers, and merchants with goods for sale. Hamlets grew up where an owner was willing to offer land (for example at Tremans, now Trumansburg) or where there were opportunities for milling (for example, at Ludlow's, now Ludlowville). Simeon Dewitt drew up a map of a village, expecting it to become a commercial metropolis at the head of the lake. His map of 1807 placed the name Ithaca on the land that lay within Military Tract #22, in the town of Ulysses. Settlement throughout the county followed these initial events. In 1810 DeWitt Clinton wrote that the "village has several houses, three taverns, and two or three stores, and mills in a ravine or hollow." Following the Embargo Act of 1808 salt and gypsum from Salina went south by way of Cayuga Lake and then through Ithaca, enlivening the local economy. In 1810 the state chartered the Ithaca-Owego Turnpike, and Ithaca became a trans-shipment point for goods flowing south. In the absence of any state or federal authority other than the Postmaster, residents formed a Moral Society that acted to stem the boisterous antics of the teamsters, who sometimes numbered up to 400 at a time. The state of New York created Tompkins County on April 7, 1817 and named the new county for Daniel D. Tompkins, governor of the state (1807-17) and Vice President of the United States (1817-25). Tompkins never saw the county named for him. Tompkins County was pieced together from the Military Tract town of Dryden, from lots 51 to 100 of the town of Locke (which became Groton), lots 42 to 100 of Milton (which became Lansing), all formerly within Cayuga County. To these were added lots 43 to 100 of Ovid, renamed Covert, and all of the towns of Ulysses and Hector, taken from Seneca County. In 1817, the small community fostered by Simeon DeWitt was designated the county seat. In 1823 the county grew with the addition of Caroline, Danby and Cayuta, which became Newfield, originally from the Watkins and Flint Purchase and formerly within Tioga County. Further adjustments were made in 1819 when Covert was returned to Seneca County, and again in 1853 when a portion of Newfield and the town of Hector became part of Schuyler County. From that time on, the county's footprint remained unaltered. Early settlers were predominantly native-born farmers seeking new land. Some from eastern New York and the south brought slaves with them, and until the abolition of slavery in New York in 1827, there were both enslaved and free African Americans in the county, although their numbers were small. In the 1820 federal census there were 72 non-whites and 20,609 white residents. There were also 20 foreign-born aliens. At that time neither Danby nor Caroline were located in Tompkins County. Population in Tompkins County rose gradually over the course of the nineteenth century and into the mid-twentieth. A closer look at those figures shows the village of Ithaca having a steady increase in population while most of the towns in the county reached a peak population around 1850 and then dipped to half that level in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1827, the Rev. J. Perkins wrote that people were moving out of the area while others were moving in. "This is the most fluctuating place I was ever in," he commented. The town of Newfield declined in population from a high in 1850 of 3,816 residents to a 1910 low of 1,509, and even towns on somewhat better land experienced a dip. Lansing, with over 4,000 residents in 1830, had but 2,676 in 1910; Dryden peaked in 1840 with 5,446 but slipped to 3,590 in 1910. During the early nineteenth century a number of small manufacturing companies, including an early printing industry, a coverlet factory, and mills used the ample waterpower. The opening of the Erie Canal and the Seneca Canal connection to it, kept local goods flowing into the eastern markets, but they competed with cheaper grains and produce from the Midwest where the flat land produced more per acre and thus could be sold for less. County businesses flourished until the aftermath of the Depression of 1837 when the economy slowed. There was a development attempt in 1840 to attract industry into the county but it failed. The people of the county were of a variety of political positions and many, but not all, were abolitionists who supported not only colonization and emancipation, but efforts to aid the fugitives from the south. In the election of 1860, the voters of Tompkins County gave the county to Abraham Lincoln, even while the village of Ithaca voted the Democratic ticket. When the Civil War began, the residents of the county responded with enthusiasm although their high spirits lagged as the toll of war became known. The establishment of Cornell University in 1865 stabilized the county’s economy. The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 provided land to states for the support of agricultural and mechanical education and training in military tactics. It was through the interest in educating poor boys that Ezra Cornell staked his own newly-made fortune and his Ithaca farm to settle the Morrill Land Grant College in Tompkins County. But Cornell knew little of universities, and the school that emerged was the product of the experience and ideas of Andrew Dickson White. White had been born in Homer, grown up in Syracuse, and educated at Hobart and William Smith College, Yale University, and in Europe. Together the two men founded Cornell University, attracting students, faculty, and many new residents to the county, some of whom moved into Ithaca while their children attended the university. Railroad development linked Tompkins County with the markets and destinations beginning in 1832 with the Ithaca-Owego Railroad. By the 1870s, there were four major railway lines running through Ithaca. Lake travel began in 1823 and continued into the twentieth century. Ithaca College opened in several downtown Ithaca buildings in 1892, moving to South Hill in 1969. Significant industries include the Ithaca Gun Company, the Thomas-Morse airplane company, and the Groton Iron Bridge Company - all of which are now gone. For a decade, beginning in 1914, movies were made in Ithaca. County population growth in the twentieth century continued only slowly although the university from 1885 increased in size yearly. In 1910 there were 33,647 residents in the county. The increase thereafter was slight until 1940 when the total population was 42,340. In the next ten years, however, the overall population jumped by more than 16,000 residents to 59,122, with the major gain occurring in Ithaca, reflecting the growth of Cornell University following the second World War. An additional jump by 10,000 residents between 1960 and 1970 brought the county population to 77,064. That decade's figures reveal a shift in living patterns with a major increase in the Town of Ithaca, especially in the northeast portion and in the areas adjacent to Cornell. By the 2000 federal census, the population of Tompkins County was 96,501. The ethnic composition of the county had also changed. Early in the twentieth century newcomers included Italians, Hungarians, Greeks, and Finns. In 1900 there were two Chinese listed. By 2000 there was a diversified Asian community along with Hispanics, Russians, and a small contingent of Tibetans. The student population at Cornell is nearly 20,000. The major business of the county is education, with Cornell, Ithaca College, Tompkins Cortland Community College, a branch of Empire State College, and six public school systems plus several private schools and the Community School of Music and Art (CSMA). Agricultural continues to be important, as does tourism. There is a major business complex adjacent to the Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport, and over 80 companies in the county are here because their founders studied or taught at the university. Traditionally the county, outside the City of Ithaca, has voted Republican. With the increase of population after 1950, the Democratic core increased and in 1993 the County legislature for the first time had a Democratic majority. More than sixty cultural organizations, including historical societies, drama companies, musical groups of all kinds, dance companies and an orchestra and opera society flourish. Major events each year include the Ithaca Festival, which occurs the first weekend of June, the Grassroots Festival each summer, and an Art Trail open all year long with featured weekend events in the spring and fall. The county is served two daily newspapers, The Ithaca Journal, which was founded in 1814, and The [Cornell] Daily Sun, and The Ithaca Times, a weekly. Other regular publications include the Bookpress, which appears monthly with cultural comment, and the biweekly Ithaca Community News, a progressive online newsletter. The county’s history was first treated in H. Hurd, History of Chemung, Schuyler, Tioga and Tompkins Counties, New York (Philadelphia, 1879) and in John Selkreg, Landmarks of Tompkins County, (Syracuse, 1894). Henry Abt published his history, Ithaca, in 1926. Recent treatments include Carol Kammen, Peopling of Tompkins County: A Social History (Interlaken, 1985) and Jane M. Dieckmann, A Short History of Tompkins County (Ithaca, 1986). Also useful is W. Glenn Norris, The Origin of Place Names in Tompkins County (Ithaca, 1951) and The Towns of Tompkins County, Jane M. Dieckmann ed., (Ithaca, 1998). Histories of Cornell University include Carl Becker, Cornell University: Founders and the Founding (Ithaca, 1941) and Morris Bishop, A History of Cornell (Ithaca, 1962) and Carol Kammen, Cornell: Glorious to View (Ithaca, 2003). Major archival repositories include the Tompkins County Archive, Cornell University Archives, and the DeWitt Historical Society of Tompkins County. Carol Kammen Tompkins County Historian August 2003 |