Saturday, April 22, 2017

April 22, 2017 Happy 240th Birthday New York State!

A recent article in “The Historian’s Exchange” caught my eye. “New York’s birth in April 1777 was an against-the-odds, rushed, political miracle.”
An interesting thought, and like others which have led to Snippet items, one I had to ponder on and look at to determine what could be included.
In 1777, as we all know from our basic grade school history that the American Revolution was in progress because, after all July 4, 1776, is a date we can usually recall.
So what did New York State look like in 1777? Even before there was a state, ie we were still a colony, the land was divided into counties. Over the years between 1772 and 1817 the counties got smaller in land mass and the county seat moved closer to where we are today. In the forty years between 1777 and 1817 there were five different county names for our area. Recall, that the Town of Covert was taken from Seneca in 1817 to help form Tompkins County.
Year            County                          County Seat
1772           Montgomery                   Fonda
1791           Herkimer                        Herkimer
1794           Onondaga                      Syracuse
1799           Cayuga                           Auburn
1804           Seneca                           Waterloo
1817           Tompkins                       Ithaca
There will be more Snippet from the Past items on the early history and events before 1817, so for now, we will just say, Happy Birthday New York State.

Dewitt’s Diary on New York’s 150th and 200th Birthdays
Friday, April 22, 1927
Rain this morning. We built another new gate this morning.
The rain will do a lot of good. Trees are beginning to leaf out.
Colder tonight and snow flurries.

Wednesday, April 22, 1977
Temperature 55. Got up early and worked on oat ground. Loaded the balance of the oats on truck about noon.
Working on ground on field along woods (south).


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