Office
of the County Historian
The Project: Anti-Slavery, Abolitionism, Underground Railroad and African American Life in Wayne County for the Period 1820 to 1880. This project is funded by Preserve New York, a grant program of the Preservation League of New York State and the New York State Council on the Arts...
Susan B. Anthony
& The Struggle for Equal Rights
- A Women's History Conference at the University of Rochester
was scheduled for March 30-April 1, 2006. Please click on the following
link to view the Registration
Form and Schedule of Events.
The history of the Wayne County Fair starts
in the fall of 1849, when some citizens of Palmyra, NY decided to
hold a fair in Hathaway's grove. Little is written what took place
after that first fair until 1856. On June 26, 1856, seventeen men
organized themselves as the Palmyra Union Agricultural Society, and
held a three-day fair that October. During the same year, the society
became a stock company and continues to remain so today....
William Fee has the dubious distinction of being the only convicted
murderer ever to be executed in Wayne County. Fee lived in the town
of Galen, near what is known as the Lockpit, with his father and
mother, James and Mary, and brothers, George and Thomas. On March
23, 1860, William Fee was executed by hanging at the Wayne County
Jail on Butternut Street in Lyons...
In 1847, a worried father wrote to his daughter, who
was about to graduate from Oberlin College, “Your mother and
I are shocked by your boldness and lack of wisdom. I just can’t
believe this thing. Your mother is prostrate. I am doing you a ...
One of the most widespread social problems of the 18th
and 19th centuries was the use of alcohol. To combat this “evil”,
the Temperance Movement began to form, however, it gained little ground
until the early decades of the 19th century. At that ...
Since much of history is measured by the history of
wars, it seems appropriate to tell the story of Wayne County's military
history. It continues with the War of 1812.Wayne County and the War
of 1812 The American Revolution brought political ...
Since much of history is measured by the history of
wars, it seems appropriate to tell the story of Wayne County's military
history. It begins with the French and Indian War of the 1750s, which
was not a war between the French and Indians, but ...
The Treaty of Paris of 1783, at the close of the Revolution
recognized the independence of the United States from England. England
agreed on the Mississippi River as the western boundary of the territory
of the new nation. Before actual ...
In 1996, the Wayne County Historical Society and the
Alling Coverlet Museum, through a combined effort, published the book
"Figured and Fancy: Weavers of Wayne County". Financial
support for this project was also received from the ...
Seth Cole, Jr. was born October 20, 1829, in Great
Valley, Cattaraugus County, New York. He was the youngest son of Seth
and Lucretia Salisbury Cole. As a young man, Seth, with his family,
moved to Wayne County. He lived the remainder of his ...
The Grand Army of the Republic, or G.A.R. was a large
veterans' organization founded in 1866 by a Union Army Surgeon, Benjamin
Franklin Stephenson. Membership was limited to veterans of the Civil
War. The organization, originally, was ...
Following are more stories of the early settlers of Wayne County:Christianna
and Nancy Richards Amos and Christianna Richards and their 13 year-old
daughter, Nancy, settled on the lakeshore between what is now Sodus
Point and Pultneyville ...
The permanent settlement of Wayne County began in
May of 1789, when the Stansell and Featherly families arrived near
Lyons. In that same year, John Swift took up land in Palmyra and Webb
Harwood moved onto land in Macedon. During the next ...
Amendment XIX- The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce
this article by appropriate legislation. ...
Jerry Collins was one of Wayne County’s most colorful
figures for over half a century. For fifty-one years, he served the
county either as Sheriff or as Criminal Deputy, starting in 1883.
During the fifty years from then until he retired in ...
Job Travice came to Galen, in eastern Wayne County
about 1847. He purchased his farm from Alonzo Hunt near what was called
Pilgrimport. In the 1850 census Job Travice’s farm of 86 acres
listed as having a cash value of $4000-a sizeable farm at the ...
General Anthony Wayne, for whom Wayne County is named,
was a hero of the American Revolution. He was a contemporary of Franklin
and Washington and knew them both well. His public life spanned scarcely
twenty years, yet in those twenty years he ...
