Southern Tier Volume 2

by Arch Merrill

A delightful book, by a fellow who was the Night Editor of the Rochester Democrat&Chronicle (one of the original Gannett papers) back in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Somewhat old-fashioned and Rotarian in style, but lots of good local lore and regional history about the New York counties along the border with Pennsylvania.

212 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Arch Merrill was a newspaperman, working for decades for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, first as an editor, then as a writer, and even in retirement as a columnist until 1973.
He wrote many local history books about Upstate New York, published from 1943 to 1969. He is buried in Brighton Cemetery in Rochester.

Reviews

[Mel Foster · Rating 3 out of 5]

Merrill is definitely a natural story teller. He has gathered a heap of anecdotes for the counties covered--Chemung, Tioga, and Broome. Two warnings for the modern audience.
First, there is no attempt to consistently identify sources. There is an acknowledgement page but details are often mentioned with no indication of the source or how to follow up on the story. In many cases his sources seem to be a local interview or a visit to the town. This is understandable, as modern scholarship documentation standards were not the standard in 1954.
Second, issues of race are pretty glaring by today's standards. On several occasions, such as his discussions of the "many races" of Elmira or Binghamton, he lists a number of European extractions (he does at least mention Jewish in Elmira) but he does not so much as mention black history except to mention that Mr. Whitney of Broome County owned slaves. This is disappointing as he is talking about cities that have and had double digit black populations.
He drops a brief mention of some men in the Sullivan expedition who skinned two Indians to make leggings--with no commentary about this horrific behavior. Much has changed since the days when you could walk into a local museum to check out a Seneca skull, as he mentions. And it seems as though a lot has changed in Native scholarship as well. He refers to the village of Oquaqa as a "minor Indian tribe" and he refers to the Andaste as a tribe that preceded the Susquehannocks.
Taking those negatives, there is still a considerable and valuable wealth of information here about starting places and biographies to begin exploring local history in these communities of the Southern Tier. Merrill is much more narrative-focused (as opposed to the tendency to be photo-driven) than some of the more recent local history books.
I'm sure that anyone local has certain people and places (even pre-1954) they wish had made it in. Rather than complain though I guess we should write our own books.

[LuAnn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting history of the eastern Southern Tier cities and villages of NYS including their founding, prominent past and current (as of 1950s) industries, people and institutions. It's also the sad story of once prosperous industrial towns that still suffer from the loss of those industries such as Ward LaFrance in Elmira and Endicott-Johnson in the Triple Cities (Binghamton-Endicott-Johnson City).

I particularly enjoyed the background on Elmira College as I didn't realize it was the oldest existing in US higher ed to grant degrees to women that were the equivalent of mens and it almost was located elsewhere and barely hung on in the 1860s. We always passed it when going for school clothes at Sears Roebuck from Watkins Glen in the 1970s.

[Rich Mulvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arch Merrill is reliably entertaining when it comes to his descriptions of local history. I'd never assume that this is in any way a scholarly work; it's more like sitting around with an elderly uncle who likes to reminisce about the days gone by. But as a folksy, entertaining series of anecdotes, it does well.

[Meg Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Covers the counties of Chemung, Tioga and Broome. History through the m9d-1950's. Interesting read. Probably would rate this 3 1/2 stars. I found this interesting because I know the area.

[LuAnn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew very little about the western Southern Tier of New York until I read this. I've never even been in Chautauqua Country and only to Cattaraugus County once even though I grew up in the Finger Lakes, so I enjoyed my tour through them with Arch Merrill and Google Maps and Street View.

The importance of the Erie Railroad to the cities it passed through stands out, as do the efforts of the early land agents, such as Phillip Church owner of 100,000 acres centered on Angelica which he named for his mother (Alexander Hamilton's sister-in-law--that Schuyler sister!) and Charles Williams, land agent for British owners of a million acres, whose promotional efforts to create a populous and industrious area made Bath a lovely city but lost the owners money and him his job.

I never knew of the oil boom in south western New York that led to names such as Olean (Latin oleum "oil") and Wellsville (the wells were gone by my time) that started with Native Americans soaking blankets with oil from Oil Springs, that Salamanca rents their land from the Seneca's Alleghany Reservation (the only city in the US to do so) and that the Ben Patterson Inn, established by agent Williams, is still there as a part of Heritage Village and may be the oldest extant building in Steuben County.