Geneva1889Geneva Jan 10 The Niagara suspension bridge is blown down. Feb 22 Rochester public schools hold their first annual Transfer of Flags ceremony, presenting an American flag to one student representative from each city school. Bausch and Lomb co-founder Captain Henry Lomb and other veterans participate. Mar 24 The Leatherman, a wandering recluse always dressed in leather scraps, is found dead in a cave in Ossining. Aug 27 George Eastman begins marketing his own transparent film. Nov 14 Nellie Bly, reporter for the New York World, sets out to better the time of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days. December John McAlpine and William Hutton's Washington Bridge across the Harlem River is opened to traffic. Dec 26 A storm destroys Rochester's second Liberty Pole. State The Schoharie County Historical Society is founded. ** The spiritualist faction of the Oneida community gains a majority on the board of directors. ** Geneva's Belhurst Castle is completed. ** Emily Staunton, last of the co-founders of Le Roy's Ingham University, dies. ** Corning department store owner John W. Fedder is elected the village's president this year and next. ** Charles Young becomes the third black to graduate from West Point. Batavia Baker Gun and Forging Company builds a plant. ** Mary E. Richmond, widow of former New York Central Railroad president Dean Richmond, donates the Richmond Memorial Library to the city. ** James M. Williams builds a livery stable on State Street. Rochester An Italian Mission is established by several upper-class women to aid immigrants with poor English prepare for evening school classes. Italian-born U. S. citizens form a local chapter of the Bersagliere La Mamora, a patriotic and benevolent society. ** Electric trolley service reaches the village of Charlotte. ** The Rochester and Brighton horse-car line along Monroe Avenue is extended to the Erie Canal. 1890 Jan 18 Journalist-novelist Gilbert Wolf Gabriel is born in Brooklyn. Feb 8 Newspaperman-novelist-historian Henry Clune is born in Rochester. Mar 6 Eugene Schieffelin releases 100 starlings in New York's Central Park to control the English sparrow population. The starlings soon infest much of the northeastern U. S. Mar 20 Tenor Lauritz Lebrecht Hommell Melchior, Wagnerian tenor with the Metropolitan Opera, is born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Apr 21 New York City's Ninth Avenue, between 59th and 127th Streets, is renamed Columbus Avenue. Jun 16 The first Madison Square Garden opens in New York City. The building is lit by thousands of patterned lights and has a searchlight mounted on the roof. Aug 6 The first execution by electric chair, in Ossining. Oct 6 Joseph Arthur's melodrama Blue Jeans opens at New York City's Fourteenth Street Theatre. City Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives. ** William Waldorf Astor inherits the family fortune; moves to England to avoid the constant attention of the press. ** Lawyer and social arbiter Samuel Ward McAllister publishes Society As I Have Found It. State Coal exports from Charlotte to Canada reach 350,000 tons, while all other exports total only 18,318 tons. ** Miller George Gladden builds a verticle-axis windmill in Naopli. ** Geneva's Roman Catholic Church buys the Protestant Dutch Reformed Church building. ** Twelve steamboat lines are now operating on Chautauqua Lake. ** Corning's population tops 10,000. ** The Pavilion Salt Company is founnded. ** Historian Ralph Henry Gabriel is born in Reading, New York. Batavia The Batavia Hospital is founded. ** Leonidas Doty builds the Farmer's Bank building (later a site of the Bank of the Genesee). Rochester The YMCA at South St. Paul and Court streets is completed. ** A trolley line is established on Clinton Avenue. ** The present Driving Park Avenue bridge is completed, re-linking the west and east banks of the Genesee River at Ridge Road. ** Nurseryman Patrick Barry dies. ** A bridge over the Genesee is begun just below the High Falls. Over the next year two thirds of the Phoenix Mill will be cut off to make room for the project. Troy The approximate date the Plumb Building at Russell Sage College is completed. Poestenkill Gorge Mills are also completed about this same time. 1891 Jan 18 Former New York State newspaper owner and canal commissioner Frederick Follett dies in New York City. Sep 14 The Empire Express arrives in Buffalo from New York City, on the New York Central Railroad in a record 7 hours and 6 minutes. City A Brooklyn Heights cable railway is begun. ** Printer John Wiley dies. ** Future doctor Toyohiko Campbell Takami sails from Yokohama, working his way to the U. S. as a captyain's boy on an English ship. He jumps ship here. State Keuka College is founded. ** Caroline Parker, last descendant of Jikohnsaseh (the Peace Mother), dies. ** The "big gun" shop at Watervliet Arsenal is completed. Rochester Port of Rochester revenues reach a peak for the century - Imports: $911,933; Exports: $884,249. ** Milkman Hubert Jencks moves to Gardiner Park. ** The city annexes the Gardiner Homestead Tract, the Leighton Lea Tract and State Hospital Property, increasing its size to 18.44 square miles. ** The bridge over the Genesee at High Falls is completed. 1892 Jan 2 The new immigration depot, at New York City's Ellis Island, is opened. The SS Nevada deposits the first immigrants. Fifteen-year-old Annie Moore is the first person processed. Mar 17 A play based on Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Foresters, with incidental music by Arthur S. Sullivan, opens at New York City's Daly's Theatre. Mar 27 Composer Ferde Grofe is born in New York City. Apr 1 The North American Canal Company contracts to deepen the St. Lawrence River and connect Lake Erie with Ontario, and Lake Francis with Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. Apr 15 General Electric is incorporated in Schenectady, by a merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric, arranged by J. P. Morgan. Apr 27 President Benjamin Harrison lays the cornerstone of Grant's Tomb in New York City. Jun 9 Broadway composer Cole Porter is born in Peru, Indiana. Jun 10 The Republican national convention adjourns in Minneapolis, nominating President Harrison and New York Tribune editor Whitelaw Reid. Jun 12 Poet-illustrator Djuna Barnes is born in Cornwall-on-Hudson. Jul 23 223 people die in New York City during a severe heat wave. August Railroad switchmen in Buffalo go on strike. 8,000 national Guard troops are dispatched to maintain order. Aug 28 The Socialist Labor party meets in New York City and nominates Simon Wing of Massachusetts and New York's Charles R. Matchett for President and Vice-President. Oct 10 U. S. diplomat Sumner Welles is born in New York City. Dec 27 The cornerstone for New York City's Cathedral of St. John the Divine is laid. City The Edison Company erects the city's first flashing electric sign, for Long Island Railroad (LIRR) president Augustus Corbin, at the corner of 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. ** William Gibbs McAdoo arrives from Georgia to practice law. ** Democrat Thomas F. Gilroy, backed by Democrats behind Grover Cleveland's presidential candidacy, defeats Republican Edwin Einstein and People's Party candidate Henry Hicks, to become mayor, serving 1893-1894. ** Vogue magazine begins publication, in New York City. ** Novelist Stephen Crane moves into a New York City studio apartment on 23rd Street. ** Cuban national hero Jose Marti, in exile here, founds the Cuban Revolutionary Party. State Ithaca College is founded. ** The city of Mount Vernon is incorporated. ** Adirondack State Park is created. ** The Batavia and New York Wood Working Company moves to Clinton Street. ** The villages of Manchester and Suspension Bridge are combined and incorporated as the city of Niagara Falls. ** Le Roy's Ingham University closes. ** Author and Civil War officer Ely S. Parker, author of the terms of surrender at Appomattox, dies. ** Spiritualism movement co-founder Catherine Fox dies in poverty. Rochester George Eastman founds the Eastman Kodak company. ** City police experiment with the use of bicycles. ** Nurseryman William G. Ellwanger moves to 47-49 Gardiner Park. ** Colonel Nathaniel Rochester dies. David Minor Eagles Byte Historical Research Rochester, New York 716 264-0423 http://home.eznet.net/~dminor