Report Of The Semi Centennial Jubilee And Reunion Of The Half Century Club And Tompkins County Sept 8th 1881 PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... ITHACA. Ithaca, the County Seat of Tompkins County, was first settled in 1785. General Simeon DeWitt, a member of Washington's staff in the revolution and Surveyor-General of the State of New York, soon after the close of the war, surveyed the State and laid out the military allotments in the then unbroken wilderness of Central and Western New York. Among other lands then allotted, the General located and acquired title to the 640 acres where Ithaca now stands. Impressed with its location, he discovered at that early day its capabilities of becoming a central point of commerce and manufactures from the natural water powers with which it was surrounded. It was organized as a town in 1821, being taken from the town of Ulysses, named after one of Homer's heroes, a Grecian prince, whose reputed home was Ithaca, an ancient city of Greece, built upon an island in the Ionian sea, " a nest of birds among the rocks." Thus named and separated from its parent Ulysses, it at once became the County Seat of the new County of Tompkins, named in honor of Governor Tompkins. It was organized April 17th, 1817, taken from the counties of Seneca and Caguga. The first white settlers came in and located as early as 1789. From this early settlement the pioneers gradually penetrated the wilds then unbroken about the head of Cayuga Lake, and from 1800 onwards the settlements rapidly increased; so that about 1812, the territory about the head of the lake had become considerably improved. Roads were opened and access to Ithaca and Cayuga Lake had become less laborious and difficult. The Ithaca and Owego Turnpike Company was incorporated in 1807; the Ithaca and Geneva Turnpike Company in 1810, and Ithaca acquired a vigorous growth; and at the organization of the...