Better Binghamton

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from Better Binghamton: A Report to the Mercantile-Press Club of Binghamton, N. Y., September 1911 There was no Binghamton until there had been Bingham, the pioneer landowner. But before his day the Indians had followed, by canoe and trail, the two beautiful rivers of which the junction point is the heart of modern Binghamton. Even then the valleys of the Susquehanna and Chenango were highways, and a small Tuscarora village was at The Point. After the revolutionary war, the Oneidas and Tuscaroras (in 1785) released to the State of New York the site of the present city, and the next year the State issued a patent to William Bingham, James Wilson and Robert L. Hooper, containing upwards of 30, 000 acres lying on both sides of the Susquehanna, from Union to Kirkwood. Four years later, the owners divided their property, the eastern portion going to Bingham. William Bingham had been a successful merchant in Philadelphia and was now a great landed proprietor. He engaged Joshua Whitney as his agent, or factor. It was in 1800, when he was twenty-seven years old, that Whitney took charge of the patent. A settlement had already begun on the west bank of the Chenango, at the foot of Mt. Prospect. But Whitney, says William F. Seward, "accomplished what kings and conquerors have sometimes failed to do - he changed the seat of government, he persuaded a free and sovereign citizenship to move from up the river to Chenango Point. So easy was it to found a city! Or in other words he induced the first settlers (and perhaps some of them were squatters!) to move their homes, their altars and their fires from outside to inside the boundaries of the Bingham Patent." As Mr. Seward tells the story, Whitney "had learned the exact location of a bridge to be built across the Chenango and dropped into Keeler's tavern to tell the news. 'Boys, ' he said, 'you had better stop building here, the village will be built down where the bridge is built, ' and the 'boys' then and there agreed to have a 'chopping bee' the next day and make a clearing for the coming of the bridge. The next morning Joshua Whitney, Selah Squires and four other men took their axes and floated down stream in a canoe, landing at an elm tree on the east side of the river." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.