In the summer of 1876, George Armstrong Custer, who had massacred women and children at the Washita, suffered a massacre of armed fighting men at the Little Big Horn.
As he did so, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone at America’s Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
In November Rutherford B. Hayes lost the presidential election, but was installed anyway, in a fiasco of electoral vote manipulation. Hayes, who was wounded FIVE TIMES in the Civil War, had the grace to reject a second term. But Benjamin Harrison, who in 1888 also lost but got in (sedately) on electoral votes, started the God-made-me-president tradition.
America ran on steam power, but also harnessed electricity, and fell in love with internal combustion. The age of the horse had lasted for thousands of years, but largely ended during this half-century.
Lines for telephones and electricity stretched across Steuben, though farm folks mostly went without. Cars and trucks took to our (mostly dirt) roads. The modern bicycle appeared. We learned to love movies (still silent, still black and white). Hornell and Canisteo had electric trolleys, as did Painted Post, Corning, and points eastward.
Corning Hospital, and Hornell’s St. James Hospital, were founded. So was the New York State Soldiers and Sailors Home, in Bath.
Alexander Graham Bell used some of that telephone money to sponsor airplane experiments in Hammondsport, vastly improving the technology and launching Glenn Curtiss on his way to being a multi-millionaire.
Newspapers invented comic strips. New literary heroes included Tom Swift and Zorro.
Supposedly to save Cuba from cruel rulers, we fought a war with Spain, grabbing Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii in the process. (And Hawaii wasn’t even IN the war.)
The N.A.A.C.P. was born, as were Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Labor unions became stronger. Basketball was invented. With Caton’s Deacon White as a leading star, Major League Baseball became part of summer, while colleges started playing football. Here in the Finger Lakes, summer camps for youth appeared.
Women finally got the right to vote.
The World War (nobody thought of numbering them yet) junked many monarchies, and re-drew the map of the world. America, which missed most of the fighting, became one of the great powers. Along with war came Spanish Influenza, a deadly pandemic which killed as many people in four months as the war killed in four years … possibly the worst natural disaster in history.
Americans started listening to radio. Those who had 24-7 electricity bought vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and refrigerators. Those who DIDN’T have steady power got steady visits from the iceman. Corning Glass Works started making products for the home. Frederick Carder and Thomas G. Hawkes opened Steuben Glass, purchased by CGW in 1918. Gunlocke was established in Wayland. “The Rand” grew up in Painted Post.
A new version of the Ku Klux Klan enlisted thousands of Steubeners, and dozens of Steuben churches.
Keuka’s wine and grape businesses, which had grown spectacularly since 1860, were all but killed off by Prohibition. Campbell’s Thomas J. Watson created IBM.
Al Smith and Robert Moses eyed Stony Brook as a new state park. A state fish hatchery was created between Bath and Hammondsport.
Corning and Hornell were legally established as cities. Riverside and North Hornell completed our list of incorporated villages. Although it traces back to an 1847 paper, the Corning Leader first appeared as such in 1903. Hornell’s Evening Tribune regards 1873 as its birth year, though it can be traced through earlier forms back to the 1850s.
With financing from Andrew Carnegie, Hornell opened Steuben’s first purpose-built library (still in use!) in 1911. Communities joined together and formed union high schools. More and more students went past eighth grade.
And, of course … those babies who were born in 1925 and 1926 would grow up to be soldiers, in an even bigger war than the one that ended in 1918.
– Kirk House, of the Steuben County Historical Society, writes a column appearing in The Leader and The Spectator.
This article originally appeared on The Evening Tribune: Steuben County saw many changes from 1876 to 1926 | America 250
Reporting by Kirk House, Steuben County Historical Society, Special to The Spectator / The Evening Tribune
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