Press and Sun-Bulletin from Binghamton, New York • 95

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(Continued from page I8H1 (Bingham, who never saw Binghamton, was precocious in every sense of 'the word to his death at only 52. He had a I Midas touch and a seeming reverence for aristocracy. His daughters married titled French and British millionaires, and one of them could have been Queen of France had she been permitted to dally with Louis Philippe during the two years he lived nearly penniless over a Philadelphia bar between 1797 and 1799. He succeeded the deposed Charles in 1830. And Willie Bingham's vast fortune went overseas to his heirs.) One of the few here to make trips "outside," Josh Whitney also learned way ahead that there was to be a bridge built over the Chenango near the junction with the Susquehanna.

An early history of the locality edited by H.P. Smith reconstructs the "One day. while a group of men were gathered in the barroom of the old Keeler tavern at Chenango Point (Nimmonsburg). a young man entered they called "Josh." He informed that he had been east and that he had seen Elmendorf. who had the charter for building a bridge across the Chenango, and that he had learned exactly where it was to be located.

said: 'You had better stop building here. The village will be built down wnere the bridge is to be built. They all fell in with this conclusion and fixed upon a chopping bee for the next day tor the purpose of making an 'opening' down near the site of the proposed bridge "The bridge at Court Street was part of the great western road soon built from Kingston-on-the-Hudson to Elmira, and the removal of the village brought it into line with that thoroughfare." The bridge came in 1808, but it was not an unmixed blessing. Chenango Point became a part of the new County of Broome, but. by legislative action, what is now the city's West Side and all the area west stayed in Tioga County.

Anyway. in 1800. Keeler moved his tavern to what is now the corner of Court and Water streets. Jake McKinney moved his general store to Water Street. Then John Yarrington moved his blacksnith shop to Washington Street.

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Big Savings SAVE UP TO 1500 DOLLARS Great Summer Savings on All Suiuki Motorcycles vmmm America's Centennial came SALES SERVICE history. The Millards. the Doubledays. the Conklins and many more came later: and still later came the ethnics who left their stamp forever on what everyone knows as "The Ward." and the German descendants who named their streets west of Recreation Park for their favorite musicians. Lumber, fabric and grist mills, distilleries, foundries, tanneries and small home enterprises, smithys and bootmak-ing shops provided- employment, with lumber as the number one export, mostly by way of the Susquehanna to Philadelphia and Baltimore.

But there was also big business in hides, wool, cured hams and bacon, furs and grain. The hamlet prospered vastly. The stages ran east and west, north and south. along what had been Indian trails. Mail came and went by riders who posted from station to station.

Both rivers, at that time to some extent navigable, provided eady transportation to many points. By 1834, the movement to create the Chenango Canal locking into the Erie Barge near Utica. with access to the great American westward sweep, had reached final consideration in Albany. It came in 1837. In 1823, the New York 4 Erie Railroad was incorporated to bring the iron horse through here.

By 1834, the community was working on its third courthouse, the first having been on the site of the Perry Block at Court and Chenango, on land made available by the William Bingham Estate between Collier and Exchange. Court House Hill was then an eminence some 25 feet above the present street level. By 1834, the community had decided it should formalize its government. On May 6, the State Legislature incorporated the Village of Binghamton, once and for all time destroying the provincial designation as Chenang' but unknowingly opening the way to the misspelling as Binghampton. Dan Dickinson (who else?) was the first president (mayor).

By 1834. Binghamton was heading into explosive growth that would make it a city in 33 years. Had it had a Chamber of Commerce, it would have had much to boast about. After all, in the second term of Andrew Jackson's administration in Washington, Buffalo was still a tiny hamlet. So was Detroit.

And Chicago didn't exist. as catharsis most Americans paid 5 cents to ride on a narrow railroad at what many considered the breakneck speed of 8 miles an hour. In the spirit of the celebration the railroads reduced their rates as much as 30 per cent from all points west. A round trip ticket from Chicago to Philadelphia cost For the most part, visitors were happily surprised by the low cost of a visit to the exhibition. One man even complained: "The fifty cenis charged for admission seems too puny and dispropor-tioned." But visitors were not reticent in complaining about the high cost restaurants, inadequate signs, and ignorant guards.

ti Christ Church was built in 1807 in Washington Street at a-point which later became the corner of Henry. Rebuilt in 1823 the year after the first of the many direct predecessors of the Sun-Bulletin started publication in Binghamton it was by far the most imposing structure in town, including the new courthouse. Its present rector, the Rev. Frederick jw. dorst.

who moonlights as president of the Public Library Board of Trustees, and buddies with M. Charles Miller, librarian and official city historian, says it looked about the same then as it does today. Josh Whitney, of course, gave the land to the parish. Meanwhile, people were colonizing and homesteading all over the place. The ancient village of I'nadilla, onetime metropolis of the Indians, had settled down on the present site of Sidney.

The Village of Union had taken shape where the Nanticoke flows into the Susquehanna, and the hamlet of Maine had taken root in the Nanticoke Owego was already sizeable: and the Borough of Montrose was mushrooming across the Pennsylvania border. Eugene D. Montillon "Historic Architecture Broome and Vicinity." copyright 1972, shows that, from the very beginning, the home builders who came here from the coastal states built well, for permanence and beauty. In all of the hamlets in this so-called marketing area there are speciments of architecture dating to the first generation of the 19th century. At least six of them claim to be the oldest, but the Town of Maine, with two candidates, probably has that spot nailed down.

Many of the first settlers who determined the course of the city's growth from the layout of Court Street, its first, and Water, its second, to a downtown which existed 176 years ago much as it does today, preserved their names in the names of streets. Hawley, for example, is named tor Maj. Martin Hawley: Robinson for Dr. Tracy Robinson, Collier for John A. Collier, an attorney: Lerty for Daniel Leroy, another lawyer: Ely for Dr.

Elihu Ely. another physician; and Tompkins for Christopher1 and Gilbert, merchants. Dickinson, of course, stands for Saniel who was a latecomer in but whose political career has assured him a top spot in the area's early ness of the times. The Civil War was concluded just 11 years earlier; the administration of Ulysses Grant was barely surviving the scandal-ridden resignations of its Secretary of War and Treasury, and the House of Representatives had instituted an investigation into many irregularities of the administration. On May 10, 1876.

opening day t)f the Centennial, Americans swarmed over 200 different exhibition buildings to view a 700-ton Corliss engine powering the entire exhibition, a newly invented typewriter, a telephone, and a lamp that burned electricity instead of gas or oil. To see the 400-acre exhibition grounds. 'til a 1 By SI SAN FISHER Gannett News Service PHILADELPHIA "The American people like to be humbugged." the famous showman P.T. Barnum once said: and the six-month Centennial Celebration of 1876 was no exception. Nine million Americans traveled to Philadelphia and viewed such sights as a sculpture of the classical heroine Iolanthe carved out of butter, a Liberty Bell made from tobacco plugs, a chandelier with cigars for candles, and a picture of George Washington made from the hair of Simon Bolivar.

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