Central New York transportation documents and flour trade correspondence

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: 65

Scope and content

Correspondence (chiefly business and financial dealings) concerning transportation in central New York State, including Ithaca, Syracuse, Owego, Elmira, and Albany. Topics include the Ithaca and Owego Rail Road, the New York and Erie Railroad, land purchases, steamboats to Ithaca and Owego, a mill owned by Francis A. Bloodgood, the Chemung Canal, Ithaca canals and streams, a proposed turnpike road from the head of Seneca Lake to Elmira, and public opinion and politics in Ithaca. Also included are minutes from a Tompkins County business fraud case, The People vs. Alvin C. Farnsworth, tried in 1841. Also, two Greyhound bus schedules from 1934, for routes from Syracuse to Buffalo and Syracuse to Binghamton. Correspondents include Simeon De Witt, Francis A. Bloodgood, B. F. Isherwood, George E. Hoffman, and S. P. Lyman.

Scope and content

Flour trade correspondence consists mainly of a letter of petition to Dutch government officials to improve trading conditions for merchants in the Albany area. A typewritten transcript of the letter is followed by a handwritten English translation. Also included are minutes of an unidentified council meeting in 1683 concerning the flour trade in the North American colonies.

Dates

1678-1683 and 1823-1934,-1823-1866 (bulk).

Creator

no primary creator (Person)
De Witt, Simeon, 1756-1834. (Person)
Bloodgood, Francis A., 1775-1842. (Person)

Language of Material

Mainly in English; some of the flour trade correspondence is in Dutch.

Biographical / Historical

Francis A. Bloodgood was president of the Ithaca and Owego Rail Road Company; Simeon De Witt was the Surveyor General of New York State.

Extent

.1 cubic feet. (.1 cubic foot.)

Additional Description

Ownership and Custodial History

Some or all of the collection formerly belonged to Charles Humphrey, the grandfather of Mary E. Humphrey. Miss Humphrey passed them on to Charles Henry Hull, Professor of American history at Cornell University.