Cortland County History
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History
Cortland County is located in the glaciated Appalachian Plateau area of central New York midway between Syracuse and Binghamton. This predominately rural county is the southeastern gateway to the Finger Lakes region. Scattered archeological evidence indicates occupation of this area by three different aboriginal cultures, mainly the Onondaga Tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy beginning about 1500 A.D.
What was to become Cortland County remained Native American Indian territory until after the American Revolution and was included within the Military Tract, an area of more than one and one-half million acres set aside by the State’s Legislature to compensate the Revolutionary War veterans. To encourage settlement in the upstate isolated wilderness, New York State constructed a road from Oxford through Cortland County to Cayuga Lake in 1792-94. This road and other privately financed roads were the major impetus to settlement.
Eastern New Yorkers and New Englanders welcomed the opening of this new frontier. Settlers first made inroads in Cortland County in 1791, with Amos Todd and Joseph and Rhoda Todd Beebe coming from Connecticut to Homer via the Tioughnioga River. Following them came a flood of settlers who, in 1808, petitioned the State’s Legislature for county status. Thus, Cortland County was created from the southern half of Onondaga County on April 8, 1808 and was named in honor of General Pierre Van Cortlandt, first lieutenant governor of the state and owner of lands in the Military tract. The settlers transformed this heavily wooded region into tillable acres supporting mixed crop agriculture. Potash from wood ash was their first cash crop.
Between 1830 and 1860 most of the towns of the county reached their highest populations. Beginning about 1870 most rural town populations declined as farm boys were attracted by city opportunities and farmers left for city jobs or answered the call of new lands in the West.
With the coming of the railroad in 1854 and a second line in 1871, Cortland area industries were assured of easier access to raw materials, fuel, and new markets. The establishment in Cortland Village of two national banks and a savings bank provided a broader credit base. These factors, coupled with the nation-wide demand for more goods, spurred some imaginative young men of the village to transform their small shop enterprises into the county’s first large-scale factories. Taking the lead was the Cortland Wagon Co. which became the largest and best known of a dozen or more firms making horse-drawn vehicles or accessories. After a meteoric rise with impressive production figures, the firm quietly succumbed - victim of the automobile.
The county’s present reflects its past. Economically, agriculture continues to be important. Silage corn, oats and hat occupy most of the cultivated acreage and are used as dairy feed. Milk is shipped out in fluid form rather than as butter and cheese. Agribusiness flourishes: feed stores, machinery dealers, and veterinarians serve Cortland and surrounding counties. Farm woodlots still account for a sizable production of maple products. Consistent with the pattern elsewhere in New York State, the number of farms has declined while acreage per farm and yield per acre has increased.
The diversified pattern of industry also continues and the economy is further bolstered by the lumber industry and sand and gravel quarrying.
State University of New York College at Cortland has grown from a two-year normal school teacher training institute (1869) to a four-year program of study leading to the bachelor’s degree and to a master’s degree in certain disciplines.
In 1848, national and local abolitionist interests created the Free Central College of McGrawville, one of the first schools in the country to offer education to both blacks and whites and the first school to have a black instructor teach a predominately white student body. The school would close its doors in 1861. The county has contributed leaders to all walks of life and continues as a county proud of its history and one whose major assets of dairy farming, diversified manufacturing, education and recreation facilities, and a good transportation network contribute to a sound and stable economy.
Shirley G. Heppel
Updated by Cathy Barber
Cortland County Historian