Its location during the early westward expansion of the United States, on an international border and in a fertile farming region, has contributed to a rich cultural and economic history. Two world religions sprung from within its borders, and its inhabitants played important roles in abolitionism in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Nineteenth century War of 1812 skirmishes, Great Lakessailing ship commerce and Erie Canalbarge traffic have yielded to contemporary recognition as one of the world's most productive fruit growing regions. Wayne County ranks as New York's top apple producing county.
History
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the land Wayne County encompasses was originally part of the Iroquois Confederacy, which had existed from around August 31, 1142.[3] When counties were established in New York State on November 1, 1683, it became part of Albany County.[4]
On April 11, 1823, Wayne County was formed by combining portions of Seneca and Ontario counties.
The first westward road was one coming from near Utica to Geneva, and, with the building of the Cayuga Bridge in 1800, was the road chosen by nearly all of the westward travelers. This highway left the future Wayne County region somewhat isolated and settlers desiring to locate there came by way of streams and lakes lying to the north of the road. It was only a few years after that the "new road" came west, passing through the county, opening up the fertile Ganargua lands to easier settlement.[6]
The first permanent settlement was started by John Swift and Col. John Jenkins in March 1789, about two miles (3.2km) from Palmyra. In May of that year a small colony made up of the Stansell and Featherly families located at the junction of Ganargwa and the Canandaigua Outlet, calling the place Lyons, from a "fancied likeness of that city's location on the Rhone".[6]
While Phelps and Gorham sold some land to settlers, they were unable to make payments on their land and much of the land in the Phelps Gorham purchase either reverted to Massachusetts and was resold or conveyed directly to Robert Morris, a major financier of the Revolutionary War and signer of the US Declaration of Independence. In 1792, he in turn sold approximately 1,200,000 acres (4,900km2) to The Pulteney Association owned by Sir William Pulteney and two other minor partners. The Pulteney Purchase, or the Genesee Tract as it was also known, comprised all of the present-day counties of Ontario, Steuben and Yates, as well as portions of Allegany, Livingston, Monroe, Schuyler and Wayne. After Pulteney's death in 1805 the land was known as the Pulteney Estate.[7]
Sir William Pulteney selected Charles Williamson as land agent to develop the purchased 1,200,000 acres (4,900km2). In 1792, Williamson, a Scotsman, came to the unsettled wilderness in upstate New York to develop the land by building roads, selecting sites for towns, dividing land into lots, and building gristmills, taverns, stores and houses.[7] Williamson selected Sodus Bay on Lake Ontario as the point for a future commercial center, with the idea that the lake and the Saint Lawrence River would be the outlet for the products of the region. In 1794 he had roads built from Palmyra to Phelpstown (present-day Phelps). Sodus was surveyed by Joseph Colt in lots of a quarter acre (1,000 m2), a hotel was built, and $20,000 was expended in the first two years in improvements. Sodus quickly passed from having an uncertain future to the head of the towns of the region.[6]
War of 1812
Two small skirmishes were fought in the county during the War of 1812: one in Sodus in June 1813,[8] and the other in Williamson a year later. In May 1814, British troops under the command of Sir James Yeo landed in the Williamson hamlet of Pultneyville. Yeo's fleet had already successfully raided Oswego to the east and unsuccessfully attacked Rochester to the west before attempting to obtain stores from Pultneyville. An agreement with the hamlet's residents was made, permitting the invaders to seize supplies without resistance. A dispute broke out, however, and weapons fire began on both sides, including cannon bombardment from Lake Ontario. A few citizens were killed or wounded and two were taken prisoner as the British fled.[9]
Great Lakes commerce
Until the opening of the Erie Canal in 1823, Pultneyville, New York, at the mouth of Salmon Creek, was Wayne County's only port. From about 1811 through the 1890s (when the customs office closed), shipping in this small hamlet extended to the Atlantic Ocean and the world via the Saint Lawrence River. During the early years of the 19th century, activity in Pultneyville focused on agricultural commerce from the surrounding region (as far south as Canandaigua) and the maritime trade on the Great Lakes. In 1865, it was home to nearly 30 lake captains, and many sailors from both Pultneyville and Sodus Bay crewed on whalers around the world.[10] In 1874 the first railroad appeared when the Lake Shore Railroad line opened and the center of trade moved three miles (4.8km) south to Williamson and Pultneyville's significance as a commerce center sharply declined.[11]
Religion: Wayne County and the Second Great Awakening
Kate and Margaret Fox
Wayne County played host to key events in the development of significant American religions during the country's Second Great Awakening period of the early 19th century. The Fox Sisters heard rappings from a dead peddler in Hydesville and spawned a movement that eventually garnered a million followers at its peak.[12]
Sodus Bay also was the site of a community of Shakers from 1826 to 1836. The site provided convenient access to travel by water on the Great Lakes Ontario and Erie, for visits to Shakers who lived in Ohio. This site might also have been useful for abolitionists moving former slaves to freedom in Canada via the Underground Railroad.
The first Shaker leadership team, Elders Jeremiah Talcott and Eldress Polly Lawrence, along with their assistants John Lockwood and Lucy Brown, came to Sodus from the Shakers' parent community at New Lebanon, New York. With 72 converts during their first year, they soon had 200 acres under cultivation. By 1835, the community had grown to almost 150.[14]
However, they learned in 1835 that a canal had been proposed to be dug through their land, and by New York state law, the canal company had the right to seize the property it chose. The Shakers responded by selling their land and 23 buildings to the canal company and moving inland to the 1,700 acres they purchased at Groveland, in Livingston County, New York. However, the canal was never built; two years later, the Shakers were asked to take their property back, but, having reestablished their village elsewhere, and knowing that the land could later be taken for the same purpose, they refused.[15]
Several diaries and journals describing the Shakers' early years at Sodus and Groveland can be found at the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio.[16] These manuscripts are available on microfilm at more than 20 locations throughout the U.S.[17]
Spiritualists often set March 31, 1848 as the beginning of their movement. On that date, Kate and Margaret Fox, of Hydesville, reported that they had made contact with the spirit of a murdered peddler. What made this an extraordinary event was that the spirit communicated through audible rapping noises, rather than simply appearing to a person in a trance. The evidence of the senses appealed to practical Americans, and the Fox sisters became a sensation. Demonstrations of mediumship (seances and automatic writing, for example) proved to be a profitable business, and soon became popular forms of entertainment and spiritual catharsis. The Foxes earned a living this way, as did many others.[18]
The Erie Canal transits the southern edge of the county. The villages of Clyde, Lyons, Newark, Palmyra and Macedon all became homes to canal locks when the Albany to Rochester section of the canal opened on September 10, 1823. On that day these communities became part of a direct water-link between the eastern seaboard metropolises of New York City and Baltimore and America's expanding western frontier.
Hoffman essays
Wayne County high school seniors are offered the opportunity to win a scholarship by The Augustus L. and Jennie D. Hoffman Foundation Scholarship Essay Program. Established in 1954 to encourage the study of local history, students research and write essays on some aspect of Wayne County history or civic affairs. Between its inception and 2007 over 600 essays have been submitted.[22]
The Ginna plant was the site of a minor nuclear accident when, on January 25, 1982, a small amount of radioactive steam leaked into the air after a steam-generator tube ruptured.[23][24] The leak which lasted 93 minutes led to the declaration of a site emergency. The rupture was caused by a small pie-pan-shaped object left in the steam generator during an outage. This was not the first time a tube rupture had occurred at an American reactor but following on so closely behind the Three Mile Island accident caused considerable attention to be focused on the incident at the Ginna plant. In total, 485.3 curies of noble gas and 1.15 millicuries of iodine-131 were released to the environment.[25]
Historical societies
In addition to the county historical society, there are a number of other historical preservation organizations. Most of these are town or village based.
Newark-Arcadia Historical Society
Butler Historical Preservation Society
Galen Historical Society
Historic Palmyra, Inc.
Lyons Heritage Society
Macedon Historical Society
Marion Historical Society
Ontario Historical & L.P. Society
Pultneyville Historical (please refer to Williamson-Pultneyville Historical Society)
Red Creek Historical Society
Rose Historical Society
Town of Sodus Historical Society
Sodus Bay Historical Society
Walworth Historical Society
Wayne County Historical Society
Williamson-Pultneyville Historical Society (www.w-phs.org)
Wolcott Historical Society
Law, government and politics
The county is governed by a Board of Supervisors, composed of the town supervisors from each of the county's fifteen towns. The board's chairman is selected from amongst the supervisors. The 2007 county budget was $154 million (~$218million in 2023).[26]
The county seat is the town of Lyons and bi-weekly board meetings are held in the Wayne County Court House in the hamlet. In August 2010, the board made history by convening outside of Lyons for the first time—at the Wayne County fairgrounds in Palmyra.[27]
The Wayne Supreme & County Court (7th Judicial District) sits in Lyons and hears felony cases as well as a few civil cases; the Wayne County Drug Treatment Court also provides an opportunity for recovering drug addicts to work with each other and improve their lifestyles.[28] Vehicle and traffic matters, small claims, evictions, civil matters and criminal offenses in Wayne County are heard in locally-funded town and village courts (collectively known as the Justice Courts).[29]
Politics
United States presidential election results for Wayne County, New York[30]
As of November 2013, Wayne County had a total of 56,589 voters registered (53,891 active, 2,698 inactive). Of those totals: 14,339 were registered as Democrats (13,574 active, 765 inactive); 23,144 as Republicans (22,338 active, 806 inactive); 3,035 as Independents (2,831 active, 204 inactive); 1,517 as Conservative (1,454 active, 63 inactive); and the rest as Greens, Libertarians, and other minor parties.[31] In the 2010 gubernatorial election, Wayne County cast 12,126 Democratic votes for Andrew M. Cuomo, 9,552 Republican votes for Carl Paladino, 1,153 Independent votes for Cuomo, 2,489 Conservative votes for Paladino, 490 Working Families Party votes for Cuomo, and 401 Taxpayers Party votes for Paladino.[32]
Wayne County has only voted for the Democratic presidential candidate once since the Republican Party was founded in 1854.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,383 square miles (3,580km2), of which 604 square miles (1,560km2) is land and 779 square miles (2,020km2) (56%) is water.[34]
Wayne County is in the western part of New York State, east of Rochester and northwest of Syracuse, on the south shore of Lake Ontario. Sodus Bay is located on the north shoreline of the county. Wayne is bounded by five other New York counties: the northern boundary is Lake Ontario with Canada on the opposite shore; the western boundary is Monroe County; and the eastern boundary is Cayuga County; the south boundary is shared with Ontario and Seneca counties.
The Clinton Formation, a band of red hematite across the county, led to a thriving iron industry during the 19th century. Furnaces were located in the Towns of Ontario and Wolcott.
Wayne County is included in the Eastern Great Lakes and Hudson Lowlands ecoregion, which extends along the south shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River to Lake Champlain, and south down the Hudson River. This region was glaciated during the last ice age, and contains prominent glacial features including till and drumlins, as well as the valleys containing the Finger Lakes. Part of the area was covered by Glacial Lake Iroquois, while regions further to the east were flooded under the Champlain Sea. At one point during the melting of the glaciers, the Great Lakes drained down the Hudson River to the Atlantic Ocean.[35]
As of the census of 2010, there were 93,772 people, 36,585 households, and 25,304 families residing in the county. The population density was 155 inhabitants per square mile (60/km2).[41]
There were 36,585 households, out of which 29.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.0% were married couples living together, 11.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 30.8% were non-families. 24.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.53 and the average family size was 2.99.
In the county, the population was spread out, with 26.2% under the age of 20, 5.1% from 20 to 24, 23.8% from 25 to 44, 30.7% from 45 to 64, and 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 41.6 years. For every 100 females, there were 98.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.3 males.
The median income for a household in the county was $52,601, and the median income for a family was $62,677. Males had a median income of $47,056 versus $35,684 for females. The per capita income for the county was $25,327. About 7.8% of families and 11.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.4% of those under age 18 and 6.9% of those age 65 or over.
There were 41,057 housing units at an average density of 68 unitsper square mile (26 units/km2). 10.9% of housing units were vacant.
There were 36,585 occupied housing units in the town. 28,106 were owner-occupied units (76.8%), while 8,479 were renter-occupied (23.2%). The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.5% of total units. The rental unit vacancy rate was 9.4%.[41]
Earlier demographic statistics
Families made up 70 percent of the households in Wayne County in 2005. This figure includes both married-couple families (59 percent) and other families (12 percent). Non-family households made up 30 percent of all households. Most of these households were people living alone, but some were composed of people living in households in which no one was related to the householder. Source: American Community Survey, 2005 18.0% were of German, 12.8% Italian, 12.6% English, 11.6% Dutch, 11.4% Irish and 8.9% American ancestry according to Census 2000. 95.7% spoke English as their first language, 2.2% Spanish, 1.8% spoke French and 0.2% spoke another language.
Economy
According to the Wayne County Industrial Development Agency, there are over 150 manufacturing firms in Wayne County, including several Fortune 500 companies located in the county based on market access, a modern transportation network, and favorable industrial conditions. These companies benefit from a skilled workforce including graduates from some of the colleges and universities located within an hour's drive of Wayne County including the University of Rochester, Cornell University, Colgate University and Syracuse University. From its location midway between Rochester and Syracuse, Wayne County is part of the Finger Lakes region (which includes Cayuga, Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Orleans, Seneca, Wayne, Wyoming, and Yates counties) whose businesses annually export an estimated $16 billion in goods.[43]
The Finger Lakes region made $1.2 billion (~$1.7billion in 2023) in agricultural sales in 2007, which represented 27.9 percent of the total farm sales in New York. In 2007, there were 6,417 farms and 1,500,000 acres (6,100km2) of farmland in the Finger Lakes. Wayne County was the State's top producer of fruits, tree nuts, and berries. Apples are a major crop in Wayne—the county was the State's top producer of apples and ranked third in the nation in 2007.[44]
The following quick facts apply to Wayne County businesses:
Wayne County does not have a single unified school district to deliver K-12 education, but multiple central school districts. Each district is governed by a locally-elected board of education, run by a hired superintendent, and funded largely through property taxes, as well as state and federal aid. These districts include:
As with all educational activities in New York State, Wayne County's school systems are ultimately answerable to the New York State Board of Regents and the New York State Education Department, as well as their local communities. These districts also participate in the Wayne Finger Lakes Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), a state-established organization which shares common educational resources and has its own elected board and superintendent.
Wayne County also has several private, parochial/religiously-based schools, including:
Wayne County is home to several festivals and parades, most from late spring through early fall due to the Upstate New York climate. Some of the more notable, listed in order of occurrence, include:
Pultneyville Homecoming Festivities Historic Hamlet of Pultneyville in Town of Williamson, Wayne County on Seaway Trail; www.w-phs.org (3rd weekend every July)
Also, many of Wayne County's volunteer fire departments host "firemen's carnivals" throughout the summer, with parades, rides, food, fireworks, and attractions which become a centerpiece of the summer social circuit.
Communities
The county has no cities. There are 15 towns and seven villages.
Livingston County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 61,834. Its county seat is Geneseo. The county is named after Robert R. Livingston, who helped draft the Declaration of Independence and negotiated the Louisiana Purchase. The county is part of the Finger Lakes region of the state.
Ontario County is a county in the U.S. State of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 112,458. The county seat is Canandaigua. The county is part of the Finger Lakes region of the state.
Huron is a town in Wayne County, New York, United States. The population was 2,118 at the 2010 census. The town is named after the Huron Indians.
Williamson is a town on the south shore of Lake Ontario in the northwest part of Wayne County, New York, United States. The population was 6,984 at the time of the 2010 census. The town is named after Charles Williamson, a land agent of the Pulteney Estate. Its primary ZIP code is 14589, and telephone exchanges 589 and 904 in area code 315.
Macedon is a town in Wayne County, New York, United States. The population was 9,148 at the 2010 census.
Palmyra is a village in Wayne County, New York, United States. The population was 3,536 at the 2010 census. The village, along with the town, is named after Palmyra in present-day Syria.
Palmyra is a town in southwestern Wayne County, New York, United States. The population was 7,975 at the 2010 census. The town is named after the ancient city Palmyra in Syria.
Sodus is a town in Wayne County, New York, United States. The population was 8,384 at the 2010 census. The town takes its name from a native word for the bay in the eastern part of the town: "Assorodus," meaning "silvery water."
Area codes 315 and 680 are telephone area codes of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the north-central area of the U.S. state of New York. Area code 315 was installed as one of the original North American area codes in 1947, while area code 680 was added to the numbering plan area (NPA) in an overlay plan in 2017.
The Preemption Line divided the aboriginal lands of western New York State awarded to New York from those awarded to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the Treaty of Hartford of 1786. It was defined as the meridian (north–south) line from the eighty-second milestone of the Pennsylvania–New York survey line at 76° 57' 58" W northward to Lake Ontario.
New York State Route 21 (NY 21) is a state highway extending for about one hundred miles (160.9 km) through the western part of New York in the United States. The southern terminus of the route is at an intersection with NY 417 in the village of Andover, and its northern terminus is at a junction with NY 104 in the town of Williamson. In between, NY 21 serves the cities of Hornell and Canandaigua and intersects several major east–west routes, including the Southern Tier Expressway near Hornell, the conjoined routes of U.S. Route 20 (US 20) and NY 5 in Canandaigua, the New York State Thruway (I-90) in Manchester, and NY 31 in Palmyra.
New York State Route 350 (NY 350) is a north–south state highway in western Wayne County, New York, in the United States. It extends for 11.40 miles (18.35 km) from an intersection with NY 31 and NY 31F in the village of Macedon to a junction with NY 104 in the town of Ontario. NY 350 serves as the eastern terminus for three routes: the aforementioned NY 31F, NY 286, and NY 441, all of which originate in the Rochester area. Aside from the village of Macedon at its south end and the hamlet of Ontario Center at its north terminus, NY 350 serves mostly rural areas dominated by farmland. NY 350 was assigned c. 1932 to the portion of its routing south of Cator Corners, the north junction with NY 31F. It was extended northward to its current terminus in the 1940s.
New York State Route 88 (NY 88) is a north–south state highway in the Finger Lakes region of New York in the United States. It extends for 20.62 miles (33.18 km) from an intersection with NY 96 in the Ontario County village of Phelps to a junction with NY 104 in the Wayne County town of Sodus. In between, NY 88 passes through the Village of Newark, where it intersects NY 31 and crosses over the Erie Canal. NY 88 originally extended south to the city of Canandaigua when it was assigned as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York. It was truncated to its current length in August 1972. According to the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), the NY 382 designation is reserved for the NY 88 alignment. No timetable exists for the redesignation of NY 88 to NY 382.
Pultneyville is a hamlet located in the Town of Williamson, Wayne County, New York, United States. The population was 698 at the 2010 census.
Sodus Bay is a bay on the south shore of Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes. Sodus Bay is located in Wayne County, New York, United States. Most of the bay is in the Town of Huron; however, the western part is in the Town of Sodus.
Ridge Road is a 121.5-mile (195.5 km) east–west road that traverses four counties in Upstate New York in the United States. The road begins adjacent to the Niagara River at an intersection with Water Street in the village of Lewiston, Niagara County, and passes through several towns, villages, and the city of Rochester before arriving at its eastern terminus at a junction with New York State Route 370 (NY 370) southwest of Red Creek, Wayne County. It is named for the rise atop which the road was built, a mound of sand and gravel that was formed when it was the shoreline of ancient Glacial Lake Iroquois. The ridge is often confused with the nearby Niagara Escarpment, which is much taller, geologic in origin, and lies a few miles to the south.
Seneca Waterways Council (SWC) is a local council of the Boy Scouts of America that serves youth in Ontario, Wayne, Seneca, Yates, and Monroe Counties in Western New York. The current Council President is Ted Orr. The current Council Scout Executive is Stephen Hoitt.
Lake Road is an east–west roadway in western New York in the United States. It extends for 29 miles (47 km) from the Irondequoit Bay Outlet Bridge in the Monroe County town of Webster to New York State Route 14 (NY 14) in the Wayne County village of Sodus Point. As its name implies, it follows the southern shore of Lake Ontario for its entire length. Lake Road serves as the northern terminus of NY 250 and was once the northern terminus of NY 21. The entirety of the roadway east of Bay Road in Webster is part of the Seaway Trail, a National Scenic Byway.
John Swift was an American military officer during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. He founded the town of Palmyra, New York.
Ganargua Creek, also known as Mud Creek, is a main tributary which feeds the Erie Canal and Clyde River in Wayne County, New York, United States. The creek begins just east of the village of Victor in nearby Ontario County and meanders approximately 34 miles from west to east before emptying into the Erie Canal in the hamlet of Lyons. Ganargua Creek is actually split into two sections as it runs concurrent with the Erie Canal for about 3 miles near the village of Palmyra. Numerous tributaries feed Ganargua Creek along its route.
↑ "Find a County". National Association of Counties. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
↑ Barbara, Mann; Jerry L. Fields (1997). "A Sign in the Sky: Dating the League of the Haudenosaunee". American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 21 (2). American Indian Studies Center.
1 2 "Williamson". Pultneyville Historical Society. 2003–2006. Archived from the original on April 15, 2013. Retrieved January 7, 2007.
↑ Marsh, Ruth; Dorothy S. Truesdale (October 1942). War on Lake Ontario: 1812–1815. Rochester, New York: Rochester Public Library. p.11.
↑ Marsh, Ruth; Dorothy S. Truesdale (October 1942). War on Lake Ontario: 1812–1815. Rochester, New York: Rochester Public Library. p.18.
↑ Roemer, Lillian (Spring 1996). The Whale Hunters of Pultneyville. Rochester, New York: Rochester Public Library. p.5.
↑ The first train from Oswego to Charlotte, Rochester's port, ran on January 1, 1875. McKelvey, Blake (October 1968). Railroads in Rochester's History. Rochester, New York: Rochester Public Library. p.13.
↑ Stephen J. Paterwic, Historical Dictionary of the Shakers (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2008), 197.
↑ Paterwic, Historical Dictionary of the Shakers, 197.
↑ See, for instance: A Record of the commencement and progress of Believers at Sodus - and Portbay (1826-1833), ms. V:B-21; and a second volume (1826-1838), V:B-22, which includes a roster, both at Western Reserve Historical Society.
↑ The current Shakers, who live at Sabbathday Lake, in New Gloucester, Maine, maintain a Shaker Library which owns this microfilm, as do many of the Shaker historical sites and a number of academic institutions.
↑ "The Underground Railroad". The Hoffman Foundation Scholarship Essay Program. 1955.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
↑ "The Road North". The Hoffman Foundation Scholarship Essay Program. 1970.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
↑ "Williamson's Contribution to Three Great Movements". The Hoffman Foundation Scholarship Essay Program. 1977.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
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