Chemung River
This is the first known painting of the town of Corning, NY, created by an artist named J. S. Jennings sometime during the 1860s. We’re looking north across the Chemung River toward a settlement of about four thousand people, with a somewhat deforested Dutch Hill rising behind it. In the foreground, a man and woman are walking upon a rutted dirt road. Her attire includes the leggings called “bloomers” that still were considered radical a decade after their introduction in 1851; they challenged traditional (and heavy) women’s dresses, implying both greater physical and social mobility. Going for a walk in the country was just the beginning, and in fact bloomers made a comeback in the 1890s with a feminist biking movement. So although the valley still looks pretty bucolic, a lot of things are happening here.
Perhaps the biggest driver of change is the Chemung River itself, for its level grades have facilitated the roads and now railroads converging at Corning. Just fifteen years after this painting the town already looks substantially different in a bird’s eye view map you can see by clicking on this hyperlink. Now there are three railroads. The Corning Glass Works, established in 1868, occupies a large portion of the riverside along with other industrial operations. Streets are beginning to follow a grid pattern. New York’s southern tier was transforming along with the rest of America.
From the Gazetteer: "Tioga River rises in Penn., flows N. through a deep, wild mountain valley, and unites with the Canisteo at Erwin, and with the Conhocton at Painted Post, from the latter place the combined stream taking the name of Chemung River....Upon an eminence 2½ mi. E. of Elmira Village is the remains of an ancient fortification. It is protected on one side by the river, and on the other by a deep ravine. An embankment 200 feet long, 14 feet wide, and 3½ feet high still extends along the rear of the fortification, and upon it large trees grew when the whites first occupied the country....Chemung Canal and Feeder connects Seneca Lake at Watkins with Chemung River at Elmira, with a navigable feeder from Knoxville on Chemung River to Horseheads, on the summit level of the Chemung Canal, including slackwater navigation from the dam and guard lock at Gibson to Knoxville....The diversion of Chemung River into our canals has been made a subject of complaint and remonstrance by the State of Penn. Plans have been proposed for using Mud Lake, (459 acres) and Little Lake, (708 acres,) in Tyrone, as reservoirs to relieve this canal from the inconvenience felt in dry seasons from low water" (French 619, 220, 62). Major Tributaries: Cohocton River, Tioga/Canisteo Rivers. Major Lakes: Lamoka Lake/Mill Pond, Waneta Lake. Highest Point: Jackson Hill (2,380 ft). Area: 1,740 square miles in New York state.
Samuel Clemons (Mark Twain), from a Letter to John Brown, 4 September 1874
Mark Twain was one of the most famous and prolific American authors of the 19th century. He is remembered today for his novels like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) but got his start as a travel writer: vivid, often sardonic descriptions of foreign countries (and American tourists); regions of the United States and their distinctive cultures. The family of his wife, Olivia Langdon, lived in Elmira, NY and it was here that his sister-in-law built Twain a small study overlooking the Cheumung Valley. At the time of this letter he was just completing his novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published two years later. Many of his most famous works were written during his summer visits to Elmira.
We have spent the past four months up here on top of a breezy hill six hundred feet high, some few miles from Elmira, N. Y., & overlooking that town, (Elmira is my wife’s birth-place, & that of Susie & the new baby). This little summer house on the hill-top (named Quarry Farm because there’s a quarry on it,) belongs to my wife’s sister, Mrs. Crane. A photographer came up the other day & wanted to make some views, & shall send you the result per this mail. My study is a snug little octagonal den, with a coal-grate, 6 big windows, one little one, & a wide doorway (the latter opening upon the distant town.) On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor my papers down with brickbats & write in the midst of hurricanes, clothed in the same thin linen we make shirt bosoms of. The study is nearly on the peak of the hill; it is right in front of the little perpendicular wall of rock left where they used to quarry stone. On the peak of the hill is an old arbor roofed with bark & covered with vine you call the “American creeper”—its green is already bloodied with red. The study is 30 yards below the old arbor and 100 yards above the dwelling-house—it is remote from all noise.
Nathaniel Currier & James Merritt Ives, American Railroad Scene: Lightning Express Trains Leaving the Junction (1874). During the 19th century, the company of Currier & Ives advertised its mass-produced work as "color engravings for the people," and probably accounted for more art on the walls of American homes than anyone else—at least 7,500 unique lithographs totaling at least a million copies. Especially by the 20th century their work was associated with a cheesy nostalgia for simpler times, which was true in some instances but overlooks how often they recorded social upheaval: growing American cities, the Civil War, political events, and here the effects of railroads. We're probably in the Southern Tier town of Hornellville, looking at an overnight express train between Buffalo and New York City operated by the Erie Railway. Try to look past the (for us) old-timey appearance of the steam engines. How do the machines and people interface? What's new, exciting, perhaps a little frightening about the new technology? Can you see the railroad tressle crossing the Canisteo River in the distance?
Works Consulted
—Corbin, C.J. Corning, NY, 1882. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, 1882.
—Currier, Nathaniel, and James Merritt Ives. American Railroad Scene: Lightning Express Trains Leaving the Junction. 1874. Retrieved from the Library of Congress
—French, J. H. Gazeteer of the State of New York. Ira J. Friedman, 1860.
—Jennings, J. S. Scene of Corning, New York. Corning Museum of Glass, via Google Art Project, ca. 1860-1870.
—Spafford, Horatio Gates. A Gazetteer of the State of New York. H.C. Southwick, 1813.