Canandaigua Lake, from Main Street to a first boat ride

Francis Hall reached Canandaigua by stage in 1816. Caroline Cowles Richards lived there and kept a diary. Nearly four decades apart, they each left an account of the lake: Hall looking down Main Street toward the water, Richards taking her first boat ride.

Hall's published itinerary places Canandaigua on his September 6, 1816 route through Auburn, Cayuga, and Geneva. The stage journey from Geneva covered 16 miles of hills and valleys. He reported seeing only two houses along the way, though he admitted he had paid little attention to the soil. It was a traveler's impression from the road, not a count of everyone living there.

In the village, Hall noticed how the street rose from the shore. Stores and warehouses lined the lower part of Main Street. Farther up stood houses and cottages with colonnades, porches, and verandas, set in gardens or larger grounds. At the bottom of the view was the lake.

That arrangement gave Hall a way to describe Canandaigua: the businesses near the water, the homes above them, and the lake visible down the street. His account is selective, but it tells us where he was looking.

Richards began her diary in Canandaigua in 1852. She wrote about school, her household, relatives, neighbors, errands, and things she noticed. The diary, published in 1913, preserves that schoolgirl's view of village life.

A Tuesday entry from 1854, printed just before the entry dated May 26, describes a picnic up the lake. Richards and her sister met a group heading out and asked permission to go along. Neither girl had ever been on a boat, or on the lake.

They boarded the steamer Joseph Wood toward the head of Canandaigua Lake, got off at Maxwell's Point, and ate their picnic dinner. Then they climbed through a glen. Alexander Howell and Mrs. Wheeler reached the top first, and the others cheered. After the boat ride home, the sisters told their grandmother how much they had enjoyed it.

For the two girls, a lake close to home was still somewhere new to go. The outing depended on permission to join the group, a boat to take them, and people to share the day. We cannot assume every child in Canandaigua had the same experience. We can say that these sisters had lived beside the lake without having been out on it.

Hall's account and Richards's diary offer a useful pairing. One follows a visitor's view down Main Street; the other follows two residents onto the water for the first time. The distance between those experiences is part of what makes both worth reading.

About this account

The pairing is an editorial interpretation. It does not suggest that Hall's visit caused anything in Richards's later life, or that two observers can represent the whole history of Canandaigua Lake. Neither account explains the labor behind the road, warehouses, homes, steamer, landing, or picnic, and neither represents every resident or community. Business records, newspapers, property research, crew and passenger records, and culturally appropriate sources would be needed to follow those histories.

Source note

Hall's September route appears on printed pages 169-170, and his Canandaigua streetscape appears on printed page 186, of the Library of Congress 1818 edition of Travels in Canada, and the United States, in 1816 and 1817. Richards's Canandaigua diary context begins on printed page 1, and the lake-picnic entry appears on printed page 27, of the Library of Congress 1913 edition of Village Life in America, 1852-1872. This article uses original synthesis and paraphrase only and reproduces no source page, map, portrait, photograph, illustration, layout, typography, or extended quotation.