Developing story3 sources
Emily Howland, beyond the directory’s job title
The 1929 directory put Emily Howland under farming. Its short entry also recorded an honorary degree and connections well beyond that label.
Open recordWork and enterprise
Explore agriculture, mills, vineyards, industries, businesses, and everyday labor around the lakes.
Current exhibit
This collection may grow or change order as more material is reviewed and published. Each item keeps its links to the sources.
The 1929 directory put Emily Howland under farming. Its short entry also recorded an honorary degree and connections well beyond that label.
Open recordThe Case laboratory’s museum record follows two 1920 experiments: measuring daylight for industry and listening without success for a message from Mars.
Open recordThe NWS account follows the 1998 Labor Day derecho through roads, boats, shoreline houses and power lines around Cayuga and Owasco lakes.
Open recordA federal authorization list puts Canandaigua Industries and Widmer’s Wine Cellars on the page under their own names and identifiers.
Open recordA 1995 Cornell report kept labor hours visible in a five-year vineyard experiment, while keeping company payroll rates private.
Open recordThe National Park Service’s account of Auburn’s Thompson Memorial church preserves another building story: congregation members supplied much of the labor for a 1910 parsonage.
Open recordThe 1935 agricultural census counted more than vineyards. Cayuga County’s column records cabbage fields, sweet corn, tomatoes and land in orchards and vines.
Open recordThe Divine Word alumni history follows its Conesus property from farm to seminary, including the cooking and laundry work that supported the school.
Open recordThe Marcellus railway began with electric ambitions. The historical society’s account follows the line that actually carried passengers, farm goods and mail toward Otisco Lake.
Open recordAn 1896 county history follows a two-and-a-half-mile millrace along Ninemile Creek from a private association into the state canal system.
Open recordWhitford’s canal history records a dispute over the Keuka outlet: the canal needed water, but so did the mills downstream.
Open recordBefore the Steadman House, Marcellus's historical society made a museum in municipal rooms. One founder remembered building its shelves with lumber from the Upper Crown Mill.
Open recordHarold Saxton's 1973 account describes a floating research platform anchored over more than 500 feet of water.
Open recordHistoric Geneva's research puts paid workers beside the Swan family in Rose Hill's history.
Open recordIn 2019, researchers compared fixed instruments, shoreline surveys, and laboratory samples on Seneca and Owasco Lakes. The methods did not always tell the same story.
Open recordRochester planted trees to protect its water supply. When disease appeared in the plantations, the work expanded into nurseries, underplanting, and a laboratory in Springwater.
Open recordFlooded land, mill power, and canal navigation pulled water-level policy in different directions. A 1906 state history records the arguments without making them disappear.
Open recordE. Lewis Sturtevant took possession of Geneva's new agricultural research station in March 1882. His first report records the work of making a farm ready for science.
Open recordAn 1894 foreclosure account and an 1898 map show a Skaneateles boat works changing hands and standing idle. The names behind the business are harder to untangle.
Open recordNear Hall's Corners, a farmer's pail caught seven inches of rain. A federal report used that observation, flow estimates, and damage photographs to document the July 1935 storm.
Open recordTubman took people into her Auburn household long before the Home formally opened in 1908. The farm, a neighboring property, and an A.M.E. Zion partnership sustained that work.
Open recordAn 18-foot Penn Yan boat appears in wartime manuals and maintenance indexes. The records identify the Model AT, but leave its production numbers and service history unanswered.
Open recordRochester bought watershed land and planted millions of trees to protect its drinking water. DEC's 2015 plan describes the work behind the two lakes' forested shores.
Open recordBeverly Stamp of Lakewood Vineyards petitioned for the Seneca Lake appellation. It became official in 2003, as federal wine regulation moved from ATF to TTB.
Open recordDouglas and Susanna Knapp and Robert Plane asked for a Cayuga Lake wine appellation. The federal designation took effect in April 1988, inside the larger Finger Lakes region.
Open recordThe 1940 agricultural census counted 1,228 hired farm workers for one September week and 461 for one March week. The difference is striking, though the table cannot tell us who they were.
Open record