Finger Lakes history · regional story
When the Glen Springs guest books became history
A 1943 Cornell notice records a second journey for the Watkins Glen hotel’s books: into a new collection of regional history.
By February 1943, Glen Springs was closed because of the war, Cornell Alumni News reported. Its hotel books had another destination. The paper announced that William M. Leffingwell, the resort’s president, had given its records to Cornell’s new Collection of Regional History. Cornell Alumni News, February 25, 1943, p. 247.
The notice describes registers for forty-two years from 1890. A photograph caption identifies both registers and account books in front of curator Whitney R. Cross. It is a glimpse of the working records behind a resort, rather than another advertisement for a stay. Cornell Alumni News, February 25, 1943, p. 247.
The donation joined a collection still taking shape. The article calls it the largest of thirty gifts and loans received since the previous fall. A Rockefeller Foundation grant had helped prepare quarters in Boardman Hall for preserving and cataloging manuscripts. Cornell Alumni News, February 25, 1943, p. 247.
Cross was looking for much more than hotel books. The article records his appeal for letters and diaries, transport-company records, farm accounts and the papers of shops, schools, churches and industries. Everyday records were part of the history he wanted saved. Cornell Alumni News, February 25, 1943, p. 247.
The announcement gives us a useful lead, not the contents of the registers. We have not read their entries or established which volumes survive and can be consulted today. Before a guest’s name becomes a story—or a hotel account becomes a claim about its workers—the actual record still needs to be found and checked.
Sources & research notes
Review status: Developing history. Human editorial review is pending.
Written and source-checked with AI assistance under an owner-authorized editorial process. This is not a personal review by Riley or an independent historian. Sources and unresolved questions are listed below; corrections are welcome.
- What the records establish
- A dated, contemporaneous Cornell announcement documents the reported donation and identifies the donor, curator and kinds of books involved. It does not reproduce their entries or establish current archive access.
- What remains uncertain
- The original registers, accession documentation, current finding aid, volume-by-volume dates, access restrictions and reproduction terms remain uninspected. The report’s forty-two-year phrase has not been converted into an inferred exact end year, guest list or treatment history.
- What we are researching next
- Locate the current collection description and accession record, then request an item-level register and account-book list. Keep historical donor identities distinct and review privacy before extracting guest or patient-related data. This is an internal unsent request, not authorization to contact the archive.
Sources
- Cornell Alumni News, volume XLV, number 19, February 25, 1943 — Historical Collection Grows — Cornell Alumni News editorial staff; individual article byline not printed; 1943-02-25. Locator: Printed p. 247, PDF p. 7, center column; Printed p. 247, PDF p. 7, center column; Printed p. 247, PDF p. 7, photograph caption; Printed p. 247, PDF p. 7, right column. Exact sub-passages registered separately; dates, attribution, methods and units checked against the retained source. Accessed October 22, 2026.