The city was incorporated as a village in , the same year that Oneida County was organized. After the Erie Canal arrived in , Utica grew quickly and became a city in Utica State Hospital for the Insane was established in Utica College, a private college established by Syracuse University , opened in Lawrence frontiers. In , Utica Township was formed from Whitestown. In Erie Canal construction was begun and in the canal was completed to Utica and on October 22, , the first boat "Chief Engineer" made the initial trip between Rome and Utica, when a great celebration was held.
The opening of the Erie, from Buffalo to Albany, in , greatly stimulated the town. In Utica Academy was built and the first public library was opened in In slavery was abolished in New York State and the slavery abolition movement soon agitated Utica, like most northern towns. The Abolitionists were few and despised at first but the movement, which excited much bitter controversy, continued until its objects succeeded in the Civil war On February 13, , Utica was chartered a city. In the same year it suffered considerably in a national cholera epidemic.
In the city had a population of 10,, with considerable manufacturing. See " Chapter 89 — Review of the Mohawk Valley," for a description of Utica in In the Chenango Canal was opened northward from Chenango River headwaters of the Susquehanna, through the Oriskany Creek Valley to Utica, forming a valley outlet for coal from Pennsylvania.
This canal was abandoned in In the modern utilization of trunk waterways, the use of the Chenango Canal may be resumed as well as other abandoned waterways of New York State, the pioneer and leading commonwealth in canalization. In the trolley route was extended eastward to Little Falls. In Barge Canal construction was begun and completed from Waterford to Utica in and opened in In Harry Atwood, in his flight from St.
Louis to New York City, passed over Utica and down the Mohawk, and, on June 3, , the great United States naval dirigible Shenandoah passed westward over the Mohawk Valley, on its way from New York to Buffalo, adding the final chapter in Utica's history of transportation.
In the Utica water works and gas company were inaugurated. In the city hall was begun. In an armory building was erected, and in the present armory took its place. In the Government building and the Y. The first great industrial development in the Utica metropolitan district was the beginning of cotton cloth manufacture in at New York Mills, at the present western limits of Utica.
For the first forty years of its growth, , Utica was largely a trading and transportation center. Manufacturing followed the building of the Erie Canal here as elsewhere along the waterway as it furnished the first cheap transportation facilities.
The first local industry of importance was the manufacture of plows begun in Local industries and the dates of their establishment follow: , grist mill, iron foundry; , pottery works; , engine and boiler works, oilcloth factory; , steam planing mill; , ready made clothing; , stoves and furnaces; , woolen goods; , cotton cloth; , locomotive headlights; , iron works; , steam gauges; , firearms; , knit goods; , caps; , worsted; , burial caskets.
Other industries have been added and are constantly coming to this increasingly great industrial center. Utica, as the county seat, was the center of Civil War activities of Oneida County. The principal military organizations recruited from this and adjacent counties were 14th, 26th, 81st, 97th, th, th infantry regiments, the Oneida Cavalry and Oneida County had representation in some twenty-five other Civil war commands. Company M, machine gun company, is located at Hudson.
In the 3rd Battalion of the 10th ranked first among the battalions of the state in point of efficiency. Troop G, st Cavalry, 27th Division, N. Many of its members served valiantly in the World War, when most of the guard cavalry units were transferred to machine gun companies.
Cookinham , of Utica. The World War was won in the arms and ammunition factories of America as well as upon the field. The Lewis machine gun was a great asset in the military strength of Great Britain. It was manufactured in Utica by the Savage Arms Company, which attained the remarkable monthly production of two-thirds of all the output of the factories of Great Britain and Canada combined.
The rifle factory of Ilion and the machine gun works of Utica were powerful factors in winning the war for America and her allies. The City of Utica was the home of Horatio Seymour, a brilliant public man, who was a Democratic "war" governor of the greatest patriotism. Seymour was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president of the United States in , running against General Grant. See biographies of Seymour, Conkling and Kernan.
Roscoe Conkling of Utica, was a dominating figure in American National politics during the last half of the Nineteenth Century. He was born in in Albany, and was the son of Alfred Conkling, a noted lawyer of that day, and a one-time resident of the village of Canajoharie.
Roscoe Conkling was elected mayor of Utica in , and, as a Republican, represented the Oneida district in Congress from until , when he was elected United States Senator from New York, being re-elected in and Conkling was a strong supporter of President Lincoln's war policies in Congress. When Grant became President, Conkling became his trusted adviser. James and also that of Chief Justice of the United States.
Both of them were declined. In , Senator Conkling was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. He was unsuccessful. Rutherford B. Hayes being nominated and elected Senator Conkling advocated the nomination of General Grant for a third term in Conkling's party opponent, James G. Blaine, was also a candidate. James A. Garfield, friendly to the Blaine faction, was nominated and elected. A bitter party feud now ensued between the Conkling and Blaine groups. The Conkling followers called themselves "Stalwarts" and their opponents "Half-Breeds,' names which came into general use.
The climax was reached when President Garfield nominated W. Robertson for Collector of the Port of New York. Platt, resigned. They became candidates for re-election but were defeated, after a contest of 48 ballots, by Warner Miller of Herkimer and Elbridge G.
There was never a more violent partisan conflict in the history of America, since the Leislerians and anti-Leislerians of , in New York State. President Garfield was assassinated on July 2, , by a lunatic crazed by the prevalent political fury.
Blaine, the political opponent of Roscoe Conkling. The vote was very close and Mr. Conkling became the attorney for the Democratic organization, during the recount which followed. Conkling died in His handsome stone mansion stands in Rutger Park, Utica. A prominent political figure of Utica was James S. Sherman , who was for years a Republican Congressman, representing the Utica district and who was elected vice president with William H.
Taft on the Republican ticket of A statue of Vice President Sherman was erected here in , and his house stands on Genesee Street. Many other nationally famous men have been residents of Utica.
A statue of Steuben stands at the intersection of Genesee Street and Steuben Parkway, named for the general. General John Cochran was a close friend of Washington and in charge of the American Revolutionary military hospitals. He moved from Palatine Church to Utica and died here. Besides these there were many Oneida County pioneers who were Revolutionary officers of lesser rank.
The last survivor of the War of was Hiram Cronk , a native of Frankfort, who died at Ava, Oneida County, in , at the age of years. He was given an impressive funeral in New York, where his body lay in state in the City Hall. Oneida County made great contributions of man power to the Union cause during the Civil War, and the number of commanders of high rank which it furnished to the Union forces is truly remarkable.
Major General Henry W. Breese, Rear Admiral Montgomery Sicard. Mention has previously been made of Vice President James Sherman Among other famous citizens of Utica and Oneida County have been: Horatio Seymour born , died , Governor of New York, , , one of New York's finest executives who, as our Civil War governor, was a strong supporter of the Union cause, later unsuccessful candidate for President against General Grant in Senator Roscoe Conkling , a noted lawyer and a great power in Republican politics in the third quarter of the nineteenth century; U.
Roberts, journalist, historian and U. Treasurer; S. North, journalist; Pomeroy Jones , historian; Daniel E. Wager , lawyer and historian; Thomas R. Proctor, who gave Utica its splendid park system; Harold Frederic , journalist, London correspondent N. Oneida County was the home of O. Elmer, who was born in and died in at the age of years.
The Mohawk Valley has had an unusual number of centenarians, including Delina Grandma Filkins of Jordanville, years old in ; Sophia Sitts of Starkville, years old at her death in ; Hiram Cronk of Ava, years old at his death in , then the last surviving soldier of the War of ; David Timerman near Fort Plain years, and several others.
For brief biographies of many of the foregoing natives and citizens of Utica and Oneida County, see the biographical volumes of this work. Utica is a modern, progressive American city with an interesting and important past and a promising future, due to its past and present enterprising and patriotic American citizens and its wonderful industrial and commercial location.
With the exception of Clinton and Oriskany the city district has reached out until four of the six villages mentioned are now actually part of the Utica city section. Building is continuing along motor roads and trolleys extending towards Clinton and Oriskany, so that it is not improbable that these communities may be part of the city of Utica within the next fifty years, when the city will embrace a quarter million people.
Whitesboro and Oriskany are given separate mention among the other Mohawk Valley communities in this volume but New Hartford, Yorkville and New York Mills are now integrally a part of Utica and are considered under the subject of the city of Utica as one municipal area or metropolitan district. The run from Utica to Clinton 9 m. The Utica city district embraces a section within a circle drawn ten miles from the Utica City Hall, including the village of Clinton and Hamilton College on its western outskirts.
On this route the tourist passes New Hartford settled , virtually a southern part of Utica. This route to Syracuse is described in the Summary in the front of this book. The road from this point to Clinton is the most traveled highway in the Mohawk Valley west of Amsterdam, according to figures of From Hamilton village it runs south along the Chenango River, a headwater stream of the Susquehanna.
Utica will have four wards. The First Ward will be on the northeast corner, the Second Ward on the northwest corner, the Third Ward on the southwest corner and the Fourth Ward on the southeast corner. In March, an election will be held to choose three aldermen from each ward. Heavy rains and melting snow and ice cause area creeks to rampage through communities in Herkimer County.
Frankfort and Mohawk bear the brunt of the deluge with water several feet deep on many streets. Schools and many businesses are closed and trolley service is discontinued in Dolgeville, Little Falls, Herkimer, Ilion, Mohawk and Frankfort. Charles Higgerson is elected president of the Tramp and Trail Club. Hertwig, secretary; and Bertha Buhl, treasurer. Although Utica and the neighboring city of Rome have their own metropolitan area, both cities are also represented and influenced by the commercial, educational and cultural characteristics of the Capital District and Syracuse metropolitan areas.
Formerly a river settlement inhabited by the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy, Utica attracted European-American settlers from New England during and after the American Revolution. In the 19th century, immigrants strengthened its position as a layover city between Albany and Syracuse on the Erie and Chenango Canals and the New York Central Railroad. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city's infrastructure contributed to its success as a manufacturing center and defined its role as a worldwide hub for the textile industry.
Utica's 20th-century political corruption and organized crime gave it the nicknames "Sin City", and later, "the city that God forgot". Like other Rust Belt cities, Utica had an economic downturn beginning in the midth century. The downturn consisted of industrial decline due to globalization and the closure of textile mills, population loss caused by the relocation of jobs and businesses to suburbs and to Syracuse, and poverty associated with socioeconomic stress and a decreased tax base.
With its low cost of living, the city has become a melting pot for refugees from war-torn countries around the world, encouraging growth for its colleges and universities, cultural institutions and economy. Several theories exist about the history of the name "Utica". Although surveyor Robert Harpur stated that he named the village, the most accepted theory involves a meeting at Bagg's Tavern a resting place for travelers passing through the village where the name was picked from a hat holding 13 suggestions, Utica being included because it is the name of a city of antiquity several other upstate New York cities had adopted classical Mediterranean city names earlier, such as Troy, New York and Rome, New York , or were to later, as with Syracuse, New York Prior to construction of the fort, the Mohawk, Onondaga and Oneida tribes had occupied this area south of the Great Lakes region as early as BC.
The Mohawk were the largest and most powerful tribe in the eastern part of the Mohawk Valley. Colonists had a longstanding fur trade with them, in exchange for firearms and rum. The tribe's dominating presence in the region prevented the Province of New York from expanding past the middle of the Mohawk Valley until after the American Revolutionary War, when the Iroquois were forced to cede their lands as allies of the defeated British. The land housing Old Fort Schuyler was part of a 20,acre Since the fort was located near several trails including the Great Indian Warpath , its position—on a bend at a shallow portion of the Mohawk River—made it an important fording point.
The Mohawk called the bend Unundadages "around the hill" , and the Mohawk word appears on the city's seal. During the American Revolution , border raids from British-allied Iroquois tribes harried the settlers on the frontier. More than 40 Iroquois villages were destroyed and their winter stores, causing starvation. In the aftermath of the war, numerous European-American settlers migrated into the state and this western region from New England, especially Connecticut.
That year a contract was awarded to the Mohawk Turnpike and Bridge Company to extend the road northeast to Albany, and in it was extended. The Seneca Turnpike was key to Utica's development, replacing a worn footpath with a paved road.
The village became a rest and supply area along the Mohawk River for goods and the many people moving through Western New York to and from the Great Lakes. The boundaries of the village of Utica were defined in an act passed by the New York State Legislature on April 3, Utica expanded its borders in subsequent and charters. On April 5, , the village's eastern and western boundaries were expanded, and on April 7, , Utica separated from Whitestown on its west.
After completion of the Erie Canal in , the city's growth was stimulated again. The municipal charter was passed by the state legislature on February 13, The city's growth during the 19th century is indicated by the increase in its population; in the United States Census ranked Utica as the 29th-largest in the country with 20, residents , more than the populations of Chicago , Detroit and Cleveland , respectively.
In the latter part of the century, Chicago became a boomtown based on resource extraction and processing from the Midwest, and as a railroad center. Utica's location on the Erie and Chenango canals encouraged industrial development, allowing the transport of anthracite from northeastern Pennsylvania for local manufacturing and distribution.
Utica's economy centered around the manufacture of furniture, heavy machinery, textiles and lumber.
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