The Development of Central and Western New York: From the Arrival of the White Man to the Eve of the Civil War as Portrayed Chronologically in Contemporary Accounts

xi, 466 pp. The traditional treatment of early New York State history has emphasized the importance of New York City, The Hudson and Mohawk valleys, and the northern lake region. It has allowed the central and western parts of the commonwealth to be largely overshadowed by these first settled areas. Such an emphasis is justified, in large measure, by the relative importance of these sections, but the common tendency to skip from one end of the state clear across to the Niagara frontier, ignoring the Finger Lakes Region, and the Genesee and Susquehanna valleys before finding anything worth recording, is to slight much of fundamental significance. True it is that most political and military events had their setting in the sections in close communication with the sea but the central and western parts of the state should not be entirely neglected. To give a more adequate account of these areas is the object of the present volume.--Preface