It is quite frequent to listen to somebody say that it was “politics” that led to some selection becoming produced. It is a properly-identified reality that Seneca County was created on March 24, 1804. What is not perfectly-known is all the political and legislative maneuvering concerned in developing Seneca County from the western areas of Cayuga County, with the new county courthouse to be located in Ovid.
Folks in existing-working day Seneca County in the yrs it was element of Cayuga County had difficulty achieving the county seat there. It meant crossing Cayuga Lake or heading about the northern conclusion of the lake and the Montezuma Marshes. When Aurora was the county seat for Cayuga County, this was primarily hard. Even though the initial Cayuga Extensive Bridge, connecting Cayuga and Bridgeport, had opened in 1800, it was nevertheless tricky to travel by land from Cayuga to Aurora. As an substitute, the village of Aurora could only be achieved by smaller boats propelled by oarsmen or by small sailing vessels — there was no direct ferry services.
It really should therefore not be stunning that a desire would create on the component of some Seneca County people to feel that their spot — west of Cayuga Lake — need to turn into a independent county. When this was 1st critically talked over in 1802, several possibilities have been viewed as:
1. Divide then-Cayuga County into a northern county and a southern county
2. Divide then-Cayuga County into a southern county and a northern county but incorporate to this northern part Geneva and some jap sections of Ontario County. This selection was proposed by petitioners offered to the New York State Assembly by William Powell and many others of Ontario County. One surmises that these Geneva-place citizens of Ontario County resented that the Ontario County seat was in Canandaigua relatively than Geneva and they hoped Geneva could possibly turn into the seat for this newly produced county
3. Divide then-Cayuga County so that the portion west of Cayuga Lake would develop into a different new county.
The dilemma of dividing Cayuga County was formally offered to the New York…