Still changing and still returning
…and as I write this article, our last blog post for the calendar year, we prepare to head into Yates County’s bicentennial year. In 1823, Yates County – what was beforehand the American frontier wilderness, settled by the Public Universal Friend and their followers as well as other groups seeking to find new land and expand the young nation in the years after the American Revolution – was formally separated from Ontario County and established as its own county. It is named after Governor Joseph C. Yates, the New York State governor who signed the act establishing the county.
Next year – which begins in just a few days, really – the Yates County History Center, in conjunction with Yates County government and other organizations and groups in the county, will celebrate the past 200 years of our county’s history with a series of events to highlight that history and feature its accomplishments and achievements. Undoubtedly, we as a community will also look ahead to what the next 200 years may bring for our county, our nation, and even our world.
At YCHC, we have a booklet titled “Changes and Returns: Chapters in our County’s History,” written by former Yates County Historian Frances Dumas in 1998, that we offer for free to visitors to the History Center whether from within the county or from outside the area. Whether Dumas intended to pen this booklet for the 175th anniversary of Yates County, she did exactly that. Each chapter of the booklet is broken into 25-year increments beginning with the county’s founding: 1823, 1848, 1873, 1898, and so on. Within each chapter, Dumas discusses the developments and happenings in Yates County during that specific year while also providing context of what was going on the wider American history and culture at the same time.
The last chapter is titled “It is 1998…”, and it consists of just a few short paragraphs – almost an epilogue to the booklet – describing life in Yates County and in America in the then-present day and all of the changes and returns that had taken place in the preceding 175 years to reach that point. It also mentions the county’s bicentennial year – a quarter of a century away then but just three days away now – and muses over the aspects of life that may change or return by the time 2023 rolls around. I offer you, the reader, a transcript of that last chapter and allow you to think your own thoughts of life in 1998 and 2023.
It will be interesting, 25 years hence, when the County reaches its bicentennial year, to see what people then make of the way we live now. Yates County’s farm population, unlike that of most others in the nation (let alone the state), is increasing. The small hamlets around the county that still survived in the 1970s as actual centers of population, some of them with stores as well as homes, have since disappeared or become little more than names attached to a crossroads. A great many of us drive small cars, but average vehicle size is growing again, as is gasoline consumption.
Where radio gave way to broadcast television, cable and satellite systems now reign. Perhaps the social changes wrought by the automobile and the television set will be dwarfed by those wrought by the computer; much of the information gathered by the writer for this book about the past came from the Internet. On the other hand, most of it came from local newspapers, which still thrive in Yates County.
Consumers in rural areas have become more and more like consumers everywhere else. Little local advertising, for example, is directed specifically towards farmers. People in the countryside are as likely to have a couple of relatively new cars and more than one television set as people in more heavily residential areas. The population of small towns is on the rise as jobs become less concentrated near cities; the issue has too often become one of economic development versus the rural environment. A country as wasteful of open space as the United States has in the last very few years recognized how very scarce and valuable it really is.
It will be interesting to see how people looking back from 2023 will judge us; of course, most of us will still be here to see for ourselves, and no doubt our clothing and hair styles will look exactly as comical to us and our children as those we and our parents thought were the latest and best in 1973 do now.
The past will still be there, though; and one thing that we can be certain of is that some things will change, and others will return.
Of course, many things in Yates County and in America – let alone in the world – have both changed and returned in the time since Dumas wrote this chapter. Yates County is still very much a rural county based in agriculture, one of the smallest counties in New York State population-wise and with a demographic that is one-third Mennonite settlers. It is the small towns and hamlets, rather than big cities or even villages, that seem to represent daily life in the county. We as Americans drive all kinds of cars, big and small, and consumption of gasoline – and its price per gallon – keeps going up. Our culture is becoming increasingly aware of, and concerned with, climate change and its effects on our planet.
Consumers are consumers; nothing about that has changed much in 25 years except for the styles, the fashions, and the fads. Of course, the big-box stores seemed to do in the mom-and-pop stores and now online shopping seems to be doing in the big-box stores. In the last quarter century, we have seen the rise of the internet and social media and the impacts – good and bad – of both.
As a nation and a world, we have weathered terrorist attacks, wars, more attacks, more wars, the worst pandemic in a century, and division both nationally and globally. Small towns are seeming to become more popular places to live again, as people seek to move away from big cities as the ability to work remotely from home becomes not just a necessity at the height of the pandemic but also a permanent way of life for some professions now.
Yet, here we are, looking back on the last 200 years of past history and looking ahead to the next 200 years of future history. How will things look in Yates County, America, and the world look 25 or 50 years from now, let alone 200 years from now? Only time will tell, as the old saying goes; as Dumas told us 25 years ago, we can be certain that some things will change and others will return.
As for me, I have now been working in the research room of the Yates County History Center for a few days over one year, and I can tell you that learning and writing about 200-plus years of history in Yates County and the Finger Lakes region has been one of the most wonderful experiences of my professional career. One thing I must never lose sight of, as I often tell myself when I write the articles for this blog, is the people I am researching are, more often than not, no longer with us. It is rare that I mention, let alone feature, someone in the blog who is still living. Not never, just rare. It is interesting to learn their stories – to read into their backgrounds and their experiences – and present it to you, the reader.
With that in mind, it is my sincere hope that, wherever these people’s souls and spirits rest in eternity, they can look upon my work and appreciate that I am sharing their stories with new generations and letting other people know these people once existed upon this earth and within this county. It is also my sincere hope that you, the reader, and have enjoyed as much as we have the journey of traveling through time and history and learning the true tales of history in Yates County and beyond. Thank you for taking the journey with us, and see you next year as we continue the journey.
