Allegany County, New York

A visit to Allegany County, NY is like a walk through American history. The county is located in the Southern Tier of New York State, with its center approximately 90 miles due south of Rochester. There are about 45,000 citizens residing in the county’s twenty-nine townships, ten villages and numerous hamlets.

Once, long ago, this area was home to the Seneca Nation who occupied it for several hundred years. In 1627, the first white men, Franciscan missionaries, explored the county and discovered petroleum, the first in North America, at the Seneca oil spring near the present day village of Cuba.

Gradually, white men began to explore this area and began to settle here. In 1782 Moses Van Campen, a frontiersman and scout for American Revolutionary forces, was captured by the Seneca’s and forced to run the gantlet in Caneadea. He did and survived. In the years after the War, veterans of General Sullivan’s armies settled here and raised their families. In 1795, Nathaniel Dyke who had been a member of Washington’s staff, built a home in what is now Elm Valley near Almond. Phillip Church, nephew to Alexander Hamilton, owned thousands of acres of land and built a Mount Vernon style mansion at Belvidere. Later, settlers could be found up and down the Genesee River Valley. In 1806, Allegany County was created by an act of the State Legislature. At that time, the county’s population was just a few hundred people, but that would grow to 30,000 by 1860.

In the first half of the 19^th century, timbering and agriculture were the main businesses of the county. The Genesee Valley Canal was built through a number of the towns in order that it could transport the wood and agricultural products grown here to points north. Later railroads, such as the Erie in 1851, would also provide transportation.

Many of the county citizens were antislavery and supportive of the efforts of the Underground Railroad, which wound its way up the Genesee River the length of the county and beyond. Two documented stations are still standing in Almond and Belfast, with many supposed stations scattered in other towns.