Cortland in 1895.

Cortland in1895.

1895 was the year when the electric trolley system replaced the horse-drawn trolley in Cortland and Homer, and the Traction company added McGrawville as a destination. A fat and lean baseball game was played in Homer, N. Y., and the Cortland Hospital was dedicated for public use on North Main Street.

It was the year of the disastrous Cooper Brothers machine shop and foundry fire, a fire at the Cortland Chair factory and a very  destructive fire at the Cortland Cart & Carriage Co. on the corner of Port Watson and S. Church Streets.

Kellogg Road was built to lawyer O. U. Kellogg’s farm house (lawyer Kellogg bought, sold and raised trotting horses for racing), and the Tioughnioga river was crossed by an Erie & Central New York railroad bridge just below Port Watson bridge. The E. & C. N. Y. railroad was completed the next year and connected Cortland to Cincinnatus via McGrawville. It was sold a few years later to the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western R. R.

Cortland and Cortlandville were places where alcohol could not be sold, as licenses were not given by the Excise Tax Board which was controlled by Prohibitionists.

Naturally the heavy drinkers invaded Homer, which was still serving alcoholic beverages, and several illegal speakeasies opened in Cortland and Cortlandville.

The proprietor of Bates’ Hotel on Church St., who was caught serving whiskey and tried before a police justice, was sentenced to sixty days in the Jamesville penitentiary. It was his second violation of the law.

It was the year when Patrick Quinlan was murdered. The murder was never solved. In December there was a tragic murder-suicide in South Cortland involving neighbors R. W. Tripp and George W. Galpin. Tripp murdred Galpin and then took his own life.

Italian immigrants dug and installed the water and sewer systems in the early 90’s, and installed rails and switches for the Traction company. The Traction company opened a village park with a pavilion and ice skating rink on the east side of the Tioughnioga river, sold a few lots in a planned development next to the park, and built a trolley bridge over the river at Elm Street extension (that’s how the trolley got to McGrawville and back).

The Cortland Traction Park development ultimately failed. It was located on the east side of the Tioughnioga river on the steep side of Salisbury hill. In 1906 the Cortland-Homer Traction company opened a new park and pavilion at Little York lake and extended the trolley from Homer to Little York.