19th Century Logging Towns In New York State

[Mike S]

When people are doing genealogy for the small towns listed on birth or death certificates from 100 or more years ago some no longer exist. So it's hard to get much information about family living in those areas. I know from conversations with my dad that my grandfather worked for several years for timbering companies along the Southern Tier in Western New York and Pennsylvania in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I learned from much more direct information about what that meant when my wife and I were transcribing an oral history taken from a World War I NYS veteran living in Olean, NY. He described how timbering companies set up gangs of workers in areas they were timbering and established small towns for them to live in. Some of them were quite large and they all provided all the necessities for family life. They lasted about 20 years or so until the area was completely timbered, then the entire towns was relocated to other areas and given different names. This man was quite a character who spoke in wonderful colorful language.

It was from guys and girls like him that I learned so much about the part of the country my family has lived in since the late 1700s. I also learned not to be so frustrated in genealogical research when not finding small towns they lived in. It helped me understand why research on my mother's side of family history in Hungary presented the same problem. Towns come and go, so little is permanent.

 

[jasonc]

When people are doing genealogy for the small towns listed on birth or death certificates from 100 or more years ago that no longer exist. So it's hard to get much information about family living in those areas. I know from conversations with my dad that my grandfather worked for several years for timbering companies along the Southern Tier in Western New York and Pennsylvania in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I learned from much more direct information about what that meant when my wife and I were transcribing an oral history taken from a World War I NYS veteran living in Olean, NY. He described how timbering companies set up gangs of workers in areas they were timbering and established small towns for them to live in. Some of them were quite large and they all provided all the necessities for family life. They lasted about 20 years or so until the area was completely timbered, then the entire towns was relocated to other areas and given different names. This man was quite a character who spoke in wonderful colorful language.

It was from guys and girls like him that I learned so much about the part of the country my family has lived in since the late 1700s. I also learned not to be so frustrated in genealogical research when not finding small towns they lived in. It helped me understand why research on my mother's side of family history in Hungary presented the same problem. Towns come and go, so little is permanent.

Ghost town Web page has all 50.my state has a few.my county has three.oslo,quay, viking,white city,ft.capron,ft.vinton,the original ft.pierce.of that are now after 1925,quay and oslo.my county was part of two others as people came here it changed.that is a partial list.

 

[Michael74]

...family history in Hungary presented the same problem. Towns come and go, so little is permanent.

Some of my relatives moved from Budapest to the village of Grabati. There is a town in Romania with that name today. I don't know if it is the same Grabati or not. My ancestors sojourned there when that area was all one country.

 

[Mike S]

Some of my relatives moved from Budapest to the village of Grabati. There is a town in Romania with that name today. I don't know if it is the same Grabati or not. My ancestors sojourned there when that area was all one country.

My maternal grandparents came to America from Hungary in 1915. My grandfather's family had lived in the fairly large city of Miskolc, which I visited a few years ago. My grandmother's family lived in a small village of Osvath, of which I can find no record.

One of the things I wanted to do in Hungary was to try the dishes my grandmother used to make to see how closely they matched my memory (she died in 1968.) The food was exactly how I remembered it, delicious.