Setting:Town History
From Literepetition
The town of Bartleby, NY, is not a very large one. Nestled amongst the myriad small communities scattered throughout the Finger Lakes region, it is better known for its well-preserved historical architecture and two stately wineries than for its bustling metropolitan center. With a population of approximately 7,500, it is quiet, quaint, and breathtakingly lovely in the fall. It's also a college town, which is responsible for a surge in population each year that brings the actual number of residents closer to 10,000 than the locals occasionally are comfortable accomodating. It is roughly an hour's drive to Rochester, perhaps three to four hours to Syracuse, two to two and a half to Buffalo, and a little over five hours to New York City. There are ski resorts as close as a couple hours to the west, and the Finger Lakes themselves begin after perhaps twenty minutes to half an hour's drive. Bartleby's award-winning wineries are only two of countless others in the region.
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[edit] History
[edit] Origins
Nestled in a richly fertile river valley, Bartleby was originally known as Bartleby Farm, named for Colonel Andrew Bartleby, who settled there with his sons and his young second wife after the American Revolution. Drawn by the excellent farmland and the promise of protection from Seneca natives by the Colonel and his boys, several other families soon settled in the area, and by 1791 the cluster of farms had grown into a small but thriving community. The settlement was incorporated into a village in the spring of that year, and the name was shortened to Bartleby, to honour the Colonel who had passed away only the year before.
[edit] Beginnings of Commerce
The town, its economy richly fed by agriculture, swiftly grew, and by the eighteen-teens was a thriving center of commerce, particularly upon the completion of the Erie Canal. This man-made river connected the Hudson River in the east to Lake Erie in the west, and was the catalyst for an explosion in commerce that more than doubled the town's population in one short decade, enabling the rapid transfer of goods between the small towns along the Canal to the huge and wealthy metropolis of New York City-- and the ships that carried their cargoes to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Civil War
The events of the Civil War largely passed Bartleby by, although, with its burgeoning Quaker population, it served as an outpost of the clandestine Underground Railroad, seeing many furtive, frightened men and women on their way north to Rochester, one of the last stops before Canada and freedom. At least three houses in the town's well-preserved town center have bolt-holes proudly proclaimed on the National Historic Register to be way-stations for fugitive slaves. Many of Bartleby's young men served the Union cause, and after the war, those who survived returned home to fall again into the relatively easy life of a wealthy small town.
[edit] Into Modern Days
The town's economic luck received another boost in the latter half of the nineteenth century when the trend of health spas and water cures siezed the popular consciousness. Sir Anthony Robert Hopwood, a British entrepreneur and devotee of modern health methods, opened the Randall Sanatorium, named for his mentor and teacher. It was an instant success, and made Bartleby, for a time, a popular vacation destination for the wealthy of New England and the East Coast, there to take the waters and breathe the air, and spend their money. The elegant old building, protected now by a local historical society, still stands and is open seasonally for tours, school field trips and, by individual arrangement, investigations by paranormal societies, it being locally supposed to be quite haunted. Bartleby's annual Halloween parade ends at the sanatorium's sprawling front grounds, whence commences the Fall Festival, a carnival event lasting three days and drawing spectators and participants from surrounding communities.
[edit] Establishment of the Schools
Elwood Dowd Preparatory Academy, a private school, was opened in the late 1870s, and is still recognised as one of the state's best private schools. Its graduates are routinely accepted into Ivy League and highly-regarded private universities, and Bartleby's own Meridian College, itself highly-accredited, fosters many EDPA graduates' higher education.
