Archive: Around Town

Lansing Town Historian visited the Village of Lansing last week to talk to the Village trustees about how they can take advantage of the town historical archives.  A key Village asset in the town archive is the The Rita Smidt archive, six boxes of research that Smidt used when writing her book 'Lansing at the Crossroads', a unique, detailed history of the creation of the Village of Lansing.  But Bement said that the one file cabinet currently used for Village records will not be enough as more material is found.

"Anybody in the Town or Village can come to our archive building and do research," Bement said.  "You are very welcome to use any of the resources that we have."

Bement said that one of the key reasons the Village was formed is the geology of the Town of Lansing.  She said it had to do with the quality of the farmland.

"As you go farther north you get good farmland," she said.  "As you go farther south you get all this clay.  It also makes for very different attitudes.  The farmers up north are against urban development, but when you get to where there is lots of clay that's all you've got is urban."

She noted that Cayuga and Tompkins counties were originally one county called Milton County, made up of 100 military lots in 1790.  These lots were doled out to officers in payment for their service in the Revolutionary war.

"In 1817 when the Town of Lansing was formed when Tompkins County was split from Cayuga County we got 60 lots and Cayuga County got 40 lots," Bement said.  "Why wasn't it 50/50?  The Town of Genoa Historian told me it was because of the land.  We got more lots because our land wasn't any good."

Village Trustee Gerry Monaghan has been organizing the Smidt collection, and said he was about two thirds through the nine boxes of notes and documents.

"It's the most incredibly well organized archive," Monaghan said. "She was a copious note-taker.  There are the voter rolls, there is a ton of Community Party information.  There is a ton of earlier 1972 pre-village meetings and all the notes from meetings to discuss how they were going to go about getting the referendum set up, and letters about why we need the Village, and letters from Ed LaVigne's dad on why the Village was not a good idea."

Monaghan reached out to Bement last year, and they have been meeting since then to define what will be called The Rita Smidt Archive.  He said when he is done organizing the collection he plans to reach out to former Mayor Anne Furry for more documents.  Monaghan acknowledged Village Clerk Jodi Dake's role in saving Village documents and said he would like to make copies of parts of the Schmidt materials to be displayed in the new Village Hall.  Bement gave the Trustees a print of a historical map and a historical directory of the Town.

Bement told the Trustees that when the Village was formed the Warren Road / Route 13 intersection and the Triphammer Road / Route 13 intersections were dangerous.

"There was one old fellow who got stopped by the police for going straight through the intersection without stopping," she said.  The policeman said, 'You didn't stop at the stop sign.'  He replied, 'This is such a dangerous intersection that I just go as fast as I can to get through it.'

"No one really understood how fast development was going to happen after 1963 and the early '70s," she added.  "So when they built the verpass for the Triphammer Road intersection they built a diamond intersection.  They didn't future in any possibility of having a clover-leaf.  That's a very bad thing because it's so terribly congested.  It's right here in page six of Rita's book.  And they never can fix it."

Bement has been the Lansing Historian since 1988.  She founded and administers the Lansing Historical Association.

"When I look at those pictures of North Triphammer I realize we really have made some progress in making that street look a lot nicer," said Deputy Mayor Lynn Leopold.  "We put in the grassy lawns and the trees and it certainly is an improvement."

Monaghan said that the collaboration between the town and village on historical materials is a good starting point for villagers to begin taking advantage of benefits their Town taxes entitle them to.

"If we can focus on things that are really working in terms of Town/Village relationships, that is a great place," Village Trustee Gerry Monaghan said. "It has been wonderful to go up there.  It is a real gem, and it's ours, too."

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