Archive: Around Town

If you have ever wondered what the building next to the little school house in the Town Hall and Library campus is, you should go in on a Saturday morning.  There you will find members of the Lansing Historical Association sorting the archives or working on a new exhibit or program.   Town Historian historian Louise Bement, a former Lansing 4th grade history teacher, is also the president of the historical association, an active group of history buffs who maintain a collection of records and artifacts spanning over two centuries.  The core of this group is quite busy, not only in preserving the records and Lansing's heritage, but in presenting it and making it a vibrant part of current town life.

"The Historical Association uses the archives that are here," Bement says.  "A town can't own the archives.  If you don't have a historical association then the Town Historian would have the archives.  We have public programs in October and in the spring, which are very well attended.  The Board of Directors always has so much to discuss, and we do so much for the Town."

Bement founded the Lansing Historical Association in the fall of 1988.  In the first year there were around 30 members.  At its peak it attracted over 250 members.  Today there are 186.  The Association was officially chartered by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York on November 16, 2010.  The Historical Association Board of Directors currently has 15 members who meet five times per year.


Lansing's Historical Association mounts periodic exhibits, including a museum exhibit in the Historical Records Building during the annual East Shore festival of the Arts show.  Members maintain and exhibit the Field School House, a one room school house that was moved to the Town Hall campus from Peruville Road near Armstrong Road.  They sort the archives.  The Association also provides the Susan Howell Haring scholarship for a graduating high school senior who plans to study history, named for a past Lansing Town Historian.  (Click here for the Star article on the history of Lansing Town Historians.)

The Town of Lansing was formed in 1817 when the Town of Milton was split in two.  Milton was established in 1791.  The collection includes items that are almost that old.  It includes school yearbooks and government and town records that go back to 1817 and earlier.  They have poor house records and pack master and highway records.

"It lists whose cow was in whose yard that had to be returned," Bement says.  "Whose pig was running loose.  We have records that go back to 1800 or more."

Genealogies and historic maps, artifacts and many pictures are included in the collection, and a historical costume collection is slowly growing.  Recently Bement provided pictures from Lansing's history to the Triphammer Tops Market to be converted into beautiful sepia pictures and a large mural celebrating the town.


The association is also an active publisher.  They publish a quarterly newsletter filled with reprints of various Lansing historical documents, newspaper articles and remembrances.  They reprint books that have gone out of print that have to do with town history.  They also carry books about Lansing that have been written by Bement and other members, including a beautiful remembrance of Ludlowville compiled by Jeane Bishop with help from Bement and Bea Davis.

"We work here every Saturday morning, from 10 'till noon almost every Saturday," Bement says. 

The Historical Association declined to take over the North Log Cabin when the Cayuga Museum offered it to the Town, because members feared they would be taking on too much.  The cabin, the oldest known log cabin in Tompkins and Cayuga Counties, was built by Thomas North, a Revolutionary War veteran whose descendents went west and successfully petitioned to name their new home in Michigan after their childhood home in New York.  The cabin was originally built near Conlon Road around 1800, and it eventually became an exhibit at the Cayuga Museum in Auburn.  When the museum no longer wanted it, they offered it to the Town of Lansing.  Instead a committee was formed, funds were raised, and the cabin was reconstructed and dedicated at a ceremony in 2010 attended by descendents of North who now live in the Michigan Lansing.

Bement says Historical Association members are hoping another committee will be formed to provide period furnishings for the inside of the cabin.  She sometimes takes individuals on tours of the building, but says that there would be more interest if the inside is furnished.


"If they ever get anything inside we would like to open the cabin on special days like the 4th of July," she says.  "Sometimes I open it to take people through it.  One committee brought it from Cayuga County.  And one committee put the cabin up.  Every committee gets tired and then a new committee gets formed."

Past programs have included speakers like Peter Larson, talking about his family farm; an in depth look at the notorious Lewis family of Sangerfield; Brad Griffin's presentation on the Smith Corona plant that used to be in Groton that manufactured secret encoding and decoding devices for the armed forces; Bob Kibbee presented a history of local maps from 1600 to the present; and Ryan Vanderhoof presented the history of an Ithaca guitar luthiery.

You don't have to be a member to attend programs or research the collection.  But membership is the best deal going.  It only costs $10 per year, or $100 for a lifetime membership.  That pays for the printing and mailing the newsletter.  Other funds are raised by book sales, various projects, and donations.  People who receive help in researching their families often give donations.


The future of Lansing's past is looking good.  The Association hopes to make a space to display its antique clothing collection.  Members are planning the big exhibit for next spring's art festival.  In the near future Bement has a couple of upcoming presentations scheduled, including a tour of the Asbury graveyard tomorrow (October 10) at 2pm, a presentation on Salt Point on October 22 at 7:30pm, and a presentation about boats and boating at Salt Point on November 10 at 7pm.

"We just keep evolving," Bement says.  "Before we had this association the Town didn't really know what its history was.  The Town Historians did a lot of work.  We had some very good town historians, and some years we didn't have any town historian at all.  So I thought it was extremely important to start a historical association and get organized so we could do more for the Town.  And that's what's happened.  I'm sometimes amazed when I think about how much we do and how big we are."

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