Auburn, New York

“ We rejoice that, in our own country, a wise foresight has already disposed our citizens to set apart at a distance from the busy mart and the thriving town, secluded and beautiful places for the quiet resting-place of the beloved dead. From this pious feeling has sprung our own Laurel-Hill—Mount Auburn, near Boston—Greenwood, near New York, and scores of other places appropriately named and selected in the vicinage of cities and towns of our country—where the monumental pile and the humble tomb bear silent company. ”

“ All the witnesses we have found, testify that this Community was set on foot by the rapping spirits in a large circle of Spiritualists at Auburn, New York, sometime between the years 1851 and 1853. It appears to have had active constituents at Oneida, Verona, and other places in Oneida and Madison Counties. Several of the leading "New York Perfectionists" in those places were conspicuous in the preliminary proceedings, and some of them actually joined the emigration to Virginia. ”

“ The hills are often cultivated to their very tops. It is healthy. Such a region is a treasure in a State so level and placid as much of western New-York; and had it the means of ready access to markets, and to the Atlantic, it would, in a few years, be spotted 224 with gentlemen’s seats from the seaboard. There are some remarkable examples of the east and west, and north and south fissures of rocks (a trait also noted at Auburn,) in these counties. ”

“ In fact the railroad from this last point to Auburn already had been completed more than a twelvemonth and but fifteen months later trains would be running all the way from Syracuse to Rochester; with but a single change of cars, at Auburn.
Upon the heels of this pioneer chain of railroads—a little later to achieve distinction as the [Pg 6] New York Central—came the building of a railroad to the highly prosperous Lake Ontario port of Oswego—the earliest of all white settlements upon the Great Lakes. ”

“ In our journey to this place, we had a practical illustration of the increased facilities and greatly accelerated movements of modern travelling. Having left New York on Wednesday evening, the fifteenth of July, at five o'clock, we found ourselves the next evening, before nine o'clock, at Auburn—a distance but little short of three hundred and fifty miles, which was passed over, omitting, in our reckoning, the time spent at Albany, Utica, and Syracuse, in about twenty-one hours. ”

“ Cincinnati has no Fifth Avenue like New York, but it has its Mount Auburn, its Walnut Hills, its Price's Hill, its Clifton and its Avondale, which are as much superior to Fifth Avenue as the country is superior to the city, and as space is preferable to narrowness. ”

“ Practically a new town, called "East Auburn," has been started on higher ground, and a fight is on to move the post office; but the people in the hollow having the voting strength, hang on to it like grim death. Along the edge of the American River canon and commanding a magnificent view, are the homes of the local aristocracy. In christening Auburn, it is scarcely credible that the pioneers had in mind Goldsmith's "loveliest village of the Plain;" nor, keeping the old town in view, is the title remarkably applicable today. ”

“ It is somewhat alarming to know that the number of houses now actually engaged in the publishing of books, not including periodicals, amounts to more than three hundred. About three-fourths of these are engaged in Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore—the balance being divided between Cincinnati, Buffalo, Auburn, Albany, Louisville, Chicago, St. ”

“ II NEW YORK, Sept. 16, 1894.
DEAREST MIRIAM,—I would have written two or three days ago, but when I’ve had supper I’m too tired to think even. It isn’t the work at the store, either. I’m getting on all right there, and I see how I can make myself useful already. I haven’t been living in Auburnvale all these years with my eyes shut, and I’ve got an idea or two that I’m going to turn to account. No, it’s just the city itself that’s so tiring. It’s the tramp, tramp, tramp of the people all the time, day and night, never stopping. And they are all so busy always. ”

“ We went to Mount Auburn, and it appears very lovely; how much better than the dreary resting-places for the dead so common in New England, overgrown with thistles, and the graves hardly designated by a rude stone! Our Puritan forefathers mistook very much, I think, in making the place of deposit for our mortal remains so forbidding in appearance to the living. A better taste is growing among us. ”

“ This is a clean, well-built town, with 8000 or 9000 inhabitants. The expense of education is 300 dollars; and if that cannot be paid, the students are educated free, subject to instructing others a little. There is no barrier here to the poorest man's son becoming the President, as free-schools abound. We then drove to Mount Auburn, a cemetery delightfully situated about five miles from Boston. They pay 4000 dollars for a lot for a family burying-place. Here some eminent men are interred. There are some beautiful walks over this one-hundred-acres plot of ground. ”

“ They do need me here.”
“It’s the same old place,” said Barbara, at four o’clock the next afternoon, “the same dear, old, sleepy place. Aside from the fact that I find some more tucks let down in gowns and some more inches added to trousers each year, I don’t think Auburn changes anything—even her mind—from going-away time to coming-home time. Procrastination is the spice of life, here.”
“The things that keep a town awake are usually sent away to college,” said her mother, slyly. “But Auburn is solid, as well as conservative.” ”

“ A walk along any part of the dull, low-lying, muddy shore, between the lonely little light-house at Spurnhead and Easington, where the chalk heights commence, will afford abundant evidence of the abstraction of many broad, fat acres; and more than one spot can be pointed out beneath the waters, once the site of a flourishing port or village, of which the mournful legend runs: “Here stood Auburn, washed away by the sea.” ”

“ As the placer mines in Idaho and in East Oregon were worked out, many gold-hunters turned farmers and settled the fertile Powder Elver Valley, finally founding a city here, which has grown and prospered, while Auburn, a mining town eleven miles away which once boasted ten thousand inhabitants, is left like Goldsmith’s Auburn,—a “ deserted village.” ”

“ Hall and others at which time it was resolved to lay out a town to be called Auburn, and the next day a street was located from Freezeout gulch to Blue canon, and building lots taken on each side, and in a short time a number of buildings were put up and Auburn assumed the usual appearance of a new mining town. The diggings in that vicinity were thereafter called the Auburn mines." Many interesting stories have been written about the rise and fall of this camp, which is now not even a ghost town, but the compiler has never seen any information about the reason for the application of the name. ”

“ Auburn is a city of 19,000 inhabitants in western Washington, halfway between Seattle and Tacoma, which serves as the western terminus for the Northern Pacific's transcontinental trains. A substantial part of the city's economy is dependent upon that road's activity there. The record before the Commission indicated that if the merger were approved, the Auburn yard would be closed, and that the town of Everett, on the other side of Seattle, would become the western terminus for all of New Company's transcontinental trains. ”

“ It is not these things, superadded characteristics, negligible details, which cause one to cry or to laugh—which mark the difference between town and town. It does not matter how one sees a town—but how one feels it, the soul, the meaning, the reason of it.
And one can feel New York as one can feel no other town—not even London. ”

“ In Auburn are the Auburn (State) prison (1816) , in connexion with which there is a women’s prison; the Auburn Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) , founded in 1819, chartered in 1820, and opened for students in 1821; the Robinson school for girls; and the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, for the education of working girls, with a building erected in 1907. The city owns its water-supply system, the water being pumped from Owasco Lake, about 21⁄2 m. S.S.E. of the city. There is a good water-power, and the city has important manufacturing interests. ”

“ The Town of Auburn was originally set off from Worcester, Sutton, Leicester and Oxford, and was incorporated on the 10th of April, 1778, with the name of Ward, in honor of General Artemas Ward, of Shrewsbury, a man of great prominence in this region, active as a patriot during the difficulties that caused the separation from the mother country, and receiving on the eve of hostilities the appointment of First Major General in the Revolutionary Army. ”

“ When first from Auburn's vale I roam'd forlorn.
He spoke—and frantic with the sad review,
Prone on the shore his tottering limbs he threw.
Life's crimson strings were bursting round his heart,
And his torn soul was throbbing to depart;
No pitying friend, no meek-ey'd stranger near
To tend his throes or calm them with a tear.
Angels of grace, your golden pinions spread,
Temper the winds and shield his houseless head.
Let no rude sounds disturb life's awful close,
And guard his relicks from inhuman foes. ”

“ On, on rushes the busy throng—a ceaseless tide of human hopes and worldly ambition, cares and disappointments; and on, on presses Auburn. At length he catches a glimpse of that charming figure; not for an instant does he doubt its identity—so on, on he presses, while nearer, still nearer to his eager vision floats the white robe of the pursued. Small respect has he for persons, as he elbows his way through the crowd. ”

“ Parker, Joseph Phillips, Samuel Learned, Israel Phillips, Jacob Work, Jonathan Cutler, David Stone, John Harwood, Thomas Gleason, William Phips, Isaac Putnam, Joseph Gleason, Jonas Bancroft, Elisha Livermore, Gardner Chandler (for his land within the limits) Nathaniel Scot, David Bates, Nathan Patch, David Richards.
Population at Different Periods.—1790, 473; 1810, 540; 1830, 690; 1850, 879; 1880, 1317. The State Census of 1895 gives the number as 1598.
The Area of Auburn is about 10,000 acres.
Auburn Records.
Auburn Births,
To the end of the year 1850. ”

“ All this is so simple and natural that we cannot fail to believe in the reality of Auburn, or Lissoy, or whatever the village may be supposed to be. We visit the clergyman's cheerful fireside; and look in on the noisy school; and sit in the evening in the ale house to listen to the profound politics talked there. But the crisis comes. Auburn delenda est. Here, no doubt, occurs the least probable part of the poem. Poverty of soil is a common cause of emigration ”

“ In the afternoon, blue and purple in the far distance, we saw the glorious range of the mighty Catskill Mountains, forming one unbroken series of snow-capped domes, hiding in their deep recesses many of Nature's grandest secrets. The evening was closing in as the steamer passed under the swinging arch of the bridge at Albany, the chief town of New York State.
Albany is chiefly remarkable for its very fine Capitol, which has been in process of building since 1871, and is still far from finished, though it has already cost an enormous sum. ”

“ The way I took through Muitzeskill and Castleton to Greenbush, is marked with New York and Albany guide posts, but none of the old mile-stones adorn its path.
Ever since Rhinebeck the Catskills have been marching along the western horizon, and while generally the river is too far away to be a part of the picture, the country, the beautiful country, makes one continually wonder, not that the painters of a past generation grew to love the region and to revel in its seductive delights, but rather that they could ever stop its delineation. ”

“ For his comfort, the gentry around inform him that his children may be got back in a day or two, and he may find his baggage somewhere on his route to the west—offering, for a consideration not very trifling, to send off an express for either one or the other.
Albany is the seat of government, and has a State House, of which the historian of New York remarks: “In the structure of this edifice, the rules of architecture, whether Egyptian, Hindoo, Chinese, Grecian, Roman, Saracenic, Gothic, or Composite, have been violated.” ”

“ The most uncomfortable vehicle going, yet let me give the angel his due—in a stage people do move up; everybody waits on everybody else; hands fare; rings for change, and pays all of the old-fashioned courtesies which went from a busy city life with the advent of the conductor, the autocrat of ill manners and indifference."
"Superstition evidently does not obtain in New York on one subject at least," said Aubrey, "and that is the bad luck supposing to accrue from crossing a funeral procession. ”

“ And everywhere to north, south, and east, the endless waste of city, stark, clean-cut, naked alike of tree and of art, unsoftened even by the haze of its own exudations—everywhere the window-riddled blocks of oblongs and cubes gridironed with steel rails—New York in all the painted squalor of its Pueblo splendour. ”

“ How they can spend so much time in the street, too, that puzzles me. My feet were tired out before I had been down-town an hour. Life is harder in the city than it is in the country, I see that already. I guess it uses up men pretty quick, and I’m glad I’m strong.
But then I’ve got something to keep me up to the mark; I’ve got a little girl up in Auburnvale who is waiting for me to make my way. ”

“ And, of course, they are summer boarders really—New York is where the summer boarders come from. When they are up in Auburnvale they call us the Natives—down here they call us Jays. Every now and then on the street here I come across some face I seem to recognize, and when I trace it up I find it’s some summer boarder that’s been up in Auburnvale. Yesterday, for instance, in the car I sat opposite a girl I’d seen somewhere—a tall, handsome girl with rich golden hair. ”