William G. Andrews (2) (1930–)

In Brockport in the Age of Modernization, 1866 – 1916, William G. Andrews examines the changes to the village of Brockport, New York over the fifty-year period between the end of the U.S. Civil War and the U.S. entry into World War I, drawing upon contemporary sources, primarily The Brockport Republic, to catalogue these changes. Andrews organizes his book into six chapters. The first, “1865 Brockport,” establishes much of the village history prior to the focus of Andrews’s study and draws upon his previous books, Early Brockport (2005) and Civil War Brockport (2013). The next four chapters examine Leaders, Infrastructure, Utilities, Transportation, and Institutions.

Many of the leaders financed, owned, or managed the mechanical reaper factories that made Brockport an industrial center at mid-century. Discussing utilities, Andrews writes, “A telephone system appeared in Brockport when Captain Lina Beecher arrived from Medina in December 1881 as the Constructing Manager for the Bell Telephone Co. claiming that twenty-one businesses and professional offices had subscribed” (pg. 69). The mails underwent rapid change with each new U.S. President as, “until 1971, postal service in the United States was operated by the Post Office Department, a part of the executive branch of the United States government, and was used by successive presidents as their most important patronage dispensing tool” (pg. 71). Along with this change in the person holding the office, the location varied regularly, sometimes being in the shops owned by the current postmaster. As a result, “the arrival of the mail became a great social occasion” (pg. 72). In this, Andrews recalls Henkin’s The Postal Age.

In discussing changes in transportation, Andrews details the role of the canal in the village’s finances and competition between the canal and the railroad. As to cars, Andrews writes, “By 1908, automobiles had become sufficiently numerous and dangerous in Brockport that the village board enacted two ordinances regulating automobiles. One set a speed limit of 10 mph… Another 1908 rule required automobiles being operated in the village to have a means of ‘alarm’ to warn pedestrians and other automobile drives and, if operated between dusk and dawn, to have lights before and aft” (pg. 85). Turning to institutions, Andrews draws largely upon Wayne Dedman’s out-of-print 1969 monograph, Cherishing This Heritage, to discuss the history of the Brockport Normal School, later State Teacher’s College. Andrews concludes, “It seems fair to say that the village today is what it is pretty much because of those fifty years. Brockporters owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to their predecessors, both the leaders and the many followers, for their accomplishments” (pg. 106).

Andrews’s Brockport in the Age of Modernization fits somewhere between his monographs, Early Brockport and Civil War Brockport, and his pictorial histories, Around Brockport and Brockport Through Time. While it largely consists of textual analyses of historical documents, Andrews writes Brockport in the Age of Modernization more for the audience of the pictorial histories than an academic audience. As a study of the late nineteenth century, this will offer a useful guide to academics, but will primarily appeal to casual fans of Americana and antiquarians focused on the Erie Canal and the villages on it.… (mais)

In Early Brockport, William G. Andrews traces the history of the Erie Canal village from the time of the Senecas through the Civil War. He acknowledges gaps in early records of the area and, in his section about Native American communities and the earliest white settlers, draws largely upon more generalized sources of Western New York. After describing the purchase and division of the triangle tract that gave rise to Leroy, Bergen, Sweden, Clarkson, and Hamlin, Andrews focuses on village co-founder Hiel Brockway who, though his later business ventures, links the narrative with the impact of the Erie Canal in bringing trade and settlers to the region and causing its early growth. He briefly covers the early Brockport Collegiate Institute, though he admits in his preface that he “omitted an extensive presentation of the history of the Brockport Collegiate Institute” as “Wayne Dedman’s book, Cherishing Our Heritage, has done that job very well and needs no help from” him (pg. xiii). Andrews devotes one chapter to Cryus McCormick, inventor of the reaper, and how both the invention and the industry that developed to manufacture it on a large scale affected the town’s growth. A later chapter covers Mary Jane Holmes, one of the most popular authors of the nineteenth century, who made her home in the village. Andrews does not extensively chronicle Brockport’s role in the Civil War, as he felt the breadth of sources was deserving of its own book, which he later wrote in 2013 (Civil War Brockport: A Canal Town and the Union Army). Andrews succeeds in his goal of conveying “to the reader a sense of life in the village during its early decades” while providing “a better understanding of and appreciation for those who came before us in the community we have inherited” (pg. xviii). This book, being published by the Village of Brockport’s 175th Anniversary Committee in 2005, will primarily appeal to Brockporters and those interested in the history of Western New York or the Erie Canal. It is the first of Andrews’s monographs on Brockport history, with the second focusing on the Civil War years and the third, Brockport in the Age of Modernization, 1866-1916, being published in 2018. Together, all three tell the history of this Victorian village on the Erie Canal.… (mais)

William G. Andrews’s Around Brockport, as part of the Images of America series, uses photographs and historic drawings to tell the story of a community, in this case the communities that made up the Triangle Tract purchase west of Rochester. Andrews, an historian of Brockport, focuses on the towns of Sweden and Clarkson, the village of Brockport, and the college in Brockport, later part of the State University of New York. Photographs focus on historic figures, buildings, landscapes, and technology, with several side-by-side comparisons to show a century or more’s worth of change. Like Andrews’s Brockport Through Time, this consists primarily of photographs with explicatory captions and will appeal to residents of Brockport and its surrounding communities and will also make a nice gift for recent graduates from the College at Brockport.

Andrews has written several previous books about Brockport’s history, including Early Brockport (2005, published on the occasion of the village’s 175th anniversary), Civil War Brockport: A Canal Town and the Union Army (2013, part of the History Press’s Civil War Series), and Brockport in the Age of Modernization: 1866-1916 (2018, part of the America Through Time series). For those interested more specifically in the history of SUNY Brockport, The Campus History Series’ State University of New York at Brockport by Mary Jo Gigliotti, W. Bruce Leslie, and Kenneth P. O’Brien will make an equally appealing read.… (mais)

William G. Andrews’s Brockport Through Time reprints photographs of the Erie Canal Village from the nineteenth century through the early twenty-first, with particular attention to images that show changes in buildings or locales over time, such as the athletic facilities of the original Brockport Collegiate Institute and the modern gymnasium at the State University of New York College at Brockport. Some images, like those of the Seymour and Morgan Reaper Factory, are from old newspaper illustrations, but the majority are photographs. Andrews offers the caveat in his introduction, “Very few photographs of buildings and places in Brockport before 1900 exist. The best sources of early photographs are picture postcards… Thus, the ‘time’ ‘through’ which ‘Brockport’ passed – as recorded in this book – is essentially from 1900 through 2014” (pg. 3).

In these pages, Andrews traces “changes in housing, the decline of the manufacturing industry, and the growth of the schools and the college” (pg. 3). An interesting addition is a table comparing types of business and professions on Brockport’s main street between 1907 and 2014, both for its similarities and the differences inherent in a modern college town. Andrews organizes the book into 6 sections: businesses, public buildings, residences, industry, transportation, and recreation. Each chapter grows successively shorter, possibly due to a lack of sources or the inability to juxtapose landmarks as the character of Main Street changed over time.

Andrews has written several previous books about Brockport’s history, including Early Brockport (2005, published on the occasion of the village’s 175th anniversary), Civil War Brockport: A Canal Town and the Union Army (2013, part of the History Press’s Civil War Series), and Brockport in the Age of Modernization: 1866-1916 (2018, part of the America Through Time series). He’s also written Around Brockport (2002) for Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series of local history books. The current work, consisting primarily of photographs with explicatory captions, will primarily appeal to those who live in Brockport or in the towns west of Rochester, New York. It will also make a nice gift for students at or recent graduates of SUNY Brockport. For those interested more specifically in the history of SUNY Brockport, The Campus History Series’ State University of New York at Brockport by Mary Jo Gigliotti, W. Bruce Leslie, and Kenneth P. O’Brien will make an equally appealing read.… (mais)