by David Crumb, Parma Hilton Historian
The new year, 2025, celebrates the opening of the Erie Canal, which stretches 291 miles across New York state from Albany to Buffalo.
The canal created an elongated connection of villages along its route. It inspired new thinking, innovation, business opportunities, and even new religions. The canal opened an easy pathway for settlers to relocate to the western frontier. Today, it is a favorite draw for tourists, hikers, bikers, and canal enthusiasts from across the globe. Because of the Erie Canal, Rochester became America’s first “boomtown,” dubbed the Great Lion of the West. On Monday, January 13, at 7 p.m., Dan Cody will present a program for the Parma Hilton Historical Society on “The Great Lion of the West” in the Ingham Room of the Hilton Community Center on Henry Street.
Between 1809 and 1817, Parma was much larger. When word came out in 1817 that the much-debated Erie Canal project was going to be a reality, the folks in South Parma called for a vote to have their own township. The vote passed, and the newly created Monroe County township was called Ogden. The canal was slated to pass through the village of Spencerport in Ogden. The canal did indeed go through Spencerport when it finally opened in 1825, and the village became an immediate success. However, so did the town of Parma.
North Parma, between Peck Road and Lake Ontario, contained excellent farmland once cleared. The old-growth forest, when removed, created superior fresh land for growing cash crops and producing fruit. Lake Ontario acted as a thermostat, keeping temperatures cool in the spring to keep the fruit trees from budding too fast and then succumbing to frost. In the fall months, the warm lake temperatures helped maintain a longer harvest season. Word quickly spread east that this land was worth leaving home for and starting a new life. Thus, between 1825 and 1850, settlers flocked into North Parma via the Erie Canal to buy new land for sale.
The P.J. Browne 1852 Landowners Map of Monroe County shows that all the good land in Parma had an owner by that date. This was also true of other adjacent towns along the Lake Ontario shoreline.
This year, Monroe County will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Erie Canal. The celebration will include a replica of the Seneca Chief, the large canal boat that left Buffalo for the 1825 opening celebration to head east to Albany. In 2025, the replica will make its way on the historic canal, taking the same route it did 200 years ago with a planned stop in Rochester.
In Parma, we hope to honor documented families that were known to come here and settle via the canal. The Parma Hilton Historian would welcome information from anyone with knowledge of their family’s connection with Erie Canal travel between 1825 and 1850. Our objective is to create a story of some of these early families and their experiences as they settled in Parma to establish new farms and homes. Families named Amidon, Burritt, Collamer, Curtis, Childs, Miller, Simmons, and Wheeler, all from the surrounding Albany area, settled in North Parma between 1825 and 1850.
Philander Curtis left Camillus, New York, in 1825 to check out land possibilities in Parma. He liked what he saw and encouraged many of his brothers, sisters, and cousins to follow. In 1830, his cousin, Elias Curtis, of Saratoga, NY, boarded a canal boat in Albany, got off in Spencerport, and was met by Philander. Both men established large farms on Curtis Road, which was subsequently named for them. Several trunks that Elias brought with him on his trip west have survived and are in the possession of the Parma Hilton Historian.
Please contact the Parma Hilton Historian at http://historian@hiltonny.org if you have an Erie Canal story from your family to share that connects to the early settlement of the town.
