[Index] [Vital records]
The Yates County Chronicle was the successor of The Penn-Yan Whig and the Yates County Republican of the 1840s and 1850s. The editor from 1854 on was Stafford C. Cleveland, who later, in 1873, published the History and Directory of Yates County, one of the best 19th-century county histories.
Cleveland was definitely what would today be called a "history buff" and besides being an early and enthusiastic member of the Yates County Genealogical & Historical Society (founded in 1860, one of the oldest in the country), published a great deal of historical matter in the pages of his weekly paper.
Mrs. Dianne Stenzel abstracted her two volumes of Genealogical Gleanings from the Chronicle and its predecessors, beginning in 1824 and running up through September, 1867. These are both still available from Heritage Books in CD-ROM format, and being copyrighted material (the royalties have been donated to the County Historian's Office) will not be reproduced here. The papers have been microfilmed, and the next roll after those Mrs. Stenzel abstracted begins in October 1867.
The table below displays links to the various pages that have been uploaded so far. There will at some point be a comprehensive index to these pages, but until then they will be indexed only through the search engine on the main page. Of course you may also run the search function in your browser to find a specific name.
Just a word about the format of the abstracts: they are verbatim, with ellipses (...) showing where a portion has been left out. Generally these consist of material irrelevant to genealogy. Nineteenth-century obituaries particularly are much more verbose than those of today, for example, and made much of the decedent's high moral qualities. Also, descriptions of such incidents as railway accidents were much more graphic than would ever be published nowadays; much of the blood and gore is represented by these ellipses. However, if a print from the microfilm of the original is desired, this can be provided; see the note below.
To obtain a print of the original notice, you must include the following in your request:
Each print will be billed at a rate of $1 each. Please do not pay in advance.