A Short History of Albion

The Village of Albion, the county seat of Orleans County, is located on the old Erie Canal, (now the New York State Barge Canal), in the center of a rich farming region 12 miles south of Lake Ontario.  It is between the large cities of Rochester on the Genesee River 30 miles to the east and Buffalo on Lake Erie 50 miles to the west.  The population from 1830 to 1980 is given below: 

 During the Colonial period, most of New York west of the Hudson River was owned and occupied by the Iroquois Confederacy.  After the Revolution this land was gradually bought from the Iroquois and settled.  In 1798, the Holland Land Company bought the 6 million acres of land (excluding Indian reservations) west of the Genesee River and had it surveyed.  The land office for this vast tract was established at Batavia in 1800.  Settlement began immediately, with settlers clustering at river mouths, crossroads, and mill sites.  In 1803, the Oak Orchard Road (now Route 98) was cut north from Batavia, following an old Indian trail through the Tonawanda Swamp north of Batavia, to the mouth of Oak Orchard Creek, which was projected as the main port for the Holland Purchase.  The first settlement in what is now Orleans County was along the lake in 1803.  In 1807, settlement began along the Ridge Road (now Route 104), an old beach line that provided a continuous dry trail from Rochester to the Niagara River.  The hamlet of Gaines grew up at the intersection of the Ridge Road and the Oak Orchard Road.  Gaines became the largest hamlet north of Batavia, acting as the market center for the surrounding farms, and was predicted to become the seat of the new county that would eventually be erected north of the Tonawanda Swamp. 

Then, in 1817, the Erie Canal was begun to connect the Hudson River and Lake Erie.  In 1821, the route of the canal west of the Genesee River was established and Nehemiah Ingersoll and two partners from the Batavia area brought 100 acres of the William Bradner farm on Oak Orchard Road at the proposed crossing of the Erie Canal and laid out the Village of Newport.  The entire orientation of Western New York changed from the lakes, rivers, and roads to the Erie Canal, which offered fast passenger service on the packet boats and cheap freight rates on the freighters.  By the time the seat for the new county of Orleans was selected in 1825, the booming Village of Newport was selected over Gaines.  The name was changed to Albion in February 1826.  A brick court house and log jail were built in 1827 on land donated by Nehemiah Ingersoll.  The village was incorporated on April 21, 1828. 

The village grew rapidly in the 1830's.  The Presbyterian Church was built in 1831, and the Methodist and Baptist churches in 1832.  The first bank in Orleans County was incorporated in 1834.  The county clerk’s office was built in 1836 and a new jail in 1838.  The Phipps Union Seminary for the education of girls opened in 1837, and an academy for the secondary education of boys opened in 1838.  Albion remained the largest village in the county until 1900, when the industrialization of Medina began to take effect. Since Albion is the county seat, county government has been and still is a major business.  It was also the political center of the county and the agricultural shipping point for central Orleans, with many warehouses and commission merchants.  The main articles shipped from Albion were wheat, lumber, potash, and pork.  In the 1840’s Albion became known as a center for horses and livestock.  About 1855, wheat lost its importance because of competition form the West, the wheat midge, and exhaustion of soil.  Beans and fruit (especially apples) then became the main crops. 

The Erie Canal was Albion’s main transportation link until the railroad came in 1852, dooming the passenger packets.  In the 1880’s the railroad became the main freight carrier and crop storage and processing businesses (fruit evapories, grain and bean elevators, vinegar works, and cold storages) grew up along the railroad.  Then, in 1903, The Burt Olney Canning Factory, specializing in tomatoes, peas, beans, and corn was constructed.  This company eventually merged with General Foods during World War II, becoming Birdseye Snider (complete with a research laboratory for frozen foods), then Hunt Wesson.  The Lipton plant was established in the Thomas J. Sweet Canning factory in 1942 to provide dried food for the military.  These two plants became the main industries in Albion, which suffered when Hunt Wesson closed in 1970 and Liptons in 1980. 

While agriculture and food processing have always been the main business of Orleans County, several industries have provided alternatives in Albion.  At first Albion was relatively self-contained, producing many of the products consumed in the surrounding towns.  There were foundries that specialized in stoves, carriage shops, cabinetmakers, and a wide variety of stores.  In the 1860’s the stove foundries went out of business (the Curtis Works, specializing in farm machinery, lasted until the 1890’s). 

Beginning in the 1820’s, a band of Medina sandstone that occurred along the canal had been quarried for foundations, canal walls, and bridges.  Beginning about 1860, quarrying gradually became a major industry in Albion, supplementing agriculture.  At first the sandstone was mined by the local day labor, Irish and American.  Then, in 1882, business boomed as the sandstone became very popular for paving blocks and curbs.  This boom created a demand for labor that was met by importing English quarry workers, Polish laborers, and then Italian quarry workers.  The quarry business collapsed in the 1920’s under poor management, labor troubles, competition from Vermont granite, and the demand for smooth roads for cars that emphasized asphalt and concrete. 

In 1894, the Western Refuge for Women was established at Albion.  This school for delinquent girls has provided employment for many people over the years.  The complex (now called Albion Correctional) has changed with the times and is now a 700-inmate medium security prison. 

Throughout the life of Albion, while local industries came and went, there has been a continual influx of people form the adjacent cities, who bought small farms or big old houses and commuted to work, and increasing numbers of Albionians who found work in the surrounding cities.  There was a slump in local industry in 1980 when Lipton’s closed, but the effect of increasing sub-urbanization and developing service industries soon became apparent.  In 1987, the number of real estate agencies increased from two to five.  A second prison, Orleans Correctional, opened in 1985.  In 1987, Anchor Bank, a major lending institution, established their mortgage-processing center in part of the old Hunt Wesson plant.  Other businesses are buying up and renovating the remaining empty buildings, and Albion is now well on its way to becoming a suburb with service industry.  

By Neil Johnson