Meridian, New York, is a sleepy village on the northeastern edge of the Finger Lakes in Central New York.  Its history is not that of a great city with great men influencing the destiny of the nation.  Rather, its history is that of a small village that began as a tiny frontier settlement and grew to become a pretty little town that served its surrounding agricultural community.  It didn’t get very big; its population has remained fairly constant since the Civil War.  It never became famous, nor, with a couple of exceptions, did any of its inhabitants.  Nevertheless, its history is a mirror, in many ways, of the history of small-town America.  Its inhabitants lived lives of interest to few outside its boundaries, but those lives were touched by the waves of history that swept the United States from the early nineteenth century into the twenty-first.

I have been exploring that history, beginning with the people who lived there before Europeans came to North America.  I grew up in Meridian, and my memories of an idyllic childhood there have inspired me to learn as much as possible about its history, and here I will try to share what I have learned with you.

In 1855, a Syracuse newspaper reported on the Fourth of July celebration in Meridian.  The paper’s correspondent wrote of patriotic sentiments expressed, a procession of the village inhabitants, a picnic under the elm trees, and cheers that accompanied the firing of cannons nearby.  The article closed with the comment that Meridian “is described to us by a friend as a place of very pretty girls, very white paint and very green grass.” [1]

While the village still can boast of pretty girls, white paint and green grass, there is more to Meridian and in this blog, I’ll share some more about the rest.

 

 

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[1]            Syracuse (NY) Evening Chronicle, 5 July 1855.