NEW PLAT BOOK PACING FARM BUREAU’S MOVE
By George Questa
Unknown Newspaper Source
Unknown Date
Transcribed by Kathy S. Bentley
The new addition of the “plat book and directory” of Allegany County put out by the Farm Bureau – its first revision since the 1964 book – is now available at the bureau’s office in Friendship.
It’s like a city directory, only for farms and rural dwellings.
Using full-page maps of the county’s 29 townships, the 96-page book pinpoints by numbered dots where who lives on what farm or rural property. For the nosey, it even tells who’s an owner and who’s a tenant.
Names and addresses appear alphabetically on the pages facing the maps, and again in an index at the back of the book starting with A for Alfred running through W for Wirt.
The Farm Bureau directors have been talking about moving the Bureau’s office from the second floor rooms in Town Hall in Friendship to a mobile home or trailer on the property of Raymond J. Strahan, off Rt. 408, between Belvidere and Friendship.
Initial cost is estimated to run $2,500 to $2,600, and the money is to come from the sale of the plat book and directory.
It would cut utility and rent costs and be a matter of greater convenience for Bureau directors, members, and patrons of the Allegany County Farmers Cooperative Fire Insurance Co. Office manager is Milton Scutt of Friendship.
The town maps also detail state highways and county roads, and continues to list many of the familiar names – descriptive, romantic or just plain practical – by which many town roads long have been known.
Road names like Hog Back in Alma, Snow Ball Hollow in Scio and East Hill in Friendship.
Smaller settlements whose residents get mad when they are called hamlets are named and located.
Such as Tinkertown in Five Corners, in Alfred; Whitney Crossing, Burns; Karrdale, Almond; Bishopville, Almond; Aristotle, Allen; Wiscoy and Rossburg, Hume; Kossuth, Bolivar; Pikeville, Alma; Shongo, York Corners and Stannards, all three in Willing; Spring Mills, Independence; Nile in Friendship; Phillips Creek, in Ward; Lyons Corners and North Valley, New Hudson; Rockville Lake and Transit Bridge, Belfast; Bennetts, West Almond; and Higgins, in Centerville.
Not to forget the likes of Rattlesnake Hill, the state game management area in Grove, and Rushford and Cuba lakes whose locations everybody knows.
The maps also locate the north flowing Genesee River, the counties principal waterway, and its east-and-west creeks and what’s left of the railroads, the Erie-Lackawanna.
The maps not only bring the names of people up to date, but their names are on the facing pages, giving the maps less of a cluttered look. You just match up the number dots on the map with the number and name on the facing page, and there you are.
People doing any kind of business in the county find the plat books and directories a gold mine – salesmen, banks – policemen, firemen, utility companies – and the new Rural Senior Citizens Informational Center in Wellsville. They are well worth the $4 cost, up a dollar from the 1964 books.
Jerry M. Knapp of Alma, president of the 206 farm family member Bureau, says 3,000 books were ordered from a Hornell printer, costing the Bureau about $4,500. The 14 months of work it took to get the material ready for the printers was masterminded by Harold Snyder of Alfred, working with Mrs. Lawrence Vossler of Wellsville. The last edition numbered 1,500 books, but anticipation demand led the Bureau to double the 1964 edition.
The front cover of the book is illustrated with photographic reproductions of scenes from the farms of Albert Young, Canaseraga; Harold Snyder, Alfred; Judson Stearns, the poultry man, Alfred; and Robert H. McNinch, the supervisor, Amity.