PROCEEDINGS OF THE ༢) TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE Livingston County HISTORICAL SOCIETY HELD AT GENESEO, N. Y., NUNDA, N. Y.: W. B. SANDERS, BOOK AND JOB printer, 1899. A.S. Publication-L. R. DOTY, W. A. BRODIE, G. B. ADAMS Finance-C. K. SANDERS, H. B. HIGGINS, A. D. NEWTON. Membership-WM. HAMILTON, J. A. LAKE, J. J. BAILEY. Necrology-H. D. KINGSBURY, A. O. Bunnell, Wm. Carter. THE NEW YORK P 180457 ASTOR, LENOX AND Livingston County Historical Society. TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL MEETING. The twenty-second annual meeting of the Livingston County Historical Society was held at the Log Cabin in Geneseo, Tuesday, January 24th, 1898, at 11 o'clock A. M. Vice-president S. E. Hitchcock, presiding. The following report of the Secretary and Treasurer was presented and read, and on motion the same was duly accepted and adopted: REPORT OF SECRETARY AND TREASURER. The officers of the society having in charge the preperations for this annual meeting were compelled for various reasons, to appoint a later day than the constitutional day for holding the meeting. It has been the custom of late years to have an evening session and an entertainment of a somewhat popular character, and such an entertainment was planned this year but the speaker whom we selected was forced to disappoint us, and sufficient time did not intervene to enable us to find another. We were very fortunate in inducing Hon. William P. Letchworth, of Portage, to attend the meeting with the promise to discuss a very interesting matter at the afternoon session. At the annual meeting in 1896 various resolutions were offered looking to a change of the time for the holding of the annual meetings, and were laid over under the rule until the following year, favorable action was not then taken upon them, but the recommendation of the council that the annual meetings occur on the third Tuesday of January was adopted. During my connection with the society as an officer, having more or less to do with the arrangements for the annual meetings, I have been unable to discover any real good or practical reason why the meetings should be held in mid-winter, but on the contrary my observation has satisfied me that much greater interest would be manifested and a larger attendance secured at the annual meetings if they were appointed for some milder season in the year. It has, I believe, been suggested when this matter was under discussion, that farmers find it more convenient to attend the meetings in winter than at any other times in the year; this may be theoretically true in a measure, but as I recall the names of the few farmers who have from year to year attended the meetings I think I am quite safe in saying, that there is not one of them who would not be just as sure to attend a meeting of the society, either in the spring, summer or fall; unfortunately the farming element of our membership does not appear to take advantage of this arrangement designed for their convenience to any appreciable extent, and it is a source of no little regret that the farmers attending our annual meetings form an exceedingly small proportion of the members present, and I do not believe on the whole that the plan of holding mid-winter meetings accomplishes at all what it is designed to in this direction. It cannot be doubted that the most interesting members of the society are those who have been longest with it and are in advancing years; the discomforts of a journey in the depth of winter deters every year many of these members from attending who would be glad to be present at the meetings but for this circumstance, and I fully believe that a change would secure a much larger attendance on this account; there are other considerations, for example, that of procuring comfortable quarters for the meeting, expense of heating and etc., that contribute to satisfy me that the experiment might be at least tried, even if it is not thought wise to modify the constitution in this regard. During the year, the following members of our society have |