How Hinsdale, NY got its Name and Other History

Some various history on Hinsdale, New York

  1. How Hinsdale got its name. In 1820, the people within the area which now includes Hinsdale and Ischua decided that they no longer wanted to be a part of the community which started out as Hamilton and presently Olean. They contacted their representative in Albany, Elial Todd Foote, who was from Jamestown. They asked him to present to the legislature in Albany a resolution that they become their own community of Fayette. He went to Albany and asked this for the community. Since there was already a Fayette and Fayetteville, the legislature would not pass this resolution. The legislature gave Elial until the next morning to come up with a name or he would have to wait until the next fall when they would be meeting again. Since this was 1820 and there weren’t any telephones he stayed awake for most of the night trying to come up with a name for the community. Finally, he decided on the name of the birthplace of his mother, Libbie Doolittle Foote, Hinsdale, New Hampshire. He felt that it was easy to say and to spell. So on April 14th, 1820, Hinsdale, New York was born. Then, in 1846, the present community of Ischua decided that it wanted to separate itself from Hinsdale, NY.

  1. Colonial Ebenezer Hinsdale established the town of Hinsdale, New Hampshire. This is where Libbie Doolittle Foote had been born.

  1. Captain Elihu Murray, a Captain from the Revolutionary War settled here in 1809. His daughter, Loranda, was Hinsdale’s first school teacher.

  1. Daniel Judd was a contractor building canals and railroads. He was also an inventor and patentee of several machines including an excavator.

  1. Many of Hinsdale’s roads were named for families who lived on them including Fay Hollow, Sherlock Hollow, Dutton Road, Isaman Road, Gile Hollow, Emerson Road, and Flanigan Road. Congress Road was named for Nelson I Norton who represented this area in Washington, DC in “Congress.”

  1. We have two sites that had been part of the Genesee Valley Canal. The one behind the Hinsdale American Legion had been cleaned up while the other one off Underwood Road is still hidden from traffic near the underpass for Route I 86.

  1. We had soldiers who were in the Revolutionary War move here. Many men from Hinsdale were in the Civil War, World War I and II, Korean Conflict, Viet Nam Conflict, and the Gulf Wars.

Schools:

  1. Hinsdale had a wooden schoolhouse, Hinsdale Academy, which burnt in 1906 so the children attended school in the Hinsdale Methodist Church. Each pew was a different grade level. When the school was rebuilt, it was made of red brick. It became too small so for $1.00 part of the farm on the southern part of Hinsdale was sold for a new centralized school. It officially opened in 1936.

  2. Our present fire hall was built on the property where Hinsdale Academy and the brick schoolhouse had been built.

Tag Municipality:
Hinsdale