Once again, a new addition to my collection engendered this article on a town I visited some time ago, Poland, N.Y. Poland is an old village that straddles State Routes 28 and 8 in southern Herkimer County. Poland had supported no less than three national banks, though none of them operated simultaneously, and all of them occupied the same structure!
Poland was first settled circa 1800 on land owned by Samuel Wright and was briefly called Maple Valley and then Russia Flats. The first post office, established in 1838 in the hotel at the corner of Main & Chase Streets, was known as Danielsville, after Nahum Daniels who owned a large amount of land in the village. The first postmaster, Joseph Benchley, soon changed the name because of the confusion with Dansville in western New York.
