Around Liverpool

By Dorianne Elitharp Gutierrez and Joyce M. Mills

Liverpool, on the shore of Onondaga Lake, was settled by John
Danforth and his family due to the natural brine springs near the lakeshore. The population of salt boilers quickly grew. The Oswego Canal opened in 1828, and the village was incorporated in 1830. German immigrants brought willow weaving to the village in the mid-1850s, and by the 1890s, Liverpool willow products were being shipped all over the nation. In the 20th century, as more lucrative work became available and the automobile ruled, the basket weavers gave way to factory workers, nurses, teachers, and engineers. Around Liverpool takes you on a tour of the unique history of Liverpool, with images of its salt boilers, weavers, firefighters, schoolchildren, churchgoers, ice boaters--the people and places that made the community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jun 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781439652091

Dorianne Elitharp Gutierrez

Dorianne Elitharp Gutierrez has been the Liverpool village historian since 1991. A technical writer by day, her passion is local history. Joyce M. Mills, a retired media specialist from Liverpool Public Library, has presented local history programs for many years. She is a volunteer at the Liverpool Village Museum. The images in this book come from the photographic collections of the Liverpool Village Museum and the Liverpool Pubic library.

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INTRODUCTION

Liverpool, Onondaga County, New York, perches on the northeast shore of Onondaga Lake. At the time of its settlement in 1794, it was swampy and unhealthy, not the sort of location to attract settlers looking for a place to establish family farms. Due to Onondaga County’s peculiar geology, however, natural brine springs bubbled up next to Onondaga Lake. The springs were noticed by the French during a brief Jesuit presence in the mid-1600s and were not forgotten when the country opened up after the American Revolution. Salt was a valuable commodity in those times, in particular demand for preserving food. John Danforth is said to be the first Liverpool salt boiler. Other entrepreneurs from New England, Jefferson County, and the Mohawk River valley soon joined him.

Further opportunities developed as the state’s canal system was constructed. Liverpool was home to canal workers in the early 1820s. Many of these folks were Irish, and Liverpool was for a time called Little Ireland. The Oswego Canal opened in 1828, connecting the Erie Canal with Oswego, New York, and thus Lake Ontario. At Liverpool, the canal ran below First Street, parallel to the lakeshore and separated from the lake by a towpath. After construction, the canal provided further employment opportunities in running canal boats, repairing and building boats, supplying groceries and dry goods stores, and running hotels, boardinghouses, and taverns. Salt was no longer boiled by the single kettle, but in salt blocks, buildings that contained long lines of kettles for turning brine into fine salt on a grand scale. The salt blocks lined the canal, and Liverpool was a bustling place. In the mid-1850s, some 36 liquor permits were issued in the village, which was then (as now) only about one mile square. Temperance workers and evangelist preachers came to town regularly; their work was cut out for them. The canal was Liverpool’s lifeline, a highway for information, ideas, and sin as well as goods and livelihoods.

Because of the canal system, Liverpool was also an embarkation point for westward migration as the country opened up. Many early Liverpool settlers moved on to Ohio, for example. Their traces remain in land, church, and mercantile records, but fewer in Liverpool’s municipal cemetery. They stayed awhile, made some money, packed up, and moved on west.

The village was incorporated as Liverpool in 1830. The most likely explanation for the name is that the great port of Liverpool, England, was famous for shipping high-quality salt. Salt barrels stamped Liverpool were reputed to contain a dependable product. History does not reveal whether the name was chosen to honor the English city or as a marketing ploy.

The salt-boiling industry peaked just before and during the Civil War, when local manufacturers supplied salt to the Union army. But fuel became increasingly expensive, and after the war, new and cheaper sources of salt became available to the country. In Liverpool, salt boiling was a dead industry by the 1890s. However, solar salt manufacturing, a process that relies on evaporation to produce a coarser grade of salt, was in use along Old Liverpool Road until the last batch was produced in 1926.

The late 1840s and early 1850s saw the beginning of a wave of German immigrants to Liverpool and the surrounding town of Salina, who came seeking opportunities in the salt industry. Among the first were members of an extended family familiar with willow weaving in their home country. John Fischer, an 1852 immigrant and salt boiler, noticed wild swamp willow growing along the Euclid Road (today’s Morgan Road). He wove a sewing basket and sold it to Ann Timmons (the wife of Patrick Timmons) for 50¢. About 30 interrelated families soon joined him. Basket weaving is undertaken in the winter using the fall harvest of willow, while both canal work and salt boiling tend to be summer occupations. Basket weaving offered a good supplemental income for immigrant families.

At first, the weavers made all kinds of necessary utilitarian containers, such as laundry baskets, market baskets, and sewing baskets. The demand for raw material soon exceeded the wild supply, and cultivated basket willow became a useful crop. It is a perennial shrubby plant that thrives in swampy areas where other crops may not. The roots remain in the ground and send up new branches year after year.

At the height of Liverpool’s basket industry in the 1890s, willow was purchased not just from local growers, but also in great quantities from other areas along the Erie Canal, such as Lyons, Montezuma, and Port Byron. At that time, Liverpool weavers produced three-quarters of all the laundry baskets used in the United States, some 360,000 baskets annually from a village the population of which has never been much over 2,800 people. At the same time, the basket makers became the true settlers of Liverpool. Immigrant families became, in the space of one or two generations, the pillars of local churches, government, schools, and other community organizations.

Despite the production volume, basket weaving was largely undertaken as a family cottage industry in small backyard shops. After willow was harvested, it was passed through a commercial steamer to soften the bark and kill insects and then delivered to individual weavers. Children typically ran each wand through a special tool to crack the bark and then stripped it by hand. The weavers would then soak it in batches as needed to make it pliable for weaving. The women often made the basket bottoms, while the men wove the sides and finished the rims. Very good weavers could make up to 25 baskets a day. The bark strippings would be piled around the building foundations as insulation and later removed and burned in the spring. It was said that Liverpool residents could be identified by the acrid smell of willow strippings smoke that permeated their clothing.

The basket industry began to die out in the 1920s under competition from foreign imports and as better transportation and larger industries opened up other ways to make a living in the area. Liverpool at that time began its transformation into the commuter community that it is today. A few willow manufacturers, particularly those who made furniture and other fancy work, persisted in the 1960s and early 1970s. None are left today.

Before World War II, increasingly prosperous industrial workers