OWASCO - Cayuga County historian Sheila Tucker said with local Harriet Tubman sites possibly being established a National Park, that individual historians in Cayuga County will include Tubman displays in each town, not only honoring her Underground Railroad activities but highlighting her humanitarian role in the struggle for women's rights and establishing a home for the aged.

Historians gathered Friday at Emerson Park in Owasco for the annual Municipal Historian and Historical Banquet. The group of about 50 represented a broad area of the county, with significant numbers from northern towns of Sterling, Montezuma and Ira.

Before dinner, Tucker presented The Millard Fillmore History Awards to Bernie Corcoran, Cheryl Longyear, Dorothy Southard and Don Richardson for their contributions to local history.

Corcoran created and has maintained the Cayuga County Ge/Web site since 1996. The site has attracted many tourists to the area and has received more than half a million hits.

Longyear, Montezuma town historian since 2000, researched and designated the abandoned Mentz church on the National Register. She also found grants to index and preserve town records and nominated and listed the Richmond Aqueduct/canal site on the Register. Her efforts led to the establishment of the Montezuma Historical Society.

Southard, Ira historian for 31 years, is the only municipal historian certified through course work. Active in CIViC and regional historical associations, she collected extensive photos of Ira.

Richardson, president of the Sterling Historical Society, has increased the membership from 45 to 235. He wrote grants to acquire a railroad signal tower and recreate “The Golden Age of Rail” in the Little Red School House museum. He has also published “Tales of Sterling” in the Fair Haven newspaper for eight years.

Following the banquet, Eva Taylor-Sholes produced a PowerPoint presentation on kit homes. All materials for entire homes were ordered through catalogues such as Sears. Kit homes first became popular in the early 20th century when shipping by rail and truck increased, she said. Some of them were pre-cut and some were not. Many were made from and trimmed with fine wood, such as oak.

“These homes were also a sign of the socio-economic times, when government programs in their infancy needed to accommodate GIs for housing,” she said.

“When I was out at Victory, I ran into a man from Cato who told me about a kit home on North Marvine Avenue in Auburn next to the city dump that his grandfather put together,” Tucker said. “Hoopes Park was once indeed the city dump.”

Taylor-Sholes showed pictures of some of the kit homes in the area, including the one mentioned by Tucker that was owned by a Reverend DeForest. There are a couple of Sears kit homes on Owasco Road, one on Peacock Street, and an Alladin kit home on Route 34 in Fleming. Montgomery Ward also sold kit homes locally through the Ray H. Bennet Lumber Co., and one still exists in Seneca Falls, the Bennett home.

Less than 2,700 Luston home kits were ever made, yet there's one of these also in Auburn on Capitol Street extension.

The event concluded with Tucker's presentation of “A Pictorial History of Lakeside, Island and Emerson Parks.”

“I remember that my parents met on a trolley ride and came out here (Emerson Park) and danced to a dime-a-dance,” Tucker said. “During the depression my father was a newspaper man who came out and became mincemeat for bootleg boxing,” she said. “He told me the ins and outs of stories of the island. The island had a lot of action.”

Staff writer Kathleen Barran can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or kathleen.barran@lee.net