In Brockport in the Age of Modernization, 1866 – 1916, William G. Andrews examines the changes to the village of Brockport, New York over the fifty-year period between the end of the U.S. Civil War and the U.S. entry into World War I, drawing upon contemporary sources, primarily The Brockport Republic, to catalogue these changes. Andrews organizes his book into six chapters. The first, “1865 Brockport,” establishes much of the village history prior to the focus of Andrews’s study and draws upon his previous books, Early Brockport (2005) and Civil War Brockport (2013). The next four chapters examine Leaders, Infrastructure, Utilities, Transportation, and Institutions.

Many of the leaders financed, owned, or managed the mechanical reaper factories that made Brockport an industrial center at mid-century. Discussing utilities, Andrews writes, “A telephone system appeared in Brockport when Captain Lina Beecher arrived from Medina in December 1881 as the Constructing Manager for the Bell Telephone Co. claiming that twenty-one businesses and professional offices had subscribed” (pg. 69). The mails underwent rapid change with each new U.S. President as, “until 1971, postal service in the United States was operated by the Post Office Department, a part of the executive branch of the United States government, and was used by successive presidents as their most important patronage dispensing tool” (pg. 71). Along with this change in the person holding the office, the location varied regularly, sometimes being in the shops owned by the current postmaster. As a result, “the arrival of the mail became a great social occasion” (pg. 72). In this, Andrews recalls Henkin’s The Postal Age.

In discussing changes in transportation, Andrews details the role of the canal in the village’s finances and competition between the canal and the railroad. As to cars, Andrews writes, “By 1908, automobiles had become sufficiently numerous and dangerous in Brockport that the village board enacted two ordinances regulating automobiles. One set a speed limit of 10 mph… Another 1908 rule required automobiles being operated in the village to have a means of ‘alarm’ to warn pedestrians and other automobile drives and, if operated between dusk and dawn, to have lights before and aft” (pg. 85). Turning to institutions, Andrews draws largely upon Wayne Dedman’s out-of-print 1969 monograph, Cherishing This Heritage, to discuss the history of the Brockport Normal School, later State Teacher’s College. Andrews concludes, “It seems fair to say that the village today is what it is pretty much because of those fifty years. Brockporters owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to their predecessors, both the leaders and the many followers, for their accomplishments” (pg. 106).

Andrews’s Brockport in the Age of Modernization fits somewhere between his monographs, Early Brockport and Civil War Brockport, and his pictorial histories, Around Brockport and Brockport Through Time. While it largely consists of textual analyses of historical documents, Andrews writes Brockport in the Age of Modernization more for the audience of the pictorial histories than an academic audience. As a study of the late nineteenth century, this will offer a useful guide to academics, but will primarily appeal to casual fans of Americana and antiquarians focused on the Erie Canal and the villages on it. ( )