OLD INMATES OF THE ALMSHOUSE
GENESEO HOME FULL OF QUAINT CHARACTERS. HAVE SEEN HISTORY MADE
More Than One Was Born as Long Ago as 1812—One Was Postmaster of Geneseo Eight Years, and All Delight in Thinking of the Past.
The register of the Livingston county poor house at Geneseo shows that there are now 75 inmates at the institution dependent upon the charity of the county. Among those now staying at the County Home are the following:Henry Osborn, 87 years old, was married when he was 22 to Jerusha Backus. They had nine children, of whom seven are still alive. His wife died at the home in 1889. He has been there nine weeks. His father was Stephen Osborn. His mother, who was a Lima woman, lived to the age of 90.
The census of 1900 shows that Henry was living in Canandaigua with his daughter Jennie. They told the census taker that Henry's parents were born in Vermont. Henry may have just been funnin' with him because in other decades, the record says his parents were born in New York. It's possible that he didn't know where Stephen was born, maybe guys didn't talk about that sort of thing back then.
It could have been both. The border between Vermont and New York wasn't official until 1812. Nobody knew where anything really was. It was land, that's all. After the American revolution, after the treaty with the Seneca, Phelps and Gorham mapped it out in a grid.1790 Phelps Gorham purchase