Believing, with the Chinese, that ‘one picture is worth a thousand words”, I have compiled this scrapbook, hoping thus to preserve for this and future generations, these pictures of scenes and ways of life in Sodus, a fairly typical western New York village. Local people who are to borrow the auctioneer’s phrase, “too numerous to mention” have contributed pictures and information. I am deeply grateful to them all. A word of caution: While some dates are exact, many are approximate only and intended to indicate the general period of the picture.

                                                                                                            Doris M. Sims

(Copied from a scrapbook assembled by Doris Sims in 1959 and donated to the Sodus Free Library. Most of the information below was in the form of captions, which accompanied the photographs in the scrapbook). The information was copied, as typed below, in 1976. — R. Ransley

The Early History of Sodus by Doris Sims.  Note this booklet can be found in the Ruth Mills room of the Sodus library.

The village we now know as Sodus was called East Ridge from 1812 to December  17, 1833 when the name was officially changed to Sodus. John Holcomb is believed to have been the first settler in the village. He built a log house at a site now the northeast corner of East Main St. and Maple Ave. in 1809. About the same time, (summer of 1810), Dr. Joseph Green and his brother, the Rev.  Byram Green, residents of Williamstown, Massachusetts, came to this section and built four log houses on the north side of Ridge Road (now West Main St.) just west of the present intersection of West Main and Rotterdam streets.  They returned to Williamstown and then came back in the spring of 1811, bringing more of the Green clan, (19 in all) and built two more log houses on the south side of Ridge Road west of the present intersection of West Main and Newark Streets.  In 1812, when the village became known as East Ridge, it consisted of eight log houses: the Green and Holcomb houses mentioned, a log house belonging to a Mr. Shelby on the north side of the Ridge opposite the present north terminus of Elmwood Ave., a frame schoolhouse near the southeast corner of the present Main and Mill Streets, and a log tavern at the southwest corner of those streets. The section of the village at the intersections of West Main, Newark and Rotterdam Streets is still known locally as “Green’s Corners.”

You can go page by page through the scrapbook by clicking the links below. Note by pressing the + and – buttons on the right you can zoom in and out of the page.

For Pages 2 – 16 click the link below:

 Page 2 – 16 PDF (New)

For Pages 17 – 34 click the link below:

Page 17 – 34 PDF