Victor tells the unique story of a historic community in the Finger Lakes region, just south of Rochester. It chronicles Victor's past as a Seneca Indian capital to the coming of Massachusetts settlers in the 18th century through to life as it was in the 20th century. With over 200 photographs, this book shows how people in rural upstate New York lived, played, studied, worked, and worshiped. The images are from the town and village archives, the Victor Historical Society, the Ontario County Historical Society, and private collections. Many are previously unpublished photographs, and several are by Fred Locke, an amateur photographer who is considered to be "the father of porcelain insulators."
The first settlers came to the Brockport area soon after 1800. Located some twenty miles west of Rochester, the towns of Sweden and Clarkson, the village of Brockport, and a college were organized between 1814 and 1835. The Erie Canal, farm implement manufacturing, and higher education fostered their growth and prosperity in the mid-1800s. At Brockport, the United States became a continental nation, the Industrial Revolution came to agriculture, and popular literature came to American women. Today, Brockport is a remarkably well-preserved Victorian village on a revitalized Erie Canal, Clarkson and Sweden are havens for farming and commuting, and the college is an 8,500-student unit of the State University of New York. Around Brockport presents more than two hundred thirty images from private and public collections, many from glass negatives. They depict such aspects of the area's history as farm life in early Sweden, stately homes at Clarkson Corners, industrial plants in Brockport, and student activities at the normal school.