Discover Mcgraw: Local History in the Valley

Mcgraw combines a distinctive valley setting with a wealth of local history. A library housed in a historic residence, community collections, a listed historic district, and cemeteries with varied historical connections give the village a distinct cultural profile. If you enjoy discovering local history while traveling, you’ll find points of interest here spanning different periods and aspects of life.

A village in the valley and a library with a special history

The Village of Mcgraw lies in a narrow valley that stretches east from Cortland. The valley is about half a mile wide. This approximate figure describes the village’s landscape without reducing its valley setting to an exact boundary. When planning your trip, Mcgraw can therefore stand out as a destination in its own right, with topics ranging from the history of individual institutions to former businesses and cemeteries.

The Lamont Memorial Free Library was founded in 1906 at 5 Main Street in McGraw. Since its founding, it has been housed in the childhood home of Daniel S. Lamont. This connection between a library and a residence gives local history a tangible link to a building and a person. For travelers interested in cultural history, it offers a distinct way to explore Mcgraw’s past, alongside the Village’s collections and historic sites.

Collections and historic traces

The McGraw Historical Society’s Local History Room is located behind the Lamont Memorial Free Library. The Society’s collection includes furniture, photographs, news articles, scrapbooks, photo albums, postcards, and books about the Village and its residents. These varied materials offer different perspectives, with books and news articles alongside personal mementos and visual records. In this way, the collection documents both the place and the people connected to it.

A special collection of the McGraw Historical Society is devoted to New York Central College. This gives local history another distinct area of focus. If you enjoy comparing different historical topics on a trip, you can explore this subject alongside the collections about the Village and its residents, rather than viewing Mcgraw solely through the lens of one building or event.

The Main Street Historic District is also part of McGraw’s historic profile: it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Old Baptist Cemetery, in turn, was the first community cemetery in McGrawville, now McGraw. Each place offers a different historical connection: one through the designated historic district, the other through the early history of the community.

The New York Central College Cemetery offers a self-guided tour of its history. This is a distinct way to explore the cemetery: the tour gives the visit a historical focus and follows the story of the site. Together with the Historical Society’s collections and the history of Old Baptist Cemetery, it provides a range of ways to discover Mcgraw’s past.

From the corset industry to more recent businesses

Local business history adds to these cultural themes. P.H. McGraw & Son launched the corset boom in the 1880s. Later businesses that followed included the McGraw Corset Company. The two names thus mark a sequence in time: other businesses, including the McGraw Corset Company, followed the boom launched by P.H. McGraw & Son.

A more recent milestone is McGraw Box Brewing, which opened in McGraw in June 2022. Alongside the older historical references, this date shows that the village’s history spans different eras. It adds a specific recent chapter to the themes of the library, collections, and industrial history, without combining the different stories into a single narrative of development.

If you’re looking for a vacation rental in Mcgraw, the village’s local history and varied themes may be a reason to choose it as your destination. Depending on whether you’re especially interested in historical collections, cemetery history, or business history, you’ll find different points of interest to consider when planning your trip.

More destinations to consider when planning your trip: Cortland Cortland, Marathon Marathon.

Back to the main travel overview: Cortland.