BATAVIA  , a

village and the county-seat of Genesee county, New York, U.S.A., about 36 m . N.E. of Buffalo, on the Tonawanda Creek . Pop . (1890) 7221; (1900) 9180, of whom 1527 were foreign-born; (1910), 11,6x3 . Batavia is served by the New York Central & Hudson River, the Erie, and the Lehigh Valley railways . It is the seat of the New York State School for the Blind, and of St Joseph's Academy (Roman Catholic), and has a historical museum, housed in the Old Holland Land Office (1804), containing a large collection of relics of the early days of New York, and a memorial library erected in 1889 in memory of a son by Mary E . Richmond, the widow of Dean Richmond; the building contained in Igo8 more than 14,000 volumes . The public schools are excellent; in them in 1898 Superintendent John Kennedy (b . 1846) introduced the method of individual instruction now known as the " Batavia scheme," under which in rooms of more than fifty pupils there is, besides the class teacher, an individual " teacher who helps backward children in their studies, Among Batavia's manufactures are harvesters, ploughs, threshers and other agricultural implements, firearms, rubber tires, shoes, shell goods; paper-boxes and inside woodwork . In 1905 the city's factory products were valued at $3,589,406, an increase of 39.5 % over their value in 1900: Batavia was laid out in 18oi by Joseph Ellicott (176o-1826), the engineer who had been engaged in surveying the land known as the " Holland Purchase," of which Batavia was a part . The village was incorporated in 1823 . Here lived William Morgan, whose supposed murder (1826) by members of the Masonic order led to the organization of the Anti-Masonic party .

Batavia was the

home during his last years of Dean Richmond (1804–1866), a capitalist, a successful shipper and wholesaler of farm produce, vice-president (1853–1864) and president (1864–1866) of the New York Central railway, and a, prominent leader of the Democratic party in New York state . See O . Turner, History of the Holland Purchase (Buffalo, 185o) .