ELMI'RA. A city and county-seat of Che mung County, N. Y., 100 miles southeast of Rochester, on the Cheinung River, and on the Erie, the Lackawanna, the Northern Central ( Pennsylvania System), and the Lehigh Valley railroads (Map: New York, D 3). It has the New York State Reformatory, a State armory, Elmira Free Academy, Elmira College (q.v.), a United States Government building, accom modating the post-office, Federal courts, etc., Steele Memorial Free Library, Arnot-Ogden :Memorial Hospital, and hones for orphans and the aged. A monument to the Rev. T. K. Beecher is one of the features of the city. Eldridge, lloffman, Wisner, and Riverside parks are worthy of mention. Elmira is noted for the ex tent and variety of its manufactures, the chief industrial plants being rolling-mills, railroad car shops. iron and steel bridge works, steel-plate works, boot and shoe factories, hardwood finish ing works, table-factories, bicycle-factories, silk mills, glass-factories, knitting-mills, fire-engine works, engine and boiler vrorks, dye-works, lu bricator-factories, tobacco and cigar factories, leaf-tobacco warehouses, door, sash, and blind factories, breweries, etc. The city government
is administered under the charter of 1894 by a mayor, chosen every two years, and a unicameral city council. Besides the executive and alder men, there are elected by the people the recorder, city judge, and twelve supervisors to act as a county hoard. Population, in 1890, 30,893; in 1900, 35,672. Near the site of Elmira, now marked by a monument to General Sullivan, was fought, August 29, 1779, the battle of Newtown, in which General Sullivan with an American army of 5000 defeated a force of Indians and Tories led by Sir John Johnson and Joseph Brant, and numbering about 1500. First perma nently settled in 1788, and incorporated as the village of Newtown in 1815, then re-incorpo rated as the village of Elmira in 1828, Elmira became the county-seat in 1836, and was char tered as a city in 1864. In 1861 it was chosen as the State military rendezvous, and in 1864-65 had one of the Northern prisons for Confederate prisoners.