The Chemung River is a tributary of the Susquehanna River, approximately 46.4 miles (74.7 km) long, in south central New York and northern Pennsylvania in the United States. It drains a mountainous region of the northern Allegheny Plateau in the Southern Tier of New York. The Chemung River is formed near Painted Post in Steuben County, just west of Corning by the confluence of the Tioga River and Cohocton rivers. It flows generally east-southeast through Corning, Big Flats, Elmira, and Waverly. It crosses into northern Pennsylvania before joining the Susquehanna River approximately 2 miles (3 km) south of Sayre.

Charles Wesley Lanning (1874-1956) was born on March 7, 1874 in Enfield and attended Ithaca High School and Starkey Seminary. After teaching for three years, he went to the Syracuse University College of Medicine and graduated in 1898. Initially, he worked as a general practitioner, and his first office was in Tully. He married three times with his daughters Phyllis and Sylvia being born during his first marriage. Florence Marie Hill Lanning was his second wife and a school teacher in the Cooperstown area who died in 1933. During their marriage, they had a daughter, Elizabeth Jean Lanning Wilson, and a son, Charles Wesley Lanning Jr. He married his third wife, Zana Pollock, in 1935, who was a dietician at Bassett Hospital.
He served as the school commissioner for Onondaga County from 1904 to 1910 and practiced in Otisco and Manlius prior to moving to Cooperstown in 1911 or 1912. While in Cooperstown, he served as the Otsego County physician for nine years and was president of the Otsego County Medical Society for one year. He continued to be a general practitioner until 1926, when he completed special courses at the New York Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat Infirmary to be a specialist. From 1927 to 1936, he was the first head of the Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat department of the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown. Prior to working at the Bassett Hospital, he was on staff at the old Thanksgiving Hospital situated in what is now the Clara Welch Thanksgiving Home. In 1936, he moved to Herkimer to be an Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat physician specialist and was a member of Medical Society of the County of Herkimer for 20 years. After practicing medicine for 55 years, he retired in 1953 and died on April 18, 1956.

A native of Buffalo, NY, Dr. Charles Rand Penney made his life and career in Western New York, working first as a lawyer and later pursuing a life-long love of collecting and lecturing about art and antiques around the world. In 1995, he was honored with a Doctorate of Fine Arts from the State University of New York for his commitment and contributions to the arts, especially in Western New York. In 1999, he received the Red Jacket Award from the Buffalo History Museum for his commitment to raising awareness of the shared heritage of Western New York.

Whether traveling to Papua, New Guinea or up the Niagara River to Olcott Beach, Dr. Penney’s collection signified his approach to learning about new people and places, eventually growing to include more than 100 different themes. In the early 1990s, he donated a collection of Western New York Art to the Burchfield Art Center at Buffalo State College (resulting in the renaming of the Center to the Burchfield-Penney Art Center). His collection of Historical Niagara Falls Prints was donated to the Castellani Art Museum in 1993. In 2008, he donated his entire collection of Niagara County art, artifacts, and research materials to the History Center at the Niagara County Historical Society, eventually resulting in the opening of the eponymous Penney Gallery.
The Charles Rand Penney Trail connects collections that were either donated by Charles Rand Penney or purchased from his estate and now reside in diverse institutions across Niagara and Erie County, New York. These institutions include the Niagara County Historical Society, the Buffalo History Museum, the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site, the Buffalo Museum of Science, the Castellani Art Museum, the Butler Library of SUNY Buffalo State, and the Burchfield-Penney Art Center. In total, the collection represents the depth and breadth of art, artifacts and ephemera assembled by one of the great American collectors of the twentieth century. Dr. Penney collected throughout his life and maintained a strong connection to Western New York. The museums and cultural institutions above have brought Dr. Penney’s diverse interests together once again through the Charles Rand Penney Trail digital collection.

Charles Henry Miller (1842-1922) resided in Queens and East Marion, New York and was known for his prose, paintings, and sketches. A recipient of many prestigious art awards and prizes, his works were exhibited around the world in the late 19th century. Poet Bayard Taylor referred to Miller as “the artistic discoverer of the little continent of Long Island.”

Charles Fergus Binns (1857-1934) was a ceramist, educator, and art administrator. He was born in England in 1857 where his father was a co-managing director of the Royal Worcester Porcelain Works. From 1900 until his retirement in 1931, Charles F. Binns was Director of the New York State School of Clayworking and Ceramics at Alfred University. Binns was a frequent contributor to ceramic periodicals and publications including monthly columns of technical advice. He helped found the American Ceramics Society in 1899 and served as its president in 1901 and secretary from 1918 to 1922. Among the awards Binns received for his work in art pottery and glazes are the Logan Medal from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1919 and the Medal of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts in 1922.