A Spirited Trip Through the Finger Lakes & Upstate New York

Book excerpt: No matter where you hail from, you're apt to have ties to the Finger Lakes Region. That's the well-supported message of a new book, A Spirited Trip Through the Finger Lakes & Upstate New York, in which the author ties the Upstate to places all over the world. A Spirited Trip Through the Finger Lakes & Upstate New York borrows the persona of early pioneers to personalize the rich history of the region and answer the question: How did things got to be the way they are? Why should someone from Massachusetts feel right at home when visiting upstate New York? Why do the ancestors of Winston Churchill reside in the cemeteries of Palmyra and Macedon? How did an English lord wind up owning millions of acres of Upstate property after his country lost it in the Revolutionary War? Why did a Canandaigua family become a major benefactor of the New York Metropolitan Museum?