HORNELL, a city of Steuben county, New York, U.S.A., on the Canisteo river, 90 m. S.E. of Buffalo. Pop. (1890) 10,996; (1900) 11,918, of whom 1230 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,617. Hornell is served by the Erie and the Pittsburg, Shawmut & Northern railways; the latter connects at Wayland (20 m. distant by rail) with the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad. In the city are St Ann’s Academy, the St James Mercy Hospital, the Steuben Sanitarium, a public library, and a county court-house—terms of the county court being held here as well as in Bath (pop. in 1905, 3695), the county-seat, and in Corning. Hornell has extensive car shops of the Erie railroad, and among its manufactures are silk goods (silk gloves being a specially important product), sash, doors and blinds, leather, furniture, shoes, white-goods, wire-fences, foundry and machine shop products, electric motors, and brick and tile. The value of the factory product in 1905 was $3,162,677, an increase of 30.1% since 1900. The first settlement here was made in 1790, within the district of Erwin (then in Ontario county); after 1796 it was a part of Canisteo township, and the settlement itself was known as Upper Canisteo until 1820, when a new township was formed and named Hornellsville in honour of Judge George Hornell (d. 1813). The village of Hornellsville was incorporated in 1852, and in 1888 was chartered as a city; and by act of the state legislature the name was changed to Hornell in 1906.
See G. H. McMaster, History of the Settlement of Steuben County (Bath, New York, 1849).