Correction

McCaffrey is the county’s third Democratic DA, not the first

Since Greg McCaffrey was appointed district attorney by Governor Andrew Cuomo last week, it’s been widely repeated — including in this paper — that McCaffrey is Livingston County’s first District Attorney from the Democratic Party.

Reader Terrence Grant informs us that Democrats were elected and appointed in the district attorney’s office during the 1870s:

“…In the 1870′s an anti-Grant, anti-Republican frenzy swept the nation including this county, and Democrat Daniel Noyes of Dansville was elected as county district attorney. The Democrats were also to elect James Faulkner Jr. of Dansville to the state assembly, along with John Sheppard as County Treasurer and Hulbert Brown as the County Clerk. Assemblyman Faulkner’s brother Samuel Faulkner was a Democratic county judge at the time, and when he died on August 9th 1878 the Democrat Governor Lucius Robinson appointed District Attorney Noyes as the county judge, and then he appointed another Dansville Democrat, Charles Bissell, as the district attorney.”