Archie Hayes Merrill, the "poet laureate" of New York's Finger Lakes/Genesee Valley region was born on August 5, 1894. He attended Hobart College in Geneva, New York, but his college career was cut short by World War I. In 1923 he took a job with the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Newspaper. For many years he wrote a series of articles on local history and folklore for the Sunday edition of the paper, and collections of these articles formed the basis for most of his 23 books."
Source: http://home.roadrunner.com/~pflass/Merrill/index.html His first published book was A River Ramble; a saga of the Genesee Valley. Rochester, NY; Louis Heindl and Son, 1943.