In 1806, Allegany County was created from lands that previously had been part of both Steuben and Genesee Counties. Within a year of the County's formation, Clark Crandall and Nathan and Edward Greene walked into the area from the hills of Rensselaer County three hundred miles east. They and those who followed came from families who called themselves Seventh Day Baptists, some of whose ancestors had branched off from Roger Williams' Baptist Church in Newport, Rhode Island. They had developed a distinctive faith, unique for their keeping of the traditional Jewish Sabbath, the seventh day of the week (Saturday). Some of the members of this loose federation of autonomous churches had descended from members of the Millyard Sabbatarian Baptist Church in London, England, while many others joined the churches that sprang up as members moved west.

The Celadon Company built a small office building about 1890 using decorative roof and wall tiles, as a means of displaying their products. The Alfred Historical Society saved it from destruction in the 1970s, moved it to the grounds of the College of Ceramics, where it serves as a small museum. The Society has also assembled a collection of artifacts, periodicals, and documents, which are housed in Hinkle Memorial Library on the campus of Alfred State College, and assembled a history of the town, for which many families submitted their own (hi)stories. At the turning of the new century and millenium, Alfred retains much of that tradition and unique character that has made it a dynamic rural community, while it embraces the new possibilities that present themselves.