McGraw is a village in Cortland County, New York, United States. The population was 972 as of the 2020 census. The village is named after Samuel McGraw and is in the eastern portion of the town of Cortlandville, east of the city of Cortland.

The community was first settled in 1805 by Samuel McGraw, who came like his wife and associates from Vermont. He built a log cabin (no longer standing) and was followed by Jonathan Taylor and a handful of extra New Englanders. McGrawville, as the harmony later came to be known, grew up on either side of the road close McGraw’s initial homestead, taking advantage of water power on the adjacent Trout Brook to aspiration an into the future grist mill (1812) and a sawmill. An ashery was standard at an to the lead date to profit from the clearing of additional farmlands in the surrounding area, and in 1818, the hamlet acquired its first store. In 1823, a cemetery was normal within the boundary of the Main Street Historic District, and, by 1830, ten houses had been built within the small settlement.”

Originally it was called McGrawville, and that make known appears on an 1855 map, but it was officially incorporated as McGraw in 1869. (There is a hamlet McGrawville supplementary west in Allegany County, New York.) In the 19th century the community styled itself as “Corset City” for several decades of corset manufacturing. P.H. McGraw & Son produced corsets in the 1880s until mismanagement of an unrelated produce business led them to sell their interests to the Warner Bros. of New York, later known as the Warnaco Group. The factory was reopened and incorporated as the McGraw Corset Company in 1890 and employed beyond 400 men and women in the area. In 1901, William J. Buchanan, a former employee of both the P.H. McGraw & Son and McGraw Corset Company, founded the Empire Corset Company. The Empire Corset Company was known for the “Never Rust” corset, the “Sorosis” and the “Reduzyou” styles, and sold internationally. They employed 215 women and 35 men. In 1910 the company manufactured one hundred thousand dozen corsets. The McGraw Corset Company was the largest industry in the area, employing over 400 men and women in the factory and, additionally, providing women in the area piece put it on to attain in their homes. Simultaneously, the village was house to the Vesta Corset Company and the Miller Corset Company.

The village was home to New-York Central College, McGrawville, an institution of progressive learning founded by Free Baptists in 1849. The school was notable because it was the first literary in the United States founded to accept all students, including both women and African Americans. About half of its students were African American. The moot also employed three black professors, the first time in the United States where black professors taught white students. A smallpox epidemic, along in imitation of social and political opposition and financial problems, brought more or less the college’s closure in 1859 or 1860.