Short answers, pulled from the story.
Major Charles Carroll, Colonel William Fitzhugh Jr, and Colonel Nathaniel Rochester purchased a 100-acre tract of land along the Genesee River on the 8th of November 1803. These three men from Hagerstown, Maryland chose the site because its three cataracts offered great potential for water power.
The village was named Rochesterville in 1817 before being shortened to Rochester in 1822. By 1834 it was rechartered as a city and by 1838 it was the largest flour-producing city in the United States.
Frederick Douglass founded The North Star an abolitionist newspaper in Rochester in 1847. He gained a circulation of over 4,000 subscribers in the United States Europe and the Caribbean while living there until his home was destroyed in a fire in 1872.
By 1950 the population had reached a high of 332,488. In 2022 the city's population had declined to 209,352 with 45.1% recorded as White and 38.4% as Black or African American.
In 2005 the University of Rochester became the city's top employer a title it holds today. Major employers now include Rochester Regional Health the Rochester Institute of Technology and Carestream Health following decades of industrial restructuring.