USA > New York > Wayne County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 15
USA > New York > Cayuga County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 15
USA > New York > Seneca County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 15
USA > New York > Ontario County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 15
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On April 24 the board met, heard a report on properties available and adopted a resolution approving the purchase of the B. D. Thomas property consisting of a cottage, garage, boat house and dock adjoining the Glenwood Hotel property.
This action provides the Ithaca Yacht Club for the first time with a modest headquarters on the lake with ample facilities for moorings, dockage and a delightful club house for the use of the members.
The Keuka Yacht Club was organized in 1870, reorganized in 1904, and again reorganized in 1924, from which time its growth has been rapid both as to membership and the number of its craft. The purpose of the club is to promote yacht racing of all kinds, both sailing and motor. The sailing fleet is made up of nine 38 foot Class "A" yachts of the fastest type known on inland water, and is the only fleet of its kind on inland waters east of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The motor boat fleet includes two Baby Garwoods, capable of a speed of fifty miles per hour; also fast outboard motors.
Races are held Sundays and holidays on the course off Keuka Hotel, the headquarters of the club, on the east side of Keuka
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Lake, midway between Penn Yan and Hammondsport. H. Allen Wagener of Penn Yan has for several years held the office of Commodore of the club. The regattas sponsored by this organ- ization have proved immensely popular to local yachtmen and visitors alike and are one of the greatest attractions of the vicin- ity of Lake Keuka. The official season begins Memorial Day and closes Labor Day.
In the development of water sports in Central New York, no man holds a higher place than Charles E. "Pop" Courtney, one of the world's greatest oarsmen and for years coach of the Cornell crews. He was born in Union Springs in September, 1848, the son of Irish parents, and was one of ten children. At the age of seven his father died and he was forced to aid in support of the family. He became a carpenter and joiner, which trade served him well in fashioning his own racing shells. With his brother John he operated a planing mill and also manufac- tured hubs, sash, doors, blinds and moldings.
But it was in the field of sports he gained wide renown. He began coaching Cornell crews about 1881. Dr. W. A. Wakeley, who was graduated in medicine at Cornell in 1888 became his personal physician and from him come intimate stories of his athletic prowess. Courtney won seventy-six consecutive races himself, using boats he made. He was never defeated as an amateur. At the Centennial exhibition in Philadelphia in Sep- tember, 1876, he won the handsome Centennial badge over a field of forty-five oarsmen. The badge contained thirty-eight dia- monds, representing the states then in the Union. His collection of trophies numbered eighty-three, many of which were very costly.
ORGANIZED BASEBALL.
The largest sports organization the world has ever known- organized baseball-found birth in the mind of a Central New York man who very largely created that organization. And from the district some of the greatest names in the baseball players' hall of fame have come. Central New York, with Cornell Uni- versity as a hub of athletic activity, has written a striking chap-
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ter in many lines of sport. But from the standpoint of national significance, Central New York's contribution to the national game, witnessed by a third of the nation's population each year, has been most outstanding.
To baseball players throughout the country, Auburn is known as the capital of baseball. Tradition as to the reason has vaguely found its way to ball parks from coast to coast. John H. Farrell, one time messenger boy and now chairman of the National Board of Arbitration and secretary-treasurer of the National Associa- tion of Professional Baseball leagues, at his home in Auburn is the busiest man in baseball. He handles and approved ten times more players' contracts, investigates ten times more claims, dis- putes and controversies and writes ten times more baseball deci- sions than any other man. Ninety per cent of all decisions in organized baseball controversies are rendered by him.
One million and a half dollars annually goes through his hands accruing from the transfer of players' contracts from one club to another, the collection of awards allowed clubs and players by his decisions and liens. Today Farrell has jurisdiction over approx- imately 5,000 players, representing thirteen leagues in eighty- eight cities and towns in the Minor Leagues of America, extend- ing from coast to coast and from the Mexican border into Canada. He is unchallenged head of an organization whose property inter- ests are valued at over $50,000,000; whose monthly payroll to play- ers reaches about $850,000, and whose yearly payroll for the five and a half months of the playing season is over $4,600,000; whose games draw over 40,000,000 admissions a year.
The romance of the development of organized baseball is as striking an episode as any event in the district's history. Starting in the eighties, Farrell, then in Auburn, achieved local fame as a fast player with the Golden Stars, the Knights of St. James, the Auburn Independents and other local semi-pro outfits. After be- coming the best third baseman in the district, he looked to the managerial end. He surprised his home town in the winter of 1894-96 by announcing that, as a side line to his work as an Asso- ciated Press telegrapher in the old Advertiser office, he would put a professional team in the field the next summer.
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After a few seasons he put the team on its feet and then or- ganized the New York State Baseball League, of which he became president-secretary-treasurer. He began to dream of the day when all baseball leagues across the continent would join for mutual advantage, the majors then having them at their complete advan- tage. At that time there were merely articles of agreement be- tween loops. In August, 1901, the unorganized minor leagues seemed about to collapse. Farrell and a few others called a meet- ing in Chicago, September 5, 1901, and there was born the Na- tional Association of Professional Baseball Leagues with sponsors from eleven leagues.
They pooled their interests, turned over the tangled ends to Farrell and a few weeks later perfected organization in New York City. While the pioneer National League fought bitterly against the newcomer-the American League, Farrell led the minors steadily ahead. The first year closed with seventeen leagues in the organization. In three years there were twenty- two leagues and another year more and the group had grown to thirty-nine, with only the California State League yet outside. New leagues were organized and new courage given the minors. In the first six years the association did not lose a member. Weak leagues were given changes of territory, business principles were introduced in management and contracts were honorably drawn up and enforced. By 1912 and 1914, just before the World War, the association had grown to forty-nine leagues representing 350 cities. Then the war came and in 1919 there were but nine leagues. And Farrell built over again.
Central New York also produced the greatest manager in the history of the major leagues. Once a brilliant third baseman, John J. McGraw, native of Truxton, Cortland County, has for four decades been an outstanding figure in baseball. It was he who transformed New York from a joke city in the majors to the best baseball city in the world. McGraw was born at Truxton, April 7, 1873, and when seventeen signed his first professional contract with Olean, in the New York-Pennsylvania League. From that start, McGraw has had active work with every phase of the game with the exception of the role of umpire. His first
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great advance came in July, 1902, when he became manager of the New York Giants, quitting that post in 1932. He has been player, captain, coach and manager. He served as club executive when he became vice-president and part owner of the Giants, he con- tributed baseball stories to newspapers and wrote a review of his own career in book form after thirty years in baseball. And he was one of the most active missionaries in introducing baseball to Europe and the Far East.
Farrell's own Auburn team in the old New York State League in the late nineties probably graduated more stars to the majors than any team in a town of similar size in the nation. Eddie Mur- phy, pitcher, a native Auburnian, was sold to Philadelphia, play- ing there then in the Atlantic and Eastern League and later going to the St. Louis Browns, where he starred for years. Pitcher Mal Eason was sold to Brooklyn, where he twirled for years; Bill Duggle, sold to Philadelphia, was the Quaker City pitching ace for ten years; Tommy Leach, third baseman, was sold to Louis- ville, Kentucky, going to Pittsburgh when his own league was reduced to eight clubs.
Bill Bradley, third baseman, was sold to Chicago, later jump- ing to Cleveland in the American League. He was rated with Jimmy Collins, of Boston, as the greatest third baseman the game ever produced. George Brown, right fielder, was sold to the New York Giants, and was considered the fastest outfielder of his day in either of the big leagues. Tommy Twaddle was sold to Phil- adelphia, but died before reporting, and Tommy Messitt, too, was sold to Philadelphia, where he played until his right hand was torn off by explosion of a firecracker.
Games in Auburn in the old league were staged at the Nor- wood field near Owasco Lake. Now it is meadowland opposite St. Joseph's cemetery.
The old Empire League operated in 1907 and W. A. Hoagland, one time world's champion heel and toe walker, managed the Auburn team. This outfit also contributed timber to the majors. Alan Storke, native Auburnian, a star third baseman and deadly hitter, went to Pittsburgh and later to St. Louis. He was one of the few men in the game who could hit the famous Christy
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Matthewson. Storke never got less than two hits in any game he batted against Matthewson. Graney, left fielder, played several games with Cleveland, and Romer later pitched for the Giants. Probably the greatest game ever played in Auburn was an Empire League duel at the Y. M. C. A. park between Auburn and Seneca Falls. Romer pitched for Auburn. After battling fifteen innings without a score, Seneca Falls scored a home run by Jimmy Walsh, later with several big league teams. In Auburn's half, Romer got a base on balls and "Tacks" DeLavé, a first baseman, hit a home run, winning for Auburn 2-1.
Other communities of Central New York also contributed heavily to big league stardom. Frank M. Schulte, outfielder and home run king, born in Cochocton, Steuben County, in 1882, joined the Blossburg, Pennsylvania, club in 1900, was for three years with Syracuse in the New York State League and then went to the Chicago Nationals in 1904, remaining there many years.
Joseph E. Grenewich, born in Elmira, January 15, 1898, pitched as a lanky right-hander for semi-pro teams in his home city, join- ing the Boston Braves pitching staff in 1922.
Bill Koopman from Geneva, catcher for the Boston Nationals, was the man who developed Grover Cleveland Alexander, famous pitcher for Syracuse in the old State League, who graduated to the Philadelphia Nationals in 1911.
Heinie Groh, infielder formerly with the Giants and Reds and now a minor league manager living in Rochester, played for Arthur O'Connor in an old semi-pro team in Auburn. O'Connor himself became an umpire in the State and National Leagues. He is now retired in Auburn.
Steve O'Neill, famous catcher, now a Toledo coach of the Mud Hens in the American Association, started his professional career with Elmira in 1910 in the New York State League.
Roy Wilkinson, once with a Canandaigua semi-pro team, be- came pitcher for the Chicago Americans. Big Bill Dineen, Amer- ican League umpire and former star American League pitcher, who now lives in Syracuse, got his start by pitching for a semi- pro team in Weedsport, Cayuga County, working with Barney McManus, now of Auburn, an old time player and promoter, who
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NEW HIGH SCHOOL, HORNELL, N. Y.
HIGH SCHOOL AND GRADE BUILDING, CANISTEO, N. Y.
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pitched for Grand Rapids, Troy, Utica, etc. Bill Bern, of Lyons, Wayne County, became one of Cleveland's greatest pitchers, and "Wild Bill" Setley, who was baseball's "biggest bug," once played with Auburn.
The three Mansel boys of Auburn also made a niche in the base- ball hall of fame. Mike Mansel went with Toronto and Syracuse, Thomas Mansel with Kansas City and John Mansel with Phil- adelphia.
Back of the thrilling diamond careers of Christy Matthewson, Ty Cobb, Napoleon Lejoie and other stars stands Charles D. White, another grand old man of baseball who, now retired, has chosen Cortland as his home. Known among ball players through- out the country as just Charlie White, he was secretary of the New York Giants back in 1892 and secretary of the New York State League in 1885, handling much of the detail that saw that league emerge the following season into the International League. White served as secretary of the International until he went with the Giants. The veteran started in 1891 as A. G. Spaulding's ambassador of baseball.
White opened the first package of golf goods ever received in the United States, when there was but one golf course in America -the St. Andrews course in Westchester County. It was built by persons who had learned the game in Scotland. The Cortland veteran recalls that the baseball changed from rubber to cork center in 1909 and that the distance of the pitcher's box from home plate was changed several times.
Abner Doubleday, who founded the game in 1839 at Coopers- town, Otsego County, today has a monument erected in his mem- ory on the site of the world's first diamond in Cooperstown. Base- ball gloves were first introduced in 1875. The first home plates were made of iron.
In 1845 the pitcher stood forty-five feet from home plate, fifty feet away in 1881 and sixty and one-half feet away in 1893. Mr. White is now compiling a record of baseball records for all time.
CHAPTER XV
ANCIENT LANDMARKS.
HOUSE OF THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE-HISTORIC WILLOWBROOK-WHERE DEWEY, WASHINGTON IRVING, "DAVID HARUM," COLONEL INGERSOLL, WIL- LIAM H. SEWARD AND OTHER NOTABLES LIVED-HAUNTED HOUSES-OLD TAVERNS AND OTHER ANCIENT RETREATS.
Glimpses back to yesterdays are afforded by Colonial land- marks still standing on shadowed streets of many a Central New York community. In their architecture, their prized relics and hallowed memories, these ancient homes and taverns and mills breathe of the spirit of America's first Great West, when the Genesee Trail, the Erie Canal and horse drawn trains fol- lowed paths where Indian footsteps had once marked out the courses of power.
In the spacious halls of some of these century old mansions, the great of another day once made merry. In other cabin homes, still standing, pioneers in the days of faith alone reared sturdy men and women to carry forward the torch of civilization. Hundreds of these historic places dot Central New York. About some are woven the romance of legend; others have been im- mortalized in literature and some are locally famous as "haunted houses." Even to list the buildings a century old in Central New York would require a volume. Herewith are outlined a few of the striking old landmarks whose history is emblematic of the tradition which broods eternally in many others scattered over Central New York.
In North Lansing, Tompkins County, was built back in 1809, the "House of the Circular Staircase," one of the wonders of the countryside. It remained unfinished for more than a cen- tury, because an artisan could not be found capable of following the plans of the builder, Abraham Osmun, who spent $15,000 on
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this twenty-four-room house of heavy timbers and hand carved oak doors. Indicative of the toil of workers on the original house, it is said that eighty lambs were killed, in addition to other meat to feed them.
Then back in 1922 an itinerant tinker drove up in a battered truck. With him he had a writing desk on which he had worked since 1890 and which already had inlaid in its body 27,684 pieces of wood. This eccentric, William Houser, asked only that he be permitted to stay a few days. He learned that Charles Osmun, son of the original builder, had hundreds of feet of choice Hon- duras mahogany stored over the pig pen awaiting a builder who could fashion the circular staircase planned back in 1809. So the wandering craftsman stayed on-for two years. And the staircase wound upward for its forty-one steps, without a brace, exquisite, polished, a work of art. The tramp artisan then van- ished as mysteriously as he had come, but the house and the stairs he created remain a marvel of the district. And the stairs alone is worth today more than the cost of the original house.
In historic Ingleside, a stone house overlooking Cayuga Lake near Levanna, Cayuga County, the Grinnell Antarctic Expedi- tion was organized. Upon its return, the ship which took the explorers within a few degrees of the South Pole, was dismantled and some of its equipment brought to Ingleside. The structure was erected early in the nineteenth century by Washington Irv- ing, who spent a portion of the time there. Shortly after 1900, the property was leased to parties who erected the present wings and opened a private coeducational school with fifty pupils. Later the school was closed. Today Ingleside is the home of G. W. Slocum.
At the intersection of the Homer-West Little York and Ithaca-Little York roads, Cortland County, about a mile north- west of the Homer village line, is a little house where for nearly a year George Dewey, later hero of Manila Bay and a United States admiral, lived for a year as a boy of fifteen. Here he broke horses for his uncle, Samuel Babcock, a few years before the Civil war. Babcock then owned the house. Dewey spent a winter attending the Homer Academy. The farmhouse is now
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occupied by the family of L. A. Noble. One of the animals that young Dewey broke was ridden years after by the late Judge A. P. Smith of Cortland in the Civil War.
One of Seneca County's oldest structures is a farm home on the Stevenson road six miles north of Seneca Falls. The house, made of hand hewn logs from the forest, was constructed in 1798 by James Stevenson, great-great-grandfather of William S. Ste- venson, whose family occupies the place today. At first the build- ing was a schoolhouse, but more than seventy-five years ago it was converted into a home. The property has been in the Ste- venson family more than 125 years.
Two miles northwest of Penn Yan is the famous Potter House, where Louis Phillipe, later king of France, spent much of his time while on exile to America in 1797.
A treasure-house of heirlooms, a repository of cherished tra- ditions is the rambling, rusty brown frame building known as "Willowbrook" near the foot of Owasco Lake, Cayuga County. The structure was built by Enos T. Throop, who later became governor of the state and who came to Auburn in 1806. In 1817, when Throop was riding along the lake, his fancy was caught by the possibilities of the point and its shore line. He purchased the property and there erected a home, in whose spa- cious rooms the entire diplomatic corps at Washington has frolicked.
Century old fireplaces, regal mahogany, trophies of the chase and historic curios are features of the old mansion now occupied by descendants of Mrs. Mehetebal Martin, sister of Governor Throop. But memories cloistered in the house are most cher- ished of its possessions. Washington Irving was a frequent guest at Willowbrook and President Martin Van Buren and his family spent many vacations there on Owasco.
The list of notables is too long to give complete but among those who enjoyed Martin hospitality at the old house were Gov- ernor Horatio Seymour, Governor John A. Dix, President Ulysses S. Grant, Admiral Farragut, Generals Custer, Fullerton and Joel Rathborne, Secretaries of State Seward and Wells, Sir Fran- cis Bruce, British ambassador; Jenny Lind, the Swedish Night-
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ingale, and even a royal delegation representing the emperor of China.
A house where General Lafayette was once given a royal frontier welcome stands on a hill just west of Geneva, near the junction of the old-Pre-emption road and Highways 5 and 20. It is known as Lafayette Inn, originally built in 1820. Prior to that date, when Geneva was known as the village of Kanade- saga, there was a building on the site, said to have been used by settlers as a fortification against the Indians. The old 1820 house was remodeled in 1834, very much in the present style, with the exception of the small and south porches which were added in 1860. It was used as a private home until 1923 when it became an inn. Within its portals is still the great carriage in which Lafayette made a triumphal trip across the state in 1825.
Originally the estate with the present inn as a homestead, covered several hundred acres. In 1860 the farm was the home of one of the first herds of Jersey cattle brought to the state. At that time the low L building northwest of the drive was used as a cattle shed. This structure was remodeled in 1880 as “Elm- wood Priory," planned as a boys' military school, but never suc- cessfully so operated.
When the members of the Roosevelt Flag Committee made their survey of New York, they spent one night at the house. Their report classified the Lafayette Inn as one of the twenty- two most historic houses of the state.
"Halseyville House," at Halseyville, near Trumansburg on the Ithaca-Geneva road, was built in 1829 by Nicoll Halsey, al- most on the site of a log house he constructed in 1803 when he purchased a large tract of land in what afterward became the town of Ulysses. Hand hewn timbers from the forest and hard- ware fashioned in an improvised foundry were used in construc- tion. Nicoll Halsey's father was Dr. Silas Halsey, a Minute Man in the Revolution and a surgeon on a privateer, who settled in the district, where he became assemblyman, state senator and Congressman. The son Nicoll was also an assemblyman, Con- gressman and county judge. An ardent Mason, he with a few
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others kept up their meetings all during the anti-Mason move- ment in 1848 and it is said that for two years the only Masonic meetings in Central New York were in the attic of Halseyville House. The old house was purchased in 1921 by Charles W. Halsey of New York, a grandson of its builder, and has been restored to its former grandeur. Each room has been decorated in imported papers of the designs in use in early 1800.
Standing like a sentinel at the frontier is a log cabin, built in 1806, seven miles south of Penn Yan on the east shore of Lake Keuka near Crosby. Once it was a trading post and until a few years ago the sign, "Whiskey, three cents a glass" appeared on the weather stained door of the cabin which John Carr erected as the only tavern on the Penn Yan-Bath road, then a mere bridle path through virgin woods. Original clay still fills the chinks in the walls. The present owner is L. W. Carpenter, who lives in a farmhouse across the road.
Lake Home, more recently known as the Burdge property, today stands as a historic reminder of the assassination of one of the builders of the Union Pacific Railroad across the continent and as a mansion long known as a haunted house among the children of the neighborhood. Lake Home stands on a hill south of Wayne, near the border of Schuyler and Steuben counties. It was built by Samuel Hallett, born at Canisteo, Steuben County, in 1827. Hallett was slain in a street of Wyandotte, Kansas, by a contractor for the Union Pacific, who mistook him for another railroad promoter against whom he held a grudge. The body of Hallett and his wife lie in a cypress grove on the estate. Dur- ing the life of the railroad builder the great often made merry at Lake Home. Here in his youth came James Gordon Bennett, later publisher of the New York Herald; Belle Z. Spencer, nov- elist; Countess de Pompon of France and others. Twenty years ago the late George Burdge of Buffalo, secured the property on a ninety-nine year lease and restored it, moving the mansion a bit west of its original location. His later death resulted in surrender of the lease and the historic place reverted to heirs of Samuel Hallett.
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The home of David Hannum, made famous in "David Harum" by Edward Noyes Wescott, is today an attractive resi- dence at Homer, Cortland County. In the book Hannum is dis- guised as uncouth and uncultured, but his inherent character is retained in a novel which has had one of the greatest sales in America. Hannum was a horse trader and patent rights man, who lost everything as a land speculator. He was married when forty to Charlotte Hitchcock, who bore him a daughter. The child died at twelve. Some years later he married Lois Bab- cock, a cousin of the mother of Wescott, who wrote David Harum. A son was born to this marriage, but he died at the age of nine. Hannum was one of the original owners of the Cardiff Giant, a nationally known hoax, out of which he cleared $15,000.
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