USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > History of Rochester and Monroe county, New York, from the earliest historic times to the beginning of 1907 > Part 15
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The deaths of the year were numerous-in Jan- uary, on the 5th, Rev. Dr. W. D'Orville Doty, who had been rector of Christ church for the previous twenty-three years, one of the most beloved of the city pastors; on the same day tieneral W. Henry Benjamin, whose war record has been given in an antecedent chapter, was clerk of the county court for some years and in 1870 clerk of the state commission of appeals: on the 22d Theodore Bacon, a distinguished lawyer, and on the 24th Edward A. Frost, county clerk from 1877 to 1883. On April 2d Joseph D. Husbands, born in Bar- badoes, West Indies, in 1809; came to the United States at an early age and graduated at Union in 1828, supposed to be the oldest living college graduate in the country at the time of his death; admitted to the bar in 1838 and came to Rochester two years later; appointed registrar in bank- ruptey in 1867; interested in reforms and widely known as un anti-slavery and temperance orator. On April 22d W. Dean Shunrt, who had been paymaster in the army with the rank of major ; city attorney four years, surrogate twelve years. Only the passing generation will remember the Kremlin saloon, in the basement of the old Clin- ton Hotel; Roscoe Ashley, who with his father, Isaac Ashley, used to keep it, died May 30th. Henry F. Huntington, treasurer of the board of park commissioners, died June 25th; Ezra R. An- drews August 13th, president of the Mechanics Institute and the Mechanics Savings bank and a member of several boards; David Hays, October 1;th, graduated here in 1877, at Berlin univer- sity two years later and Columbia law school in 1881, a promising young attorney, with every pros- peet of a brilliant carcer before him; on the 20th Rev. T. C. Murphy, rector of St. Mary's church.
At the beginning of 1901 Charles B. Gilbert be- came superintendent of the public schools and several radical changes were made in the methods
of instruction, particularly in the lower grades, not all of which, such as vertical writing, were acceptable to the taxpayers and parents of the pupils. A grand reception and a merry dance signalized the opening of the Eastman building on the 15th of April. A continuous down- pour of rain on the 30th of May caused the aban- donment of the usual Memorial day parade, for the first time since that patriotic observance be- gan. The First Methodist church was dedicated on June 23d, with a sermon by Bishop Goodsell and an address by Chancellor Day of the Syracuse university. On the 21st of October the Rochester Optical and Camera company was formed, with a capital of $35,000,000, to purchase foreign and home plants and manufacture plate cameras ; a rn- inous enterprise, unsuccessful from the start, large- ly owing to woeful mismanagement and inexcus- able extravagance; two years later the remains of it were absorbed by the Eastman Kodak company, only four per cent, on the original investment be- ing received by the stockholders. many of whom could ill afford the loss and who suffered greatly in consequence of the boundless credulity that seems to characterize the people of Rochester.
Cornelius R. Parsons died on the 20th of Jun- uary : alderman for many years, mayor of the city for fourteen years, elected to the Assembly in 1890 and the next year sent to the state Senate, of which he was a member when he died. On May 15th Thomas Smith, aged one hundred and one, thought to be the oldest inhabitant at the time of his death ; October 11th, A. Tiffany Norton, eity editor of the Democrat & Chronicle; November 9th, William H. Goreline, a prominent contractor, who had erected many of the finest buildings in the city; November 15th, Bertha Scrantom Pool, of literary talent, granddaughter of Hamlet Seruntom, the first permanent settler; December 6th Rev. J. J. Lwary, the fourth rector of St. Mary's church to die within as many years; De- cember 11th, William J. Fowler, one of the edi- tors of the Evening Erpress for ten years, with a marvelons memory and clearness of style.
In 1902 the Stromberg-Carlson Telephone Man- ufacturing company was incorporated. with a capital of $3,000,000; it had been a highly suc- cresful concern in Chicago, where it manufactured improved switchboards and other telephonic appa- ratus for independent companies; the stock hav-
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ing been largely bought up by the stockholders of the Rochester Telephone company the works were gradually removed to this city, extensive buildings being put up at East Rochester. This year wit- neseed in its closing months the only real coal famine ever known in the city. the same that afflicted the whole country as the result of the prolonged strike in the anthracite coal fields; the actual suffering was considerable, though the ap- prehension of what might come was still worse; even after the strike was broken by being left to arbitration the supply of fuel was wholly snade- quate for a long time, the police had to guard the coal ears a> they stood on the trestles, to prevent wholesale pilfering, and in the morning hours before the dawn officers stood at the yards of the coal ralroads to regulate the loading of the wait- ing wagons, without which precaution there would have been a serious riot ; on one Sunday, that of December 14th, long lines of teams of the dealers struggled through the deep snow, on an errand of mercy rather than of business, to deliver the dark morsels that were necessary to sustain life. This was the greatest building your known up to that time, there being about seven hundred struet- ures erected, of which the most notable were the tine Masonic Temple, on Clinton avenne North ; the Rochester Athletic clubhouse, just opposile : the shops of the Pfaudler company and the Phen- matie Signal company. at Lincoln park: the East High school and public schools numbers 6 and 23: the cost of all was $2,615,028. while many more buildings were extensively remodeled. making a total expenditure of $2.913,112: the building exceeded that of the previous year by ** D ;.; 9%, that of 1900 Ix more than a million and that of 1898 and 1899 combined,
On the 2d af March George Muss died. a good newspaper man, connected with the l'uion & .Idrertiser for some years aud afterward secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. The next day Dr. Edward M. Moore passed away, to the regret of the whole city. He was born at Rahway, N. J .. July 15th. 1814, and received a thorough class- ical education in the school of his father, Lindley Murray Moore. A sketch of his eminent services in medicine and surgery will be found in the medi- cal chapter; it is enough to say in this connec- tion that he was in every way one of the most conspienons figures in the community. Ile was
not only the father of the park system but was interested in all forward movements, in all the philanthropie and educational enterprises, of many of which he was the president, including the board of trusters of the Reynolds Library; for the last years of his life he was universally recog- nized as the "first citizen" of Rochester. On the 15th of the month Samnel Wilder died; a promi- nent financier, but still better known among his associates as a most entertaining raconteur; at an early age he came here from Massachusetts, where he was born in 1821; at first a clerk in Brit- tin's dry goods store, on East Main street, he soon obtained an interest in the firm, which becamee that of Brittin & Wilder, changing a little later to that of Wilder. Gorton & Co., when the place of busi- ness was moved to State street, a little north of Exchange place (now Corinthian street), and in that location it was one of the well-known land- marks of the city in the middle of the last cen- tury; during the war it was moved across the street. the firm having become, in the meantime, Wilder. Case & Co., from which the head of it soon after retired; he then devoted himself to real es- tate, purchasing Corinthian hall with a block of the Western Union Telegraph stock, of which company he was one of the directors, and turning the Imilding a few years later into a theater; he established the Central bank, was one of the founders of the Mechanics Savings bank and president of huth, and was largely interested in the City hospital and the Unitarian church. Churles S. Baker, a well-known lawyer, died April 21st; . after holding municipal offices for some years he was elected to the Assembly in 1838 and continued there, with the intermission of one terin, till 1883, when he was sent to the state Senate; in 1881 was chosen a member of Congress and was twice re-elected. George F. Yeoman, a successful lawyer and justice of the Supreme court, died June 1st; Rev. Dr. Benjamin O. True, a profes- sor in the Rochester Theological seminary; Rev. Dr. Herman C. Riggs, twice pastor of St. Peter's Presbyterian church, Angust 7th, and Dr. Azel Backus, September 2d; he was born here in 1829. the son of Dr. Frederick F. Rackus twho set- tled here in 1816) : having graduated ut Hobart and in the medical department of the L'niversity of Pennsylvania, he practised his profession here till near the close of his life. On the 23d of
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October, John H. Rochester, a grundson of the founder, passed away at the age of seventy-tw), the oldest member of St. Luke's church at the time of his death; was president of the Rochester Historical society for two forms, an original mem- her of the park commission, secretary and treas- urer of the Mechanics Savings bank for thirty vears.
Everything that seems to call for record in 1903 is of a personal nature. Dr. Adolph Lorenz, the celebrated surgeon of Vienna, Austria, visited Rochester in the latter part of June and performed several operations at the City hospital during his stay here. On the 28th of November, Adolph J. Rodenbeck resigned the office of mayor, having been appointed judge of the Court of Claims. Dr. H. H. Stebbins, for many years pastor of the Centrul Presbyterian church, resigned December 30th, and in the evening of the same day a fare- well reception was given at the Lyceum to Rev. Thomas R. Hendrick, who had been appointed as the Roman Catholic bishop of Cebu, in the Philip- pine islands.
William Rumsey died . January 16th; born in 1841, before gradnation at Williams college in 1861 he enlisted in the army and served during the war, coming out with a reputation for bravery and a colonel's brevet ; having studied and prac- tised law he became justice of the Supreme court in 1813 and remained on the bench till 1901, when he resigned. Three other well-known at- tarneys gave up their briefs later in the year- Joseph A. Stull, June 14th, Frederick L. Durand, August 10th, aged eighty-seven, graduated at Yale in 1836 and came to Rochester in 1845, beginning practice at once ; George H. Humphrey, October 6th. James A. Hinds died July 24th; Samuel Sloan, for some time president of the Mechanics Savings bank, September Ist, and H. Austin Brewster. December 18th-all three prominent merchants of long standing-Oliver Allen, May 5th; though living in Mumford. where he was born in 1823, and continuing the woolen mill that his father established there in 1829, he was closely identified with Rochester interests, as bank director and otherwise: he was the principal pro- moter of the State Line railroad, which became the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg. Rev. J. B. Stillson, the oldest clergyman in the city, died July 2d, and Mrs. Louisa Rochester Pitkin, the
last surviving child of Colonel Rochester, passed away the same day; she was born at Dansville in September, 1810, a few months after the family migrated to the Genesce valley. Henri Appy, the oldest and best-known musician in Rochester, died November 16th ; born at the Hague, Holland, in early life he played with Mendelssohn and was afterward solo violinist with Jenny Lind, Son- tag and other singers of world-wide celebrity; he came here about the close of the war and estab- lished the Philharmonic society, which he con- ducted for twenty years, giving it up to confine himself to private pupils.
All the theaters were carefully inspected on the 4th of January, 1904, in consequence of the aw- ful fire at the Iroquois, in Chicago, where so many lives were lost on the last night of the prev- ious year; the license of the Empire, a place of vaudeville performance, was revoked, as having too many elements of danger, and other build- ings of resort were made more thoroughly pro- tected. On the 2d of June the Rochester and Lake Ontario Water company began laying an in- take pipe at the beach, to give the city an addi- tional supply. On the 10th of that month the Rochester Light & Power company, which two years before had absorbed all the gas and electric companies of the city, reached out still further and purchased all the stock that could be ob- tained of the street railroad, forming thereby the Rochester Railway & Light company, a monster monopoly of public utilities, which thus far has been rather beneficent on the whole, owing to the constant supervision and requirements of the municipal anthorities. Apart from suicides there were a surprising number of fatal casualties in this year -- one hundred and nineteen, of which thirty-nine were from accidents on steam rail- roads. thirty-two from drowning, eight from the street cars, the rest from various etuses. Rev. Dr. T. Harwood Pattison died on the 11th of Feb- ruary, a professor in the Rochester Theological seminary; James Brackett, March 7th. mayor in 1864 and president of the Rochester Savings bank for many years before his death ; Reuben D. Jones, May 30th, born in 1815, one of the oldest newspaper men in Western New York, having been on the Daily American as far back as 1817 and after that connected with severa! aker local journals: Joseph A. Adlington, July
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THE "FOUR CORNERS."
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2dl. surrogate from 1884 to 1892, a good soldier. officers resided; it involved the practical absorp- having entered the war as a private and coming out as lieutenant-colonel. Father Hippolyte De Regge, chancellor of the Catholic chocese of Rochester. a popular priest, well-known through- out the United States, died July 14th at Antwerp, having gone to Belgium, his native country, on a visit. Valentine Fleckenstein on August 11th; he had been a member of the executive board, city assessor, postmaster, city treasurer and collector of internal revenue. Rev. Dr. Isane N. Dalbey, pastor of the West Avenne Methodist church, August 15th. John MeMullen, a typical fireman of the ald volunteer school, chief engineer of the department in 1863, died September 27th. Mrs. Mary J. Amedlen, widow of Christopher T. Ams- den, December 26th, the oldest native-born resi- dent of Rochester at the time of her death, having come into the world and this little settlement in 1816.
In January. 1903, the Brighton election was carried by the annexation party by a majority of one vote. The Rochester Railway & Light com- pany gave ont contracts in March for extensions, buildings and machinery to the extent of $1,250,- 000. In April Rev. Dr. C. E. Hamilton resigned the pastorate of the First Methodist church and Rev. Dr. 1. P. Coddington that of the First Uni- versalist. Father Thomas F. Hickey beenme coad- jutor hishop of the diocese in May. On the 1st of June the public market was opened, a great step in advance, for it put a stop to the blockade of hay wagons on Front street from time immemor- ial and to what was still worse, the serions inter- ference with traffic in the neighborhood of the "Seven Corners," at East Main street and North avenue, by the long lines of wagons of market gardeners which had come there, principally from Irondequoit, long before dawn and stayed well into the morning. On June 20th was the presentation to the university. the gift of the alumni, of the statue of President Anderson, in the middle of the campus; on the 5th of August the laying of the corner-stone of the new armory. Toward the close of the year negotiations that had been going on for several months were completed which resulted in the formation of a gigantic enterprise. the United States Independent Telephone com- pany, with a capital of 850,000,000, the headquar- ters being located in this city, where most of the
tion of the most of the following named independ- ent telephone companies, with the absolute control of the others by the purchase of most of the stock : The New York, the Utah, the Indianapo- lis, the Stromberg-Carlson Manufacturing and the Rochester, which last named controlled, through stock ownership, not only several smaller concerns, but also the Independent Telephone Securities company, which itself controlled, also through stock ownership, thirteen operating companies; the cost of acquiring all these securities was $56,- 459,313.43; the future of this great company is uncertain, and what will be the final outcome is at the present writing wholly conjectural. This year building operations were carried on to an un- precedented extent, so far as the money expended was concerned, the total valuation of the structures erecied being 85,569,019 ; among the most import- ant of these were the building of the Rochester Trust & Safe Deposit company, on the corner of Main and State streets; the addition to the Ger- man Insurance building adjoining it, making those two structures occupy the site of the old Irving Hall or Silas O. Smith block ; the Strong Manufacturing building on State street, the build- ing for offices of the Buffalo, Rochester & Pitts- burg railroad, on West Main street (one of the most Wwantiful in its proportions in the whole city), and the Sibley, Lindsay & Curr building. on East Main street, as well as those that re- placed the ones destroyed in the great fire of February, 1904 -- which is described in an- other chapter-all of which were completed in the early part of the year.
Death invaded the ranks of the law in this year, carrying off a number, among whom may be men- tioned Menzo Van Voorhis, January 18th : Wil- liam F. Cogswell, the leader of the bar, February 12th; Frederick A. Whittlesey, February 24th; born in 1827, graduated at ('nion in 1842; a son of Vice-Chancellor Whittlesey : a lawyer of the old school, confining his practice ahnost entirely to the real estate branch of his profession, in which he was a recognized authority: retiring from the practice of the law several years ago, he devoted himself more than ever to literature, to which he had always been addicted : was president, at the time of his death, of the board of trustees of the Reynolds Library, of which he was one of the in-
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corporators; John W. Stebbins died July 30th, and John Van Voorhis October 30th, a success- ful lawyer with a very Inerative practice; mem- ber of Congress, elected in 1878 and 1880 and again in 1892. January 28th Kendrick P. Shedd died; after serving in the war he was county clerk for two terms, from 1891 to 1897; February 14th J. Miller Kelly, a Democratie politician, aldermau from the fifteenth ward for twenty-five years; February 17th Frederick Cook, remarkable for the almost unbroken prosperity that attended his movements; beginning life as a shoemaker and then a butcher, he abandoned those trades to be- come a brakeman on the Buffalo & Rochester rail- road (before it became a part of the New York Central), for some time a conductor of a German immigrant train, then of a regular passenger train; having followed that calling for twenty years, he gave it up to embark in commercial enter- prises, which, multiplying on his hands, seemed to owe much of their success to his guidance, for he was president of almost every one of the corporations in which he was interested and was recognized as a financial magnate, not only here but elsewhere; was prominent in Democratie politics and secretary of state of New York from 1886 to 1890. Dr. John Stafford, the oldest physician in the city at the time of his death, just a century in age, died February 25th; Elbert Henry Serantom, April 24th, a bookstore keeper of long standing; Frederic P. Allen, May 3d, of an old family, eashier of the German-American bank ; James C. Hart, August 16th, a successful merchant and highly respected citizen ; never held office, very retiring and equally charitable, dis- tributing his great wealth so unostentatiously that no one ever knew how much he gave away. George G. Clarkson, August 25th, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1811 ; an old anti-slavery man, mayor of the city in 1824, for a long time president of the old Atheneum and for twenty-six years presi- dent of the board of managers of the Deaf Mute institution. Dr. George G. Carroll. September 24th, a valuable member of the board of education. William Purcell, December 27th, in carly life a practical printer, he became a member of the edi- torial staff in 1854 and ten years later chief editor of the Union & Advertiser, retaining that position until his retirement, by reason of ill health, fonr years before his death; one of the most vigorous
and effective writers ever connected with the Rochester press; on the last day of the year Philip Fried, a famous tenor singer in opera, in con- certs and in church choirs.
The most memorable occurrence in 1906 was the series of events connected with the trial for heresy of Rev. Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey, the rec- tor of St. Andrew's ( Episcopal) church. Toward the elose of the previous year Dr. Crapsey had de- livered a number of Sunday evening addresses at his church, in which he indicated plainly his dis- belief in some of the doctrines commonly held by members of that denomination, notably the miraculous conception and virgin birth of Jesus Christ and his bodily resurrection after death, as well as the doctrine of the trinity. Almost sim- nltaneously these addresses were printed and pub- lished in book form, under the title "Religion and Politics." On the 6th of January following Rt. Rev. William D. Walker, bishop of the diocese of Western New York, vehemently condemned, in a sermon preached in Christ church, the views enunciated by Dr. Crapsey, but, in spite of that, the latter declared publicly, three weeks later, that he should maintain his position in the church. Then the standing committee of the diocese took up the matter and made a presentment against Dr. Crapsey on February 23d. After some delay the case came on for trial at Batavia before the ecclesiastical court of the diocese on the 17th of April. Both sides were represented by able coun- sel, the committee by three Buffalo attorneys, the accused by J. Breck Perkins of this city and Ed- ward M. Shepard of Brooklyn, both of whom de- livered strong arguments. besides which Dr. Crap- sey spoke in his own behalf. On the 9th of May the court, by a vote of four members, the fifth dis- senting. handed down its decision or verdict, find- ing that the accused had been guilty of preaching and publishing in denial of the doctrines as con- tained in the Apostles' creed, the Nicene creed and the book of Common Prayer. and stating that in its opinion "sentence should be pronounced As follows: That the respondent be suspended from exercising the functions of a minister of this church until such time as he shall satisfy the ec- clesiastical authority of the diocese that his belief and teaching conform to the doctrines of the Apostles' erved and the Nicene creed as this church has received the same," expressing at the same
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time the hope that before the lapse of the thirty daye, at the end of which time he should be sen- tenced, he might see his way clear to satisfy the authorities of his conformity with the doctrines. So far from recanting, Dr. Crapsey reiterated, in still more emphatic language than he had previ- ously employed, his belief in his former utter- ances, and on the 6th of June he tiled an appeal from the verdict, on the ground that the court was illegally formed, that it had refused to receive important evidence, that not sufficient time for preparation had been allowed and that the decision was vague, null and void. That brought the case before the final court of review, which held its session in New York city and which, after hearing the arguments of counsel, handed down, on the 19th of November, a decision which, without going into the merits of the case, rejected the appeal, on the ground that no errors had been committed on the former trial, the judgment of which must, therefore, stand. That ended this remarkable heresy trial, which, for better or worse, in one way or another. will leave its impress for a long time to come. A week later Dr. Crapsey, in a letter of much dignity, requested Bishop Walker to execute the sentence without delay, having done which he preached his farewell sermon at St. Andrew's and tendered to the wardens and vestrymen of the parish his resignation as rector. On the 4th of December he was formally deposed from the priest- hood of the Episcopal church.
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