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 20
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96
Frightful as was that catastrophe. the memory of it was dimmed within a year by the most ap- palling calamity that ever visited Rochester, with the greatest loss of life at any one time, either before or since then. The steam gauge and lan- tern works, on the western brink of the upper falls, where Sam Patch made his fatal leap in 1829, caught fire in the early evening of Novem- ber 9th, 1888, and before it was over thirty-four of
the employees on the night force had met their death, five being killed by jumping to the ground. the rest being suffocated or burned alive, the re- mainder being saved with great difficulty by lad- ders or by life blankets held beneath the windows from which they sprang. With the exception of the second loss of the opera house and the injury to St. Mary's hospital, both in 1891; the destruc- tion of old Corinthian hall, latterly called the Academy of Music, on December 2d, 1898; that of Charles P. Barry's fine residence on East avenue on February Ist, 1899, and that of the whole plant of the Citizens' Light and Power company, to- gether with the Washington mill, both on Mill street at the foot of Factory, with a total loss of about $130,000. on November 25th, 1900, we come to nothing worth mentioning till the beginning of the new century. In the early morning of Jan- mary 8th, 1901, the Rochester orphan asylum, on Hubbell park, burned, rivaling in the horror of its calamity that of the lantern works and passing it, perhaps. in sadness, from the fact that all those who lost their lives were young children : there were one hundred and nine of these with- in the walls, all of them sound asleep (though the two night nurses on duty were awake) and thirty-one of them perished. the remainder being rescued by the neighbors and by the firemen, who had enough to do in saving the little ones with- out caring so much what berame of the asylum; a large proportion of the sufferers were so af- fected by fright, cold and partial suffocation that they had to be taken to the hospitals, the others being given shelter at various charitable institu- tions and private houses till a home could be provided for them. as described in another chap ter; the accident resulted from defective heating apparatus. Another fire, later in the same day, at the Eastman kodak factory, caused three fire- men to lose their lives and two others to be dan- gerously affected by the fumes of nitric acid. Lieu- tenant Boon was killed and eight other firemen were injured at the burning of the Rochester ma- chine screw works, January 28th, 1902. Most of the Hayden furniture manufactory and storage warehouse, on Exchange street, was destroyed on March 25th, 1903, with a total loss of $250,000.
The gloomy character of this recital may be lightened by the mention of the biggest bonfire ever seen here, when, after the municipal hospital for
Dla ized by Google
ROCHESTER'S GREATEST FIRE. FEBRUARY 26, 1904.
Dignzoo by Google
163
HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
contagions diseases had been erveted, the old build- ings of Hope hospital, where for so many years smallpox patients had been confined and treated, were, in conformity with an ordinance of the common council, burned to the ground in April of that year and every vestige of them obliterated. A far grander spectacle impressed all beholders two months later. On the 11th of June at eight o'clock in the morning fire broke out in the Pan- cost building, on Allen and Fitzhugh streets, oc- cupied by the Star Headlight company, which was utterly destroyed, the livery stable next south of it being crushed by a falling wall, and when the North wall went down it injured the water tower so badly as to render it practically useless and unable to stay the work of devastation. This vol- cano quickly sent its tongues of flume across Fitz- hugh street ; these fastened on the loftv steeple of the Brick church and soon from cornice to vane the spires were wrapped in a sheet of fire; the historie old edifice was aloomed, and within an hour its blackened walls were all that remained to show where the sanctuary and the Sabbath school room had once stood. Before the relics were cool the trustees bad met and resolved to continne the . regular church service, which was done on the following Sunday at the Baker theater and after that at the National till the new place of worship was erected. On the night of December 14th in that year the sky was lightened for several hours lwy a series of illuminations-early in the evening that of the Sherwood Shoe Finding company, on Mill street ; then, about midnight, that of the Fos- ter-Armstrong piano factory. on Commercial street, and an hour Inter, by a strange coincidence, another piano factory on North Water street, owned by the same syndicate but running under the name of Marshall & Wendell, was entirely de- stroyed; some hostile incendiary may have done the work or some flaming brand may have been carried across the river from one place to the other ; the loss by the three blazes was almost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, besides fifteen thousand dollars on workmen's tools in the two musical establishments.
Great as was the fire loss of the previous year it was rebpsed by that of the conflagration of 1901. which swept a large portion of the dry goods dis- trict, ope and three-quarter acres, and inflicted
a monetary damage of over three million dollars, the heaviest ever suffered from any one cause in this city. Before daylight on the morning of February 26th the electric fuse connected with the elevator in the Rochester Dry Goods establish- ment, on East Main street, became surcharged with that mysterious fluid, blew out and threw off sparks into some loose drapery lying near by. Al- though the night watchman heard the noise of the blowing out and hastened to the spot, the flames had already attained such headway that there was nothing to do but send in an alarm. The depart- ment arrived promptly, but found themselves con- fronted by a raging furnace. Any attempt to ex- tinguish the fire in the original building was at once seen to be useless and all efforts were di- rected to prevent it from spreading to adjoining stores. It took but a few minutes to show that this was almost equally hopeless with the means at hand, and aid was requested by telephone from Buffalo and Syracuse; both cities responded im- mediately, the former sending twenty-six men, the latter thirty, with two steamers and two hose carts from each place, all of whom went to work at once and were of invaluable assistance. The flames speedily devoured two small buildings to the east, then turned to the westward and at- tacked the Cornwall building, then came the Ell- wanger & Barry building, both blocks being oe- cupied by the Beadle & Sherburne dry goods com- pany, then the marble front owned by the Buell estate and finally the lofty Granite building, be- longing to Sibley, Lindsay & Curr, who used its ground floor, as well as that of the Buell block, for their retail store, their wholesale department being in another building of theirs, on St. Paul street, just across Division, the two connected by a covered bridge. It was hoped for a short time that the Granite, being reputed fireproof, would stand as a barrier to the march of the destroyer, and great was the disappointment when the flames were seen to burst from the windows in different stories, which were all filled with offices whose contents were utterly consumed. Fireproof it was, however, in a literal sense, for its walls, though defaced by smoke and cinders, stood firm and needed no reconstruction when the time came for the complete renovation of the interior; it stopped. too, the progress of the conflagration, for if its walls had fallen, like those of the other structures.
Digiszed by Google
164
HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
nothing could have saved the large dry goods es- tablishment of Burke, FitzSimons, Hone & Co., on the opposite corner of St. Paul street, and, 44 it was, that building was preserved only by the absence of an east wind and by the hardest kind of work on the part of our friendly visitors. The Sibley wholesale block went next, being absolutely destroyed, after which the fire crept around back of the Cox building and wiped out two or three small houses on Mortimer street : there it stopped.
The total insurance was $2,300,250, but there was little, if any, compensation for the Irnants of the Granite building, who, relying upon its supposed incombustibility, were generally uninsured and lost about two hundred thousand dollars. The city was exempt from other disastrous fires till near the close of the year, when. on December 11th, the handsome Boby building. on Elizabeth street. was totally destroyed, with a loss of $164,500 This brings our fire record to a close.
Digilized hy Google
CHAPTER XII
CRIME AND ITS PUNISHMENT.
The Peace of Rochester -- The Night Watch-The First Juil-The First Record of Crime-The First Homicide-The Second and Third Jails- The Regulations of the New City -- Duties of the Watch-The Midnight Cry-Locations of Police Office-Present Headquarters-the First Mur- der and Execution-The Falls Field Tragedy- Hardenbrook and Robertson Trials -- The State Industrial School-The Penitentiary-First Chief of Police-The Police Commission -- Three Murders-The Howard Riot-The Shed- on' of Death-The Lost Hanging-The Smith Murder-Two Mysterious Murders -- Love and Jealousy-The Department at the Present Day.
Whenever human beings are gathered together. whether in Eden or in Rochester, there must be some wrongdoing; the strife and the contrast be- tween good and evil, so early typfied, must, it would seem, go on while the world endures, and the most that advancing civilization can do is to repress the manifestation of wickedness and to instill a growing respect for the observance of law. That will in time bring about the universal recot- nition of right as the governing principle, as is plainly indicated by the progress of affairs. for it needs but a glance to see that, in spite of con- stant instances of retrogression, the forward steps are greater than those backward and that with all the shocking individual crimes and the appalling national sins the world is growing better every day. Selfishness will always prevail, but altruism will more and more serve to check the aggressions
of egoism. The settlement of Rochester was prob- ably no worse and no better than other localities. and no violent disorder can be found to have cx- isted here till the place had got pretty well ad- vanced.
EARLY CONSTABLES.
The earliest record that can be found regarding the pence establishment is that of the election, in 1812, of Solomon Close, Pelatiah West, Jonathan Parish and Hope Davis as constables for the town of Gates, which of course included the western half of what afterward became the city. There is no reason to suppose that the exercise of their powers weut any further than the arrest of delin- quent debtors, who might then be imprisoned for their insolvency, and even that authority had itz limits, for the river divided the counties of On- tarto and Genesee, so that if a fugitive happened to be more fleet than his pursuers all he had to do was to reach the middle of the bridge first. when he could turn and laugh the officers to scorn. When the village was incorporated, in 1817, the charter provided that the duties of the constable should be the same with those of the constables chosen at the annual town meetings of Gates, but it is probable that he had also the power to make arrests for criminal offenses in the daytime. when the night watch were necessarily off duty. At the first meeting of the frecholders and inhabitants held May 5th in the year named. Ralph Lester was chosen as constable, and some time in 1819 Matthew Brown, Roswell Hart, William P. Sher- man, Daniel Mack and Hastings R. Bender were
Dla ized by Google
166
HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
appointed as street patrol, but it is difficult to corded here, when it is mentioned in the Telegraph see how their services could have been very valu- able, as they were all business men and most vi them held other offices than this.
THE NIGHT WATCH.
The police department of Rochester really began to exist on the 28th of December, 1819, when at a publie meeting it was voted "that the sum of eighty dollars be raised by tax to defray the cv- pense of maintaining a village night watch, which had been appointed on the 10th inst., and to be continued so long as the said money raised will admit." The name of that official is not recorded ; that there was only one is shown by the fact that in the following year the salary was raised to one hundred dollars, but a year later was put back to the original eighty, "to support a night watch for so long a time, now commencing, as a faithful man can be hired for that sum."
THE FIRST JAIL,
When Monroe became a county, in 1821, it was of course necessary to have a jail, for that, as well as the court-house, was the outward and visible sign of a county, so the jail was built in that year. It stood on North Fitzhugh street, then called Hughes street, on the present site of the German United Evangelical St. Paul's church. No further description of it can be obtained than that it contained two tiers of cells, divided by a hall through the middle, and was inclosed with a high and insurmountable stone wall. It was sit- uated in the rear of a commodious brick house. ocenpied by the jailer's family, and the two build- ings together cost the county 83,674.41. Until the erection of the jail on the island, eleven years later, this one answered its purpose quite well; after that it was used for some time as a recruit- ing office for the United States army. Who were the first inmates of that place of confinement we do not know.
THE FIRST BURGLARY.
It ought to have been, but probably was not. the burglars who committed the first crime re-
of August 21st, 1821, that the store of Ilart & Saxton, which was located on the spot where the Elwood block now stands, had been feloniously en- tered the week before, when the clerks, who, after the custom of those times, were sleeping in an ad- joining room, were awakened by the noise made in attempting to open the cash drawer, whereupon the thieves departed without carrying off the plun- der which they had piled up on the counter; no arrests seem to have been made. The increase of the tax to two hundred dollars to support the night watch in 1822 would seem to indicate that the constituency of that body must have been doubled. Raphael Beach was elected constable in that year, succeeding George G. Sill and Charles Millard.
BLOODSHED COMES IN.
The first homicide in what is now the county took place not in Rochester but in the town of Gates outside of the village in July of the year named, when in a quarrel a man named Nichols struck Squire Hill on the head, inflicting a wound from which the latter died a few days later. Tha assailant was arrested, lodged in jail (of which he may have been the first occupant), from which he escaped, was retaken and escaped again, prob- ably not captured after that, as there is no record of his trial. What was in all likelihood a more cold-blooded murder occurred in the town of Par- ma, in the following April, when a man with his throat cut was discovered by the side of the Ridge road; no trace of the assassin was ever found. Ar the village grew in size it seems to have become more immoral, for the Telegraph of February 10th, 1824, after making the rather rash assertion that "probably no place in the Union of the size of Rochester is so much infested with the dregs and outcasts of society as this village," speaks of a meeting that had been held during the previous week, at which a committee was appointed to draft a petition to the legislature for the passage of a law to erect a tread-mill, or "stepping-mill." as it was called. Although the journal applauded the scheme as being likely to inspire non-resident crim- inals with such terror that they would stay away from this region, the law was never passed, public sentiment being then, and ever since then, ton
Digiszoo by Google
167
HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
strongly opposed to it in this country, though Great Britain retained that form of torture until five years ago. At any rate there were a sufficient number of evil-doers to fill up the jail, and some of the prisoners made a desperate attempt at es- cape on the night of July 31st. The sheriff, John T. Patterson, had, however, received warning of the plot and had notified a few citizens thereof, so that when the conspirators broke out of their cells about ten o'clock and blew out all the lights there was a hand-to-hand conflict in which iron bars and hickory clubs were freely used, so that several on both sides were badly hurt, but the riot was finally quelled.
WIFE-KILLING, BUT NOT MURDER.
John H. Ribby was, at the October circuit, found guilty of killing his wife, under circum- stances of great brutality, but as the woman lived for a week after her husband had beaten and kicked her, he got off with a conviction of man- slaughter and Judge William B. Rochester sen- tenced him to the state prison for fourteen years. In the following April Judge Walworth, of Sara- toga connty, was for some reason presiding over the court of Oyer and Terminer held here, when a man named Jones was brought up for trial. By means of a succession of skillfully forged deeds he had become possessed of a thousand acres of valuable land in Brighton, turning out of their rightful homes a number of innocent occupants. The district-attorney, Vincent Mathews, was a3- wisted in the prosecution by Messrs. Chapin and Hosmer, while Messrs. Lee, Marvin and Dickson defended the prisoner. Sixty witnesses, from four different states, testified for the people, but the trial lasted only two days, resulting in conviction. followed by a sentetice of life imprisonment.
THE SECOND JAIL.
The second jail, begun in 1831, was completed in the following year, standing on the artificial island formed by the river and the bend of th- Fitzhugh and Carroll race, on the site now cor- ered by the train-shed of the Erie railroad station. It cost $13,112.56, including $1,250.19 for the lot, from which should be deducted $2,600 realized
from the sale of the former jail on Fitzhugh street. The structure was one hundred feet loug by forty feet wide, built entirely of stone and so close to the river that the waters washed its eastern foundation wall. In the main prison, which was sixty by forty feet, was a block of forty cells, each cell being four feet wide, eight feet long and seven feet high; above them was a room of the whole area of the prison, which at a later period was fitted up with cells of a larger size. The jailer's dwelling, which formed a part of the building, was forty feet square and three stories high, the third floor being divided into seven rooms intended for debtors, for women and for men charged with minor offenses. Those of the last-named class were commonly employed in making furniture, iu weaving, tailoring and shoemaking. Edwin Ar- ery, who seems to have been the first jailer, was succeeded by Ephraim Gilbert. This jail stood for more than half a century, and for many years before it was torn down it was a disgrace to the county, simply from the parsimony of the board of supervisors in systematically neglecting to keep it in decent repair. Escape from it became pro- verbially an easy matter in certain seasons of the year, for the inmates, after letting themselves down from the windows, had only to walk across the river bed when it was dry from the drought of the summer or frozen over in the winter.
The third and present jail, on Exchange street, was completed and occupied for the first time on October 4th, 1885; it cost $56,419.91, besides $20,- 000 for the lot.
UNDER THE MUNICIPALITY.
In 1834 Rochester became a city, its population being then, according to the directory of that year, 12,252. The art of incorporation was passed April 28th and on the 2d of June the frecholders held their last village meeting, electing five aldermen. with as many assistants, live assessors and live con- stables, the last-named being Cornelius Fielding, Joseph Putnam. Isaac Weston, Sluman W. Harris and Philander Davis. A week later the common council completed the list of the first officials cf the municipality, among those appointed being Thomas H. Dunning, Samuel Miller and Na- thaniel Draper, with Sidney Smith as the first police justice. Ephraim Gilbert was appointed
Dla ized by Google
168
HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
city marshal, an officer who seems to have been a kind of head constable, serving warrants issued by the city treasurer and also executing processes from the mayor's court. The office ceased to ex- ist in 1850. By the terms of the original charter the thickly settled part of the city was consti- tuted the "lamp and watch district," .the limits of which were to be prescribed annually by the common council, and a separate column was to be provided in the assessment rolls for the tax to be imposed upon the real estate within that district. and upon the personal property of all persons liv- ing therein, "to defray the expense of lighting the city and compensating watchmen and for the pre- vention and extinguishment of fires," it being care- fully provided that the sum "to be appropriated to the lighting of the city and for the support of 1 night watch" should not exceed $1.500.
THE NEW WATCH.
On July 17th Newton Rose, Edwin Avery and William Wilbur were appointed city watchmen, with the first named as captain ; they were simply, the night watch, as their predecessors had been, for they were ordered to patrol the watch district from ten o'clock at night to the succeeding day- light, and evidently there were no day policemen at all. These nocturnal guardians had a great variety of duties imposed upon them by ordinance and a good deal of inquisitorial power, for they were authorized to enter any dwelling-house, grocery or other building where they had good reason to be- lieve that any felon was harbored or secreted. Be- sides that, the whole force had to start out on moonless nights (for when that luminary was shining there was not supposed to be any need of additional illumination), each one of them with a string of oil lamps on his arnt, which he would place on different posts at long intervals, leaving them there till morning, when he would gather them and take them to the watch-house, where they would be stored till the next evening. The officers were also expected, possibly as a matter of courtesy, to call ont the hour while patrolling their beats, ac- companying the temporal announcement with re- marks of a meteorological nature, such as "Twelve o'clock and all's well," or "Two o'clock and a starry night," or "Three o'clock and a frosty morn-
il g," or "Four o'clock, it snows and it blows," which tidings were not always productive of early rising on the part of the hearers.
THE POLICE STATION.
At the council meeting just mentioned the lamp and watch committee was directed to report a suitable section of the city for the location of a watch-house, which would seem to indicate that up to that time the jail had been used for the storage of all offenders, those who were too much intoxi- cated to get home as well as those who had com- mitted serions offenses, for both classes must have been locked up somewhere. In accordance with the report of the committee the southwest corner of the basement of the court-house was then fitted up, not only for the police court-room but with the necessary number of cells, so that for the next sixteen years all the passers-by on Sonth Fitz- hugh street were saddened by the constant sight of the gratings and oftentimes by that of the mournful or vicious faces behind the bars, When the court-house was torn down in 1850, to make way for the new county building, the police court was taken across the street to the present site of the Powers Hotel, while the lockup was removed to an old stone structure on the southwest corner of West Main street and Plymouth avenue, Both were, however, soon transferred to the north wing of the old Center market, on Frout street (which up to that time had been used as an armory for the militia companies), the cells being located in the basement, with the court-room above reached by iron steps on the outside. There they remained till 183, when they were located for a year on North Water street, near Mortimer, while a city building was going up to take the place of the old market. Back then they were removed, but they did not stay there long, for in 1875 they were installed in the new city hall, then just com- pleted, and there they remained till the erection of the central police station on Exchange street,
POLICE HEADQUARTERS.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.