USA > New York > Monroe County > Landmarks of Monroe County, New York : containing followed by brief historical sketches of the towns of the county with biography and family history > Part 11
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Barnes's Rifle Battery .- This was always the Twenty-sixth independ- ent battery. It left the state December 4, 1862, under Capt. J. Warren Barnes. Like the foregoing, it served in the far South. and was in Banks's expedition.
Eleventh Artillery .- Recruiting for this regiment began in Roches- ter in February, 1862, under Col. William B. Barnes. Four companies had been raised, under Captains William Church, Seward F. Gould, Henry P. Merrill and William F. Goodwin, up to June 24, when they were hastily ordered to Pennsylvania, to defend the state against Lee's invasion. After that campaign those companies were transferred to the Fourth New York artillery, and others who had been recruited by Major H. B. Williams were put into the Thirteenth artillery.
Fourteenth Artillery .- Of this, too, a portion was sent away before the enlistment was half completed, 200 being ordered off in July, 1863, to protect New York city against the hideous draft riots. On August 15 they returned and the regiment was mustered in by companies during the latter part of the year. Its first officers were : Elisha G. Marshall, colonel; Clarence A. Corning, lieutenant-colonel; William H. Reynolds, major ; Job C. Hedges, adjutant. It consisted largely of veterans, many of the men recruited in Monroe county having been members of the " Old Thirteenth." Having served during its first win- ter as heavy artillery in the forts of New York harbor, it went into the field as infantry in April, 1864. Its first engagement was at Spottsyl-
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vania and its most brilliant achievement at Petersburg, where it stormed the breastworks and captured 300 prisoners, but in doing this Col. Marshall was wounded and Major Hedges was killed, being succeeded by Joseph P. Cleary.
Fiftieth Engineers .- This was a regiment raised as the Fiftieth in- fantry, in 1861, and afterward converted into an engineer regiment, its original numerical designation being retained-most absurdly, as there were only three engineer regiments from this state. One of the later companies, mustered into service in December, 1863, was recruited partially in Rochester.
Besides the regiments named above, men from Monroe were in many others, so many that it would be difficult to trace out even those in which the number was quite appreciable. All through the conflict the honor of the county was fully sustained by those of its sons who laid down their lives to save the country and by those who survived to en- joy the blessings of a more perfect Union. Those of our citizens who acquired the title of general were John H. Martindale, brigadier and brevetted major-general; Isaac F. Quinby, brigadier; Elisha G. Mar- shall and Charles J. Powers, both brevetted major-general. The follow- ing were brevetted brigadier-general: Harrison S. Fairchild, Charles FitzSimmons, W. H. Benjamin, John McMahon, Francis E. Pierce, Edmund M. Pope, Oliver H. Palmer, Elwell S. Otis. The last named entered the regular army as captain soon after the close of the war and rose in the service till he became brigadier-general.
The organisations of the nation's defenders are well represented in this county. There are twelve posts of the Grand Army of the Re- public, of which five are in the city-the O'Rorke (which was the first in the state), the Peissner, the George H. Thomas, the C. J. Powers and the E. G. Marshall-and seven in the villages-the Martindale post, in Spencerport; the Gates post, in Gates ; the Goodrich post, in Churchville ; the Farr post, in Webster; the Slocum post, in Fairport ; the Tyler post, in Pittsford ; the Cady post, in Brockport.
These posts, together with various regimental and company organisa- tions, make up the First Veteran Brigade, which was formed in Janu- ary, 1879, for the specific purpose of maintaining the observance of Memorial day. The first commander was John A. Reynolds; the present commander is Henry S. Redman.
A SKETCH OF ROCHESTER.
BY WILLIAM F. PECK.
CHAPTER I.
THE GENESIS OF THE COMMUNITY.
The One-Hundred-Acre Tract -- Its Successive Owners -- Purchased by Rochester, Fitzhugh and Carroll -- Sketch of Col. Rochester -- Jeremiah Olmstead -- Charles Harford -- Enos Stone -- The First White Child-The First Log Cabin-Hamlet Scrantom- Abelard Reynolds-The Postmasters-The Early Bridges-Business Enterprises-In- corporation of the Village-Its Officers -- Its Population in Succeeding Years.
In the first part of this work mention has been made of the One- hundred-acre tract. That tract, which forms the nucleus of Rochester, extends from a point on the river about four hundred feet south of Court street (or near the foot of the Erie railroad train-house) due west to a point near the corner of Spring street and Caledonia avenue, thence north to a point a little northwest of the corner of Center and Frank streets, thence due east to the river, striking it a little north of where the foot of Market street extended would be. Of all this land Indian Allan cleared only half an acre for the erection of the saw-mill and grist mill that were the first human structures in Rochester. On the 27th of March, 1792, he sold the tract, so far as he could do so, giving to Benjamin Barton, of Sussex county, New Jersey, a writing empower- ing him to call on Phelps and Gorham for a deed of the land which they had promised to give to Allan and which was described in the instru- ment as running " northerly from said mills sixty-three rods also south- erly of said sixty-three rods from thence turning westerly so as to make one hundred acres strict measure." There being no deed of this land
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on record-and probably none was ever signed-from Phelps and Gor- ham to Allan or Barton or anyone else, the document above-mentioned is the final source of title, which, probably, was strengthened, afterward, by guarantees in the various transfers. It is stated in the instrument that the price paid was £500, New York currency, but that can hardly be so, for, if it were, the subsequent sales must have been made at a loss.
Just before he sold the place, Allan installed his sister and her hus- band, Christopher Dugan, in the mills, and they were not disturbed in the course of change of title, as indeed the principal difficulty seems to have been to get anyone to live there, rent free, and to derive any toll from the mills. The Dugans, the second family living, though not permanently, in Rochester, were very reputable people, in contrast to the Allans, who had preceded them. Christopher was in 1797 chosen one of the three pathmasters between the Genesee river and Lake Erie, while his wife, who had in early life been a governess in the family of Lord Stirling, was a woman of unusual cultivation, out of place in this unsettled region. December 24, 1793, Barton sold this One hundred- acre tract to Samuel B. Ogden, and he transferred it, November 29, 1794, to Charles Williamson, as manager of the Pulteney estate. Dugan tried to get Williamson to repair the mills, but in vain, so the family moved away, and when Aaron Burr came here in 1795, to look at the falls, there was not a human being living in the neighborhood.
A man named Thompson and another named Sprague were occa- sionally put in charge of the mills, and in 1796 Williamson spent about $500 in improvements and induced Col. Josiah Fish to undertake the office of miller. Fish built three sides of a log house, using the stone ledge for the back wall, remained there six years and was followed by a son of Gideon King, who came from the landing. The saw-mill was swept away by a freshet in 1803, and the grist mill burned down in 1807, which was no loss, for the grinding-stones had been transferred before that by Salmon Fuller, the last occupant, to his own mill in Irondequoit. After many mutations of ownership the stones were brought to the city in 1861 and placed just south of the court-house, in 1873 they became the foundations for lamp-posts in front of the city hall, then just completed, and this year (1895) they were imbedded in
Jacob Gerling
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the wall of a corridor of the new court-house, with a suitable inscrip- tion placed beneath them by the Rochester Historical society.
In 1800 three men came to the Genesee country, riding on horseback from their homes in Maryland, whence they had started on a leisurely prospecting tour, not in search of gold or other productions of the earth, but to find a new country in which to settle and bring up their families. They were all men of means, if not of great wealth, all were in middle life, all had acquired honorable distinction in the service of their country and all were citizens of influence in their community. They were Col. Nathaniel Rochester, Col. William Fitzhugh and Major Charles Carroll. Of the first and oldest of these, as the one for whom our city is named and who did much for its establishment, it is fitting that a few words should be said. Born in Westmoreland county, Vir- ginia, February 21, 1752, he passed his ten years from sixteen to twenty-six at Hillsboro', in North Carolina, where, during the Revolu- tionary war, he was prominent in military and civic capacities, being a member of the constitutional convention of that state and of the legis- lature, together with service in the militia, rising till he became deputy commissary- general of military stores in North Carolina for the use of the Continental army, besides being commissioned to superintend a manufactory of arms for the same object. Five years after the war he went to Hagerstown, Md., where he remained in business till he re- moved to this region, holding, in the meantime, the offices of post- master, county judge, presidential elector, member of the legislature and first president of the Hagerstown bank. In 1810 he migrated to Dansville, now in Livingston county-the calvacade embracing his wife (born Sophia Beatty), five sons, five daughters, ten slaves, two family carriages and three wagons with household effects-where he built a saw-mill, a grist mill and the first paper mill in Western New York; in 1815 he sold that property and moved to his farm in East Bloomfield ; in 1816 he was again a presidential elector ; in 1821 he settled down, at last, in the village that bore his name, living at first on the corner of Exchange and Spring streets but a little later erecting and occupying the house still standing on the northeast corner of Washington and Spring streets ; he was the first clerk of the county, in 1822 a mem- ber of the legislature, and in 1824, when the Bank of Rochester, the
14
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first in the village, was organised, he became its president; he died May 17, 1831, universally respected by a circle that far exceeded the limits of his personal acquaintance. Messrs. Carroll and Fitzhugh moved to Livingston county a few years after Col. Rochester, but never came to the city to live; the name of the latter is perpetuated in one of our oldest streets, but that of the former has long been blotted from the map in consequence of an unfortunate disagreement with the au- thorities over a question of riparian rights.
These three men, after making extensive purchases further up the valley at the time of their first visit and in the following year, bought the One-hundred-acre tract in 1803 (not in 1802, as is stated in most histories), the contract being signed on November 8 of that year. The instrument, executed at Bath, was signed, as well as by the three pur- chasers, by John Johnston as attorney for Sir William Pulteney, John- ston having been substituted, temporarily, for Robert Troup, who had, in 1801, taken Col. Williamson's place as agent for the Pulteney estate. Seventeen dollars and a half per acre was to be paid, one-fifth in the following May, the remainder in four equal annual installments, but in spite of that the last payment was not made till 1808 and the deed was given in 18II.
The decadence of the mills has been noted above ; the settlement at the falls was obliterated and had to be begun anew, but, before that was done, a few other arrivals occurred in the vicinity. In 1798 or 1799 Jeremiah Olmstead moved to this locality and settled with his family in a cabin that had been built a year or two before that by a man named Farewell, on Lake avenue, near the present State Industrial school. Olmstead produced the first crops raised within the present limits of the city, and indeed he may be called, in a way, the first permanent white settler of Rochester ; though the name, of course, did not cover his residence till many years afterward. Charles Harford, an English- man, having purchased an interest in the Twenty- thousand acre tract, came here in 1807 and erected a block house on State street, near the corner of Lyell avenue ; in the next year he built a mill on the same side of the river, just south of the high falls, and for as much as four years that did the grinding for all this region.
Mention was made, in the sketch of the county, of Enos Stone,
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THE GENESIS OF THE COMMUNITY.
junior, who came here in 1790 but continued, with several visits to this country, to live in Lenox till March, 1810, when he came here to dwell on the east side of the river. He built, first, a log cabin, and then, in October, a larger house, on South St. Paul street, near Court-the lat- ter being the first frame dwelling erected within the present city lines -- which still stands, inclosed within a more modern covering, on Elm street, whither it was moved several years afterward. During the in- terval between March and October his family lived with his brother Orange, near the " big rock and tree," on the Brighton road, and there, on May 4, 1810, his son, James Stoddard Stone, was born, who died at Charlotte only three years ago and around whom two successive tradi- tions have clung, with a persistency that makes one despair of the truth of history. In every narrative, long and short, touching upon this region, published previously to twelve years ago, it has been stated that he was the first white child born in Rochester -- meaning, of course, within the present limits of the city, for no one then thought of applying the term to that side of the river.
But that honor, such as it is, belongs to the late Mrs. John F. Bush, the daughter of Isaac W. Stone. Her father, mentioned on a preceding page as the commander of our forces at Charlotte, purchased of Enos Stone (no relation) in 1810 five acres on the corner of South St. Paul and Main streets, where he erected a frame house soon after Enos had built his; there he kept the first tavern in what is now the city, and there his daughter Mary was born, August 16, 1811. After it had been shown, in a history of Rochester published eleven years ago, that James S. Stone was not born in that city at all, but in what is still the town of Brighton (and was then Boyle), it was written and printed and said in public addresses, from that day to this, that he was the first white child born in the county. Which is no more true than the other assertion. That initial infant was, as stated on a preceding page, the daughter of Peter Sheffer. After that a granddaughter of Gideon King was born at King's Landing in 1799 and one of Zadock Granger at the same place in 1800, while three or four Stones (children of Israel and Simon) and at east one Agate were born in Pittsford before the close of the century.
After Col. Rochester moved to Dansville, he visited the falls every ew weeks, surveying and laying out the lots himself, one-quarter of an
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acre in each lot. As he was the one who did all the work, it was evi- dent to the two other owners, who were still living in the South, that the honor should be his also, and at their request his name was conferred upon the village that he was determined to have here. That was early in 1811, before a single sale had been completed. On November 18 the title was passed from Sir William Pulteney, and two days later the first lot was sold, to Enos Stone, nominally for fifty dollars, but really the land was given to him to compensate him for his services as resi- dent agent. Fifty dollars was the price for some of the lots, thirty for more of them ; either was a low valuation, compared with other places, but the owner coupled with each sale the condition that a dwelling or a store-house should be erected within a year or the lot should revert to the grantor, with the forfeiture of the five dollars already paid. The third sale was of lot number one to Henry Skinner, of Geneseo, which brought $200, the highest price of any, for the lot was on the corner of Buffalo street-which was a part of the " new state road "-and Carroll street (now State) and was the site of the present Powers block. Ham- let Scrantom had come on from Durham, Connecticut, to settle in this country, and as he was stopping at Geneseo Mr. Skinner offered to build a house for him on the lot mentioned if he would occupy it and locate in the future village. The offer was accepted ; in May, 1812, the house was completed-the first dwelling in what was even then called Roch- ester-built of logs, to be sure, but well roofed with slabs from Enos Stone's saw-mill across the river. Into it the Scrantoms moved at once, living there for a year or more and then building a house for themselves on a lot which they had bought nearer the river. One of the sons of this first family of Rochester was Edwin, a prolific writer of fugitive pieces on pioneer history, and another was Hamlet D., who became mayor of the city.
The only one who could compete with Mr. Scrantom for priority of settlement in the One-hundred-acre tract was Abelard Reynolds, who came on here from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in April, 1812; bought two lots where the Arcade now stands, contracted with mechanics to build a two-story frame house for him, returned to Pittsfield, found there waiting for him an appointment as postmaster of Rochester,1 came
1 Since there was only one family then living here, it might seem that the establishment of a post-office was in the nature of an official jest, but Col. Rochester was in earnest about the matter
·
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THE GENESIS OF THE COMMUNITY.
back here in the autumn and put up a smaller house on his other lot ; then, in February, 1813, he moved his family-consisting of his wife, his son William A., and his sister-in-law, Huldah M. Strong-from Pittsfield to their new home, and there Mortimer F., his second son, was born on December 2, 1814, the first white child born in what was then Rochester. After Abelard Reynolds recovered from the universal fever and ague, which prostrated him for the first six months of his resi- dence here, he carried on the business of a saddler and for some years opened his house as a tavern. Neither occupation at all interfered with his duties as postmaster, and he held that position for nineteen years, longer than any of his successors, who were the following: John B. Elwood, 1829; Henry O'Reilly, 1838; Samuel G. Andrews, 1842; Henry Campbell, 1845 ; Darius Perrin, 1849; Hubbard S. Allis, 1853; Nicholas E. Paine, 1858; Scott W. Updike, 1861 ; John W. Stebbins, 1867; Edward M. Smith, 1871; Daniel T. Hunt, 1875; Valentine Fleckenstein, 1887 ; Henry S. Hebard, 1890; John A. Reynolds, 1890; George H. Perkins, 1894.
This opening year of 1812, though it saw but little growth at the falls, gave promise of what should be speedily in the future. In the first place, the bridge across the river was completed. Three years be- fore that, it had been petitioned for, and the legislature had received the request with shouts of derision, saying that only muskrats would go across the bridge after it was built. Finally, however, it dawned upon the legislators that, even though there were no settlers just at that spot, it might be well to have some means of transit for emigration on the new state road, without which accommodation travelers had to go to Avon for the nearest bridge or run the risk of drowning if they at- tempted to ford the river. So the bill was passed in 1810 and the bridge was built in two years, at a cost of $12,000, divided equally be- tween the counties of Ontario and Genesee. It was more of a stimulus than the erection of a hundred houses would have been, for it was a pledge of permanence, but its own durability was not great and it had to be replaced in 1824 by another, far better, built by Elisha Johnson at a cost of $6,000, paid by the county. Connected with this was a
and he got the office created and the officer appointed through the influence of his old Hagerstown partner, Thomas Hart, whose daughter was married to Henry Clay.
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market, built at a right angle to it, in 1827, and extending over the water of the river. Buildings were erected, a few years later, on both sides of the bridge, and these, occupied as stores, stood there till the structure was taken down in 1857.
It may be as well to make, in this connection, a statement of the other river bridges within the city, except those that are now standing, which will be mentioned in another place. In 1819 a toll bridge was thrown across by Messrs. Andrews, Atwater and Mumford, a little south of the present Central avenue, at a street put down on the early maps as Bridge street, but since then closed up on both sides ; it lasted only about ten years and was never replaced ; it must have been a perilous crossing, for when the Duke of Saxe Weimar came to the village in 1827, to see the falls, he hastily withdrew as he was about to set his foot on the structure, remarking that he had a wife and children at home. In 1823 the first aqueduct for the Erie canal was completed, at a cost of $83,000 ; its west end was on the same spot with that of the present one, while its eastern termination was a few rods north of where this turns southward; it was built of red sandstone, with coping and pilasters of gray limestone; the blocks at the bases of the piers were trenailed to the solid rock, in which they were sunk, and each column was so cramped and cemented as to present the strength of a single piece ; it was 804 feet long, built on eleven arches. In 1826 a bridge was built at Court street, by private enterprise, the same persons cutting the street through to the Pittsford road and at the same time erecting the Rochester House on the southwest corner of Exchange . street and the canal, in order to draw travel in that direction ; another bridge was built there in 1858, costing $12,000, which was partly torn away by the flood of 1865, but after its repair it stood until the present viaduct was erected. The first Andrews street bridge was laid down in 1838, by private capital ; its successor, constructed of iron in 1857, cost $12,000 and stood for thirty-six years. Mount Hope having been dedicated in 1838, the first Clarissa street bridge was built two years later to serve as an avenue to the cemetery ; it was of wood, with high partition walls between the roadway and the foot-paths and still higher walls outside of the latter ; the second, far better, was constructed in 1862, costing $15,000.
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The second year of the settlement saw the opening of the first store, built by Silas O. Smith and conducted by Ira West ; the first school in the neighborhood was begun, in Enos Stone's barn, by Huldah M. Strong, who afterward married Dr. Jonah Brown; the Fitzhugh and Carroll race was opened on the west side; Francis Brown, Matthew Brown, junior, and Thomas Mumford started a rival settlement just north of this, calling it Frankfort, after the first named, and three years later they finished a mill canal from the head of the high falls, which has been called Brown's race ever since. It was these water privileges, together with that of the Johnson and Seymour race on the east side, with the dam across the river, both made in 1817 at an expense of $12,000, that laid the foundations for Rochester's swift prosperity, the " red mill" being put up by the Elys and Josiah Bissell, on the west side, in 1815 (the first building here of any magnitude), a cotton factory in the same year and the "yellow mill," by William Atkinson, on the east side, two years later. The first wedding, that of Jehiel Barnard and Delia, daughter of Hamlet Scrantom, occurred October 8, 1815, in a house on Brown street, near State. The first religious society (Presbyterian) was organised in 1815, Rev. Comfort Williams was in- stalled as pastor the next year and the church was erected in 1817, on the west side of State street, where the little gray stone building stands that was used as a banking-house by many successive corpora- tions.
By that time Rochester had become a compact community, far out- reaching its original limits within the lines of the One-hundred acre tract and embracing, by ties of identical interest, the hamlet of Frank- fort on the north and that of Brighton on the other side of the river. By an act of the legislature passed April 21, 1817, the village of Rochesterville was incorporated, on the west side of the river, though its confines soon became too restricted, as trade expanded in all directions. It lay wholly within the town of Gates till Brighton was annexed to it in 1823. The name selected was unfortunate, so distasteful to the inhabitants that it was seldom used even at the beginning and in 1822 it was exchanged for the simple form of Rochester. At the village election, held on the 5th of May, five trustees were elected- Francis Brown, Daniel Mack, William Cobb, Everard Peck and Jehiel
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