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 15
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Buffalo (merged in the Western Union in 1860), which was opened for the transmission of messages in the winter of 1844-45. The first press dispatch received here came on June I, 1846, and appeared in the Democrat of the next day, being a report of the constitutional conven- tion then in session at Albany; the office was originally in the base- ment of Congress Hall, but was soon removed to the Reynolds arcade, where it still remains ; George E. Allen was at first in charge of the office, then S. S. Pellett, then A. Cole Cheney (from 1852 to 1881), then George D. Butler, the present manager. Several other companies opened their offices here at intervals, but they all closed eventually, as the lines became absorbed in the all-controlling Western Union- except that of the district telegraph, a local concern, for the purpose of summoning messengers, police and other persons, and also that of the Postal telegraph cable company, a new-comer, which has not yet suc- cumbed. In connection with the progress of this monopoly is the in- teresting episode of the speculation in its stock ; the headquarters of the company being then in this city the shares had a local attraction and their price began to advance in 1863, keeping on till April, 1864, when the stock, having been doubled and then watered again in the meantime, sold for $230, the highest point reached; that broke the market, some fortunes being made, but more lost ; the same was still more widely true concerning the investment in Pennsylvania petroleum interests at about the same time.
After the little war scare of 1814 peace reigned supreme in this community till 1837, when the Navy island raid took place ; the so- called "patriot war " (though those engaged in it were discontented rioters, rather than lovers of their country) had broken out in Canada West, and some men from this city, as well as large numbers of people from the vicinity, rushed to Navy island, in the Niagara river, and took possession of it, with a view to assisting the insurgents on the other side ; great excitement prevailed here and it seemed that the two coun- tries might become involved in a senseless war, but our government interfered before it was too late and sent General Scott to the frontier, who took control of the island and dispersed the crazy interlopers ; after that the turmoil subsided, William Lyon Mackenzie, the dema- gogue who had originated it, escaping to New York, coming to Roch
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ester in 1839 and starting a weekly paper called the Gazette, in order to revive the disturbance; he was tried at Canandaigua and sentenced to our jail for eighteen months but was pardoned within a year and disappeared. The Mexican war having broken out in 1846 a small company was raised here, but the quota was full by that time and the men stayed at home; in the next year a full company was enlisted and went to Mexico under Caleb Wilder as captain and Edward McGarry as first lieutenant ; they saw little fighting but remained in the country for eighteen months as part of the army of occupation. Then came the war of the rebellion in 1861, and for four years our feelings were en- grossed by that ; during 1862 and 1863 the streets were dotted with tents for enlistment, the court-house plaza and the "four corners" being specially devoted to their location ; fairs were held at different times for the benefit of the soldiers, the principal one being the grand bazaar at Corinthian hall for a week in December, 1864, when $15,000 was realised ; a full statement of our troops will be found in the sketch of the county.
In few communities did the feeling of hostility to African slavery have a stronger foothold than in Rochester, and here was laid the foundation of the Liberty party when Myron Holley, in June, 1839, started the Rochester Freeman, in which he urged the policy of inde- pendent political action on the subject. On the 28th of September of that year the Monroe county " convention for nominations " was held, by which was meant a meeting for the selection of delegates to a con- vention that should make distinct nominations of candidates to be sup- ported on that issue at the ensuing presidential election ; as an outcome of that convention at Rochester-the first of the kind held in the coun- try-a state convention was held a short time later at Arcade, Wyom- ing county, and a national convention at Albany in the following April, which nominated James G. Birney for the presidency. Anti-slavery conventions of all kinds were frequently held here, both of the more moderate wing and of the Garrisonian abolitionists, so that, if the dif- ference between the two factions was not clearly understood by out- siders, it was not owing to any lack of information imparted at Corin- thian hall and elsewhere; in that popular auditorium fairs in behalf of the cause were common during the times of the agitation, at which 19
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Frederick Douglass was often a conspicuous figure, and it was there that William H. Seward, on the 25th of October, 1858, uttered his pro- phetic words about the "irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces."
But not alone in this public way was Rochester distinguished for its part in the struggle between slavery and freedom, for this was always one of the principal stations of the " underground railroad," that occult method of transportation from intolerable bondage to liberty beyond the border. Guided by the polar star and by means of information known only to themselves, thousands of fugitives 1 passed through this city on their way to Canada, and a large proportion of them were har- bored here, sometimes over night but in other cases for days at a time, while they lay concealed from the watchful eyes of government officers who had been notified of their flight and ordered to intercept and arrest them. Generally the runaways would be in groups of two or three, but sometimes one lonely wanderer would appear and once a party of fifteen came on Saturday night to the residence of Mrs. Post, on Sophia street, where they were sheltered over Sunday and driven down on Monday morning, in the usual way, to the steamboat landing at the foot of Buell avenue, whence the regular vessel, under the British flag, carried them safely to Canada. How the knowledge of that house, and of three or four others in this city, as secure and friendly hiding-places, came to the intelligence of the flying bondmen was never known, nor was the fact of their concealment divulged in a single instance, though it was within the cognition of great numbers of people of both colors and there were often warrants in the hands of the officers, ready to be served on those who were more than suspected to be lying here.
Though there were many narrow escapes here, there was only one actual rendition to slavery, and that was as far back as 1823, when a woman who had got away from her owner at Niagara Falls had come to this city and lived for some time with her husband, who was a barber here ; she was finally arrested, carried to Buffalo and put on a vessel bound for Cleveland, whence she was to be carried to her home in Wheeling, Virginia; on board the boat, with hope behind, despair in
I The late Mrs. Amy Post, in a thoughtful article prepared eleven years ago, estimated the number as about one hundred and fifty each year on the average; she is a good authority.
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front, she cut her throat, and so was free at last. From that time, public opinion, though somewhat divided, preponderated so strongly against the surrender of human beings that it was never attempted here again, and even after the passage of the infamous fugitive slave bill in 1851, which increased the bitterness of feeling and never helped the South, the authorities wisely abstained from precipitating the conflict that would have been sure to result from any effort at the forcible return of a runaway slave.
Rochester is associated with a peculiar manifestation that appeared here about the middle of the century and spread the name of the city to the uttermost parts of the earth. In 1847 John D. Fox, who had lived here previously, moved with his wife and daughters-Margaretta, aged twelve. and Kate, aged nine-to Hydeville, in Wayne county, where they occupied a house in which mysterious noises had already been heard. These now increased in frequency, in loudness and in va- riety, the little girls seeming to be the mediums through which the dis- turbances occurred. The noises finally resolved themselves into rap- pings or knockings, which resounded all over the house, on floors, ceil- ings and walls, but neither the parents nor any of the neighbors were able to solve the mystery as to how the sounds were produced. The children were then separated, one of them, and afterward the other, coming to Rochester to live with their older sister, Mrs. Leah Fish, who, originally incredulous, soon came to be as successful a medium as either of the little ones. In the presence of any one of the three the knockings were repeated and seances were held at different houses in the city, where communications were carried on by the laborious pro- cess of repeating the alphabet and spelling out whole sentences as the affirmative raps indicated that the proper letter had been reached. Curiosity was aroused and of course much antagonism was evoked by the spread of this new cult, and it is only fair to say that it seems to have been these mysterious agencies themselves that originally and persistently demanded a public investigation of the matter. As sug- gested by the responsive rappings, a meeting was held at Corinthian hall on November 14, 1849, at which a committee was appointed, which made a report on the following evening at the same place to the effect that it had, after full investigation, failed to discover the means by which the sounds were made.
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Instead of allaying the exitement this report only increased it; a second committee, composed of Dr. H. H. Langworthy, Frederick Whittlesey, D. C. McCallum, William Fisher and Judge A. P. Haskell, of LeRoy, was equally unsuccessful, and finally a third committee was appointed, consisting of men equally eminent, every one of whom had the full confidence of the community and not one of whom was a be- liever in the new philosophy. These men, after some trustworthy women, selected by them, had carefully examined all the clothing worn by Mrs. Fish and Margaretta Fox, to prevent the concealment of arti- ficial appliances, subjected the mediums to the most rigid and severe tests that they could devise, and yet, in spite of all, this committee, like its predecessors, had to confess that it was unable to discover the fraud. Considering that all these fifteen men were appointed, not as impartial investigators but with the avowed object of exposing what was alleged, even by them, to be a mischievous imposture, their discomfiture is cer - tainly very remarkable. At the gathering before which that final report was made, Corinthian hall was packed with a crowd that contained a large element of the baser sort, and these ruffians, enraged at the out - come of the inquiry, tried to seize the women who were the objects of their disapproval and who were there on the stage, so that it required the intervention of a strong body of police to quell the disturbance, which was the nearest approach to a riot that was ever witnessed in that building. No further inquisition was made, the Fox sisters continued for many years to practise their mediumistic voca- tion, and so the "Rochester knockings" became the beginning of modern spiritualism in all its various forms.
From flood as well as fire Rochester has had its losses, but by the former element no mortality is known to have been caused. The prin- cipal freshets within our historic times were those of 1803, which carried away Indian Allan's saw mill, the first structure on the One-hundred- acre tract ; of 1835, which overflowed Buffalo street and carried away the bridge at the lower falls ; of 1857, which swept off the old buildings on the north side of Main street bridge and most of the bridge itself, and, finally, that of March, 1865, the most disastrous of all, which was owing to the insufficiency of the openings in the Erie railroad embank- ment near Avon, so that the accumulated water from the sudden thaw
JOHN H. ROCHESTER.
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of a great body of snow and ice was held back and then, breaking its barriers, came down with a volume that could not be discharged under the arches of the aqueduct, so there was no dry land in the middle of the city for more than two days. No effective measures have yet been taken to guard against a repetition of this disaster, although many have been proposed, and the encroachments on the river bed continue as in - dustriously as ever, regardless of the danger that in our own time, not after us, may come the deluge.
To provide the means for preventing wholesale conflagrations was always in the minds of our citizens, and, long before the problem of how to obtain them was solved, the necessity made itself felt of supplying the / fast-growing city with drinking water to take the place of that procured from wells and from the roofs of buildings. After many costly ex- periments in the way of issuing bonds the proceeds of which were frit- tered away by dishonesty and folly, a law was passed in 1872 "to supply the city of Rochester with pure water." Under this act a com- mission was appointed, which, with J. Nelson Tubbs as chief engineer, began work by laying out a double system-first, the Holly system, by which water for fire purposes could be obtained from the river by pump- ing machinery, and, second, one by which drinking water of the best quality could be brought from Hemlock lake, twenty-eight miles away ; the former was in operation by the beginning of 1874, the first stream from a hydrant being thrown at a fire on the 18th of January; the Hemlock lake system went into effect on January 23, 1876; the distrib- uting pipes of the latter were extended annually and the total cost of the combined systems up to the Ist of April, 1884, was $3,656,049.
Rochester's fiftieth birthday was celebrated on the 9th and 10th of June, 1884, with processions, parades, addresses, fireworks and all the other paraphernalia so dear to the hearts of the American people ; the mayors of New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Toronto and other cities were present, and a congratulatory dispatch was sent from the corpora- tion of the English Rochester. With this the record of our antiquity may close, the record of our new life begin.
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CHAPTER IV.
THE LAST DECADE.
Cannibalism in the Greely Relief Expedition-Foundry Strike in 1885-The Bell Telephone Struggle-Sketch of Henry O'Reilly-The Naphtha Explosion Disaster- Awful Loss of Life at the Lantern Works Fire - Death of Gen. A. W. Riley, Hiram Sibley and Seth Green-Street Car Troubles and Changes-Sketch of Henry E. Rochester-And of President Anderson-Church-Building in 1891-Sketch of Josialı W. Bissell-Dedication of the Soldiers' Monument-Charitable Relief Work in 1894- Introduction of Individual Communion Cups-Dedication of a Jewish Temple-Sketch of Darius Perrin-Diphtheria and Anti-Toxine-Sketch of Frederick Douglass, and of William S. Kimball.
In the semi-centennial year the local press teemed with historical and reminiscent accounts of Rochester's past life, and more than one com- prehensive narrative of the city was published in book form. Among those works was a history of Rochester compiled by the writer of this sketch, and therein was a chronological list of the most important events in the city's career up to that time. Believing that a continuation of that classification will be appropriate in this place, it is here given. On August 10 of that year the remains of Lieut. F. F. Kislingbury, the second in command of the Greely relief expedition, were buried at Mt. Hope after lying in state at the city hall; four days later the body was exhumed in order to settle the question of cannibalism on the part of the surviving members; the flesh was found to have been cut from the bones, affording proof of the previous rumors. From August 19 to 22 the American Microscopical society held a convention here ; the na- tional reunion of the army of the Cumberland took place, General Sheridan being present. Two boards of municipal civil service exam · iners were appointed in October, the first examinations being held De- cember 7.
In 1885 the Park avenue Baptist church was dedicated January 25 ; John Kelly, after conviction and death sentence for the murder of Jacob
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Lutes, was tried again and acquitted, March 8, mistaken identity being proved ; a long strike began at the foundries April 30, keeping about six hundred men out of work ; it was ended by arbitration August 9; Asbury Methodist church, on East avenue, was finished in June, cost- ing, with the lot, $64,694 ; memorial services in honor of General Grant were held in the city hall August 8; on September 9 the corner stone of the new government building, on Church street, corner of Fitzhugh, was laid, the original appropriation being $300,000, increased by $200,- 000 afterward. A sham battle was fought at the driving park on Sep- tember 14, for the benefit of the soldiers' monument fund; all the sur- viving war veterans in the city participated, and over $5,000 was realised.
The right of the Salvation Army to march, sing and play musical instruments in the street was settled in the early part of 1886 by judicial decision. The South Congregational church was organised September 2. The Bell telephone company, which had opened its offices here in January, 1879, and increased its business till it reached nearly one thousand, grew more and more extortionate in its demands until, in October, it announced that the plan of charging a fixed rent was to be abandoned and a toll system substituted, by which a certain sum should be paid for each message ; this exhausted the patience of the subscribers, most of whom joined together and at noon of November 20 over seven hundred of them hung up their telephones, with the pledge to leave them unused till reasonable terms should be obtained ; this was not ac- complished till May 12, 1888, when the company yielded, the people gaining most of the points in dispute. Henry O'Reilly, born in Ireland in 1805, died August 17, at St. Mary's hospital ; he was, in his early life, one of the most remarkable men in Rochester, identified prominently with every public movement ; he was connected with New York journals when a mere youth and came here in 1826 to take editorial charge of the Advertiser, the first daily paper west of New York ; he was one of the most conspicuous Anti-Masons in this vicinity, but more embittered against the other one of the two factions into which they were divided than against the members of the secret order; he was one of the most active promoters of the Erie canal and the author of the first memorial in favor of enlarging and improving the waterway ; he was the author
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of the first history of Rochester, published in 1838, was appointed post- master of the city in that year and was afterward the builder of the lines of telegraph as told in the preceding chapter, which brought him into collision with the inventor Morse, with whom he had a protracted litigation for many years ; during the civil war he was the secretary of the national society for promoting the enlistment of colored troops; he was a man of the most restless activity of mind until the infirmities of age subdued his energy, and was one of the most prolific writers of political and polemic pamphlets in this country, besides leaving at his death an enormous mass of unpublished manuscript on a great variety of subjects. Mrs. Abelard Reynolds, who came here with her husband in 1812 and lived in the second house built in Rochester, died August 22, being within one month of the age of one hundred and two years.
On the 14th of May, 1887, the Erie railway station, costing $48,000, was opened; the elevated foot-bridge, the first in the city, on Exchange street, over the Erie canal, was accepted by the authorities May 27, cost $3,900 ; many old buildings were torn down and new ones begun, near the " four corners "-the Wilder building, the Ellwanger & Barry block, the German Insurance building and those in place of the old
Clinton Hotel. There were many workingmen's troubles in June, culminating in riots among the street laborers on the 27th, particularly one on Gorham street, where the strikers assaulted those who had taken their places; the police who came to the rescue were stoned by the . rioters and fired into the mob, wounding several. On December 21 a frightful catastrophe occurred, by the escape of fifteen thousand gallons of naphtha from a broken pipe into the Platt street trunk sewer ; the volatile gas took fire before the liquid could flow into the river, and ex- plosions took place all along the line for more than a mile, with a noise that was heard throughout the city, the flames leaping high into the air from the man-holes and other openings; the Jefferson mill was blown down, the Clinton and the Washington were burned, three men were killed, two fatally injured and many others badly hurt.
Few institutions in this city have been so beneficial to the working- men, and none have done so much to give them the ownership of the houses that they occupy, as loan associations. These had been multi- plying so rapidly during the ten years prior to 1888 that there were then
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about one hundred of them, more, proportionately, than in any other place in the country except Philadelphia ; the first state convention of these organisations in New York was held here on May 17 of that year. On the 26th of that month the first deaconess of this city was ordained at St. Luke's by Bishop Coxe. St. Matthew's church (Evangelical Lutheran) was dedicated October I. The Lyceum theater, on South Clinton street, the finest house for dramatic entertainment thus far erected in this city, with a seating capacity of nearly two thousand, was . opened with the play of " The Wife " on the night of October 8. In the early evening of November 9 the most appalling calamity that ever visited Rochester cast into the background of horror the disaster of the year before ; the steam gauge and lantern works, at the brink of the upper falls, on the west side, where Sam Patch made his fatal leap in 1829, caught fire and of the sixty persons who were doing night work there thirty four came to their death, five being killed by jumping to the ground, the rest being suffocated or burned alive; the remainder were saved with difficulty by ladders or by life blankets held beneath the windows from which they sprang.
Of the prominent citizens who passed away during the year, Gen. Ashbel W. Riley died April 3, aged ninety-three ; he came here in 1816 and was one of the first board of trustees of the village and one of the first board of aldermen of the city ; in early life he was colonel of the first regiment of riflemen-offering their services to President Jack- son in 1832 to put down nullification in South Carolina-and afterward major-general of militia ; his local fame rests upon his noble self-sacri- fice in the cholera times, as described elsewhere, but his reputation away from here is based upon his long career as a temperance advocate and orator, he having delivered some four hundred lectures on the subject in Europe and innumerable addresses in America. Hiram Sibley died July 12 ; having resided previously in Mendon he moved into the city in 1844, when he was elected sheriff of the county ; becoming interested in telegraph enterprises he was largely instrumental in the consolidation of the various companies into the Western Union, of which he was the president for sixteen years, the number of offices increasing during his administration from one hundred and thirty two to over four thousand, and the line being by his persistent efforts extended across the con- 20
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tinent ; he was a munificent benefactor to several institutions, par- ticularly to Cornell university, where he built the Sibley college of the mechanic arts, and to the University of Rochester, to which he gave the library building. Seth Green, distinguished for his services to the world in the propagation and transportation of fish, for which he re- ceived medals from foreign countries, died August 20. John S. Mor- gan, special county judge for four years and county judge for four years more, died in office December 8.
In the early part of 1889 the largest three brewing companies in this city sold out to an English syndicate for about $4,000,000. On March 14 the first dog show ever held in Rochester opened. An extensive strike of the employees of the street railroad company began on April 3, continuing for more than a month, interfering with the running of cars and including a riot on North Clinton street, for which fifty men were arrested. Cars began to run to Charlotte by electricity on July 30. On November 9 the old horse car company sold out for $2, 175,000 to a new concern, which began the next year the work of introducing the most improved electric system, which was completed in 1893. Among the dead of the year were Julius T. Andrews, January 7, an early resident of the east side of the river and one of the founders of St. Paul's church ; D. M. Dewey, January 17, who had been in the bookselling business for nearly fifty years; Mrs. Amy Post, January 29, aged eighty-seven, a prominent abolitionist in slavery times and afterward conspicuous in her advocacy of spiritualism. woman suffrage and other manifestations of advanced thought; H. H. Langworthy, February 5, an eminent surgeon ; Schuyler Moses, March 13, aged ninety-one, the oldest pioneer (in years) of the city and the oldest Mason in the state at the time of his death, who came here in 1818 and was a member of the common council in 1837, and Henry E. Roches- ter, the youngest son of the founder, who was born in Hagerstown, Md., January 7, 1806; he came here with his father in 1810, riding, though only four years old, all the way on his pony, except when taken into the carriage for necessary rest; having been educated at Hobart college he became the law partner of an attorney named Ford, but soon afterward was associated with the late Judge E. Darwin Smith ; he retired from the practice of the law in 1845 and engaged in
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