Landmarks of Monroe County, New York : containing followed by brief historical sketches of the towns of the county with biography and family history, Part 16

Author: Peck, William F. (William Farley), b. 1840; Raines, Thomas; Fairchild, Herman LeRoy
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Boston : Boston History Co.
Number of Pages: 1160

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 16

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business for a few years, when he removed to Caledonia and lived there till 1864, returning to Rochester and residing here till his death on June 3 ; he was one of the founders of the Rochester Historical society and contributed valuable papers on the early settlement of this region ; of retiring habits, he never held any office other than that of member of the governing bodies of the city and the county, and he died with a reputation for the staunchest integrity and the most unswerving ad- herence to his convictions.

Through the early part of 1890 the malady commonly known as the grip (an Anglicisation of the French form, la grippe), which had made its first appearance at the close of the previous year, was very prevalent, being directly fatal in many instances but in far more cases bringing with it the susceptibility to other diseases and to lifelong infirmity ; the city has not been free from it since then and almost every spring it be- comes so widespread as to be epidemic. On Sunday, April 13, by order of Mayor Carroll, all the saloons of the city were kept closed, for the first time in many years, and the law was actually enforced for several succeeding Sundays. The first meeting of the Rochester clear- ing house was held May I. The corner-stone of the Central Presby- terian church was laid August 12; All Saints' Mission (Episcopal) erected the parish house and chapel during the summer, holding the first services in December; the Young Men's Christian association building was dedicated November 7. On the 26th of February Dr. M. B. Anderson, one of the foremost educators of the country, died at Lake Helen, Florida, where he was sojourning for his health; born at Brunswick. Maine, February 12, 1815, he was graduated, in 1840, at Waterville college, where he was afterward a professor; removing to New York city in 1850, he became the editor of the Recorder, a weekly Baptist paper, resigning that position in 1853 to accept the presidency of the University of Rochester, which he retained till the autumn of 1889, when he retired on account of failing health ; his wife's death occurred, at the same southern resort, four days before his own, and the two were buried together in this city on the 4th of March. Henry S. Hebard died on March II, just a month after he had been appointed postmaster and before he had entered upon the office. Two of the oldest members of the bar-Joseph A. Eastman, admitted to practice

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in 1838, and Delos Wentworth, admitted in 1841-died March, 8 and April 8, respectively. Of well-known clergymen the Rev. Dr. Carter, rector of Trinity church, died March 26; the Rev. Dr. James B. Shaw, the father of the ministry of Rochester, who became pastor of the Brick church on February 16, 1841, and held the charge till 1887 with the veneration of his congregation and the respect of the whole city, died May 8. Of other deaths, the most noteworthy were those of Patrick Barry, on June 28, an authority on horticulture and member of the well-known nursery firm of Ellwanger & Barry ; William Alling, on July 13, one of the pioneers, who was in the employ of Marshall & Dean, the Quaker booksellers, in 1831, and was the publisher of O'Reilly's history in 1838, though Harper & Bros. printed it; George G. Cooper, on September 8, a veteran journalist, who has been men- tioned elsewhere, and Isaiah S. Emery, who committed suicide on October 19, while the Labor party's candidate for Congress.

The year of 1891 opened with two dedications of churches on the Ist of January, those of the North Baptist church and of the church of the Holy Rosary, on Rowe street; the Lake avenue Baptist Memorial church was dedicated on February 10, and St. John's Lutheran church on August 9; the corner-stone of St. Bernard's seminary, for the edu- cation of Catholic priests, was consecrated on August 20; the Central Presbyterian church, with an auditorium capable of seating nineteen hundred, costing, with the land, over $100,000, was dedicated on Sep- tember 13, and the Glenwood Methodist church on October 21. In March an unsuccessful effort was made to stock the county with quail, four thousand being brought from Tennessee for the purpose ; the new government building was occupied, the first business of the post-office being transacted on March 30 and the first session of the United States Circuit court being held there on May 5. The street car company, in accordance with its agreement with the common council when the fran- chise was given to it, began the issuance of transfer tickets on October 5, adding greatly to the convenience of local travel. Toward the end of the year the grip returned with such force that twenty-six deaths resulted directly from that cause in the closing week.

The necrological list includes the names of the following : George W. Elliot died March 18, a literary man, editorially connected with the

AUSTIN P. ROSS.

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daily press for several years and afterward managing editor of the American Rural Home; he was defeated in the candidacy for the may- oralty in 1888, but was successful in his advocacy of the public park system in the common council. Rev. Thomas James, colored, died April 18; he was born in servitude at Canajoharie in 1804 and was considered to have been the last person who came into the world in this state a slave; he was sold twice and ran away from his last pur- chaser when he was seventeen; coming to the village of Rochester he learned to read and after teaching school here for some time he began preaching in 1829 and was for many years the pastor of Zion church. James L Angle died May 4, a learned and upright judge, who was on the bench of the Supreme court, first in 1877, by appointment, and afterward, by election, from 1883 to 1889, when he retired on reaching the constitutional limit of seventy years. Dr. E. H. Hurd, the oldest homeopathic physician in the city, died May 15 ; Deacon David Dickey, a quiet man but an effective worker in the charities of the Brick church, died May 19, and Gen. I. F. Quinby, one of the faculty of the univer- sity from its second year (where he occupied the chair of mathematics), a general in the army during the civil war and city surveyor for the last few years of his life, died September 18.

Josiah W. Bissell, a resident of Rochester from his infancy till he was forty years old, a most remarkable man, a versatile genius, always do- ing something unusual, died at Pittsburg, Penn., November 30. Brought up in the banking business, he was for a time the cashier of the old City bank, and then established the banking firm of Bissell & Amsden, which issued on its own account the fractional currency-or " shinplasters," as they were called-which was in common use long before the civil war caused the government to follow that example. While he was do- ing that he built at Carthage the propeller Genesee Chief, the first steam vessel constructed at this port, and afterward he ran it himself down the St. Lawrence river and through the gulf to New York. Mov- ing to what was then far out on Main street, he changed the title of the thoroughfare to East avenue by attaching sign-boards at every corner along its length, in defiance of the common council, which had refused to alter the name, and then, buying the old tavern on the corner of Alexander street, he let the Home for the Friendless have it on terms

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of easy payment. Dissolving his banking firm he devoted himself en- tirely to building, constructing the present Main street bridge (one of the best) and the last suspension bridge at Carthage (one of the worst) and many of the largest hotels in this country and Canada. Being in St. Louis when the war broke out, he was in his element and at once raised a full regiment called the "Engineer regiment of the West," every man of which was a mechanic ; as colonel in command of this he performed one of the most notable achievements of the war by the con- struction of a canal at island Number Ten, enabling the Union fleet to pass down the river. At the close of the rebellion he returned to peaceful restlessness and devised the system of title insurance which is now in common use and for the promotion of which he established offices all over the country.

The system of university extension was introduced here by a public meeting held in January, 1892. On the Ist of May the Unitarians celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the permanent establishment of the church in this city ; many clergymen were present from a distance and at the banquet on the second evening most of the orthodox de- nominations of Rochester were represented by prominent pastors who spoke congratulations of fraternity and good will. On May 30 occurred the dedication of the soldiers' monument in Washington square, pre- ceded by an imposing parade of ten thousand people, headed by war veterans and comprising most of the older boys of the public schools ; President Harrison, Governor Flower and Frederick Douglass were present as the guests of the city and made addresses at the unveiling of the statue, the other speakers being Col. John A. Reynolds, President Hill, Senator Parsons and Mayor Curran. The monument consists of a shaft of granite surmounted by a bronze figure of Abraham Lincoln, rising from a pedestal twenty-one feet square, which is set in a base approached by five steps and having at its corners four bronze military statues, typifying the infantry, the cavalry, the marines and the artil- lery ; on the northern side is this inscription : "To those who, faithful unto death, gave their lives for their country. 1861-1865;" on the southern face are these words: "We were in peril; they breasted the danger. The republic called; they answered with their blood;" the great seals of the United States and the state are displayed on the east

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and west side ; the total height of the monument is forty-two feet, the weight of stone is nearly half a million pounds, and the cost of the whole was $26,000, met by popular subscription and the proceeds of entertainments. The American Association for the Advancement of Science met here in August. Our local state militia, consisting of the First and Eighth Separate companies, spent the last two weeks in Au- gust and much of September in the neighborhood of Buffalo, to guard property during the prolonged railroad strike there. On the 5th of October Governor Flower and his staff passed through the city on the canal, making an inspection of the channel through all its course-the first time that such a trip had been made by the executive of the state since De Witt Clinton came through from the opposite direction at the opening of the canal in 1825. The Rochester Bar association was in- corporated November 30.

Among the deaths of the year were those of Don Alonzo Watson, January I, the wealthiest man in the city ; Nehemiah Osburn, January IO, who came here in 1821 and was one of the very earliest contractors and builders in the village, so that a large proportion of the original buildings on Main street between the river and Clinton street were put up by him ; George E. Mumford, February 2. president of the Mer- chants' bank from the beginning and one of our prominent financiers ; Charles J. Burke, May 17, who might be taken as the representative merchant of Rochester ; Alfred Ely, May 18, member of Congress from 1859 to 1863, taken prisoner at Bull Run while viewing the battle from a distance as a non-combatant and confined in Libby prison for five months ; D. D. T. Moore, June 3, the founder and editor of the Rural New Yorker, a popular agricultural weekly, and elected mayor in 1865; Mortimer F. Reynolds, June 13, the first white child born (December 2, 1814) in what was at that time Rochester, and founder of the Reynolds library a few years before his death ; George Arnold, October 17, one of the pioneers and a house painter from the earliest days, and Joseph Harris, November 18, for a long time the editor of the Genesee Farmer and an authority on tillage.

During the evenings of January 23, 24 and 25, 1893, the Rochester His- torical society gave a series of entertainments at the Lyceum theater, rep - resenting the growth of Rochester from the purchase of Phelps and Gor-

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ham to the close of the war; nearly $2,000 was realised for the main- tenance of the society. The early part of the year was marked by the completion and extension of many ecclesiastical structures, the altera- tions of the Brick church to the extent of $75,000 being finished, the new building of the Second Baptist being dedicated and the old edifice turned into a Sunday school room, the Memorial Presbyterian church being dedicated on March 19 and Christ church first occupied on March 25. A branch of the post- office for the east side of the river was opened on April I. Full-sized models of Columbus's caravels-the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina-came up through the lake on June 25 and lay by the pier at Charlotte for two days, during which many thou- sands went down to see them ; the model of a Viking ship came through by the Erie canal a week later; all four vessels were on their way to the Columbian exposition at Chicago. On July 5 a man whose identity was never revealed repaid to the German insurance company $4,000 which he said had been obtained wrongfully from it. Through August 29 the most severe storm within the memory of anyone then living prevailed off the harbor of Charlotte, many lives and vessels being lost. The first female student at the University of Rochester was admitted on September 20. On November 18 was made the first public trial of the propulsion of canal boats by electricity, the power being conveyed, to a lever extending from the vessel, from the Rochester railway company's lines by overhead trolley wires ; the boat was thus drawn back and forth between here and Brighton for two miles.

On April 3 died Mrs. Mary B. Allen King, one of the early school . teachers of past generations; on July 14 Michael Filon, mayor of the of the city in 1862; on July 30 Donald McNaughton, first president of the Rochester & State Line railway ; for eight years a member, and much of that time chairman, of the board of supervisors; elected to the state Senate in 1887, and again two years later ; defeated for Congress in 1892 by only 507 votes; appointed in that year by Governor Flower as chief executive officer of the Columbian exposition at Chicago, where he died suddenly in the discharge of his duties. On October 5 George H. Harris died, an eminent authority on Indian matters in this region, of whose labors in that field mention has been made in the sketch of the county ; on October 13 died Francis A. Macomber, a successful lawyer

Hiram Sibley

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and an able judge, who was elected to the bench of the Supreme court in 1878 and re- elected in 1892.

The financial troubles of the last half of 1893 made their effects felt in this city, as well as elsewhere, not only by those who had been pre- viously the really poor but even more keenly by those who had been before that self-supporting but in very moderate circumstances. To relieve the distress the Chamber of Commerce, in the beginning of 1894, raised by appeal to the citizens a fund of $11,872.49, the common council appropriated $10,000 for the use of the board of park commis- sioners in giving winter work on buildings in the parks, and the mayor sent around wagons through all the streets to collect discarded cloth- ing; by these means and the private efforts of the charitable the suf- fering was confined to a comparatively small limit. Tuberculosis hav- ing made its appearance among cattle in this vicinity, the state board of health, after examination on February 9, ordered several cows killed, to check the spread of the disease. A movement was begun in the spring by the Genesee Forestry association for the extirpation of cater- pillars ; prizes being offered to public school children, for doing the work, several millions of cocoons were gathered and burned by them. An important step was taken in the early summer toward the preserva- tion of health, by the adoption of individual communion cups in the churches ; on May 6 the North Presbyterian church used them, for the first time in this city (and, so far as is known, first in the whole coun- try), the Central Presbyterian followed a week later and in a short time most of the large churches of other denominations here did the same. Another forward movement of a sanitary character was made when the the municipal authorities, on June 12, entered into a contract with a private company for the burning of the city's garbage at an expense of $28,970.50 annually for the next ten years.

On June I the new Jewish temple of Berith Kodesh was dedicated with imposing ceremonies, in which prominent parts were taken not only by rabbis from a distance but by Dr. Saxe (Universalist), Rev. Myron Adams (Congregationalist), Dr. Hill (Baptist), president of the university, and Rev. William C. Gannett (Unitarian), all of this city ; the chimes of St. Peter's church (Presbyterian) rang out a glad salute and all the Protestant clergy of this city attended the dedication. The 21

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laying of the corner-stone of the new court- house, on July 4, has been detailed elsewhere. On July 20 the mercury stood at ninety-nine de- grees in the shade, the highest point reached here since the weather bureau was established, perhaps the highest ever known here. Of new buildings erected during the year there were thirty-four of brick-most of them for business blocks, including the new Chamber of Commerce building-with three hundred and ninety-one frame structures, most of them dwellings. The most noticeable public improvement of many years was the laying of a new Medina block pavement on Main street, from Fitzhugh street to East avenue at a cost of over ninety-two thousand dollars, and the same on State street, from Main to Center, at an expense nearly one-third as great; at the same time all overhead wires were removed except those of the street car lines, to the iron pillars of which swinging electric lamps were attached from the West avenue bridge to Union street, supplanting the globes that formerly hung from the unsightly arms of wooden poles and making the long thoroughfare the most brilliantly lighted street in the United States.

The obituary list of the year opens with the name of Oscar Craig, a man of the most active philanthropy, president of the state board of charities, who died January 2. Jason W. Seward, born in 1806, died January 6; he came here in 1833 and, in conjunction with his sister, conducted for many years the Seward female seminary on Alexander street. Henry Michaels, the most prominent of our Jewish merchants, whose benevolence was not bounded by the limits of race or creed, died March 2. Darius Perrin, the oldest surviving pioneer, died March 15 ; he had resided here for eighty-two years, having come from Perinton (which was his birthplace and which was named after his uncle) in 1812, when he was eight years old, so that he always remembered having walked across the stringers of the first bridge, which was finished in that year, and he always carried the recollection of the sound of the cannon when the British fleet fired on Charlotte in 1814; he was a leader in politics when the city was formed in 1834, was elected sheriff on the Whig ticket in 1839 and was appointed postmaster by President Taylor in 1849; for the last thirty years of his life he lived quietly, retired from business. Dr. Herbert M. Dayfoot, a distinguished homœopathic physician, at one time president of the state society of that school, died

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in a hospital in Philadelphia, April 22, after an operation on his foot. Other deaths were those of Vital Rèche, April 25, within six months of a century old ; of Dr. M. L. Mallory, April 28, by his own hand; of Mrs. Harriet Prindle Peck, June 8, one of the founders of the Industrial school ; of Isaac Loomis, June 30, who came here in 1820, was the first architect in the village and practised that profession till the end, was al- ways a prominent Odd Fellow and one of the highest in the order in the state at the time of his death ; of Louis Chapin, August I, a leading Presbyterian ; of Rev. Carl Siebenpfeiffer, August 19, pastor emeritus of Salem church (German Evangelical), of which he was the first pastor in 1873.

This present year of 1895 is too young to have furnished much of a record of important detached events. Diphtheria having been always one of the most destructive diseases in Rochester, the attention of the community, and particularly of the medical fraternity, was attracted to the recent discovery by a French physician of the curative properties inherent in the blood of horses that had been immunised by proper treatment. Some of that anti-toxine was brought to the city and ap- plied in the case of a child who was very ill during the first week of the year, the result being perfectly satisfactory ; three horses of our fire department were then detailed for this peculiar service and after they had undergone for several weeks the graduated injections of diphtheritic poison that rendered them germ-proof they were bled and the serum was drawn off from the blood, so that in May the wonderful remedy was ready for distribution among the doctors. Several clergymen severed their connection with their congregations in the early part of the year, Rev. Dr. A. J. Hutton, of St. Peter's Presbyterian, preaching his fare- well sermon on January 28; Rev. Louis C. Washburn, of St. Paul's Episcopal, doing so on February 25, and Rev. Dr. Asa Saxe, of the First Universalist, on March 2, though the last- named continues to oc- cupy the pulpit, his successor not having been chosen ; he had been the pastor of the church for just forty-three years and was the oldest minister in the city at the time of his retirement. In the middle of March the congregation of the Good Shepherd (Episcopal), on Grape street, ceased to exist, owing to a difference with the bishop of the diocese. In the same month the Jewish Tidings, which had been published here for the

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previous eight years, was purchased by the proprietor of the American Hebrew, a weekly paper of New York, and absorbed in the latter jour- nal. During the first three weeks of April a pure food exhibition was given under the auspices of the Mechanics' Institute, which was satis- factory and successful. On the 29th of that month an extraordinary display of confectionery was made at the first ball and reception of the association of cooks and pastry-cooks of Rochester.

Brief as is the term, the first five months of the year saw many pass from the stage of action who had been identified in some way with the early life of Rochester or had left their impress upon the city. On January 14 died Samuel C. Worden, the best-known restaurateur of the place, who had been in the business through the lifetime of more than one generation, having been one of the early landlords of the old Na- tional Hotel and after that the keeper of " Oyster bay " and other eat - ing saloons of unblemished character. John H Gordon died February 13 ; he was, in connection with his brother James, the inventor of the Gordon harvester, the forerunner of the McCormick machine, which was an infringement upon it, so that each brother recovered nearly a quarter of a million dollars in damages and amassed a large fortune from the invention. On February 20 there died suddenly, at Washing- ton, the most distinguished man that ever lived in Rochester, Frederick Douglass. Born a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland, in February, 1815, he escaped from bondage when twenty-one years old and went to New Bedford, Mass., where he lived for several years and came to this city in 1847, establishing a weekly journal called at first the North Star and afterward Frederick Douglass's Paper, of which he was the sole editor ; while engaged in this work he was delivering lectures and at- tending anti-slavery conventions all over the country, besides being ab- sent for several months in 1859 in England, whither he had fled to avoid his rendition on the requisition of Governor Wise, of Virginia, on the charge, probably unfounded, of his complicity with the raid of John Brown. In the latter part of the war, after the emancipation proclama- tion, he was specially active in promoting the enlistment of colored troops ; in 1870 he removed to Washington and became the editor of the New National Era; in 1872 he was chosen presidential elector-at- large for the state of New York; in 1876 President Hayes appointed

Refus Adam

, Subley.

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him United States marshal for the District of Columbia, which office he held till President Garfield five years later made him recorder of deeds for the district ; in 1889 President Harrison appointed him minister to Hayti, and after he had resigned that position the black republic de- signated him one of its commissioners to the Columbian exposition. He was by far the greatest man of his race that this continent ever pro- duced, of superior intellect, with fine command of language and with the gift of eloquence of the very highest order, so that no other orator, with the possible exception of Henry Ward Beecher, was his equal in the ability to capture a hostile audience ; here, where he lived so long. he was always listened to with delight, even by those politically opposed to him, and he was brought back to be buried ; after the body had lain in state at the city hall through the morning of February 25, the funeral exercises, of an impressive character, were held, in the afternoon, at the Central church, which was filled long before the services began ; Rev. Dr. Taylor made the prayer, Rev. William C. Gannett delivered the ad- dress over the casket, Miss Susan B. Anthony pronounced a eulogy and Rev. Dr. Stebbins gave the benediction.

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Landmarks of Monroe County, New York : containing followed by brief historical sketches of the towns of the county with biography and family history, Part 16

Author: Peck, William F. (William Farley), b. 1840; Raines, Thomas; Fairchild, Herman LeRoy Publication date: 1895 Publisher: Boston : Boston History Co. Number of Pages: 1160

Author: Peck, William F. (William Farley), b. 1840; Raines, Thomas; Fairchild, Herman LeRoy
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Boston : Boston History Co.
Number of Pages: 1160