Landmarks of Monroe County, New York : containing followed by brief historical sketches of the towns of the county with biography and family history, Part 9

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 9

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LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

George N. Deming, 1867 ; Charles P. Achilles, 1873; James Harris, 1876; Alexander McVean, 1879; John B. Hamilton, 1894. A list of the sheriffs, and of the county clerks, as being officers of the courts, is given in another part of this work.

For the first session of Congress after the formation of the county, Monroe was, with eight other counties, in the twenty-first district ; for the next ten years it was in the twenty-seventh district, with Livings- ton county ; for the next thirty years it formed a district by itself, first as the twenty-eighth, then as the twenty-ninth ; for the next twenty years it was with Orleans, first as the twenty-eighth, then as the thirtieth ; since 1883 it has constituted, by itself, the thirtieth district. The first Representative who lived in this county (with the exception of William B. Rochester, who was a resident of Allegany county while he was a member of Congress, though he lived here afterward) was Daniel D. Barnard, elected in 1826. His successors, with the year of their election, were as follows: Timothy Childs, 1828, 1834, 1836 and 1840; Frederick Whittlesey, 1830 and 1832; Thomas Kempshall, 1838 ; Thomas J. Patterson, 1842; Elias B. Holmes, 1844 and 1846; Abram M. Schermerhorn, 1848 and 1850; Azariah Boody, 1852; Davis Carpenter (to succeed Boody, resigned), 1853 ; John Williams, 1854; Samuel G. Andrews, 1856; Alfred Ely, 1858 and 1860; Free- man Clarke, 1862, 1870 and 1872; Roswell Hart, 1864 ; Lewis Selye, 1866; Noah Davis, junior (of Orleans), 1868; John M. Davy, 1874; E. Kirke Hart (of Orleans), 1876; John Van Voorhis, 1878, 1880 and 1892; Halbert S. Greenleaf, 1882 and 1890; Charles S. Baker, 1884, 1886 and 1888 ; Henry C. Brewster, 1894.

It was not till 1844 that Monroe had a state Senator living in the county-Frederick F. Backus, who, after serving three years, was suc- ceeded by Jerome Fuller, elected in 1847; Samuel Miller, 1849; Micajah W. Kirby, 1851 ; William S. Bishop, 1853 ; John E. Patterson, 1855 and 1857 ; Ephraim Goss, 1859; Lysander Farrar, 1861 ; George G. Munger, 1863 ; Thomas Parsons, 1865; Lewis H. Morgan, 1867; Jarvis Lord, 1869, 1871 and 1873; William N. Emerson, 1875 ; George Raines, 1877 ; Edmund L. Pitts (of Orleans), 1879, 1881 and 1885 ; Charles S Baker, 1883 ; Donald McNaughton, 1887 and 1889; Cornelius R. Parsons, 1891 and 1893. By the constitution of 1846

G.T branch

DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTY.

Monroe (before that in the eighth district) was made a senatorial dis - trict by itself, and continued so till 1879, when Orleans was added to it. The constitution of 1894 restores it to its solitude and gives it two Sena - tors and four members of Assembly, the districts being equally divided by the river.

An act of Congress, passed March 3, 1805, created the customs dis- trict of Genesee, with the port at Charlotte. The following are the col- lectors, with the year of appointment-all from Rochester, except as stated otherwise : Samuel Latta, of Gates (now Greece), 1805 ; Caleb Hopkins, of Boyle (now Pittsford), 1809; Jesse Hawley, of Gates, 1817; Jacob Gould. 1829; James Smith, 1839; James K. Livingston, 1841; Joseph Strong, 1843 ; Lyman B. Langworthy, of Greece, 1844; Joseph Sibley, of Rush, 1846; Elias Pond, 1849; James R. Thompson, of Clarkson, 1851; James C. Campbell, 1853; Pliny M. Bromley, 1857 ; Philander M. Crandall, 1861 ; William H. Crennell, 1865; John M. Davy, 1866 and 1872 ; James H. Kelly, 1867 ; Thomas Parsons, 1868; William Emerson, 1869; David K. Cartter, 1875 ; William T. Simpson, 1879; Charles E. Morris, 1883 ; John W. Martin, 1887 ; Henry Hebing, 1889; George H. Houck, of Rush, 1894.

CHAPTER XI.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTY.

The First Deed Recorded-Lake Navigation-The Commerce of Carthage-Revenues a from Customs-The Erie Canal-Its Inception, its Construction and its Cost -- The Genesee Valley Canal -- River Navigation -- The Jail-The Second Court-House-The Penitentiary -- The State Industrial School -- The Deaf Mute Institute --- The Alms- House -- The Insane Asylum-The Bible Society -- The Agricultural and Horticultural Societies -- County Taxes.

Real estate changed hands after the formation of the county more rapidly than before, and the first deed recorded in the new clerk's office was one dated March 19, 1821, and put on record April 6. It con- veyed, from Elisha Johnson and Betsey his wife, to Andrew V. T. 11

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

Leavitt and Charles J. Hill, thirty-seven feet and four inches of land on Canal street (now North St. Paul), corner of Mechanic street (now Mortimer), in the village of Brighton, the consideration being $100. The lot was purchased from Messrs. Leavitt and Hill in 1850 by George G. Clarkson, afterward mayor, who built there and occupied the house until some twenty years ago, when he sold it, and a commer- cial building was erected in its place.

But the interests of the county lay on the water as well as on the land, and for a long time it seemed as though all traffic with the outside world must be carried on largely by that medium. Travelers might make the weary journey from the east or to the west over roads that were bad in winter and worse in summer, but merchandise, it was thought, could be more advantageously carried in marine vehicles. To go back to the beginning of lake navigation in connection with this locality, Charlevoix's vessel, in 1669, was probably the first craft built by white men that entered Irondequoit bay. The trading posts estab- lished near that point have been alluded to in another chapter, but they passed away and the whole thing was begun anew after the settlement of the county by the whites. Trade with Canada soon sprang up, for in 1803 over one hundred barrels of pearlash were shipped to Montreal from Irondequoit. About 1810 Erastus Spalding, a tavern-keeper at Charlotte, built at that point the first schooner, the Isabel, which was captured by the British in the war of 1812. In 1811 the schooner Clarissa was built by Oliver Culver on his farm in Brighton and drawn to the bay by twenty-six yoke of oxen, and a little later three other schooners were made by him and launched upon the lake.

Steam as a motive power made itself known upon these waters soon after its introduction to the world by Robert Fulton, and in 1816 or 1817 (authorities differing on that point) the first steamboat on the lakes, appropriately called the Ontario, commanded by Capt. Eli Lusher, entered the mouth of the river, on its passage between Sackett's Harbor and Lewiston. The Martha Ogden was the next steamer; in a short time a daily visit was made at Charlotte (where the first light house was erected in 1822), and then the vessels passed up the river, stopping at Hanford's Landing, on the west side, till the warehouses there were burned down in 1835. After that, Carthage, on the east side, had for

DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTY.

some time a monopoly of the river traffic with Canada, but even before that it had done most of the business, which was sufficient to warrant the construction of a gravity railroad, by which passengers and freight were carried up and down between the dock at the water's edge and the summit of the high bank, a car loaded with stone acting as the equipoise and being drawn up by a windlass when necessary. About 1847 the road that was long known as Buell's avenue was run down on the west side, terminating at Kelsey's Landing, where a dock was built, and there also, the Canadian steamers touched, but without dis- turbing the maritime supremacy of Carthage. This lasted until after the middle of the century, and sometimes as many as seventeen vessels could be seen lying there at one time, to take on cargoes of flour and fruit for Toronto and Montreal. It is a little singular that the customs receipts at these various ports-or different stations of the port of Rochester --- never equaled the salaries of the revenue officers till 1835, when they were about $26,000, and in the next year they amounted to $60,000. This sudden increase was probably owing to the amount of duties paid on 200,000 bushels of wheat which were in that year brought in from Canada, where the price was then so low as to make its importation profitable (even though much of it was sent back immediately after being ground), especially as all the farms in Monroe, fertile as they were, could not raise enough of the cereal to fill the capacious throats of the flour mills that sprang up in Rochester, Scotts- ville, Pittsford and elsewhere in the county.

Long before that time the Erie canal was built. Apart from the vague suggestions previously offered in various ways, the conception of this great work was first brought clearly before the people in a number of essays in 1807-08, over the signature of " Hercules," in a Pittsburg paper and in the Genesee Messenger, published at Canandaigua. These articles were by Jesse Hawley, afterward a resident of Rochester, and to him belongs the paternity of an enterprise that built up more cities than any other construction and connected our eastern seaboard with the great lakes which were then supposed to form the northwestern limits of any possible civilisation in the United States. In 1808 the legislature appropriated $600 to pay for an accurate survey to be made for a canal to connect the tide-waters of the Hudson with Lake Erie.

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

James Geddes, being appointed to do the work, did it in the most ridiculous manner possible, recommending the use of Mud creek, the Genesee river, Black creek, the Tonawanda swamp and the Niagara river as parts of the channel. The matter slumbered for two or three years, then De Witt Clinton took it up in the state Senate and efforts were made to enlist Congress and then other states in the enterprise, but the war with Great Britain put a stop to the project. On January 8, 1817, a meeting was held at Canandaigua, which was attended by many from this immediate region; Colonel Troup presided, Colonel Rochester was secretary, and resolutions, drawn up by Myron Holley and presented by John Greig, were adopted, reciting the supreme bene- fits to be derived from a canal. It was to the action of this meeting that the adoption of the plan was due. In April of that year the legis- lature passed an act authorising the construction of a canal from the Mohawk to the Seneca river.

The work was begun on the 4th of July, 1817, running west from Utica, and, as it progressed, the legislature extended the limits of the water-way ; in October, 1819, the middle section was completed and the commissioners then gave out the contracts from Rochester to Palmyra ; as 'fast as one piece was finished the water was let into it from streams which it traversed and transportation took place at once ; the last part of the labor was hardest, that of cutting through the mountain ridge at Lockport and building the admirable locks at that place ; this took up all of 1824 and much of the next year; on October 24, 1825, the guard gates at Lockport were raised, the long level east of there was filled, and the grandest work on the continent up to that ' time was finished ; the celebration lasted more than a week, beginning at Buffalo on the 26th, when, as the mooring-lines were cast off from the leading boat of the flotilla, with De Witt Clinton and other officials on board, its departure was announced by a signal gun, and this report was repeated by cannon stationed along the line, so that the news reached New York in one hour and twenty minutes ; at each important place the procession halted for the day, while festivities were indulged in, terminating at New York on November 4.

Stupendous as this work was, it was soon perceived that the canal was inadequate for its purposes, its use far transcending all previous

DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTY.

conceptions. As originally constructed, it was forty feet in width by four in depth, was three hundred and sixty-three miles long and cost $7,143,789. In 1838 the legislature appropriated $4,000,000 annually for its enlargement ; when this was completed it had cost, in all, $51,609,203 ; its width was increased to seventy feet, its depth to seven ; by straightening the line twelve and a half miles were taken from its length, and several locks were added, making seventy-two in all. Rochester was always largely interested in the Erie canal ; of the nine engineers engaged in building it three lived in that place, then or afterward; of the tolls taken, about one eighth were received there. These increased steadily for twenty-five years, after which they de- clined with almost equal regularity and were abolished in 1883, their abandonment involving little loss to the state. The canal was of incal- culable benefit in building up the region which it traversed and in developing traffic along its course ; whether it has outlived its useful- ness is a question.

To connect this water-way with the fertile country through which our river flows, the Genesee Valley canal, from Rochester to Olean, was begun in 1837 but not finished till 1856. Its business never equaled anticipations, and after dragging along an unsatisfactory existence it was abandoned by the authorities in 1878 and sold in 1880 to the Genesee Valley Canal railroad company, now the Western New York & Pennsylvania. A short canal was constructed in 1837 from Scotts- ville to the Genesee and for several years it was of great service in getting grain and flour to market from the southwestern part of the county.

River navigation was not neglected. On the upper Genesee, flat- boats, of the Durham pattern, propelled by poles pushed against the bottom of the stream, were in use from the rapids to Geneseo and be- yond, and immense quantities of produce were shipped to Rochester by the bateau system. These craft were supplemented, rather than super- seded, by a steamboat, called the Genesee, a stern-wheeler, capable of carrying more than three hundred passengers, which ran between the points named and performed its principal labor in towing the more tardy carriers that were worked by hand. Its captain was J. W. Phillips. After two seasons the enterprise, though alluring at first, be- came unprofitable, so the vessel was run over the dam and broken up.

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

After the completion of the Erie canal, the next undertaking that engaged the attention of the county was the erection of a jail. The original quarters on North Fitzhugh street were soon found to be in- sufficient, and in 1832 a new place of confinement was built, on the island between the river and the Fitzhugh and Carroll race, where the Erie railroad train. house now stands. It cost, including the land, $12,- 500, was constructed of stone, was one hundred feet long by forty wide and had forty cells. Within its walls were executed Octavius Barron, July 25, 1838 ; Austin Squires, November 29, 1838; Maurice Antonio, 1 June 3, 1852; Ira Stout, October 22, 1858: Franz Joseph Messner, August II, 1871, and John Clark, November 19, 1875. Before they would go to the expense of building a new jail, the successive boards of supervisors allowed this structure to become so dilapidated that it almost fell to pieces, and escape from it was easy and frequent. Public clamor at last overcame their parsimony, and in 1885 the present jail was erected, at an expense of $56,419.91, which stands on Exchange street, immediately southwest of the location of the former building. One execution has taken place in it, that of Edward A. Deacons, who was hanged July 10, 1888.

The first court-house was expected to last for a century ; it stood for less than thirty years, being taken down in 1850, to make way for its successor. For many years before that, in consequence of the increase in business, the county clerk's office had been located in a little stone edifice after the model of a Grecian temple, which Dr. Elwood and Dr. Coleman had erected for their office, at an early day, on the northwest corner of the court-house plaza. This was demolished when the new building was begun, but its companion structure, on the other corner, at Irving place, which had been used originally as the law office of Vin- cent and Selah Mathews, but which for some time previous had been occupied by the surrogate, was allowed to remain till the time of the civil war. For the new county court-house the board of supervisors had appropriated originally $25,000, but, before the contract was given out, the common council of Rochester decided to unite with the county for a joint structure and the amount was raised to $61,931.35. With this sum, increased by $10,000 a few years later, a building was erected that was an ornament to the city in which it stood and a credit, exter- nally at least, to the county of which it was the capitol.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTY.

The foundation, the steps and the pavement of the portico were of Onondaga limestone; the superstructure was of brick, three stories above the basement ; four imposing columns of stone upheld the roof of the portico ; the west half of the ground floor, containing the clerk's records, was made fireproof twenty-five years ago. The edifice was surmounted by a wooden dome, and that by another, the two being so proportional that the effect was pleasing, and upon the upper dome stood a figure of Justice.1 The corner stone was laid on the 20th of June, 1850, by Mayor Richardson and the chairman of the board of supervisors, the prayer was delivered by Rev. Dr. A. G. Hall and the address was made by Judge Moses Chapin. In December, 1851, the building was completed, and it was used by the county and city together till 1875, when the municipal offices were moved into the city hall, then just finished. Nearly forty-four years after its imposition the corner- stone was opened and its contents were disclosed. All those whose material was paper, whether books or manuscript, were badly injured by the moisture that had penetrated the cavity through the solid stone, and the ink on many documents was wholly effaced. Several of the articles were those that had been placed in the foundation of the first court-house-one of which, a parchment containing statistics of the vil- lage, was in an admirable state of preservation-and it was intended to redeposit them in the third, but this idea was abandoned and, with the exception of the parchment alluded to, an old map of Monroe county and a few city directories of different dates, only objects relating to the present time were put into the new corner-stone, having been first put into an aluminum box and that inclosed in a copper receptacle.

The ceremony of laying this stone took place on the 4th of July, 1894 (after an old-fashioned celebration in the morning), with the full Masonic ritual for such occasions, under the direction of John Hodge, the grand master of the grand lodge, preceded by an address from Mayor Aldridge, an invocation by the chaplain, Rev. W. C. Hubbard, and an oration by George Raines, with singing by the public school children. For the new court-house, which is now in process of erection and which is to be completed by the Ist of April, 1896, the contract

1 This was used in 1876 by the officers of the coast survey as one of the points of triangulation, whereby it was found that the meridian of Rochester is 77 degrees, 36 minutes, 50.97 seconds west longitude, 43 degrees, 9 minutes, 22.44 seconds north latitude,

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY.

price is $295,343, besides $25, 120 for the steam heating apparatus, and the future cost of plumbing, interior finish and other items. It is vastly larger than either of its predecessors, with a frontage of one hundred and forty feet and a depth of one hundred and sixty, coming almost flush with the sidewalk on West Main street, and leaving but little open space in the rear between it and the city hall; with a high basement and four stories on the Main street front, eighty-seven feet in all; built of New Hampshire granite all smooth-dressed and with a heavy cornice of the same stone ; Romanesque in general design, with four polished columns on the north front, guarding a vestibule that opens into a central court covered by a skylight ninety-two feet above the level of the ground floor ; the first floor will be used by the county clerk, the county treas- urer and the surrogate, the trial courts will occupy the second floor, the third will be taken up with the general and special term and the law library, and the fourth will be devoted to the supervisors, the district- attorney and the grand jury ; the edifice is to be fireproof throughout ; the architect is J. Foster Warner, the contractors are Friedrich & Sons.

It took a great many years for people to learn that the jail is not the proper place for the confinement of convicted criminals, and it was 1854 before the Monroe county penitentiary was erected. It was put up in that year at a cost of $22,707.60, but in 1865 it was nearly de- stroyed by fire and was rebuilt, a large workshop being added in 1873. The main part of the penitentiary proper is a four story brick structure, with two wings, the cells for the men being in the northern part, those for the women in the southern. A large addition, which was finished last December, contains two hundred and fifty cells, arranged in five tiers, most of which are occupied by inmates who were transferred from their former crowded quarters. Of the convicts, who average four hun- dred in number, though there were nearly five hundred there last win- ter, all who are able to work are made to do so during their term of commitment, greatly to their benefit, and, which is of less importance, to the benefit of the state, the expenses in most years being met by the receipts. Last year the income was $40,582.78, the outgo $32,343. 14. Zenas R. Brockway was the first superintendent, and those who have succeeded him are William Willard, Levi S. Fulton, Alexander Mc- Whorter and Charles A. Webster, the present incumbent.

Ollwanger -

DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTY.

Of far broader scope than the penitentiary, and with different methods of treatment, is another place for the confinement of criminals-the State Industrial school. This was established, under the name of the Western House of Refuge, by an act of the legislature of May 8, 1846, $4,200 being paid for the site, the state paying $3,000, the citizens of Rochester $1,200. Under the supervision of William Pitkin, D. C. McCallum and Isaac Hills, commissioners for the purpose, the building was erected and inclosed, and on August 11, 1849, the institution was opened, with Samuel S. Wood as superintendent, Dr. H. W. Dean as house physician, H. H. Goff as teacher and Elizabeth A. Taylor as seamstress, these having been elected by the board of managers, of which the president was Frederick F. Backus, the secretary and treas- urer Isaac Hills. At the outset the house could furnish room for only fifty, but wings were built on from time to time and other extensive additions were made, till the place became capable of holding a thousand people, though there have never been quite as many as that within its walls, and the population for the last year has averaged about nine hun- dred officers and inmates. The main building, with its wings, is three hundred and eighty-two feet in length, on Backus avenue, at the head of Phelps avenue, and just south of this, completely separated from it by a high stone wall, is the girls' department, with a frontage of two hundred and seventy-six feet, which was erected in 1876. In no other penal institution has so complete a change been wrought in the system pursued. Created as a place for the confinement and reforma- tion of juvenile delinquents, it has become a school for their training and education, where twenty different trades are taught, where the original cells have given place to open dormitories and where order rules instead of fear. The name of the reformatory was changed to the State Industrial school about twenty years ago. Mr. Wood was the superintendent for nineteen years, and Levi S. Fulton held the place for a still longer term ; the present incumbent is Franklin H. Briggs. The present president is Isaac Gibbard, the vice-presidents are Henry Lomb and Sarah H. Kuichling, the secretary and treasurer is John Desmond. The cost of maintaining the establishment is about $160,000 annually.

Among the schools of its class none stands higher than the Western New York Institution for Deaf Mutes. It was organised in 1876 with

LANDMARKS OF MONROE COUNTY

a board of managers of which the president was E. Darwin Smith, the vice-presidents were George G. Clarkson and S. A. Ellis, the secretary was Edward P. Hart and the treasurer Gilman H. Perkins. The school was opened in October of that year, in the Mumford block, on the corner of South St. Paul and Court streets, with twenty-three pupils, but before the end of the second year it had so far outgrown its present quarters that it was moved down to North St. Paul street, into the building previously used as the House for Idle and Truant Children, where it has remained ever since. A large part of the structure was destroyed by fire in 1882, but it was at once rebuilt and since then so many additions have been made that the property is now worth $125,000. Prof. Z. F. Westervelt was appointed principal at the out- set, and he still retains the position. To him alone is it owing that a new system of teaching was adopted twenty years ago, which involved the entire disuse of the arbitrary sign language and the substitution therefor of finger-spelling and speech, the deaf being taught to under- stand the visible movements of the lips and tongue. This is uni- versally known as the Rochester method and it is now in use in many other institutions of the kind. There are at present one hundred and eighty-four pupils in the school. The present officers of the board are : George G. Clarkson, president; S. A. Lattimore and Charles F. Pond, vice-presidents ; S. A. Ellis, secretary ; G. H. Perkins, treasurer.

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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 9

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