USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > Rochester and Monroe County: A history and guide > Part 4
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In social and intellectual history, the latter half of the 19th century glows with the light of such individuals as Susan B. Anthony, Lewis Morgan, Lewis Swift, Dr. Edward Mott Moore, and Rochester's adopted son, Frederick Douglass.
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HISTORY
In the middle years of the century, when it was still cus- tomary for women to center their interests in the narrow circle of the home, the women of Rochester took an active part in a world of wider horizons. How much of this public spirit was due to the local influence of Susan B. Anthony it would be difficult to say, but it is certain that a large part of the credit belongs to her. She fostered among her friends and acquaintances an interest in such matters as the abolition of slavery (her own home served as a station on the Underground Railroad), temperance, education, and equal rights in voting, property, and labor. Throughout the nation, and particularly in Rochester, she awakened women to a sense of responsibility in civic affairs and all matters pertaining to public welfare.
In 1872, under the leadership of Miss Anthony, 14 women voted the national and congressional tickets, the first votes ever cast by women in a national election in the United States. Although all were arrested, only Miss Anthony was held for trial, and she conducted her own defense. She was sentenced to pay a fine of $100, but the sentence was ignored by her and the fine was never collected by the court.
In 1874, after many years of activity in the temperance movement, the women of Rochester succeeded in closing the front doors of saloons on Sundays. This partial achieve- ment was the first temperance victory after the forming of the Prohibition Party and the Women's Christian Temper- ance Union in 1850. The movement made no further prog- ress toward its goal until the organization of the Anti- Saloon League in 1895.
A notable achievement by Rochester women was the forming in 1881 of the Clara Barton Chapter, the second Red Cross chapter organized in the United States.
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In the "New Woman" movement of the end of the century, Rochester women led rather than followed. They successfully invaded the office, the factory, and the store, and woman in industry became a factor to be reckoned with. Along with this economic emancipation arose the cult of culture. Numerous women's clubs devoted to intellectual improvement, such as the Ignorance Club and the Women's Ethical Club, were organized. In 1893 the University of Rochester, unable longer to turn a deaf ear to the clamor of feminine voices, reluctantly opened its doors to its first woman student. In the same year the Women's Educational and Industrial Union was organized. In 1899 women were elected to the school board for the first time and obtained a direct voice in the management of schools.
The active scientific interest which characterized Roch- ester in the 19th century was unusual for a city so predom- inantly industrial and commercial. One reason for this was the presence of Lewis H. Morgan, America's most distin- guished anthropologist. As early as 1854 he founded the Pundit Club, made up of the distinguished and cultured citizens of the city. In 1879 he was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He died in 1881, but his influence lived on and resulted in the incorporation in that year of the Rochester Academy of Science.
Lewis Swift, astronomer, was another Rochesterian. From a crudely equipped laboratory on the roof of a cider mill he saw in 1862 the first of the several comets he dis- covered.
The first fish hatcheries in the world, constructed in 1864 in Caledonia, owed their existence to the discovery by Seth Green of Rochester of a method of artificially hatching fish.
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Dr. Edward Mott Moore came to Rochester in 1882 as surgeon-in-chief of St. Mary's Hospital. He made many contributions to medical science, among which were his studies in cardiac diseases and in the treatment of fractures and dislocations. But his interests extended from his pro- fession into civic affairs, and Rochester best remembers him as the father of its parks.
During the early years of the 20th century industry in Rochester moved forward at a normal rate. But the World War brought a tremendous boom. All commerce and trade reacted to the stimulation. From other cities, from smaller towns, from rural districts workers flocked to Rochester and taxed its housing facilities to the utmost. Real estate values skyrocketed. An era of building, of industrial, com- mercial, and financial expansion began and continued almost without a let-up until the crash of 1929. Rochester's financial and industrial history since that date has for the most part paralleled that of other cities of its size-a series of retrenchments and municipal economies. Industrial im- provement showed itself in the latter part of 1935, increased slowly in 1936, and in 1937 the city found itself well out of the sloughs of depression.
In 1919 Mayor Hiram H. Edgerton visioned the Roch- ester of the future: the main currents of traffic would move through a subway and over a street of magnificent width built above this subway. Toward this end, after the opening of the Barge Canal, he started a movement for the purchase of the section of the old Erie Canal bed lying within the city limits. Work on the subway was begun in 1922. Broad Street, constructed over the subway, was opened for use in 1923, and in 1927 the first electric cars to run through the subway on their own power carried city officials on an inspection trip of the new traffic way. While it is true that Broad Street and the subway have never fulfilled Mayor
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Edgerton's hopes by becoming the city's chief traffic arteries, both have been of great value.
In 1934 Rochester looked back over her long-traveled road and held a centennial celebration in Edgerton Park. The guest of honor was Mayor Leach of Rochester, Eng- land. For a month thousands gathered to witness a spec- tacular pageant, the reenactment of the drama of the city's life. In a historic procession they came filing down the years : Indians, the first white man, early settlers arriving by ox- cart, by stage-coach, by packet boat. Again Sam Patch made his famous leap. Again the city cheered when the first boat swept through the canal. And again slaves fled along the old Underground. After thus reviewing her past, Rochester faced about and moved ahead into her second century.
GOVERNMENT
The charter of 1817, by which the village of Rochester- ville was incorporated, limited the franchise to "free- holders and inhabitants qualified to vote for members of assembly." In the first election, held in the same year, there were elected five trustees, three assessors, three firewardens, a treasurer, a tax collector, a constable, and a poundkeeper. The first tax levy did not exceed $350. The trustees were empowered to make regulations governing public markets, alleys, streets, highways, footwalks and sideways, slaughter houses, village watch and lighting, and public wells and pumps; to restrain dogs and swine, to improve common lands, to inspect weights and measures, to see that chimneys and fireplaces were kept clean and in repair, to regulate taverns, ginshops, and huckster shops within the village, to establish fire companies, and in general to do "anything whatsoever that may concern the good govern- ment of the village." By amendment to this charter, the name of the village was legally shortened to Rochester on
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May 1, 1822. The more elaborate charter of 1826, which divided the village into five wards, empowered the trustees to "pass ordinances for preventing theatres, billiard tables, or theatrical or circus performances, the exhibition of wax figures, wild animals, mountebanks, fireworks, and all other shows exhibited by common showmen."
In 1834 Rochester was granted its first city charter. Public education and public welfare were introduced as city func- tions; taxes were imposed for lighting the streets and main- taining a night watch, a fire department, and highways. Rochester's first mayor was Jonathan Child.
The subsequent charters up to 1900 were essentially recodifications of previous charters made necessary by numerous amendments. The charter of 1844 added a depart- ment of public health; the charter of 1850 added the office of comptroller; the charter of 1861 created a board of water commissioners and provided for four to six city physicians; the charter of 1880 increased the area of the city to 10,373 acres.
In 1900, under the law passed by the state legislature in 1898, Rochester was granted a second-class city charter. In 1907, with a population exceeding 180,000, it was granted a first-class city charter.
On July 28, 1925, the legislature granted home rule to the cities of the state. Rochester was the first to avail itself of the new powers. The council-manager form of government was submitted to the voters on November 3 of the same year and was adopted. Under the new charter the common council was reduced from 24 to 9 members elected on a non- partisan ticket, and the mayor was released from all tech- nical details of city business. In 1932 a number of changes were made; the principal one was the abandonment of non- partisan elections to the common council.
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The story of Rochester's changing charter revolves around a central figure, the mayor, first appointed by the council, then, by legislative enactment, elected by the people. His position increased in importance until in 1872 the charter became involved in commissions operating in- dependently of the mayor. A revolt in 1900 restored the mayor's authority. Now in 1937 the entire administrative power is vested in the City Manager, who appoints the heads of the four city departments, law, finance, public works, and public safety. The mayor is again appointed by the council, and the cycle is complete.
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FIRST FEDERAL VOTES CAST BY WOMEN
Y EARS before the adoption of the 19th amendment, Rochester women voted in a national election for the first time on record.
After the 14th and 15th amendments became part of the Constitution in 1868, many women believed that these measures gave them the right to vote. In 1872 to determine the question by a test case, 50 Rochester women under the leadership of Susan B. Anthony, head of the early suffrage movement, registered. Election inspectors in all but one ward refused to accept their votes. In the eighth ward the votes of Miss Anthony and 14 companions were accepted. Both Miss Anthony and the inspectors were arrested and held in $500 bail. When Miss Anthony refused to supply the money, bail was provided by her attorney, Judge Henry R. Selden.
The case was tried in the United States District Court in Canandaigua. Judge Hunt ordered the jurors to find Miss Anthony guilty but dismissed them before they reported a verdict. Miss Anthony was fined $100, but refused to pay; whereupon the judge declared: "Madam, the court will not order you to stand committed until the fine is paid." Miss Anthony was free to go, but this leniency of the court was really a defeat for the suffrage movement, for Miss Anthony was left without grounds for taking the case to a
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Susan B. Anthony
higher court for an interpretation of the 14th and 15th amendments.
The election inspectors fared likewise. Fined $25 each, they were not compelled to pay.
FIRST VOTING MACHINE
Not only were the first voting machines used in a Roch- ester election, but they were invented and manufactured in Rochester. In 1889 Jacob H. Myers, a Rochesterian, filed
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application for a patent on the ancestor of the present elaborate device. Myers machines were tried out in the city in the elections of 1895, 1896, and 1897. Not proving sat- isfactory, they were abandoned. As a consequence Myers fell into financial difficulties and his rights were purchased by the United States Standard Voting Machine Company, a local concern. After acquiring other patents and making improvements of its own, the company was able to induce the city council to buy new machines and try again. From the turn of the century, Rochester has constantly used machines in its elections.
The new company ran into financial bogs in 1908 and, failing to get additional capital in Rochester, moved to Jamestown. The successor firm, the Automatic Voting Machine Company, now operating in Jamestown, is one of the largest plants of its kind in the world.
FIRST MAIL CHUTE
In 1880, James G. Cutler, a Rochester architect, who later became well known as a manufacturer and as mayor, in- cluded the first mail chute in his plans for the Elwood Building at the corner of Main and State Streets. So success- ful was it that he applied for a patent on the device in 1883. Rochester postal officials petitioned federal authorities to investigate its possibilities; the device was approved by the Post Office Department; and a company was formed in Rochester to manufacture chutes-The Cutler Mail Chute Company.
Today letters are dropped in Rochester chutes from Halifax to Cape Town and from Tokyo to Paris. The chute works as well in a skyscraper as in a two-story block. A tendency in the early days for the flood of letters to fill the small boxes and clog the chute has been overcome by the installation of larger boxes. Those in the Empire State Building and in Radio City are a full story in height.
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THE FIRST TRANSFER
Rochester was just changing over from the slow, lumber- ing horse-cars to shiny new electric trolleys in 1891 when J. Harry Stedman, a Rochesterian, invented the transfer.
Before that time if a passenger changed cars he had to pay another fare, except of course in passing the home of Joseph Medbury in State Street near Andrews. Mr. Medbury had obtained an injunction to restrain cars from passing his land, and passengers were forced to get out and walk to another car waiting on the other side of the property line.
Before Stedman's invention some street-car companies had already used paper slips for transfers that were good "while legible." Stedman's invention soon was adopted by more than 400 traction companies using 750 million transfers a year. By the time the patent expired in 1909 he had printed more than seven billion transfers. Crude affairs at first, they were rapidly elaborated with a variety of features. The date, consecutive numbers, the name of the conductor and of the line were added. Black printing on white paper was used for morning, white on black for afternoon and evening. Later, faces portraying distinguish- ing features adorned the transfers, to permit identification of passengers by a snip of the conductor's punch in the right place: "clean shaven," "full beard," "with mus- tache," "with side-burns," and "with chin whiskers" for the men; and for the women, "with bonnet," "with hat," "thin," or "plump." The woman presenting a trans- fer punched "with chin whiskers" undoubtedly found it even more useless than now to argue with the street-car conductor. On the other hand, the whiskered man with a "smooth shaven" transfer might have some basis for laying it to the length of the trip and slowness of the cars.
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FIRST FOUNTAIN PEN
In 1849 Bishop & Codding, a local firm specializing in the manufacture of plowshares, turned to making the first fountain pens on record. The following advertisement appeared in a Rochester newspaper almost 90 years ago: "This truly great invention renders the pocket gold pen perfect and invariably considered as the great desideratum fully attained. This pen is particularly useful to travelers and all others using pocket ink stands." The quick demise of pocket ink stands followed, no doubt giving the Roch- ester post office and Rochester banks the further distinction of being the first link in a now vast chain of free fountain- pen filling stations.
For men of discrimination and superior honesty, however, this surreptitious siphoning of bluing, cornstarch, and sand was no more necessary then than now after Milo Codding, a brother of the inventor, brewed "The Famous Codding Fountain Pen Ink." This, as an early advertise- ment described it, was "as pure as rare old wine, flows smoothly as oil, and leaves when dry only a fine, smooth paste on the paper."
That the new pen was not all it might have been is indi- cated by the fact that Bishop & Codding soon turned to the manufacture of boots and shoes.
EARLY CIGARETTE MANUFACTURE
A distant ancestor of the present medicated cigarettes was one invented in 1877 by D. Wark, a Rochesterian. Described as a great "contribution to medical science," this cigarette was rolled in paper which had been saturated in a solution of nitrate of potash, juniper, tar, and oil of turpentine. It was supposed to alleviate the pain of the asthma-suffering populace.
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Country cousins, in New York for weekend visits, until recently gasped with unabashed awe at a shiny machine turning out cigarettes by the dozens of cartons in a Broad- way show window. Little did the gaspers know that Oscar W. Allison, a Rochester tobacco manufacturer, amazed his generation by the invention in 1880 of a machine that would produce 150 cigarettes a minute.
In the same year William S. Kimball formed the Kimball Tobacco Company and housed it in a new factory building, now the City Hall Annex. This plant boosted its production to 140,000,000 cigarettes in 1883, and a few years later was purchased and absorbed by the American Tobacco Co.
THE FIRST GOLD TOOTH
In 1843 J. B. Beers, a Rochester dentist, patented his in- vention of a gold tooth, "a hollow crown secured by cement to a screw inserted in the roots of the broken tooth." Dr. Beers, who had an office in Reynolds Arcade, was a firm believer in advertising. He proclaimed in the Rochester directory :
"I would respectfully call the attention of the public to my specimens of incorruptible teeth, mounted on gold plate. Also to my new, improved method of engrafting artificial gold teeth upon the natural roots, which renders them more permanent and durable than those inserted upon the old plan with wooden pivots."
Before the invention of the gold tooth, the source of supply for artificial teeth for the affluent was ivory from which the dentist carved a molar to fit. To unfortunate victims of frequent canal brawls were offered the cheaper calves' teeth "dressed to proportion." One Rochester den- tist advertised that he would "put in pivot teeth, selected from a bottle of human teeth procured in a Florida war." The gold tooth proved a popular substitute and, in addi- tion, provided no little personal adornment.
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EBENEZER ALLEN
Ebenezer Allen (1742-1814), the Daniel Boone of the Genesee country, was Rochester's first settler. Across the stage of history, against the vivid backdrop of his time, he struts, tall and handsome, clothed by tradition in the pied coat of heroism and scandal.
His military record as a lieutenant in the British army credits him with bravery and rare diplomacy in dealing with the Indians. In 1782 he was sent from Fort Niagara to Livingston County to investigate Indian activities. For more than a year he was a guest of Mary Jemison, "White Woman of the Genesee," in her home on Gardeau Flats near Mount Morris: with the aid of her friendship and his marriage to an Indian woman, he achieved a strong influence over the Senecas. From them he obtained title to a tract of land near the site of Scottsville, on which in 1786 he built a log cabin.
A pioneer named Nathan Chapman, traveling with his family to Niagara, stopped at Allen's cabin. Lucy Chapman, a daughter, married Allen, and lived there with him and his Indian wife. In 1789 Allen moved to the Falls to build a sawmill and gristmill. In return for erecting these mills Allen received from Oliver Phelps the 100-acre tract on which downtown Rochester now stands.
In the course of time, Allen added other wives to his harem. Tradition says that, in addition to being a multi- bigamist, he was a Bluebeard who attempted to dispose of one of his wives, Millie McGregory, by hiring two men to take her out on the river in a canoe and upset the boat. The men carried out his orders, but Millie, refusing to take the hint, swam ashore, and lived to inherit a part of Allen's property.
Because of his violent temper Allen was called by the Indians Genushio, a name which they also gave to the boil-
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Orringh Stone Tavern, 2370 East Ave. Built 1790
ROCHESTER ANECDOTES
ing torrent of the Genesee. He is said to have killed a small boy who aroused his rage by taking too long to fetch a pail of water from the spring.
In 1792 Allen sold his mills and returned to Mount Morris, but there he began to feel crowded by the dozen or so white families with whom he shared the Genesee Valley. He needed more elbow room. Always a trail blazer, he followed the receding wilderness into the forests of Canada, building mills and opening new frontiers for the civilization from which he fled. In the end, however, his wild spirit appears to have been tamed; in his old age he was overtaken, like David and Solomon, by repentance, became a deacon in the church, and died in the odor of sanctity.
How can one classify a man who, equally at home with aristocrat and savage, rode to hounds with Alexander Hamilton and was a close friend of George Washington, yet chose to marry an Indian squaw? Ebenezer was not nice. His matrimonial peccadillos were frowned upon, even in the unfastidious frontier days. Moreover, his earlier British sympathies, which he claimed to have foresworn, placed him in the eyes of his neighbors under the suspicion of Toryism. But after discounting as propaganda or as folk- lore many of the stories that have come down to us, "Indian" Allen still looms large, a figure of romance, a man of blood and iron, who cleared the way for settlement along the Genesee.
WHEN ROYALTY VISITED THE VALLEY
In 1797 Louis Philippe, afterwards King of France, came with his brothers, the Duke of Montpensier and Count Beaujolais, to view the Genesee Falls. The young nobleman had been exiled from France because of his Jacobean opin- ions. Driven by curiosity to see the new world of wilder-
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ness and Indians, he journeyed from Philadelphia under the guidance of Thomas Morris, son of Robert Morris, financer of the Revolution. From Canandaigua the royal party proceeded, probably on foot, toward the Genesee. They came along the New Landing Road across the head of Irondequoit Bay. Dinner time approached, and the hungry travelers eyed with disfavor the few clay-chinked log huts along the way; but Mr. Morris reassured them.
"Wait till we reach Orringh Stone's Tavern. I've sent word ahead by an Indian runner, and Mrs. Stone will give us a feast."
In the midst of its well-kept garden surrounded by currant bushes and fruit trees, crabapple and wild plum, the tavern offered hospitality beneath its sloping roof with scalloped rake mouldings. The guests should have been surprised to find, deep in the wilderness, so trim and sturdy a house as Orringh Stone Tavern. But, unreconciled to frontier stand- ards, Louis Philippe was apparently not impressed, for, 50 years later, when he saw in Paris a large square of plate glass ready for shipment to Rochester, New York, the King of France exclaimed, "What can they do with that in that awful mudhole!"
Perhaps his opinion of the "mudhole," if expressed im- mediately after the feast prepared by Mrs. Stone, would have been less derogatory. Full fed on roast pig, wild pigeon, turkey, corn-bread, apple and pumpkin pies, the royal guests probably rested awhile by the cheery blaze in the great nine-and-a-half-foot fireplace. When they con- tinued their journey after drinking generous noggins of Orringh Stone's applejack and pegs of native whiskey, they may have seen a rare and beautiful phenomenon, a prismatic rainbow over the Falls.
Orringh Stone Tavern still stands on East Avenue, oppo- site Council Rock. Perhaps the hand of the King of France
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rested on the jamb of its door as he steadied himself after the extensive, well-liquefied first royal dinner party.
ROCHESTER'S FIRST NATIVE CITIZEN
There are several contestants for the honor of being the first white child born in Rochester. Several authorities claim that the first time Rochester's primeval forest echoed to the wail of a newborn paleface was when Seneca Allen was born. He was the son of Ebenezer Allen and Lucy Chapman, the second of Allen's plural wives, and was born February 18, 1788. The mills at the Falls were not com- pleted until November 1789. Though Allen lived in Scotts- ville when he married Lucy Chapman, it is known that he resided at the Falls while the mills were being built. So Seneca might have been born on the site of Rochester; at any rate he was the first white child born in what is now Monroe County.
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