USA > New York > Wayne County > Rose > Rose neightborhood sketches, Wayne County, New York; with glimpses of the adjacent towns: Butler, Wolcott, Huron, Sodus, Lyons and Savannah > Part 11
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present proprietor, Chester Ellinwood. Mr. Ellinwood has been one of the few democratic supervisors whom the town has had. His childhood was passed on the farm now owned by Ensign Wade. His wife is Mary E. Phillips of Newark. Their first child, Irene P., died in 1884, aged four- teen years. Their children, living, are Mary Louise, John C., Robert and Chester E.
The next house, on the north side of the road, was built by Dell Jones. After him it has had owners or occupants as follows: George Atkinson, Chas. Reed, Chas. Whitney, George Rote, Edward Boon and Wm. Pitts.
On the south side of the way is the home of Henry Benjamin, built by himself. He has already received mention in our account of the Town district. The stream, close at hand, flows from the spring near which Alpheus Harmon located his log house.
We now come to the place long associated with the name of Smith. It was orginally taken up by Luther Wheeler about 1810. His wife, Lucy Rundell, was a sister of Mrs. Joseph Wade. They were from Fairfield, Ct. They had three daughters and six sons. The youngest, Elizabeth, married John Harmon, son of Alpheus, and lived where Benjamin is. Another daughter, Anna, was Mrs. Ransom Ward. They went to Catta- raugus Co. The name, too, of Samnel Miller is connected with a part of the farm, also that of widow Starke. It would seem that the Smiths held what afterward formed two farms, those north and south of the road. Chauncey Smith, or, as he was generally called, Judge Smith, was born May 4th, 1785, in Suffield, Conn., and came to Butler, February, 1832. His wife was Priscilla Pinney. They lived here for many years, having a family noted for intelligence and worth. Judge S. died on the farm August 8th, 1853. His wife died in Flint, Michigan, December 20th, 1877, at the age of eighty-six. They were most exemplary members of the Presbyterian Church in Rose. Their children were numerous. Matilda and Adeliza died in childhood, and are buried with their parents in the Collins burial ground. Cordelia married Joseph Crawford and is dead ; Ruth is the wife of Rev. Thomas Wright, of Fenton, Michigan ; Melissa, the widow of Rev. Milton Wells, resides in Jamestown, Dakota; Lucy Ann married George W. Henderson, of the north part of the same school district, and lives now in Hartland, Wisconsin ; two other daughters, Sally and Lydia, are dead; Chauncey married Martha Wilder, and for many years was the most suc- cessful merchant in Wolcott ; he is now in Dakota - a railroad contractor ; his home is in Jameston, No. Dakota ; Thaddeus took Frank Kingsbury for his wife, and is a resident of Flint, Michigan (Died in 1889) ; Silas N. is dead. To the Smiths succeeded one Lampson, then Silas Lovejoy, Henry Benjamin and John Weeks, who, though still residing there, has sold to Welthea Talcott, so the two farms are again united.
Our last residence in this direction is the home of Miss Welthea Talcott, whose parents bought the Elder Daniel Waldo farm. The elder and his
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son, Egbert, had bought of Chauncey Smith. This was in the time when clergymen tilled farms as well as preached. Daniel Waldo's history would tell us almost the whole story of the early ecclesiastical history of west- ern New York. A native of Connecticut, he was graduated at Yale in 1788, and from that date to the time of his death was constant in his efforts for good. He was for several years settled over the Presbyterian Church in the Valley. He lived to be more than a hundred years old, dying in 1864, in Syracuse. I heard him preach in Fulton in 1863, he then being more than a century old. He was blind, but when he was led into the pulpit he had no trouble in proving that it was not a case of the blind leading the blind in any harmful sense. For several years he was the oldest survivor of the graduates of Yale. I have understood that he married my great grand-parents, Deacon Shepard and wife, and that he preached at the funeral of the deacon. From Elder Waldo the farm passed to Thomas Forbes, who sold to George Chipman, from whom Mr. Talcott bought in 1854. Both Mr. T. and his wife, who was a Coleman, were born in Coventry, Connecticut. They are both dead and are buried in Huron. Mrs. T. died April 7th, 1881, and Mr. T. June 9th, 1885. Two sons and a daughter are buried with them. This family maintained an ex- cellent standing in a neighborhood famous for the Christian character of its people. The sole survivor of the family, Miss Welthea, holds the old farm, and the house, which is a brick one, was built by the Waldos. It is the only dwelling of this material in the vicinity. (Sold in 1888 to Mr. McIntyre, of Rose. )
As members of this district I ought to include the Freeman family, whose early home was just a little beyond that of Judge Smith. The father, Moses Freeman, came from New Jersey, while his wife, Orinda, was the daughter of Timothy and Orinda Janes, of Vermont. Mrs. Janes died in this place in 1832, and was buried in the Collins burial ground, while Mr. Janes survived to a great age, dying in Illionis, at the home of his grand- son, George W. Freeman. The family afterward lived west of Mr. Van Antwerp's, as already stated. Mr. F. died in 1837. Of the children given to Mr. Freeman and wife, there were five boys and one girl. George W. went to Bloomington, Illinois, in 1855, and still resides there. It was at his home that his mother died in 1857. Charles A. married in Iowa, moved to Minnesota, and thence, twenty-five years ago, essayed the over- land route to the Pacific coast, and has ever since resided there, his home being in Portland, where he is cashier of the Oregon Railway and Naviga- tion Company. In the account of District No. 7, he was mentioned as having passed several of the early years of his life in the home of Austin Roe. In 1886, passing through Portland, I sought him out, and giving him a letter sent by my father, I found him an exceedingly pleasant and affable gentleman. Timothy J., after the war, settled in Missouri, where he married, and where he now lives. Ephraim died a soldier during the
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Rebellion. Moses, the youngest son, is married and living in Nebraska. The only daughter, Charlotte, married Alfred Williams, of Butler, and also lives in Nebraska. The last three of the sons served in the army during the War, all in Illinois regiments, and all served through except Ephraim, who died after about a year's service. Timothy came home with a captain's commission and a wound in the neck. Moses was not scratched, though he was in all the important campaigns from the first one in Missouri to the fall of Mobile.
Facing the brick house we find the road with which we parted company, in our District No. 7 letters, when we left Martin Saxton's home. On this road are two houses belonging to No. 6 district. In the first dwells Daniel Evans, who came to these parts from Palmyra, and whose first wife was Calista Cornell; his second, Carrie Keisler, of Huron. This place also has changed owners frequently. The farm was originally a part of the Wood- ruff purchase, and here some of the family lived. Charles Allen bought of the Woodruffs. This Mr. Allen was a brother of the wives of Charles Sherman and Chester Ellinwood. He was himself a son of Ezra Allen, of Butler, and, through his mother, own cousin to the Kelloggs. I remember meeting, some years ago, at Patchogue, L. I., a son of this Charles Allen. The gentleman was a commission merchant in New York City, I think; but I shall not soon forget his enthusiasm over the old home on the confines of Butler. Charles Allen's wife was a Miss Leach, of Lyons, and to this place Mr. Allen moved finally, and died there. One son, Willard T., was in the army. After Allen, we find William Sherman on this farm. I am under the impression that we shall not find William again in our journey- ings, but this must be the sixth or seventh time that he has turned up in our peregrinations. Then came a Loveless, Newton Moore, Charles Smith. At some time in these years, during the sixties I believe, Jerome Davis. held the farm. Jerome is a son of Paul Davis, noted in the history of these towns. His only sister was the first wife of Eron Thomas. His wife, Alice, is a daughter of Jotham Post, of Butler, and so, through her mother, related to the Roes of that town. (Martin Darling now occupies.)
The very last house in the district is one now occupied by Nathan Loveless, son of Ransom Loveless, of Butler. This was the original site of the Woodruff home. The place was long held by the Benjamins, and was well known as the Benjamin farm. Just after the war Henry Marsh held it for a time. Whatever the character of the soil, there certainly are no better farms in Butler or Rose so far as convenience of location and freedom from hills are concerned.
To him who passed any considerable part of his life in this town, all that pertains to any part of the Stewart district, even though it may run over'into Butler, is interesting. I only regret that my sources of informa- tion have been so few that I could not give the minute description that I wished.
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SCHOOL DISTRICT No. 9.
(Nov. 15, 1888-Jan. 3, 1889.)
This school district is known in Rose parlance as the Lovejoy neighbor- hood or the Lake district, not from its proximity to Lake Ontario, for that is ten miles away, but from the fact that the school-house was built near the home of the Lake family. The name of Lovejoy is readily accounted for from the long residence of Parmer L. and his descendants in the immediate vicinity. We can make no better beginning than to give in detail the facts of this first comer's settlement and life. Parmer (I think it should be Palmer) Lovejoy was born in Sheffield, Mass., and there lived until the beginning of the present century, when he came to our town as one of its pioneers. It was in 1812 that, with his oldest son, Silas, he made the long trip to these western wilds. The lots that he had purchased were originally taken up by one Chapman, a Connecticut man, who had married his wife in Sheffield. He had made a start for this New York home, when the courage of his wife utterly failed. She had heard of bears, wolves and Indians, and she had no heart to brave the dangers before her. She wouldn't go, consequently her husband had to look about for some way ont of the dilemma. He didn't wish to lose either his wife or his purchase, and so finally secured Mr. Lovejoy's possessions in exchange for the untilled acres in New York. Eli Ward, who had married a daughter of Lovejoy, was already in these parts, and the Wolcott family was here. In fact, it was " Jim " Wolcott who showed the new comer where his land lay. The farm was one mile long and two hundred rods wide, thus con- taining just four hundred acres. There were no roads, but winding through the land was a clear stream, having its fountain head near the old log house of Alpheus Harmon. In later years the creek, for its earlier course known as Stewart's, as it grows and gets into Huron, is put down as Mudge. On the north bank of this rivulet, between two unfailing springs, the pioneers cleared away the trees and built a log house. It was not so great a matter to construct a house then as now. Helping hands were found even in this sparsely settled locality, and there was no occasion to build beyond the builder's means. Says one of the first settlers, " Do you know how they laid the floor of a log house ?" Of course I was entirely ignorant, till he, resuming, said : "They just took a basswood log and split it up into as thin sections as possible. Then they put down sleepers and cutting into these they put the floor down as even as they could. Then where the women would be most likely to stub their toes they evened the surface, somewhat, with an adze. A hole in the floor let us down into a small cavity where were stored potatoes, etc., while a ladder led up to the attic, where, if he were not too tall, a man might
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stand erect under the peak. Here were packed away the boys and girls of the family, and in those days they were more numerous than they are now." A line drawn from the present home of Norman Lovejoy to that of Alonzo Chaddock would pass very near the site of the old home. An old weather- worn beech tree stands nearly opposite on the south side of the creek. Only a few stones and a slight depression in the soil mark the site of this home in the wilderness. Returning to the Bay State, the father and son prepared to take their families to their new home. The father was an only son, though his father's, Timothy, family was a large one, there being nine daughters in it. Several of these, as we shall find, became migrants also. Parmer Lovejoy's wife was Esther Butler, a fit consort for a man who had undertaken to level the forest and to break up the virgin soil. His own family was very large, there being in it seven boys and five girls. Of these one boy and one girl died in their old home. The oldest son was Silas, whom we have already seen as his father's companion in his fir trip hither. Parmer, Jr., married Widow Dolly Sears, nee Davenport, and lived for a time in Bristol, Cayuga county, then on the Brockway place. Afterward he was at the Furnace, town of Wolcott, and then went to Michigan, where he died about 1850. His children were Norton, Sally, Lucinda and Harvey Puffer, known among his associates as " Puff." The whole family had the Michigan fever. William, the third son, married Sophia Kellogg, from Connecticut, and passed his life on the farm where now resides Thomas Henderson, half a mile northwest of Stewart's corners. From the primitive log house his residence progressed to the commodious house now standing. His children were Henry, who took Sarah Blaine for his wife, and built and occupied for many years the house now held by Oliver Bush, just on the confines of the Stewart district; as we have already seen, he went to Illinois, and had one daughter only ; Wm.'s second son, James, we shall meet later as the occupant of the same place ; his daughter, Laura, we have met as the wife of Oscar W. Lee, a resident of Painesville, Ohio; Minerva married Darwin Norton, born in Rose, and resides in Illinois. Parmer's fourth son, Henry, married Hannah Hicks, and began his wedded life in the old log house first built. He afterward went to Phelps, Ontario county, and then moved to Michigan, where he lived and died. He had two sons. The fifth son, Daniel, wedded Sophia Bassett, who had been brought up by Mrs. Aaron Shepard, of District No. 7. Him also we shall encounter in our way westward in the district. The sixth son, Harvey, married Perliette Higgins. His early home was in Pompey, whence he went to Michigan, where he married a second time. His children were a daughter, Mary Esther, by his first marriage and two sons by his second, Charles and Lucien. Parmer's oldest daughter, Polly, became the wife of Eli Ward, the man who was the first settler on the Toles place. He also had an interest in the lot which
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is now owned by Eustace Henderson. From Rose they moved to Wolcott, where Ward cared for a grist mill. They returned to Rose, but afterward went to that Rose Mecca, Michigan, where they died many years since. They had sons, Henry and Cyrus, and daughters, Adaline, Mary Ann and Maria. Adaline became the wife of Elisha Chaddock, from Cayuga Co. All went to the west. The second daughter, Jerusha, married Dorman Munsell. We have seen them in Stewart's district, and traced all their children. Both husband and wife lie in the Lovejoy burial ground. The third daughter, Maria, married Cyrus Brockway, a native of Castleton, Vt. They settled first in Huron ; then came to Rose and were for a short time on the corner, just south of the John Gillett farm. Soon afterward they moved to the Furnace. There and in Wolcott they lived until Mr. B. died, aged seventy-six, in October, 1876. He was buried in the latter place. Mrs. Brockway is now living with her son Elisha, on the old Wilson place- Erth of Stewart's corners. (Died December, 1891.) Though past eighty, she retains much of the vigor so characteristic of her father's family. Her reminiscences of the early days were especially interesting. She recalled the fourteen days' trip from the old home; told, laughingly, of the stop- ping one night, when all washed in an old-fashioned sink, something, I should think, like a modern bath tub, containing several pails of water. "Come," said the energetic mother, "let's be washed," and, ranging from the babe at her breast, now Mrs. Harvey Mason, to the lively boys and girls in their 'teens, all were soundly scrubbed. They brought with them an excellent cow, for, said the father : " I am not going into the wilderness without milk." "Didn't your mother dread such a journey ? " I asked. " Oh, yes ; it was a great undertaking, but she was so anxious to keep her family of boys together. She couldn't bear to think of her six boys being widely separated, and she thought a four hundred acre farm would keep them near her." "But," I say, "they did not stay after all." " Well, the most of them did," she replies. Continuing, she said: "Father brought a supply of provisions to last the first year, such as pork, flour, etc. He and the boys cut off the timber, enough to allow of planting corn the first season, and what big corn they did have among the stumps ! Then they sowed wheat right after, and they raised so much that father was able to sell a little. I remember a man coming to father and he sold two bushels. It was very high and was worth two dollars a bushel. I recall my sorrow at the man having to pay so much, and told mother how badly I felt over such a necessity. I guess the man was glad to get it, though. Yes, we had adventures with the wild beasts. We brought with us a big dog, a most valuable animal, for father said he wouldn't live in the woods without a dog. Well, he followed a deer one day until he tired him out, and luckily drove him near our home. Two of the boys ran out, and Daniel caught the deer around the neck, shouting to me to fetch a
=
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knife. I ran for the big butcher's knife and the boys cut the creature's neck. We had venison for some days. At another time we got a supply of bear's meat through the treeing of Brnin near our home. After firing many shots at him, one reaching a vital part, brought him down. It was a bad place to be sick in, this home in the forest. Why, we all had the measles-thirteen of us-not all at once, or we should have died, sure. Some one had to be well enough to gather hemlock boughs, from which we made almost our only medicine. In some way, we all pulled through, though father was never as well afterward as before. It left him with a very bad cough. Father was not a member of the church, but mother, who was reared with the Congregationalists, united with the Methodists under Rev. Wm. McKoon in his early ministrations. Of course she leaned toward the Presbyterians ; but there was more or less dissension in their first church in Huron, so she chose the Methodists. Father died in an apoplectic fit, when sixty-three years old, in 1830. He lies in the burial ground near where he built his first house. Mother lived to be nearly ninety years old, dying in 1858." Mrs. Brockway had three children. William and Prudence are both dead. As we have stated, she passed her declining years with her son, Elisha, whose wife was Elizabeth Odell of Junius. They have a boy, Willie, and two little girls. Mrs B. told me that she attended the first school taught in this part of the town. It was kept in Alpheus Harmon's barn and was presided over by Miriam Wolcott, daughter of Epaphras Wolcott, one of the pioneers. Parmer L.'s fourth daughter, Charlotte, married Gowan Riggs of Huron, and is living still ; she has a son, Henry, and daughter, Hester Ann, who married Sanford Odell. Parmer's youngest child and fifth daughter, Julia, married Harvey Mason, and is yet living in the district.
Returning now to the first settler and progenitor of all the Rose Love- joys, we shall find him, in time, leaving his first home by the creek and moving into a new one on the west side of the road, near where Widow Nancy Lovejoy now lives. Here he lived until advancing years prompted him to make his home with his son, William, nearly opposite. And here, as we have seen, he and his wife died. In person Mr. L. was erect and muscular, well fitted for life in a new country. He had a good repute for determination and for reliableness. Like all men of mark he had his peculiarities, and words of his were long repeated in the vicinity. Once when a party was in progress at his home he conceived a dislike for one of the guests, one O-, from the regions south. Perhaps the hard cider jug had been too frequently passed, and to get rid of him he says to his wife: "Weigh him a piece of cake and let him go." The expression became proverbial. He had a notion that women loved to ride about too much, and he sometimes called them " gad-abouts." This doggerel is remem- bered of him: "Aunt Anna, Aunt Dolly and Old Widow Frolly have all
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gone to Wolcott with Uncle Parmer's oxen." The first two "aunts" were his daughters-in-law, while " Widow Frolly " was the relict of Elnathan Munsell. He was the first of a numerous race, so numerous, in fact, that when parties were held in the neighborhood, it was customary to say in answer to the question, " Who were there? " "Oh! Mr. and Mrs. So and So and the thousand Lovejoys."
To get our bearings correctly, we must go back toward the east just a few rods, and we shall find a small, weather-beaten house situated in a snug inclosure. Here, for many years, lived the Pattersons. The father came from near Newark, and was a carpet weaver. Though badly crip- pled, he managed to earn a living. His house was once burned, but the sympathetic neighbors rebuilt it. After his death his wife, Lucy, took up his work, and for a long time was the weaver of rag carpets that cover many a floor in the neighborhood. Always industrious, but never far be- yond the door of want, she passed away finally, in 1885, and, with her husband, is buried in Newark. Says a neighbor, " When the folks around here made donation visits to their ministers, I used to take a bushel of potatoes and other things to Mrs. Patterson." She left a son, George, who served in the army, but who now lives in Michigan, and a daughter, Celinda, who is a dressmaker. Since Mrs. P.'s death the house has been without an occupant, some of the neighbors renting the lot. Perhaps the first dweller here was the Widow Lampson, whose husband, a painter by trade, had died in Clyde. She had three children at least. A daughter married James Phillips, and the sons, Edward and Theodore, married Barbara and Phobe Phillips, respectively. Thus these families were pretty well united. The Phillipses lived on the farm now held by Dorman Munsell. Polly Lampson died in 1849, aged fifty-four years.
Oliver Bush dwells just beyond. Him we found living on the Dudley Wade farm in District No. 7, but in '86 or '87 he made a trade with Sidney J. Hopping, who had occupied this place since 1872. Mr. Bush's wife before marriage was S. Mariette Stone. Their son, Leverrier, married Florence V. Humphrey, and resides in Syracuse ; Fletcher D. married Lottie Hollenbeck, and is in Fair Haven, N. Y .; Lavello S. married Clara Jackson, and resides in Oneida. Mr. Hopping is a native of Elbridge, Onondaga Co., but is remotely of Rhode Island stock. His own father dying when he was two years old, his mother married a Kenyon and finally worked out to these parts. His wife was Jane Cook, of Butler, and his two children, Ada and Darwin, were born here. On coming to Rose he lived four years on the Joel N. Lee farm, north of Rose. This was in 1862. He afterwards went to Chicago, and thence to Sacramento, taking six years for this experience; but ill health drove him back, and in 1872 he bought this place of Alonzo Chaddock, who had held it only a short time, having purchased of Lucian Osgood, whose brief though happy occupancy was
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cut short by the untimely death, in 1870, of his wife, who was Eudora M. Seelye. Osgood had bought of Henry Lovejoy, already met as the husband of Sarah Blaine and the son of William Lovejoy. He was the original owner and builder.
We are now ready to make a regular peregrination of the district. The next abode toward the north, for here the roads deflect in that direction, is the present Henderson home. As heretofore noted, the house was built by William Lovejoy, and here he died in 1865, aged sixty-seven years. His widow survived until 1878, when she passed away, very nearly eighty-five years old. Here he reared his children, and about him saw beautiful farms appear, where once was the primeval forest. After him, as proprietor, came his second son, James, who married Nancy Lake, of the same school district, and here James died in 1870, at the early age of forty-two. Thus, under the same roof, father, son and grandson passed into the mystery. James had a numerous family, as follows: Fanny, who married John Judge and lives in Wisconsin; Eliza, who became the wife of Isaac Jones and lives on the famous lime-kiln farm in the edge of Butler; Ella, who is Mrs. Seymour Henry, of Huron; Lewis, who married Emma, daughter of William Henry, of Huron; the next two, Augustus and Augusta, are twins. The son took for his wife Lucy, daughter of Halsey Smith, of the same district, and now lives on the first farm west of the lime kiln, on the most northerly road in the town, though his house is in Butler. Augusta married Henry Wellington, of Rindge, N. H., and resides in the old Granite State.
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