USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > The semi-centennial souvenir : an account of the great celebration, June 9th and 10th, 1884, together with a chronological history of Rochester, N.Y. > Part 2
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PRAYER BY DR. SHAW. Rev. James B. Shaw, D. D., next prayed as follows:
Oh God, our heavenly father, we are assembled here to-day to bless and praise thy name for the ummitivent blessings thou hast shown us as a city during the first half century of its existence. oh God, we come to thee to day as the God in whom our fathers trusted. We come before thee (, ivanbly confess our sins, for we are like sheep that have gone astray and wandered far from the mas tor's fold. We know that we have done many things which we oncht Bet to have done, and irit Hiddlone these things winch we ought to have done. But we came to-day to confess all these things and
Beamish, Samuel
Leap. Benjamin Lear. Isaac
Moore. William H.
Monlson. Samuel
MoKibben. John
Pote, Joseph
Howe, Jarob
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humbly ask thy mercy and forgiveness. We desire. Oh Lord, to thankfully acknowledge the mubounded mercies thon hast shown this municipality during the past half century. We thank thee for the holde founders of the city which they gavest us; that they were conscientious and bigh minded men from whose exemplary lives has radiated an in- tuance for good which has been felt through all the years down to the present tine. We also de- sire to thank thee Oh Lord for the great material prosperity thou hast granted ns: for the schools. seminaries and other institutions of learning which have been given us and have done so much for the intellectual interests of our city: for our churches, asyInis, hospitals, and all the houses of mercy which have been organized in our midst. 'And. Oh Lord our God we would commend to thine infinite care and guidance the Chief Magistrate of the land. the Governor of the state, the Mayor and all others in authority, and pray that they may all reflect thine own merciful and beneficent authority in all their official acts. May they Je able to discern the signs of the times and be wise fu all their actions. so that at that great and final day they may hear from thine own lips the words " Well done, thon good and faithful servant: thon hast been faithful over a few things and I will make thee ruler over many. Enter thou into the joy of the Lord." Our Heavenly Father, we would also ask thy blessing on those who have come here as oar guests on this festive occasion, and may they return to their homes car- rying with them none but the peasantast of recoľ- lections of their stay among us. Oh God, we would also ask Thee to create such a love for our city in our hearts, that we may continually strive to make it nearer aud nearer like that New Jerusalem. the city not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. All these unmerited mereies we ask in thy name. and with angels and archangels we will glorify and magnify thy glorious name for ever and ever, Amen.
FROM ROCHESTER, ENGLAND.
'The reading of the following document, by the Mayor, was listened to attentively :
TOWN CLERK'S OFFICE. ROCHESTER, SUL May, 1SS .. . To the Worshipful. the Mayor of Rochester, N. Y .: DEAR SIR: Iam directed by the Mayor and cor- poration of this city to forward von copy of reso- Intion passed at their last quarterly meeting.
The Mayor desires me to express to you how much he would have been pleased to have accepted your most kind invitation and to have made a jour- ney to America and especially to your city, but it is quite impossible for him to do so.
Allow me personally to offer muy sincere congrat- ulations on your great prosperity, and I am sure I can add that the forfines of our eufizens will be with you on the occasion of your most interesting celebration.
I have the honor to be, der r sir.
Yours most truly. RICHARD PRALL.
At a meeting of the Council of the said city holden at the mild
('ity of Rochester, hall. of and in the said city. on Wednesday, the fourteenth day 1 of May, IN4-
Present:
Charles Ross Foord. esquire, Mayor. AHerman, James George Naylar, esquire. Conciliors: Mr. John Smith Benton. Mr. Joseph Ord Moore.
.. Joseph Creases .. Franklin G. Homan. .. George Henry Curel. .. John James Foord.
Edward Win, Willis. .. Lewis Bly th Biggs. George William Gill.
It was Resolved, That the Commeil desires to ex- press to the Masor and citizens of the city of Bodluster, N. Y .. their appreciation of dlp kind feelings manifested in the invitation given by the Mayor to the Mayor of this edy to ire parent onthe occasion of the celebration of the 50th year of the
city's existence. The Mayor of this city is, he re- grets to say. unable to be present, but he and all the meinbers of this Council would desire to unite in one cordial wish that the celebration may be a suc- cessful one.
They congratulate the city on its wonderful progress manifested in the fact that the number of its inhabitants now exceeds 100.000, ail they hope that its prosperity in the future may be equal to what it has been in the past: And
Resolved further, That a copy of this resolution under the common seal of the corporation and signed by the Mayor and alderman and councillors present at this meeting he forwarded to the Mayor of Rochester. N. Y.
[Seal] CHARLES ROSS FOORD, Mayor. JAMES GEORGE NAVLAR. JOHN S. BENTON. JOSEPH CREASEY. GEORGE H. CUREL. E. W. WILLIS. J. O. MOORE F. G. HoMAN. JOHN J. FOORD. LEWIS BLYTH BIGGS. GEORGE W. GILL.
The following resolutions, offered by Fred- erick A. Whittlesey Were adopted unan- imonsly :
Resolved. That we the citizens of Rochester, N. Y., assembled on this fiftieth anniversary of its in corporation as a city, have heard with the greatest Measure resolutions of the Mayor, aklerinan and councillors of the city of Rochester, Kent, Eng. land, adopted 14th May. 1><1, and transmitted to our Mayor. The continmed good will and brotherly feeling on the part of that ancient and venerable corporate body towards this its vontoful namesake which are attested by this missive, are both grate- fully received and heartily reciprocated by this community, and we should have rejoiced could we have welcomed here any representative from our elder sister by the Medway on this our day of jubi- lee
Resolved. That our chairman, the Mayor, cause a copy of these proceedings to be sent to the Mayor of Rochester, England, with the request that he connonnicate the same to the alderman and coun- cillors.
OTHER CONGRATULATIONS.
The following telegrams, received by the Mayor, were also read:
WASHINGTON, D. C., June 2 .-- To His Honor. the Mayor of Rochester. N. Y., Sir: In response to your repeated invitation I have to say, it is with surpass- ing regret that I cannot otherwise than in spirit walk the streets of your beautiful city to-day, and assist in the celebration of its semirentounial. My home for more than a quarter of a century. the seone of my earliest endeavors for liberty and It- manitv, endeared to me by the warmest associa- tion of friendship and citizenship. I send it greeting and give you joy on this its fiftieth anniversary. . and extend muy heartfelt wishes for its continued health, prosperity and bouor.
Yours very truly. FREDERICK DOUGLASS. ALBANY, N. Y., June 9. I.m. C. R. Parmas:
I greatly regret that an important suit comties on to-morrow at which I have to be present. so [ will not be able to be present. Albany sends her most hearty greeting and rejoices with you in your great prosperity. A. BLEECKER BANKS, Mayor of Albany.
CINCINNATI. O .. June 9.
Tothe Hon. C. R. Parsons, Mayor of Rochester: Accept my congratulations and best wishes for
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Rochester. May she continue to increase in pros- perity and beauty.
MONTGOMERY H. ROCHESTER.
After the choir of St. Peter's Church* had rendered the selection " Angel of Peace" tan- sie by Mathias Keller), with band accompani- mnout, under the direction of Prof. Sartori, the chairman introduced the historian of the day-Hon. Charles E. Fitch, editor of the Democrat and Chronicle:
THE HISTORICAL ADDRESS BY HON. C. E. FITCH. +
t think I can understand something of the pride with which an Athenian, amid the crumbling monuments of the age of Pericles, reviews the record of Attic en ture in arts and of Attic supremacy in arms; or that with which & Roman, in the shadow of the Coliseum, looks backward, through the vista of the past to the glory of the republic and the majesty of the empire. and exclaims. ''I, too, am a Roman citisen. " What thrill of emotion may touch the heart of a Vene- tian, when he wakes from his dreams, within the slumbrous air of the Adriatic where, as in Shelley's vision,
"The temples and the palaces do seem,
Like fabries of enchantment piled to heaven, "
aud reflects that all the wealth of architec- tural adornment and visible memorials o? mediæval luxury are the enduring testimony to the refined buste and the commercial gran- deur of the queenty city which ruled the waters from the Rialto to the Zuyder Zee. Thus also may the Londoner muse, as he hears the roar of Cheapside, whose stones seem to echo to the foot falls of the vanished toilers and to glow with the light and color which the long lines of civic pageantry, in brave array of scarlet and of gold have thrown upon them; or as, within the walls of the Tower, he recalls the weary imprisouments and the somber tragedies they have witnessed ; or, as in the fane of Westminister, by tabet and vault and chapel, he notes the events with which the names of the quiet sleepers there, once sceptered with royalty or crowned with laurel, have been associated, through seven hundred years of English history.
I can understand this pride of retrospec- tion, this identification of citisenship with the development of urban life, whose genesis is wrapped in the mists of antiquity. It is
*Soprano, Mrs. F. A. Mandeville: alto, Miss Annie Alexander: tenor. F. A. Mandeville: bass, F. M. Bottum. The excellent manter in which the choir, assisted by Prof. Sartori, director, acquitted itself upon this occasion, was the subject of general remark. .
+ Hou. Charles Elliott Fitch was born Dpe. 3, 1535, at Syracuse. N. Y. : graduated from Williams College, 1555, and at the Albany Law School. 1565; practiced his profession until the Summer of 1801: clerk of The Provost conrt at Newberne. N. C., from 1861 to 1-5: eltor-in-chief of the Syracuse Standard. 1:55 to 1-13, and of the Democrat and Chronicle since then.
something of which to be justly proud. Cities have been the cradles of liberty, the watch-towers of progress, the nuclei around which nationalities have gathered. Of nearly all onward movements of humanity they have been the inspirers and the heralds From thein have radiated, as beams from centrat suns, the sciences, the arts, the philanthropies. I can understand the claims of long descent, as illustrated in the achieve- ments of such municipalities as Athens and Rome and Florence and and Amsterdam and London Poris ; but I can more than understand, I
cab fully sympathise with, the newer civilisation of the cities of this western world I can feel its fresh propulsion -the very beating of its heart. I can realise the mighty strides it has made, even in my own life. It is part of the work which this generation and the generations immediately preceding it have wrought. It is of us and akin with us Concerning it, some of you may say, with ·Aeneas, ''& part of which I was and all of which I saw. '' Because it is the newer civ - ilisation, it is tios less worthy of commemor- ation than the old Inberitor of the quali- ties, which conspired in the evolution and the perpetuity of European communities, it has essential energies of its own stimulated especially by the conditions of territorial conquest with which it has had to deal, and strengthened by the assimilation, with its original stock, ot various races combin- ing in the union of peoples which. under the genius of American institutions, is its consummate production
Do you realise how new, in the compari- son, this civilisation is! It was but last week that, at Whitestown, was cole- brated the centennial of the first New England migration which, pushing beyond the frontier of German thrift, began the co- lonisation of Central New York So late &s 1800, although the smoke wreathed it-elf above the chimney of Peter Schaeffer, in his Wheatland clearing, and a few hardy ad- venturers had penetrated to the Ohio and laid the foundations of Marietta, the western line of settlement in the United States was practically drawn at the Genesee river. In the region between the Genesee and the headwaters of the Mohawk the population was comprised in a few straggling hamlets -- Rome, Oneida Castle, Onondaga Hollow. Hardenbergh's Corners, since Auburn, Ge- neva, Canandaigua, with their ontlying de- puudencies-connected by roads, whose only distinction from forest trails was in the blazed trees upon their course, along which, however, had already begun to move that picturesque procession of high-peaked, can . Yass-covered wagons, with their patient oxen, which was, through the coming years, to plod its way from the Hudson to Paget sound. There were solitary farm houses in
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several of what are now the eastern towns of Monroe county ; quite an ambitious town wRS projected at King's, subsequently Hanford's, Landing; a few fishermen kept watch and ward over the gateway to Lake Ontario; and the section south of bore had hegun to respond to the quickening efforts of Williamson, of Faulkner and the Wads- worths. At this place there had been the whir of the mill of "'Indian '' Allan -that strange compound of backwoodsman, savage and Turk, whose life of lust and crime is still a tale of dread -but its stones, LOW preserved at the entrance of this building, had ceased their grinding, and it had fallen into disuse. Jeremiah Olmstead had gath- ered a single harvest upon a site near where the House of Refuge stands, but had aban- doned it for higher, and apparently more eligible, ground on the Ridge In 1800 also, Wheelock Wood built a saw mill at Deep Gully creek, within the present corpora- tion limits, but, after one year's experience of the fever-breeding iniasma, which brood- ed over the low-lying lands, had returned to Lima, whence he came. For a decade longer, the embryo city is to sleep, while the woods keep vigil and the cataract, as if with prophetic voice, matters its pro- test, until, at
the touch of the advancing time, the spell is dis-
solved, she from her lethargy, & man of affairs aiways, lead- er the of inen in three cont-
with vitality, asserts her and, alert
sovereignty. The woods bow at her com- mand, and the waters are swift to do her bidding.
Somewhere, in this region so favored by natural advantages, there was to be a thriving town. About this there was no dispute. The streams sang of it, and the opulent acres proclaimed it. To the clear vision of the pioneer, its shops, its ware- houses and its shining spires upruse in the mellow light of the future: but, although the approaching fact was definitely appre- hended, its precise location was, at the first, intangible and illusory. Who has evor been able to tell, at the beginning, just where the heart of trade will throb and just in what directions the arteries of traffic will run ! These have been the constantly recurring problems of urban development, embracing a goodly portion of the hopes and the heatt- aches of humanity. Salem was once the rival of Boston, but the stately ships, laden with the spices of the orient, no longer seek her decaying wharves and the luster of her name is in the romance of her past. New - port was to control the commerce of
the
continent, but
her
villas
and
her casino are but sorry off-sets to the cus- tom-house and the exchanges of New York. I can easily remember when real estate in- vestments in Sheboygan were deemed more inviting than in Chicago. And so here. Charles Williamson, the agent of the Pul-
teney estate. was a very sagacious, as well as generous minded, man, and yet over Wil- liamsburg, which he designed as a metro- polis, the plow share is now driven, its sharp point occasionally tossing to the sur- face fragments of the buried foundations. The busy mart of the Genesee country was to be at Williamsburg, at Mount Morris, at Lima, at Carthage, at Charlotte, at Tryons- town, at Hanford's Landing, at Braddock's Bay --- where not in the groping? In its zig zag rambling, the divining rod was pointed in vain to the hidden treasures.
But there was one man who guessed aright -- nay heknew. Nathaniel Rochester was in the prime of life when, in 1800, he first visited Western New York, in com- pany with William Fitzhugh and Ch-rles Carroll. Born in Virginia, in 1752, he was a resident of North Carolina, during the re- volutionary war, and was
2 mem - ber successively of the committee of safety for Orange county, of the first provincial convention, and of the first legis- lature independent of the crown, besides holding a number of other important offices, civic and military. Removing to Hagers- town, Maryland, in 1778, he was president of the bank there, member of assembly, postmaster, judge of the county court, sher- 1ff and presidential olector. He was
monwealths in which his lot was cast. Up- on his first visit to the Genesee country, he purchased the mills, water power and a portion of the land, upon which he after . ward resided, at Dansville, and Messrs. Fitzhugh and Carroll made large purchases of land near Mount Morris, which they sub- sequently occupied . In 182, the three again visited this section and bought the one hundred acre tract upon which Rochester was laid out. In 1810, Colonel Rochester removed to Dansville, erected a paper mill and made other improvements there. In 1811, he had the hundred acre tract, then called Falls Town surveyed into village lots and offered a few of them for sale, he act - ing for all she proprietors. A few
years later, the
tract Was divided between the three. It is a fact not, per- haps, generally known, but exceedingly in- teresting and deserving emphasis, that the chief impulse to the exodus of Colonel Roch- ester from Maryland was his aversion to the institution of human bondage. He could
not hear the thought of rearing his family amid its demoralising infinences. He freed all his slaves, bringing the majority of them with him, as hired domestic servants, aud, with his household gods, set his face to- ward the north star. Thus Rochester, which the Chrysostom of the colored race was afterward to make his home, and from which New York's most philosophic states-
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man was to announce the "irrepressible conflict, "' is, through the resolution of its founder, most honorably identified with the revival of anti-slavery sentiment in America.
It was, after all, a bold experiment 10 essay & Village here. Unquestionably, there was & serviceable water-power, but, the locality was marshy and consequently sick- ly, and it was quite north of the line of travel between the east and the west. which then passed through Avon ; but Colonel Rochester had faith and pinek and withat liberality. His prices were reasonable and long term payments were conceded freely. Before the end of 1812, he had, through the agency of Enos Stone, disposed of for- ty-three lots to twenty six persons, and growth had begun. The river was spanned by a bridge rude as compared with the sun - stantial, yet invisible, structure, which has replaced it, and over which thousands pass daily through Main street, but very famous in its day, and the only crossing which had been erected over the Genesee below Avon. During the same year. Matthew Brown, jr. , Francis Brown, Thomas Mumford and John McKay had bought a section of land imme- diately north of the Rochester tract, had also laid it ont in village lots, and called it Frankfort, arter the second of the foregoing nared proprietors Two years before Enos Stone, who owned some 300 acres on the east side of the river, then in the town of Boyle, afterward Smallwood, and later still Brighton, had built and occupied a house near what is now the corner of South St. Paul and Main streets, and there, it bas generally been asserted, that. the of
on 4th May,
1810. his son James S was born Mr. Stone bas, however, recently corrected this statement. and says that he was born in the house of his uncle, in what is yet the town of Brigh ton Tradition. still working as industriously for that first white child, as Jap het in search of his father, says that a son was born to Colonel Fish, in 1802, and that be is still living somewhere in Michigan, but I have been unable to verify this claim The con- flience of the Rochester. Brown and Stone migrations thus indicated was to form the strong current of future city life, but the fuller stream was, for a long time to be that which had its spring in the thought of Nathaniel Rochester. For years, it was incontestably the chief portion of the town, and is so sill if we may credit the repre. sentations of the west siders to the federal authorities when they want to locate a gov- ernment building.
It has been my privilege, on more than one occasion. before audiences in Western New York, to dwell upon the fart that the tide of immigration wirch . t hither, in the opening years of the century, 1
was mainly of New England origin. I am glad that no exception need be made for Rochester in this regard, and I rejoice that the same Puritan stock, which furrowed the hill-sides of Wyoming and planted the valleys of Livingston, brought here the mechanic arts-the plane, the last, the brush, the trowel -and that here, as elsewhere, they brought the town-meeting, the spelling book and the Bible They were the men or the sons of the men who had chased the Senecas through the forest shades, in whose veins ran the blood of the May- flover and of Marston Moor, who had re- ceived the baptism of the revolution, and who, on battle-field, or by the hearthstones of Massachusetts and Connecticut, had learned those lessons of civil and religious liberty, which they were here to formulate in law and exemplify in practice. " We cheer - fully acknowledge our obligations to all- from whencesoever they came, from the southern or the middle states, or from be- yond the seas-who have contributed their virtues and their muscle to the common weal, but we do not forget that by far the larger proportion of the early settlers-they who gave the seminal principle to our ex- pansion -- were from . the New England states.
The growth of Rochester-or Roches- terville, it was known .from 1816 until 1819-after it
once started was rapid and satisfactory. . Let us glance at it including with it the im provements on the east side, in 1814 three years after the first village lot wassold It was yet very rough and unkempt. It had five, so called, streets Main street ran from the bridge east and was intersected by River, now Sonth St. Paul street, upon which, near where the Chapman house stands, was the tavern of Baac W. Stone. Moses Hall. the brother-in-law of Enos Stone, had a farm house about where the mansion of Hiram Sibley is now placed, and, farther east, within, as I understand, the present city limits, were the log houses of Miles Northrup, John Culver and David J. Bates and the tavern of Oliver Culver. Buffalo street. west of the bridge, crossed Carroll. now State, street and Mill, now Exchange, street and entered the woods. About where thecanal aqueduct now is, were the then upper falls, some fourteen feet high, at the east end of which Enos Stone had a saw mill : from the west end, there stretched a ledge of rocks, shoot four feet bigh, which first curved from what is now Aqueduct street, turned across Mill street, and ran out on Buffalo street, at the site of the Odd Follows temple. Near the east end of the ledge, on the river bank, was the saw mill of Harvey and Elsha By : just above this were the ruins of the Allan mid, and a little tothe west was the log house built by the contractor for
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himself and hands while constructing the corner of Buffalo street, was the grocery and dwelling of Abram Stack. A little beyond, the inevitable lawyer, in the person of John Mastiek, had hung out his shingle, and, on the west side of the same street, about ; here the German-American bank is, Was the store of Ira West bridge. Dr. Orrin E. Gibbs had his house and office on Mill street, midway between the present line of the Erie canal and Court street. The store of Silas O. Smith was on - the site of Post's drug store. . Where now are the noble proportions of the Free acad- emy the first ruda school house had been Such was Rochester, seventy years ago It had a population of about. 150 souls. Its streets were unpaved. It bad few, if any, erected, and immediately in its rear was a lime kiln A few dwellings had been put up in Frankfort, and the block-house built by plank sidewalks. Its habitations, mostly combined for business and residence, were generally & story and a half high, The forest enclosed it on all sides, and within its recesses the growl of the wild beast was often heard. Privations were constant, the means of living were straitened, and lux- uries were unknown. There was still the conflict with primeval nature-the fight for existence ; but hearts were brave and hopes were high and associations close. All were on terms of equality. There were no fic- tisious social barriers; and there was that sweet helpfulness of each to each which gives a grace and charm, an idyllic beauty, to Harrow village Wife which the city, with all Its broadening influences and many su- periorities, but over which selfishness, Charles Harford, in 1807, near Vincent place, was still standing. The Harford mill. erected the same year by Mr. Harford, had been bought by Francis Brown & Co , who had enlarged it to three runs of stone and were testing their full capacity in the manu- facture of flour. On the east side, just above the falls, Moses Atwater and Samuel J. Andrews had purchased a large section of land and had made some improvements thereon, Mr. Andrews having erected his own house at the corner of Andrews and North St Paul streets. In that vicinity also was a huddle of huts partially occupied by Indians But the center of village activity was on the north side of Buffalo street, be- tween the bridge and Carroll street. The like grim Moloch, reigns, CAD-
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