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 3
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river, as is well known, widened out much more, on the west side, than in these days, and close to the bank, where is now the store of Charles E. Furman, James B. Cartter had a blacksmith-shop Adjoining him west was the carpenter and mill- wright shop of David K. Cartier. Next came the house of Aaron Skinner, school teacher ; then A Wheelock. joiner : then the new house of Handlet Seran- tom, which was set back some ways from the street: next was the tailor shop of Jehial Barnard, used also on Sunday as a place of religious worship Next was the sadler shop of Abelard Reynolds, in which was the post- office, he having been appoint- ed postmaster the year before, sud returning to the department the sum of three dollars and forty-two cents as; he first quarterly receipts. The post-office, a battered old desk, is preserved with pious care by the son of the first postmaster, and, sougly re- posing in one of its cracks, was found, only ; the other day. an order drawn in 1815, by Mr. Wheelock upon Mr. Reynolds. in favor of Horace L Sill. It was here that, on the 14th of December, 1814, was born our honored fellow-citisen, Mortimer F. Rey- nolds, the first white child born in Roches. terville proper. Next was the then unfin - ished house of Mr. Reynolds which he open- ed as a tavern, a year later Still further west, on the corner of Carroll street, was the store of Harvey and Elisha Ely On the site of the Powers block were the log house, bait by Hailet Serautom, and occupied by. Herry Skinner, joiner, and a frame house owned by Mr. Skinver On the east side of Carroll street, near the
not afford. Of who mingled actively in the life of those days, I know of but one who survives. Mrs. Abelard Rey- nolds came to Rochester, a young; wife and mother, to share in the toils of the frontier settlement, and to rear her family in 'the nurture and admonition of the Lord. '' What panorama of dissolving woods. of opening thoroughfares, of artificial water- ways, of iron fingers with friendly clasp of distant communities, of ascending walls enshrining peaceful homes or uplifong dome and tower and steeple, of hammers swinging and wheels revolving, of veried in dustries unfolding and expanding, of hos- pitals. and asylums evoked by the gentle genius of charity, of the confident tread of the sous pressing upon the tottering steps of the fathers, has passed before her eyes. Mother in Israel! we groet thee, to day, with reverence and with love, grateful that thou hast been .spared to witness all these wonders, and earnestly imploring that, upon the rounded cyelo of thy hundred years, now so near its consummation, health and peace and merey may descend in bene- diction.
We pass on to the year 1820. The popu- lation has increased rapidly, being now 1, - 500, and business activities have multiplied accordingly In 1815, the old Red Mul, destroyed by fire in 1827, had been built by Harvey Ely and Josiah Bissell, every able- bodied man and boy in the village assisting in the raising. The Genesee Cotton Manu- Facturing company, which subsequently proved a financial failure, had set 1, 392
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spindles in motion. William Atkinson had built the Yellow mill, upon which our ven - erable fellow- citisen, Schuyler Moses, worked, in 1817. A year later, the paper mill of Gilman & Sibley was built, and, in 1819, & number of new flouring mills were started. Already Rochester was renowned for the purity of the staple she manufactured, and had become the principal wheat market for
the entire Genesee country. Colonel Roch- ester, who had gone from Dansville to Bloomfield to reside, had built a house on Mill street in 1816, and occupied it in 1819, Dr. Levi Ward having meanwhile been in possession. . The house is still standing on Exchange street and has long been known by the suggestive title of the Break o' Day. Colonel Rochester subsequently moved into the house on the northwest corner of Spring and Washington streets, where, on the 17th of May, 1831, hedied. In 1S17, also, the first of the well-known hostelries of the village, the Mansion house, was built ; and a charter was granted by the legislature to Rochesterville, Francis Brown, William Cobb, Everard
Peck, Daniel Mack and Jehiel Barnard being elected trustees. They met at the tavern of Lebeus Elliot and elected Francis Brown, president, Hastings R. Bonder, clerk, and F. F Backus, treasurer Fran-
cis Brown had been continued yearly as president, and trustees, other than those mentioned, up to 1820, bad been Isaac Colvin, Ira West, Moses Chapin, Elisha Taylor and Charles J. Hill, the latter so recently departed from us, taking his seat for the first time in 1820. In this year, Judge Chapin was made clerk and filled the position for several terais In 1817, the
first fire company with Daniel Mack as foreman, was organised, and on the 5th of December, 1819, it did battle with the first serious conflagration, which swept away several buildings on the north side of Buffalo street, including the saddlery shop of Abelard Reynolds and the office of the Gazette newspaper, which had been estab . lished in 1816, by Augustiue G. Dauby, the father of the craft in Rochester. It was followed by the Telegraph, which Everard Peck & Co. first published July 7, 1818 In the early part of 1819, the Carthage bridge, then considered and described
the eightlı wonder of the world, really, and except in the "you fancy yourself in New York, "'or eke in Philadelphia. The sub- ' urbs are beautiful. envied so deeply "the lot of some certain friends who es- "'corted us along the banks of the fair Gene- "'see, and showed us the falls of that "'charming river, that their re: idences still
trifling matter of stability, a marvel of en- gineering skill, had been swung across the Genesee, and had given away on the 22d of May, 1820, and tumbled, a mass of tim- bers, into the current below, carrying with it the aspirations of the nascent bergh, and
reviving the force of the classic epitaph
'' Carthago delenda est. "' But it was not absolute destruction. She was simply to wait and serve another's weal, absorbed at last into that other's entity. In 1819, also,
a toll bridge was constructed about midway between the falls and the present site of Andrews street bridge which lasted, how- ever, but a few years, and was not rebuilt .. The year was further made memorable by the decision of the state authorities to run the Erie canal through. Rochester, and the survey was made accordingly. The blithe music of the stage horn, resonant now from Buffalo to Albany, as it wound among the hills or lingered upon the ripples of the fair chain of inland lakes, was heard in our streets, and pleasant images come to us, ever in these days of steam and electricity, from out the traditions that cluster around the goodly fellowship that enlivenod and the cheerful resting places that broke the monotony of the far away journeys. Ah ! what regretful longings must sometimes possess the breasts of the older folk, as they .recall the lambering old coach, with its heavy springs and its seats of ancient leath - er, its autocratic Jehu, artistic in
every poise of the reins and crack of the whip, and its jolly passengers making jests even of the jolts and the innd'boles ; and then the weather-beaten inns, with their swinging signs and their comfortable porches and their
spacious sitting rooms with their wide fire- places and the quaint andirons and the crackling logs and, under the breath be it spoken, the steaming mugs of flip, Even at that early day, our citisens had begun to pay attention to that beautifying of their bomes, which has made Rochester peerless among her sisters, in foliage and flowers and lawns. In 1816, sugar maples had been planted by Harvey Ely and John G Bond, ou the west side of Washington street be- tween the canal and Spring street, and the love of nature had intelligent guidance and expansion, long before the nurseries which Low gird the city -- a circlet of emerald round ruby, and amethyst and turquoise -- bad made floriculture an art and won for us the lovely appellation of ''The Flower City. "'
A picture drawn, a few years later by Willis Gaylord Clarke, who, had he longer lived,
would have been the Charles Lamb of America, will, in this connection, bear quo- tation : " The entrance to Rochester from "the west is impressive by contrast ; and " when you are once rattling over its pave-
"'ments, and through its long streets,
"rise to my eye as the very acme of rural ''establishments. From the roof of one. I "looked down upon flowery walks, the " sparkling cataract, the vast pine foresta
'' to the north; the blue Ontario beyond ;
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" the city, with its turrets, some of which "'are like those which peer above an old "feudal town in Europe; and upon the '' shady dwellings of good old friends in the ''suburbs )'
But let us take & birds-eve glimpse of the place as it was in 1820. Buffalo street was settled as far west as High street, now Caledonia avenue, and Main street had houses as far east as Clinton street, which was the eastern boundary of the village On River street there were five houses below Court street, and with these the southern limit was reached on the east side of the river. With the exception of the mansion of Harvey Montgomery, now the 'residence of Mrs Abelard Reynolds, there were no
houses south of Troup. street, and Mr. Montgomery's house, withm a demesne of eight acres, was approched, not from Fitzhugh street, which was only a lane beyond Troup, but from Sophia street which had been recently opened Frankfort was mapped out, around the square, which had been given to the village by Dr. Brown and bears his name, but embraced as yet no houses, except a sprinkling on State, the continuation of farroll street, the last house being on the corner of Jay street North of Main street, there was but a single house beyond Andrews street Marked changes, as will be seen, have taken place in the names of streets, some of which have been already indicated. Spring was then Falls street. The northern part of Fitzhugh was Hughes street. Plymouth avenue was So- phia street and Sophia was Hart Street North Washington was Franklin street and there was another Washington street on the east side contimited beyond its intersection with North St. Paul, then Market street, into Clyde street to the entire length of which the name of Franklin has since been transferred. Allen was Ann street, Conter
was Fish street. Court now Brown street, which bounds Brown square on the south, then ray through it, a portion of the square having siuce been appropriated for railroad uses Front was Mason street, and Bridge street, now in part discontinued, crossed the river upon the bridge below Andrews street. Canal was the continuation of Mortimer street. I have been particular in this de- signation of streets because I wished to in- dicate how the names of the pioneers are in some instances thus appropriately preserved, and because, even at this late day, I wish to enter my unavailing protest against certain changes that have been made. The names of cities and of streets, like their architec- ture, should have an individuality of their own. The mere mention of Constantinople, of Nuremburg or of Edinburgh suggests the mosques and minarets, the medieval Gothic devices, or the many storied structures in stone which give their character to cach
respectively Deficient as our American communities are, of course, in originality of architecture, they are also deficient in apposite nomenclature Simeon DeWitt, surveyor- general of New York, went through the military traci, some ninety years ago, and discharged the contents of a classical die . tionary upon its hapless towns indiscrimi- nately, as & pepper- box is shaken over food , and the places that might have borne melli . fluous Indian syllables, or been associated in - dissolubly with the names of their founders, remain the victims of General De Witt's love of classic lore Happily, Rochester has been saved from the fate of Rome and Syracuse, And Ithaca and ManMus, and Aurelius and .Sempronius, and the rest : but it is to be re- gretted that the names of so few of her early citisens are preserved in her streets, and that they should have been bereft of any such which had once 'been bestowed upon them Especially to be deplored is the change from Carroll to State street. The one meant something: the other means nothing. But the village had certain litiga- tion with Charles H. Carroll. concerning the title to the site of the river market ; and, al- though Judge Carroll seems to have had de- cidedly the best of the matter in the chan- cery adjudication, the village trustees had their petty revenge upon him in the passage of the following curt resolution, on the 13th of September, 1831:
"'Resolved, That the nathe of Carroll street ve changed to State street. ''
This was good in law, but execrable in taste.
As the next step, and the last but one, in our hurried progress, let us pause at the year 1827. The population has reached S, 000, an increase, in fifteen years, parall- eled only by the growth of a few western cities at a later day. Settlement bas ex- prudod along the lines etready indicated and there are some new avenues. There are the changes to Exchange, Spring and Caledonia streete, and Ford, Chestnut, Mochanic, Green, Jackson and Elm appear. Dublin and Cornhill are known as separate commu - nities, and, at the west end, we hear of Strasburg, the beginning of that German in- flow which has been of such immense advan- tage to our industries. Monroe county has been erected trom Genesce and Ontario, but the village is still in the towns of Brighton and of Gates, on either side of the river .. The court house, which was to stand for thirty years, has been erected on the site of the present edifice, and. for five years justice bas balanced her scales therein. The canal has been opened under the auspices of De Witt Clinton, great quantities of flour have been shipped upon it, and it has brought the Marquis de la Fayette to the thriving village, to the very spot which he who was to be tho citisen king of France
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had explored thirty years before along the Indian trail. Seven flouring mills are in active operation, and the fame of the Genesce
brand, so long to remain supreme. is fully established. There are cotton and woollen and a variety of other manufactories, utilis- ing the swift flowing river. There are
breweries and distilleries and tanneries. There are over a hundred stores There are
seven clergymen and twenty five physicians
and twenty- eight lawyers There are over one thousand mechanics, and more than five
hundred who are classed in the directory of the year as laborers. There are ' ten churches, the First Presbyterian having been organised in 1815, and being followed by
St. Luke's, Episcopal and the Friendsin 1817, the Baptist in 1818, the Roman Catholic and Methodist-episcopal in 1820, the Methodist society in 1522, the Christian in 1823, the Second Presbyterian in 1826 and the Third Presbyterian in 1527. In the midst of her
-
neglected the cause of religion, and, ever temporal prosperities, Rochester has never
distinguished for her philanthropic institu-
tions, she has, in 1827, her Female Charita - ble and Female Missionary societies, besides
her leadership in the County Bible, Mis -
sionary and Tract societies. The Franklin
institute has just been established as & literary society There is the Bank of Rochester, with a capital of $250, 000, aud the press is represented by one monthly, Que semi- monthly. two weekly, one semi- weekly and one daily publication, the latter being the Advertiser, now the oldest daily
newspaper in the United States west of Al -
bany The village has just had a new char- ter, has been divided into five wards, and
Matthew Brown, jr. , is still president. The
trustees are William Brewster, Matthew
Brown, je , Vincent Matthews, Elisha Ely and Giles Boulton. The assessors are Pres- ton Smith, Ezra M Parsons, Ira West, Daniel Tinker and Davis C. West.
Rufus Beach is clerk and attorney. Frederick F. Backus is
treasurer, and Samuel Works chief engineer of the fire department, which consists of
two engine and one hook and ladder compa- nies. Dr. I'enny, afterward president of
Hamilton college, is preaching in the First
Presbyterian and Dr. Cuming in. St Lukes church The bar of Rochester is even then pre-eminent in ability. John Birdsall is cir - cuit judge Ashley Sampson has just re-
tired, and Moses Chapin has been appointed, as judge of the common pleas Before these,
as practicing lawyers, appear Daniel D Bar - nard, a man of rare gifts of speech, who is to represent two districts in congress and the
republic as minister . to Prussia ; Timothy
Childs, who serves eight years in congress :
William B. Rochester who has already been in congress, and is to be circuit judge and to come within a few votes of the governor ship and is to die, at the high noon-tide of
his usefulness, by & marine disaster which sent a shudder through the nation : and Vin- cent Mathews who, after receiving many honors in & neighboring section -- assembly - man, senator, congressman -- has come hitner to pass his remaining days, the acknowl- edged head of his profession, not less dis- tinguished for his philanthropie works than for his forensic talents Among the younger members of the bar are Frederick Whittle- sey, who also was to be judge and congress- man, and the foremost politician in western New York, and who was to dir at a com- paratively early age ; Addison Gardiner, who ·was to become one of the first judicial au- thorities in the state and its lieutenant-gov- ernor, and whose recent death, with his fame full- orbed, is deplored so deeply ; Isaac fills also departed recently, sincerely mourned ; and Harvey Humphrey, who is to be county judge and is justly to attract to himself a full measure of public esteem Other
practioners are Sellick Boughton, Fletcher
M. ; Haight, James K Livingston, Charles 3 Lee, William W. Mumford and Samuel 1. Selden, then on the threshold of bis bril- liant career William S. Bishop, John C. Nash, Henry E. Rochester and Heury R. Selden are law students. Among practicing physicians are William Adams. F. F. Backus, John B. Elwood aud Levi Ward. As we run our eyes over the list of business men we find the names of many who are honorably associated with our future prosperities. A few must suffice Williami Atkinson and
Matthew Brown, jr., and Harvey Ely and Charles J. Hill and E. P. Beach and Solo- mon Cleveland and Thomas H Rochester are merchant millers Thomas Kempshall,
Erasmus D. Smith, Samuel G Andrews,
Nathaniel T. Rochester, Levi A Ward,
Jacob Gould, H. N. Langworthy, William Pitkin, Everard Peck, Preston Smith, Silas O Boith, Elibu F. Marsball and Darius Perrin are merchants Roswell Hart, one
of the most sagacious of our early merchants,
and whose name was to be so honorably
perpetuated by his son, has been dead three years. Thurlow Weed, Luther H. Tucker, Edwin Scrantom, Levi W. Sibley and Robert Martin are printers, Benjamin Blossom, J
G Christopher, Russell Ensworth, Erastus
Granger, Reuben Leonard, Jesse Southwick and others are innkeepers Among capita-
lists Levi Ward, Jonathan Child, Josiah Bissell, jr Elisha Ely. Aristarchus Champion,
Harvey Montgomery, A. Seber-
merhorn and Ira West are re-
cognised. Among
those
who
hereafter to promote our industries, the most of whom are laying the foundations of thein, fortunes, as David Copeland, Richard Gorshne. Joseph Medherry, Schuyler Moges,
Bara M Parsons, Wareham Whitney, Eb-
Wacts, the Alling brothers,
Abner Wakelee, Jacob
Anderson, Ben -
-5
17
jamin M. Baker, Aaron Erickson, Nel
son Sage and Lewis Selye. Elisha B. Strong is president of the Bank of.
Rochester. Abelard Reynolds is still post- master and is, this year, also a member of assembly : Orrin E. Gibbs is surrogate ; Timothy Childs is di trict attorney : James Seymour is sheriff ; Simon Stone is county clerk, and let it not be forgotten, Jeremiah Cutler is his deputy ; Daniel D. Barnard is our representrtive in congress.
These and such as these are the men who, in their various pursuits, are to give tone and direction to our social, business and cor- porate life. No town was ever blessed with men more diligent in business or of purer moral fiber. All honor to those who are in the forefront of our march from the wilder- ness to the city beautiful. But back of these is an intelligent body of citizenship which, resolved into the special adaptabilities of its constituent elements, assures the best and most symmetrical de- velopment ; for it must be noted that per- suasive leadership, significant as
individual impulse,
it is, after all, through the stirrings of aggregated hu- manity that progress is evolved. I wish we could pay fitting tribute to all who, iu humble, as well as in exalted, circumstan- ces, have helped to quicken our energies, to clarify our homes, to illustrate the social amenities, to broaden our charities, to en - large our educational agencies, and to sus- tain our religious institutions. High and humble alike, they have nearly all gone before. Their names may be seen where the vines of June twine about the chiselled marble, in that sylvan retreat, where the hand of affection waters the roses of summer and sets the evergreen above the snow's of winter, and which Christianity has conse- crated, through her tender offices and chasto symbolism, as the Mount of Hope. The pioneers are nearly all gone, but their mon - uments are all around us, in the energies they have stimulated and in the enterprises they have fostered, and, let us trust, in the virtues they have transmitted. A few alone remain, and may their span still belengthened far beyond the patriarchal limit, and they be spared to behold even greater wonders than the years of their pilgrimage have yet witnessed.
. And now, with the facility which histor- ical excursions permit, let us project our- selves forward through another period of seven years-for the mystical number bas been propitious for Rochester-and stand face to face with the year 1831, with the event which we, this day, commemorate. Growth has kept on steadily, and business enterprises have appreciated as steadily. Meanwhile, there have been some notable occurrences. A political party has found successful expression in an unreasoning pre-
judice against a very worthy fraternity, and has held the many responsible, at the bar of public opinion, for the guilt of the few-a . party whose cruel inspiration it is impossi- ble, in these more gentle and refined days, to understand, which could not even then have had being had there been exigent pub- lic issues demanding statesmanlike deter- mination, and which naturally became ab- sorbed in a new and virile . organisa- tion, when such questions arose. It could only be in the lull of real politics, such as existed between 1820 and 1830, that such a masquerade in politics, as was anti-Masonry, could have attracted serious attention. Like the youth who fired the Ephesian dome, Sam Patch has stumbled ' through an inglorious death, into a lasting notoriety. With a prevision, which seemed tantamount to recklessness. Abelard Rey- nolds has erected the Arcade which, for many years, was to remain our architectural pride, until the walls of the Powers block towered above it, challenging the continent for its peer, and making the fame of the city and the building almost synonomous. The fifty-fourth anniversary of American independence has been celebrated with much pomp and circumstance, Colonel Rochester, then nearing his end, sending to the com - mitree a pathetic letter declining to preside, ou account of his age and infirmities, Daniel D. Barnard delivering the oration, Samuel L. Selden reading the declaration, and the display of the home guard being quite 83 imposing as it will be to-morao ~;
for it was not from fathers
that learned that contempt for
the militia system, which We
are illustrating so fatally.
A year later, the founder dies, amid the lamentations of the community, closing serenely a life which has been eminently useful, and a career which has had honorable recognition in three commonwealths. The next year, the Asiatic cholera, like a devastating simoon, descends upon the place, carrying away over 400 persons and sparing neither age, sex, nor condition in its wrathful sweep. had thought to observe faithfully the proprieties, by refraining from anything like eulogy of living citisens, but I am sure you will par- don an allusion to one who, amid that dread- ful scourge, bore himself with a dauntless- ness, before which that which faced the Redan battery or climbed the frowning crest of Molino del Rey pales and grows weak, who met the pestilence with equanimity, when others fled before it, whose step never faitered and whose hand never trembled in the ordeal, who was as gentle in his bedside ministrations, as he was fearless in the chamber of death, and who, with his own hands, placed over sixty victims in their cof- tins. Ah! that is a sublimer type of courage which walks undismayed in the footsteps
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