history

Rochester's Democrat & Chronicle featured a reader-submitted story yesterday about the Le Roy-based Mighty St. Joe's Alumni Drum & Bugle Corps, which is readying its members for the upcoming season. The crew met for their first practice a little over a week ago. Here's what Bob Wielgosz had to say about that first session:

There were over 80 current, former and new members in attendance, including 44 brass, 20 percussion and several from the guard and staff. The corps, one of the oldest alumni corps in existence, is in its 19th year of performing this coming year, including events like indoor and outdoor concerts, parades and field shows.

It turns out the group got its start here in Batavia more than three-quarters of a century ago.

St. Joseph's Drum Corps was originally founded in 1931 by the Rev. T. Bernard Kelly, pastor of St. Joseph's Church in Batavia. In 1951, corps graduates formed St. Joseph's Drum Corps Association Inc. to perpetuate Father Kelly's work. The corps operated as a parade corps till the late 1950s when it became a field competition corps. During the 1960s, Mighty St. Joe's rose to National and International prominence, consistently ranking among the top ten junior corps in the country. In top level competition, St. Joe's placed as high as fourth in National and second in World Open competition. Unfortunately, 1971 was the final year of competition for the pride of Batavia.

Anyone can join the crew. You only have to be at least 21 years old. Check out their Web site for more information, show times and how to join.

A new electronic book on everybody's favorite Freemason, William Morgan, was recently published by Booklocker.com. The Bright Mason: An American Mystery is by Robert Berry, a freelance journalist.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that most folks know the story of William Morgan and not reiterate that here or quote from the book's site, which gives a teaser-length history of the man and the mystery. Instead, here are the first few lines from the book itself:

William Morgan had a habit of covering his baldhead by pulling hair over from the side with his fingers, especially when he was excited about something. About 5’6”, in his mid-40s, and muscular, Morgan had a barrel chest thickly matted with hair and tuffs of curly gray hair sprouting from his ears. Tattoos on his arms led some to believe he had traveled with pirates in the Caribbean. Much of the time his eyes were swollen; a condition for which he often received treatment while living in Rochester.

You can check out more sample chapters on the book's site if you're interested. As I haven't read any of this book—aside from these few lines here—I won't make any recommendations or condemnations. I'll leave it to you to judge.

We were wondering when the Muckdogs would make their appearance in the Holland Land Office Museum's countdown of the Twenty-Five Things that Made Genesee County Famous. Well, they've made it. They broke the top ten. They come in at No. 9.

So we all know why we here in Genesee County love the Muckdogs—and we loved them all the more after the brought home the league title this summer. But how do the 'Dawgs make Genesee County famous?

Here's Pat Weissend, director of the Holland Land Office Museum:

Although Batavia is one of the smallest cities in America to have a Minor League franchise, the team consistently ranks near the top of the merchandise sold list. More than 100 Little League and softball teams across the country use Muckdogs as their team name.

Not to mention the world champs:

Many major leaguers began their professional careers in Batavia including World Series champions and current members of the Philadelphia Phillies Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Kyle Kendrick, Ryan Madson and JA Happ. National media outlets visited Batavia in 1998 when Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams played left field for the team. Some of the early Batavia greats were Jack Tighe, Dick Fowler, Manny Sanguillen and Doc Ellis. Clarence (Cito) Gaston led Batavia and the league in homers and runs batted in while playing for the 1966 Trojans. Gaston won two World Series as the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays in the 1990s.

Congrats, Muckdogs!

OK, now that we're getting near the top of the list, it's time to start making some predictions. Surely, William Morgan will crack the top five. Bill Kauffman has got to be up there, too, as someone who has quite consciously made Genesee County famous with his book: Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette. A controversy over a transgender science teacher at a Batavia city school has to be at least number three.

What do you think? What's your number one?

Be sure to keep your browser tuned to the Holland Land Office Museum in the coming weeks. We could see our number one by the end of the year.

Here it is, our penultimate video in the countdown to Halloween:

This is the first of two videos on my recent visit to Rolling Hills Paranormal Research Center in East Bethany. Rolling Hills is the site of the old Genesee County Home, former "poor house," home for the "insane," and nursing home. In this video, Rolling Hills owner Lori Carlson gives us a brief overview of the facility, its past inhabitants and its current inhabitants... that latter would be the ghosts.

Tomorrow, we hope to get up the second video, which will consist entirely of footage from my tour of the facility between the hours of 11:00pm and 3:00am. While I wasn't fortunate enough to stumble into any ghosts, I got some great shots of an eerie, disquieting and utterly fascinating space.

In the meantime, let's learn a little about this place...

Be sure to check out part one of our Halloween countdown, posted yesterday: Cooking with the Dairy Princess: Halloween Special (Jell-O Eyeballs).

Looks like we need to do some catching up with the Holland Land Office Museum's countdown of The 25 Things That Made Genesee County Famous. We left off with Charles Rand back at the end of September, but Pat Weissend has posted a few more in the meantime. What's more, we're about to break into the top ten!

Clocking in at No. 13 was the Pembroke driver's ed accident: a tragic crash in 1987 that claimed the lives of three students and an instructor. That accident, relates Weissend, spurned folks to act and got the blood alcohol content lowered from .1 percent to .08 percent and made it illegal for anyone under the legal drinking age to even possess a drink.

Darien Lake Theme Park earns a spot at No. 12. Weissend tells us that over 1 million people visit the park each year.

Seneca Indian Ely Samuel Parker makes his appearance at No. 11 on the list. Here's Weissend:

Parker is arguably one of the most famous people ever born in Genesee County. He spoke in front of the Supreme Court, knew United States Presidents, was one of the only Native American Generals in the United States Army and was one of President Ulysses S. Grant’s first nominees for a federal appointment.

Be sure to check out the museum Web site for more on these and the other "famous things" and plenty of other fun stuff, such as podcasts, official Muckdogs merch, the wonderland of trees and more.

My parents are visiting from California this week. On Friday, I took them on a tour of Genesee County.

Of course, we visited the LeRoy Jello Museum, where on the spur of the moment, I bought a little guide to notable locations in and around LeRoy related to the Underground Railroad.

It's a fascinating 17-mile drive.

Here's a couple of pictures.

This is Brend Road, one of the routes north for escaped slaves.

This was the home of Elijah Huftelen, who assisted station master Daniel MacDonald during the brief time MacDonald helped escaped slaves with passage through LeRoy.  MacDonald's station house was somewhere in the vicinity.

If you're interested in taking the tour, the tour guide can be purchased at the Jello Museum for $1.

Emory Upton was a prominent Batavian, a Civil War general and a traveler to distant realms. Upton commanded men and feasted with royalty. He could charm a dame and pack a rifle with equal assurance. Throughout his voyages away from his native land, Upton sent home many letters home, to his sisters mostly, chronicling his adventures.

Two years ago, a gift was made to the Holland Land Office Museum of 75 letters that Upton wrote during the Civil War and after. Since then, Museum Director Pat Weissend and County Clerk Don Read have diligently and miraculously deciphered Upton's script, transcribing the letters that will, once the project is finished about a year from now, be published in a book. Every couple of weeks, Pat and Don get together early in the morning at Main Street Coffee to pick through another couple of pages. They've nearly finished their first run through of them all.

Pat was kind enough to invite me to their transcription session this morning where, bleary-eyed yet grateful, I produced this video:

Ann Gavenda didn't only talk about the Elba History Barn when we met a few weeks back. She had some great stories to tell me about working in the muck on the Elba onion fields back in the 1940s, when her and the other girls ran into snakes, cigars, highly articulate Jamaicans and more dimes than you can shake a stick at—and she had the blisters to prove it. Without further ado:

A few weeks ago, I paid a visit to the new History Barn in Elba, built to store all the ancient farm equipment and other relics that were locked up in who knew how many barns all over the town and its environs. Ann Gavenda was kind enough to come down and tell me a bit about the town's new treasure and the treasures inside it. Here's what she told me:

Were you able to make out the price of a gallon of gas on the old Esso pump?

Ann didn't only tell me about the history barn. She told me a lot more about growing up in Elba and working in the muck fields. Please be sure to check out that video which should go up later this afternoon.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with Anne Barone who told me how her husband, City Councilman Sam Barone, has always wanted to know what happened with the "naked lady statue" that used to be in Austin Park. Wouldn't that be an interesting story to tell, she mused.

Such was the genesis of The Batavian's newest series: Mysteries of Genesee County's History. It has one goal: Search out the lost memories and forgotten stories from our county and find out what happened.

In order to find some answers to our first mystery—the naked lady statue that went missing from Austin Park—I recruited Batavia's City Historian Larry Barnes to sleuth about. Larry filed the following report this morning:

A couple weeks ago, I received a call from Philip Anselmo of TheBatavian who wondered if I knew what had become of the “naked lady” in Austin Park.  The “naked lady,” Anselmo explained, was a statue that Councilman Sam Barone remembered seeing in his youth but then disappeared from the Park.  I didn’t have an answer initially, but with some detective work I have discovered that the “naked lady” has gone to Cincinnati.

The “naked lady” of Barone’s recollections is a life-sized bronze statue of a pubescent female holding aloft a bowl designed to hold water from which birds can drink.  In fact, the statue includes a bird flitting by the arm of the young girl.  The girl herself is not actually naked, but her garment is so thin that her anatomical features including navel and nipples are fully revealed.

The statue is the creation of an internationally renowned artist, Bessie Potter Vonnoh.  It was given to the City in 1931 for placement in Austin Park by Frances Washburn, wife of the County Judge, Edward Washburn.  It was intended to be part of a bird sanctuary in the Park.  An identical figure is part of a fountain group in Central Park in New York City.

The City had great plans for Austin Park.  A design developed by landscape architect Harold Olmsted included a band shell, pool, tennis courts, playing field, playground, comfort station, winding paths, and elaborate landscaping.  Most of this never materialized; and by the 1960s, Austin Park had fallen into a state of deterioration hastened by recurring vandalism. It was about this time that the “naked lady” was rescued from an uncertain fate.

The statue’s rescuer was Rowena Atwater, the daughter of donor Frances Washburn.  Mrs. Washburn was now dead; and Mrs. Atwater took the statue home to her garden.  That garden was next to the white house on East Main Street now owned by GCASA.  The statue remained in its new haven until the death of Rowena Atwater.

In 1996, the adult children of Mrs. Atwater, Edward, James and Julian Atwater, donated the “naked lady” to the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester.  The Gallery placed the statue in the Fountain Court, located inside the main entrance to the Gallery.  Ordinarily, if you were to visit the Gallery, you could see the statue of Sam Barone’s memory standing in the left rear corner.

Today, however, the “naked lady” of Austin Park is on tour.  Currently, she is visiting the Cincinnati Art Museum.  So, you’ll have to travel some distance if you want an up close and personal view.  I can’t resist saying that this is what happens when a community doesn’t honor its cultural treasures.  The “naked lady” has gone the way of the Cary Mansion, the Richmond Mansion, and other wonders that once distinguished our fair city.  At least she hasn’t landed in a landfill.

Be sure to check back in a few weeks for our next Mystery of Genesee County's History.

Photo courtesy of the Memorial Art Gallery Web site.

Folks looking for a good haunting with a touch of local history will get several chances to tour the eerie side of downtown Batavia in the month of October, according to the Daily News. City Ghost Walks kick off this Friday.

Tours out of the east end of the city start at GO ART! Cultural Center and stop at the Masonic Temple, the Cary Mansion, the Mancuso Theater (now City Church), St. Joseph's Church and Richmond Mansion. From there, folks will head to Ross Street and learn about a few haunted houses at Nos. 20, 39 and 41 Ross St., then head on to Present Tense Bookstore at 101 Washington Ave. West end tours start at the Genesee County History Department on West Main Street, where County Historian Sue Conklin will show off her copper divining rods.

Joanne Beck writes of the west end itinerary:

Visitors will tour the former Engine House building and move onto 4 Mix Place, once granted a permit to be a burial ground. The tour also includes the Oak Street Specter and the first known graveyard on the corner of Oak and West Main Streets, where seven known hangings and the man "who was hung twice" occurred.

There's just too much great history and eeriness packed into these walks. Don't know about anyone else, but I'm darned excited.

East end tours will run on October 3, 17 and 24. Two runs will head out each evening, one at 6:00pm and another at 7:30pm. West end tours will run on October 10 and 24, also twice each evening at the same times. Cost is $10 per person. Visit the cultural center's calendar of events for more info.

We encourage you to pick up a copy of the Daily News at your local newsstand. Or, better yet, subscribe at BataviaNews.com.

Charles Rand lands at Number 14 in the Holland Land Office Museum's countdown of The Twenty-Five Things That Made Genesee County Famous. Well, it turns out that The Batavian visited the museum a couple months back and put together a video with Museum Director Pat Weissend on that very subject

Don't forget to visit the museum Web site for even more on Rand and the other things that made Genesee County famous.

Richmond Memorial Library will host a book lunch today in the library's Gallery Room at 19 Ross Street in Batavia. Folks are encouraged to come by to hear Bill Kauffman talk about his new book (that's it here to the right) while they eat lunch. They call it "Books Sandwiched In," and it starts at 12:10pm and runs to about 1:00pm, long enough to get a healthy dose of culture, but not too long that you can't make it on your lunch break from work.

From the press release:

Bill Kauffman will talk about his new book, Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin. The Friends of the Library co-sponsor this free program. Bring your lunch; coffee, tea and cookies are provided.  All welcome. For more information, call the library at (585) 343-9550, ext. 8 or log on to www.batavialibrary.org.

Coming in at No. 15 in the Holland Land Office Museum countdown of The Twenty-Five Things That Made Genesee County Famous is the only court case to have orginated in Genesee County that was heard by the United States Supreme Court. This was in 1857.

It all started when a representative of the Ogden Land Company, Joseph Fellows, tried to take the land of the Tonawanda Indian Reservation. Tonawanda Seneca Sachem John Blacksmith wouldn't have it. (A sachem is a sort of Native American king, by the way.) Blacksmith sued the land company and his case was eventually heard by the supreme court.

If you want to know what happened next, check out the full article by Museum Director Pat Weissend. While you're at the the museum's Web site, you can isten to podcasts of some of the other big things that made the list of The Twenty-Five Things That Made Genesee County Famous.