A college professor told Deborah Wood, when she was working on her senior thesis, something that she has carried throughout her career: "It only takes one person at a time to get the stories told and the will to do so."

As the special collections librarian, helping people tell their stories has been a big part of her job, and that's one reason the Anna Ingalsbe Lovell Chapter of the Daughters of The American Revolution honored her as A Woman in American History on Monday.

Today, making bread is easy. You buy a loaf of frozen bread, defrost it, and bake it. In 1996, there was a machine called the Bread Machine. You would put all the ingredients into the machine and turn it on. It would mix the ingredients, time the bread to rise, and then bake the bread. Now, you can go to a supermarket and buy fresh bread.

In the ‘60s, my grandmother, Jennie Bellow, would bring her homemade bread to Batavia every Sunday. We all enjoyed her bread and took it for granted. On one of my Sunday sleepovers in Le Roy, I watched my grandma get out all sorts of things to make her white bread. Flour, yeast, and Crisco were some of her ingredients. She also took out a flat piece of wood, a towel, and five bread pans. I asked why she was getting everything out the night before, and she said I would find out the following day. 

Early the next morning, I watched her make her bread. I had no idea it would take all day. First, we would measure the flour, put the yeast in warm milk, and add one scant wooden spoonful of Crisco. We would mix the ingredients by hand, which is called kneading. The towel was to cover the dough, hoping it would rise. Finally, the bread was ready for the pans. The result was beautiful but so time-consuming. My grandmother was born in 1900, and making bread was a way of life for women in the 1900s as it was in the 1800s.

One of the first things Joseph Ellicott did as a local agent of the Holland Land Company was to have mills, both grist and saw, built in Batavia to encourage settlement. Before the erection of the gristmill in Batavia in 1804, the people sometimes did not have bread or anything to make it from. Flour was brought on packhorses before the roads were of such a character as to allow better transportation. The Tonawanda Creek dam was used to power a sawmill and, a little later, a gristmill.

Both corn and wheat grain had to be ground for bread and other foods. The grindstones at the gristmill reduced corn to meal and wheat grain to flour. “Rye and Indian,” made from cornmeal and rye flour, was the only bread the early settlers could make. Grinding the grain into flour for the pioneers meant a journey to the gristmill by ox sled in both summer and winter.

I wonder if the giant stone doughnuts that stood on East Main Street near the corner of Ross Street could have been gristmill stones. Many years ago, they were at the entrance of a burned house. I can remember them always being there; after the fire, they disappeared.

In the Holland Land Office Museum, there is a colonial kitchen. You can imagine our early settlers cooking in the kitchen using a fireplace. Upon request, you can view a reflector oven. This was one way the early settlers made bread. A reflector oven is a box usually made of tin designed to enclose an article of food on all but one side to cause it to bake by capturing radiant heat from an open fire and reflecting the heat toward the food. The next time you buy freshly baked bread at your local supermarket, think of the time it took to make bread from “scratch!”

I treasure the memories of cooking and baking with my grandmother. I know how to make her bread from scratch, but it is not the same not having my grandmother next to me in her cobbler apron showing me how to knead the bread.

After talking to The Batavian in November 2023 about the premise and subject matter of his latest book, “Historic Chronicles of Genesee County,” county Historian Michael Eula will finally get to celebrate the official release on Monday.

The book is a twofer of sorts: it’s a local collection of essays on how American history affected Genesee County, and, per the stamp on the book’s jacket cover, it’s Made in the USA. Throw in assassinations, immigration, presidential politics and suffragists, and you’ve got a plethora of hot subjects as future reading material.

Much of Batavia’s growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth century can be attributed to its location as a hub of major transportation systems. This was particularly evident with the passage through the Batavia of several major railway lines. 

However, another form of rail transportation through the heart of Batavia, though it existed only for two dozen years, left an impact upon first the village and then the city. The trolley line that ran the extent of Main Street was built as a precursor to Batavia's continued growth and to connect it further to the rapidly growing cities of Buffalo and Rochester at the dawn of the twentieth century.

The trolley line in Batavia was completed in 1903, though it was originally just a small piece of a much larger line. 

The Buffalo and Williamsville Company, who built the line, had plans for a line running from Williamsville and Depew to Rochester. They even had talks with investors of further expansion to Medina or Horseshoe Lake, and eventually across New York State. However, the Batavia Main Street line is all that would come to pass. 

The trolley was a single track that ran a mile and a half from Clinton Street to the intersection of West Main Street and Lewiston Road. A turnout was also built near Bank Street to allow the trolley cars to pass each other. It officially opened on September 2, 1903, with many of the village aldermen as its first riders. It quickly became the latest marvel in Batavia, and people flocked to ride the trolley, with reports of 3,300 people to board at some point during the first week. 

The trolley line's local patrons would soon have issues with its builder, the Buffalo and Williamsville Company. 

Though the line had a large number of riders, very little was done to improve the equipment or the quality of the ride. 

In 1911, East Main Street residents complained about the noise of the trolley cars, and many riders were less than thrilled with the uncomfortable seats on board. By this point, no effort had been made to add a second line. When some expansion began in 1912, the village aldermen asked the company to pave Main Street, which was never resurfaced after the line was finished. The village officials believed that this was the company’s responsibility.

The disagreement over the paving of Main Street became increasingly hostile. When pressured, the company hinted that they would just close the line altogether. The company would attempt to make good on their threat by applying for a permit to close the trolley line. In response, a commission of local men, including George Wiard and K.B. Mathes, sought out other entities to run it. In 1914, they found a potential buyer in the Storage Battery Company of New York City, but it was deemed soon after that it would be more beneficial if the line was owned and operated by a local company. 

A year later, the Batavia Traction Company was created to undertake such a venture. Though the trolleys still ran for another twelve years, there were never funds to make the necessary improvements. 

By 1927, the company was losing money, and the whole line was deteriorating beyond repair. 

Trolleys were becoming obsolete, replaced by buses, and there was little outside interest in keeping the cable cars going. By the end of the year, the trolley line on Main Street ceased to take Batavians to and from. 

Some of the tracks were dug up during the scrap drives in 1943; another part was covered by blacktop in 1947, while the tracks along East Main Street were still there until Route 5 was rebuilt in the 1960s.

It has not yet been rescheduled.

Perhaps an 11-year-old Ryan Duffy could have predicted that he’d be championing the preservation of valuable artifacts and would be involved somehow in the back stories of how historical exhibits and programs came to be presented to the public. 

“I always leaned toward that, and then we went to Gettysburg, which cemented it. I saw the park rangers giving tours. The seed was there, that made it a reality, it wasn’t just about learning the facts, it was something you could actually do. I’ve been directing myself toward that from then on,” Duffy said. 

Chosen in 2017 as executive director of Holland Land Office Museum, Duffy has now been named on behalf of the museum for the Chamber of Commerce Special Recognition of the Year Award. 

NOTE: This week, The Batavian is highlighting the annual Chamber of Commerce Award winners with a story daily through Friday. The awards dinner is Saturday evening at Batavia Downs.

Although it’s fair to say the Rev. James “Jim” Morasco has been working on a genealogy project to trace various members on his dad’s side of the family for the last several years, it might be more accurate to say he’s been working to put the pieces of himself in order for more than three decades.

And, although he may not have planned it this way, the two have peacefully collided with his latest find: his grandmother Genevive and Uncle Nicholas, both who have been traced to the nondescript pauper’s plot on the Southside of Batavia Cemetery on Harvester Avenue.  

Take any object -- a house, office building, highway, bridge, car -- all will eventually fall apart if not properly maintained. 

The same is true of war memorials, the monuments communities erect to honor their war dead and help tell the history of their hometowns.

Rep. Claudia Tenney has co-authored a bill she hopes will help communities preserve those sacred monuments so the legacies they are meant to honor live on well after we're all gone.

The Oakfield Historical Society has a new book “The Other Oakfields” (Who Knew) by Darlene K. Warner. The book is available at the Oakfield Family Pharmacy.

The book highlights East Oakfield, North Oakfield, and Oakfield Corners. East Oakfield was at one time a bustling little town. There were 9 businesses in this little hamlet in the early years. 

Learn about its sawmill, cider mill, pump manufacturing business, wagon shop, cooper shop, blacksmith shop, grocery store, fruit drying, and heading & stave mill operations. How the Cope Pump Manufacturing business was known as “the most noted manufacture of wooden pumps in the United States”.

All this from a little town that was once known as Idleport. North Oakfield which started at the intersection of Lockport and Albion Road and continued until it connected with Fisher Road had two post offices before East Oakfield had one. It also had two schools. In fact, resident’s addresses were listed as living in North Oakfield up to the 1960s.

Oakfield Corners, besides having gypsum first located there, had two very prosperous farms, and even a hotel run by Dennis Watts. The former hotel still stands. So, it is not hard to understand why the subtitle is “Who Knew”.

The book is available at the Oakfield Family Pharmacy, payment of $22.00 plus $9.95 shipping and handling can be mailed to Oakfield Historical Society, PO Box 74, Oakfield. See our other available books on local history at oakfieldhistory.org.

During the first half of the 20th century, most Batavia families purchased their main courses from one source for all their meals big and small, Colgrove and Ryan’s Meat Market. 

The store became the preeminent meat seller in the area and even had a wider distribution area. Over its history, it had a few different locations in Batavia and even subsequent generations of stores after the owners went separate ways.

Colgrove and Ryan’s was the brainchild of the partnership of Myron Colgrove and Joseph Ryan. The two were seasoned grocers and meat sellers, coming from other businesses in the area. They began in 1920 and opened their first shop at 10 and 12 State St., which was named The Genesee Market. They stayed at that location until 1926, when they purchased Greentaner’s Sanitary Market at 54 Main St., changing the name to Colgrove and Ryan’s. 

This store backed up to the State Street market with a narrow alley in between. Due to the professionalism and expertice of the operation, the business became the go-to spot for grocery and meat shoppers. 

Adding to what the customers wanted, Colgrove and Ryan added a line of groceries in 1930, though their meat products were still their claim to fame. 

The store was also an early pioneer in telephone ordering, as people could order from their homes and pick them up at the market. In the fall of 1926, the store was featured in the magazine “Meat Merchandising” in an article, which commended them for the store lighting and the noted telephone service. 

Around 1945, Colgrove hinted at buying out his partner, but in turn, it was Ryan who bought out Colgrove. Under his singular ownership, Ryan turned the Main Street store into a wholesale meat center called The Western Provision Company. The operation grew quickly, and by 1949, he had several countermen and office clerks, as well as two order clerks, a receiving clerk, two sausage makers, and several delivery boys with a fleet of trucks.

Colgrove took his business back to 12 State St. and reopened The Genesee Market. The Genesee Market remained open until the building was bought during Urban Renewal, which was the same time that Myron Colgrove retired. He passed away in March 1966 at the age of 72. 

Joseph Ryan would fight in World War II and would suffer from the aftereffects of a sulfur gas attack for the rest of his life. At the time of his passing in 1960, he was not only the head of the Western Provision Company but also the treasurer of WBTA and the Batavia Baseball Club and a partner in the Ryan-DeWitt Oil Distribution Company. 

Western Provision Company was bought first by John Byrne of Niagara Falls and then by Harold Ironfeld before it was also closed due to Urban Renewal.

Ryan Duffy is the director of the Holland Land Office Museum.