history

Jeff Ficher, the new assistant director at the Holland Land Office Museum, leads children participating in HLOM's Summer Heroes program in singing a Civil War Era song.

The eight-day program is just wrapping up its first week with a focus on the Underground Railroad.

The program is being led by Anne Marie Starowitz.

It was a lot of work, says Sue Conklin, county historian, for facilities management staff to move all of the county's archives and historical documents from the old firehouse on West Main Street to County Building #2.

The staff moved:

• 1,690 archival items in 575 boxes
• The research collection of 3,082 books and 666 notebooks
• 519 bound volumes of newspapers
• 7 large wall maps, 19 pen and ink drawings, 19 watercolors and 30 framed photographs
• 39 filing cabinets and 3 map cases

Plus staff had to disassemble and reassemble 21 bookcases, 23-foot-long newspaper shelving and all of the shelving for the county archives.

The whole move took more than two weeks.

"Now that the relocation has been completed the county historian is happy to report that all items made the move, nothing was damaged or lost," Conklin said. "Somehow facilities management managed to move on sunny, dry days, too. It was a great effort and the result is one the county will benefit from for generations."

The move gives the history department a little more space and gets irreplaceable documents out of the flood plane.

The department is responsible for storing all of the county's critical documents, from court cases to financial documents, with state-mandated document retention policies -- depending on the document -- from seven to 80 years.

At the rate documents come in, Conklin anticipates running out of space in about seven years.

The new layout -- in space once ocupied by the BOCES nursing program -- allows for easier access and better display of the county's archival records than the old location. The research library has more space and makes it easier for researchers -- including those in wheelchairs -- to move around.

Mrs. Richmond hosted a tea party at the Holland Land Office Museum today and dozens of local women attended.

Awards were given for the best hats.

Above, Dona LaValle, who won the award for best hat and ensemble.

Below, Anne Barone, most original, and Maryanne Arena, most elegant.

Tom Rivers is publishing a series of stories for OrleansHub.com about grand buildings in Western New York that were built with Medina sandstone.

Today: The beautiful building at 14 West Main Street that was once the Sheriff's Office and is now home to Genesee Justice and connected to the jail.

Local history was on display at GCC today with history groups from Genesee County's villages, towns and museums gathering in the college's forum.

Visitors could see displays on history, view artifacts, buy books and gift items and learn directly from the people who know the most what our predecessors did in Western New York.

As part of the event, War of 1812 reenactors, the Genesee County Militia, Kellogg Company, offered lectures and demonstrations on what military life was back 100 years ago.

In the early 1900s, then-Governor Al Smith created the civic position of local historians. New York is the only state to declare preservation and dissemination of local history to be a public purpose. (source)

You wouldn't want to be called a "scalawag," but if you were a Batavia resident in the early 19th Century and didn't pay your debts, that's exactly how a local merchant might label you, and the local newspaper would print the charge, no less.

An amateur word sleuth uncovered the origins of "scalawag" recently, and according to a piece in the Boston Globe, the rather uncomplimentary word was likely invented right here in Batavia.

Nathaniel Sharpe, a 22-year-old genealogist from Bathgate, ND, was researching one of his ancestors, one John W. Putman.

He found a reference to Putnam in the March 8, 1836, issue of Batavia’s Republican Advocate.

Putnam was called a "skallewagg" for leaving town without paying his debts.

The spelling was curious and Sharpe wondered if "skallewagg" might mean the same as current spelling "scalawag."

It does, and prior to Sharpe's discovery, the earliest known print reference to the word was in 1848.

The Oxford English Dictionary said the word had Western New York origins.

With more research, Sharpe was able to determine that the possible originator of the word was James Brisbane (a famous surname in Batavia and journalism history).

The entire story is fascinating. Click here to read it.

We recevied the following message from across the pond ... Brian Slater is looking to reconnect with family members separated by time, generations and immigration.

In the summer of 1967 I stayed in Batavia at the home of my great aunt and uncle, Beatrice and Hernbt Jermy, a photo of which I took of all their family.

I am very keen to make reestablish contact with any members of the family across the ocean from their original country of England where they all came in 1913/1914 from a village called Horning in Norfolk.

Their four children were Charles, Arthur, Alice and Vera all in the photograph with their children. The girl in the brown dress was Donna and her brother in the white shirt Jimmy, children of Harry and Vera, rear left, who lived not far from Watkins Glen.

If any of your readers can cast a light I shall be most grateful as I am the last generation who can bridge the family divide across the Atlantic Ocean.

Brian Slater
brian@inter-culture.com

When I stopped by the Peace Garden today, I found a TV crew there looking over an old book.

The book was found in an old house in East Pembroke that is being renovated, stuck under floorboards in the attic along with some coins from the 1830s and paperwork from the 1930s, according to Larry Abarie.

The book is well known to historians, but editions with all the pages are reportedly hard to find. This copy appears to have all of its pages.

Interestingly, you can read the book -- which was an anti-slavery tract, but advocated returning former slaves to Africa -- online.

Dave McKinley's report for WGRZ is online here.

Jeff Donahue, director of the Holland Land Office Museum, stands with a big flag that once flew on the flagship of Rear Admiral Ralph Chandler, who was born in Batavia in 1829 and died in Hong Kong in 1889.

Chandler, a ship commander in the Civil War, was Asiatic Squadron commander from 1886 until his death.

The flag is on loan to the museum by Ralph Chandler Parker III. It measures 13' 11" on the hoist and 25' on the fly.

To fit it in the case, four people wearing archival gloves spread it out on sheets on the floor and then folded it, and folded it, and folded it, until it fit.

"It would have been beautiful if we could have displayed it at its full dimensions," Donahue said. "Unfortunately, we just don't have the space to do that."

Chandler was married to Cornelia Redfield and they had five children together.

One of the first pictures I ever took in Genesee County was of this once productive food processing plant on Old Ford Road, Elba.

All I had then was a Casio point-and-shoot camera.

Every once in a while I think I should go back and try again and when I drove past the old facility today thought I'd give it another try.

The original post prompted a lengthy comment from June Rowcliffe, who explained the history of the building going back to the 19th Century (the tower was built in the 1920s).

A screenplay by local author Bill Kauffman has been turned into a major motion picture and today the official trailer was released by the studio.

"Copperhead," set in Civil War-era Upstate New York, deals with the wars effects on people far removed from the battlefields.

The film opens nationally in theaters June 28.

The subject matter of the film -- a seldom portrayed aspect of Civil War America -- may be well-timed following the box office and critical success of the movie "Lincoln."

Copperhead stars Billy Campbell, Peter Fonda, Augustus Prew and Angus Macfadyen and is directed by Ronald F. Maxwell. The screenplay is an adaptation of a novel by Harold Frederic. Frederic, of Utica, wrote "The Copperhead" in 1893.

Kauffman, born in Batavia and a resident of Elba, is the author of "Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette" and eight other books.

Margaret Brisbane told Trumbull Cary some time prior to 1817, if you're going to marry me, you're going to build me a mansion.

So the man who founded the Bank of Genesee and served as a NYS Senator and Batavia's first treasurer, built a mansion.

And it stood for nearly 150 years as one of Batavia's grandest structures, until the board of St. Jerome's on only about 30-days notice in 1964 tore the building down, stealing from Batavia another piece of its heritage.

Today, the once-handsome mansion and the man who built it were commemorated with a plaque on the former mansion site. The marker was paid for by the William C. Pomeroy Foundation.

Sallie Fogarty, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Trumbull and Margaret Cary was in Batavia for the dedication of the market (pictured above with City Historian Larry Barnes).

Prior to the dedication, Barnes told the assembled audience in the Go Art! building (the former Batavia Club and first permanent home of the Bank of Genesee) about Cary and his mansion.

Cary, born in 1787 in Mansfield, Conn., moved to Batavia in 1805 at age 18 to seek his fortune. He went to work for the post office, served as clerk for James Brisbane, and eventually became Batavia's postmaster.

Later, he became a local merchant and began to build his fortune.

He helped found St. James Episcopal Church.

In 1833, he helped finance the Tonawanda Railroad, the first rail line to serve Batavia.

The Carys -- Trumbull died in 1869 and Margaret in 1863 and both are buried in Batavia Cemetery --  had one child who survived into adulthood. His grandson was the last Cary to live in the mansion.

Fogarty traces her family tree back to this second Trumbull Cary, who died in 1913, and his first wife, Grace Truscott, who died in 1882.

Harry E. Turner (H.E. Turner Funeral Home) purchased the mansion in 1922.

On the demands of George Cary, brother of the second Trumbull Cary and a prominent architect in Buffalo, Turner sold it back to the Cary family. 

George Cary was determined to turn the mansion into a tourist destination owned by the city. He paid for restoration and set up a board to oversee its operation and then deeded the property to the city. After the operations ran into some financial trouble two years later, the city established a commission to determine what should be done with the mansion. The commission determined it could be run profitably, but the city council voted to give the property back to George Cary in 1936.

The property was rented by various businesses over the years and ownership passed from George Cary to his daughter Allithea Lango, Boston, Erie County.  Local businesses that had space in the mansion included Pontillo's and Valle Jewelers.

Lango sold the mansion to St. Jerome's in 1959. The hospital began building a nursing school on the back of the property and then with very little notice decided to tear down the mansion to expand the nursing school.

The board said the building was in a "dangerous" condition and had be demolished immediately. Batavia residents were given no time to weigh in on the demolition.

The nursing school closed in 1982. The building is now called Cary Hall and is owned by UMMC.

Last year, UMMC acquired the neighboring property, the former location and of the Elks Lodge building, and with little notice to the community, tore that building down.

Driving back from Genesee County Park this afternoon, Billie and I headed down Francis Road and spotted a man on the side of a cliff digging. It wasn't hard to guess what he was doing, so I stopped to talk with him. Yup, Bob Lann, of Spencerport, was digging for fossils.

What I didn't know is that this old railroad cut in Bethany is recognized as a good spot for fossil hunting.

Lann is a veterinarian and amateur fossil hunter. This was his first trip to Bethany.

Based on a little Google search, I came across a fossil hunting blog by James Heaney. He says Western New York -- and Lann said this, too -- is a great place for fossil hunting, especially from the pre-dinosaur ages. A guy named Robert Eaton also has information online about fossils in the Genesee region.

Below, Lann displays portions of a trilobite he found today and a bit of coral.

It's the time of year again for The Batavia Cemetery Association's annual Candlelight Ghost Tours at the historic Batavia Cemetery. The first tour was Saturday night and another will be held at the cemetery this Saturday from 7 to 9 p.m. The cost is $10 and proceeds benefit the association and upkeep of the cemetery.

Sue Conklin as a Gypsy fortune-teller.

Tim Buckman as Philimon Tracy.

Charlie and Connie Boyd was Dean Richmond and his wife.

A bit of Batavia's history will be up for auction next Wednesday at Bontrager's Auction house on Wortendyke Road, Batavia: A cross that once adorned the old St. Joe's Church.

A fire on Aug. 18, 1970, destroyed the church and the Gilhooly family in Attica acquired the cross. The family has decided it's time to let somebody else care for the historic relic.

Pictured with the cross are Todd Jantzi, right, owner of Bontrager's, and one of his employees, Dave Harms, who was a young volunteer firefighter with East Pembroke in 1970.

Harms said he remembers the fire well. He and Gail Seamans were among the first on scene and manning a hose line.

Flames, he said, were jumping out of the bell tower and church windows. It's one of the most involved structure fires he's ever seen.

Along with East Pembroke, assisting Batavia City Fire Department, were Stafford, Oakfield, Elba and Bethany fire departments.

At the time of the fire, the church, built in 1864, was scheduled for demolition. The cause of the fire was never determined.

The Town of Alexander celebrated its bicentennial today at the town hall in the village.

As WBTA reported this week, not too much is known about Alexander Rea, the man who founded the town.

If you're unable to view the slide show below, click here.

To purchase prints of these pictures, click here.

Unless you're like me and regularly watch History Channel's American Pickers, that headline may not make a lot of since.

Mike Wolff and Frank Fritz are pickers -- antique dealers who travel around looking for unusual items left abandoned and forgotten in barns and sheds.

The TV show's opening gives the best description of what it's about:

We're looking for amazing things buried in people's garages and barns. What most people see as junk, we see as dollar signs. We'll buy anything we think we can make a buck on. Each item we pick has a history all its own and the people we meet? Well, they're a breed all their own.

We make a living telling the history of America...one piece at a time.

The show's producers contacted the Genesee County Chamber of Commerce looking for leads.

Producer Jodi Friedman wrote to the chamber:

The American Pickers are headed to NY soon so we're looking for leads throughout the state, specifically interesting characters with interesting items and lots of them! Our location scout will actually be in NY soon so this is a bit time-sensitive, but I'm wondering if you can think of any folks in Genesee (or surrounding areas) with large private collections.

She added, "please note that Mike and Frank only pick private collections so no stores, malls, flea markets, museums, auctions, businesses or anything open to the public."

Here's a link to their flier, which includes contact information for Friedman.

When I drive around Genesee County, I see a few barns that look like they might contain some "rusty gold."  If you own such a barn or know somebody who does, contact Jodi.  It could be a lot of fun to have Mike and Frank stop in Genesee County and get our little corner of America on the History Channel.