history

Le Roy's Holy Family School closed its doors for the last time a couple of weeks ago, but the school will long be remembered for the outstanding staff and students who graced its hallways and classrooms, for the positive community atmosphere it enjoyed, and for what it meant to local families during its 123-year history.

Photo courtesy of Kelly Hansen

There were 10 students in the final graduating class of the school at 46 Lake St., which was attached to Our Lady of Mercy Parish and served pupils in pre-K through eighth-grade. Students came not only from Le Roy, but also from elsewhere in Genesee County as well as Wyoming, Livingston and Monroe counties.

Photo courtesy of the Le Roy Historical Society

The school has seen a lot of changes -- including a change in its name -- since it was first staffed by the Sisters of Mercy more than 120 years ago (see the  timeline of milestones at the end of this story). Throughout all of these changes, its tradition of academic excellence and thriving school family remained much the same.

People who were part of the Holy Family community are filled with sadness, but also with fond memories and hope for the future.

Here are some stories that give an idea of just how special a place Holy Family was:

Michael Ficarella

Michael Ficarella, of Batavia, was hired as a sixth- through eighth-grade teacher at Holy Family School for the 2011-2012 school year. It was his first full-time teaching job.

"I couldn't have picked a better school to start (teaching)," Ficarella said.

He talked about the supportive team of teachers who welcomed and helped him throughout the year.

"From real early on, they were always coming by my room to see how I was doing, offering pointers on how to make this or that lesson better or how to make the classroom run smoother, etcetera."

In addition to teaching science and social studies, Ficarella also worked with younger students in the school's after-school program. During his brief time at Holy Family, he got to know a lot of kids.

"The students were great," he said. "They were well-mannered, very eager to learn and took pride in their school."

He mentioned the eighth-grade field trip to Washington, D.C., on which the kids were "phenomenal."

Despite losing his job his first year teaching, Ficarella said he is "absolutely 100 percent" glad of the experience and has no regrets.

The Hansen Family

Photo courtesy of Kelly Hansen

One of Ficarella's students was Alex Hansen, who was part of Holy Family School's final graduating class. He attended the school from kindergarten through eighth-grade.

"(The graduation) was bittersweet," said Kelly Hansen, Alex's mother. "What we were witnessing was never to take place at Holy Family School ever again."

"There were many 'lasts' over the past few months. It was very difficult for everyone as the adults tried to make the last days of school the best they could possibly be."

Hansen said that the decision she and her husband made to send Alex to Holy Family was "curious to some because we live in Batavia."

"The answer is never an easy one," she said, "but it always contains the same elements. The high test scores, great word-of-mouth, a place where God could be mentioned without fear of ridicule, not to mention a stellar reputation within the community for more than one hundred years."

She and her husband were also impressed with the parish to which the school was connected, which was called St. Peter's at the time.

"I'm not sure there would be a way to calculate the grand sum from the parish that has kept the school afloat for 123 years," she said.

Photo courtesy of Our Lady of Mercy Parish Secretary Sue Bobo

Of course, the school environment was also a major factor in the decision.

"We were impressed with what we saw the day we first visited," Hansen said. "Children holding the door for us as we came and went, walking down the halls and having students greet us without an adult to prompt them, students standing and greeting adults as they entered a classroom -- all this left us knowing that we were making the right decision for our family."

Second-grade teacher Patty Page is pictured with her granddaughter at a Halloween party at Holy Family School. Photo courtesy of Sue Bobo.

As for the teachers, their "commendable dedication" has left an impression on Hansen.

"Many teachers at (Holy Family School) have taught for 20 or more years," she said. "Catholic school teachers are state certified yet make a small fraction of what their public school counterparts do. They clearly are not in their chosen profession for the money -- it is something they do because they love it."

She sees this as part of a pattern of sacrifices that everyone involved in the Catholic school system makes for what they consider the greater good.

"Most families who choose to send their children to a Catholic school quietly go without things other families take for granted so that their children may reap the abundant benefits," she said.

"We’ve had the same car over the course of all nine years (of Alex attending Holy Family School). It is a bit rustier and a lot noisier. It has driven from Batavia to Le Roy hundreds of times, often carrying multiple students to one event or another."

"To pay for education that could otherwise be obtained for free at a public school is a bizarre choice to some," she said. "But for us it was the only option we could imagine. Anyone familiar with Catholic education knows about the sacrifices made in order for it to be possible."

The Winters Family

Photo courtesy of Bryan Winters

When first-grader Anna Rose Winters learned that her school would be closing, she was very sad. But then the first question that came out of her mouth was: "What are the uniforms like at St. Joe's?"

Anna Rose, like other Holy Family students, will attend St. Joseph School in Batavia in the fall.

"She went through the normal grief stages," said her father, Bryan Winters. "There were tears, but then she very quickly started to incorporate St. Joe's."

Winters was on Holy Family School's Finance Committee for several months, which put Anna Rose in a "unique situation."

"She's a smart kid -- she could read the writing on the wall," he said. "We were honest with her from the beginning that her school could close, but we'd try our best."

And try they did. According to Winters, who makes his living raising money for the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, the committees formed by parents to help save the school "were doing all the right things."

"It's remarkable how much money we were able to raise with the time constraint," he said. "But there were a lot of needs-based scholarships (and other expenses that could not be met with the current student enrollment)."

Like his daughter, Winters also went through the grieving process. But he has a "very great feeling" about St. Joe's and is optimistic about Anna Rose's future.

"(Of course), there are families who have been at Holy Family for three or four generations," he said. "Their grieving process is probably longer, and that's understandable. But I need to think of the best interests of my daughter. We're going to get fully involved in St. Joe's."

Bryan and Kate Winters moved to Le Roy from Monroe County a few years ago. Holy Family School was the main reason for their move.

Having just started a family, they wanted to move to the country to give their kids (they have two younger children in addition to Anna Rose) some "breathing room." But they also wanted to make sure the kids received a Catholic education.

"We looked around Western New York and the Finger Lakes region," Winters said. "We toured different schools in Livingston and Monroe counties, and even some in Erie County."

They were very selective in their search, because everything in their lives is a "distant second to our kids."

When they went to an open house at Holy Family, "that sealed the deal."

"That was where we knew we felt at home (at Holy Family)," Winters said. "We learned about the different programs and the curriculum -- they had a very rigorous program. We liked the student-teacher ratio. It was primarily for that reason that we moved to Le Roy."

With three years as a Holy Family parent under his belt, Winters still sings the school's praises loudly.

"It blows my mind that there were people around here who didn't send their kids to Holy Family," he said. "They must not have known what we had there."

Pictured Principal Kevin Robertson with Mrs. Page's second-grade class. Photo courtesy of Sue Bobo.

Like Ficarella and Hansen, he touted the supportive atmosphere the school offered.

"We could call or email any time, and (the issue) was taken care of," he said. "There was a real family feel, whether it was students with teachers or families with teachers. It was an open community."

Part of this openness was the teachers' willingness to share personal stories with their students.

"Every once in a while Anna Rose would share a story at dinner about a teacher's dog, or about Mrs. So-and-So's son getting into a certain college," Winters said. "The fact that these teachers would recognize (for example) that a first-grader wants to hear stories about a dog means a lot. It goes back to that feeling of family."

Winters' wife is a teacher, so the two of them "have a pretty good pulse on what a good teacher is."

"And these teachers -- they had it," he said.

And the students weren't bad, either.

"The Holy Family slogan was 'Teaching Tomorrow's Leaders,' and I think that's what they were doing," Winters said.

He commented on how the kids would hold doors for people and demonstrate politeness in other ways.

"All that stuff goes above and beyond two plus two," he said. "It was about more than just standardized testing; the focus was on growing the student as a person. It was built into the curriculum."

Anna Rose is excited about going to St. Joe's, but she and her family will always have fond memories of Holy Family School.

STORY CONTINUES after the jump (click the headline to read more):

A Brief History in Pictures

Holy Family's original name was St. Peter's School, after the church with which it was affiliated (St. Peter's Church became Our Lady of Mercy Parish in 2008). The school was placed in the charge of the Sisters of Mercy, who lived in Batavia and commuted every day by train the first year.

A photo of St. Peter's academic department in the early 1900s. Photo courtesy of the Le Roy Historical Society, originally published in the Le Roy Gazette.

St. Peter's grew significantly between its founding in 1889 and 1955, when it was expanded to serve the children of both Catholic parishes in Le Roy (the other one being St. Joseph's Church). At that point, it was renamed "Holy Family School."

Note: Unless otherwise specified, all of the following were published in the Batavia Daily News and obtained courtesy of the Le Roy Historical Society:

Photo published in the Holy Family School Newsletter

Over the years, Holy Family slowly made the transition from a parochial school to a regional school. Hansen said that by the time it closed, "only 40 percent of the students were from Le Roy, with remaining students coming from Wyoming, Livingston and Monroe counties."

Regional schools have different requirements than parochial schools, including, according to Hansen, a "suggested class size (of) 20-25 students per grade level."

Take that, the fact that the school was staffed by state certified teachers instead of religious sisters receiving a modest stipend (which kept tuition costs low), and the population decrease in our area, and you get a good idea of the reason for Holy Family School's closure.

For more information on Holy Family School's history, please see the timeline at the bottom of this story.

Here are some pictures of the school through the years, courtesy of Sue Bobo and the Le Roy Historical Society:

Graduating class of 1957

Graduating class of 1965

Graduating class of 1978

Thank you to the interviewees, Sue Bobo and the Le Roy Historical Society for the information and pictures.

Timeline: Holy Family School:

• 1849 -- Rev. Edward Dillon founds St. Peter's Catholic Church in Le Roy.
• 1852 -- Rev. Thomas Fitzgerald, Rev. Dillon's successor as pastor, begins collecting funds to enlarge parish in response to rapid membership growth.
• 1857 -- Temporary parish school established by Rev. James McGlew in the church basement.        
• July 1889 -- Work is begun on new school behind St. Peter's Church (now called "the annex").
• Sept. 2, 1889 -- St. Peter's School opens, with the Sisters of Mercy recruited to teach.
• Early 1900s -- St. Peter's School has enrollment of 260 students.
• Feb. 14, 1907 -- Most Rev. Charles H. Colton, bishop of Buffalo, administers Sacrament of Confirmation in Le Roy; large number of Italian-American residents ask for their own "National" (or ethnic) parish.
• Feb. 16, 1907 -- Bishop Colton sends Rev. Joseph A. Gambino to establish St. Joseph's Church.
• 1913 -- Significant improvements to St. Peter's Church and School.
• 1955 -- St. Joseph's and St. Peter's unite to build a new school building to serve all Catholic children in Le Roy. Upon completion, St. Peter's School is renamed Holy Family School.
• Sept. 23, 1956 -- Holy Family School is officially dedicated by Most Rev. Leo R. Smith, an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Buffalo.
• 1965 -- Gymnasium is built in the school.
• 1989 -- Holy Family School is run mostly by laypeople rather than nuns.
• 1993 -- Barbara McVean becomes the first layperson to serve as principal of Holy Family School.
• 1990s -- 2000s -- Holy Family School begins to serve students from other communities as neighboring Catholic schools close.  Children from elsewhere in Genesee County as well as from Wyoming, Livingston and Monroe counties attend the school.
• 2008 -- St. Joseph's and St. Peter's merge as Our Lady of Mercy Parish.
• 2009 -- 2010 -- Under diocesan plan, Holy Family School transitions from parochial to regional school.
• 2011 -- Parents establish the Holy Family School Finance/Fund Raising Committee to try saving the school from closure.
• 2012 -- Holy Family School closes in spite of valiant student, parent and teacher efforts.
• June 8, 2012 -- The Holy Family School Choir performs for the last time in public at the Le Roy Bicentennial Celebration; receives standing ovation.

Previous coverage of Holy Family School:

Mancuso's hosts Holy Family School, of Le Roy, for Catholic Schools Week

Pictures: Holy Family and St. Joe's kids

Students at Holy Family learning and having fun with art

In 1812, the good people who set up shops, homes and farms in a picturesque corner of the State of New York, by proclamation of the State Legislature, separated from the Town of Caledonia and established the Town of Bellona.

The first order of business, raise alms for the poor, then deal with pesky wild and domesticated animals, such as boars, rams and foxes.

The first meeting of the Town of Bellona was reenacted on the same spot in Trigon Park and outside the Memorial Auditorium on Friday.

Less than a year later, Bellona would be known as Le Roy (named after a wealthy New York City businessman whose son settled in the area and built what is now known as the Le Roy House).

Just as 200 years ago, the meeting closed with 13 toasts by the dignitaries in attendance, including Kathy Hochul, Steve Hawley, Mike Ranzenhofer and Stephen Barbeau -- the current town supervisor who presided over the meeting dressed as the town's first supervisor, Dr. William Sheldon, might have been attired.

The chorale performance by students of Holy Family School was an emotional one for parents, who learned just a few days ago that the school would be closing.

If you're unable to view the slide show below, click here. To purchase prints of these photographs, click here.

There's an old shack stuck far back in the woods off Norton Road in Elba. I've photographed it before, but wasn't entirely pleased with the results.

As I drove down Norton this evening, I saw the shack, but the field that last year was full of wildflowers was plowed. The shack was still in a wooded area, surrounded by flowers. I then noticed a woman watering some plants in her front yard, so I stopped to ask if I could go on her property (to get the right vantage point) to make a photograph.

I introduced myself and, yes, Charline Shultz reads The Batavian.

We chatted a second and Charlene told me she had an old postcard of Norton Road. It shows her house, which was built in 1812. Charlene said a friend happened across the postcard on Ebay and bought it for her.

The back of the card reads: "The view as we see it from our home looking south.  The church in the distance is where Mr. Kellogg preached when we knew him.  With best wishes and warm regards, Mary Norton, Elba, N.Y., Dec. 25, 1908."

It was apparently contained in a letter sent by Mary Norton to a friend in California, and now it's back in New York more then 100 years later on the road where it started.

A few weeks ago, we ran pictures of the destruction of Downtown Batavia by local photographer Antoinette Dempski. That prompted Todd Jantzi to share these photos with me. Jantzi owns Bontrager's and came across two sets of photos in a box of auction items. He gave one set to the Holland Land Office Museum and kept the other for himself. He doesn't know who the photographer was.

The Oakfield Historical Society Museum officially opened for the season today with two new displays -- one about World War II on the home front and the other on the five major fires in Oakfield in the 1800s. The fire department's vintage pumper, purchased in 1863, was rolled over to the museum to display during the open house.

The event coincides with the book the historical society just published called "Main Street Ablaze." The museum is located at 7 Maple Ave. in the Village of Oakfield.

What started as an effort to organize and examine all of the old articles of clothing in the Holland Land Office Museum has turned into a new exhibit displaying the history of WNY wedding dresses.

More than 30 dresses -- most of them owned by HLOM, but some from local residents -- are on display and the show officially opens with a reception at 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., March 31.

The collection includes Civil War era dresses up through more modern gowns, including a 1940 plain satin gown and train, a 1920s-era lace gown with bolero jacket, a flapper gown of the same era and a 1870s two-piece wedding suit.

Charles Men's Shop is supplying a modern tux for display and Stella's Wedding Boutique is displaying a new wedding dress.

Treats from Sweet Ecstasy Bakery in Stafford will be served at the opening reception Saturday, and there will also be door prizes.

The Holland Land Office Museum has acquired a painting by Richard Wright Ware that depicts a bit of West Main Street and the Tonawanda Creek that no longer exists.

Sometime in the late 1950s or '60s, the Batavia native painted the picture showing a view from the Walnut Street Bridge -- which was a traffic bridge then -- looking west down the Tonawanda with the former commercial buildings of West Main Street depicted on the right.

Those buildings would eventually be demolished, and the Walnut Street bridge converted for pedestrian use. That stretch of Main Street is now a grassy, tree-lined area.

County Clerk Don Read, at right, who serves on the HLOM board, acquired the picture at an auction and paid $600 for it.

Ware, known for his landscapes around Batavia and Naples, gained some regional acclaim and held shows locally in Rochester and the Finger Lakes.

"We like to have representative works of local artists," Read said.

The work, Read said, can be combined with photos HLOM has of that section of Batavia, to give museum visitors an idea of what the area was once like.

Executive Director Jeff Donahue said HLOM is always looking for artifacts that help tell the story of Genesee County and he said he would welcome tips from local residents on anything that might become available. It's important, he said, to ensure items of local historical importance are preserved.

The painting is already on display at HLOM.

Batavia, with its legacy of demolishing its own history, is about to lose another landmark building.

The former Batavia Elks Lodge at 213 E. Main St. was purchased in December by United Memorial Medical Center for $143,500.

Workers have already removed windows and completed asbestos abatement.

Colleen Flynn, spokeswoman for UMMC, said the hospital regularly tries to acquire property adjacent to its own facilities when possible.

"We're sort of landlocked," Flynn said. "When certain buildings come up for sale we buy them for future growth."

Her own office on North Street is in a house the hospital acquired to create more space for staff, she noted.

The building housed the Elks in Batavia for nearly 100 years. The current Art Deco facade was added in the 1920s and designed by Frank Homelius, a Batavia resident and one of the premier architects of Western New York in the early 20th Century. His father, Henry Homelius designed many of Batavia's grander homes of the 19th Century. (*see update below)

Flynn noted that the building does not have any historical designation.

Laurie Oltramari, president of the Genesee County Landmark Society, said given the current state of the north side of East Main Street, she doesn't thinking losing the building is going to detract too much from the character of the city.

"You've got to pick your battles, I guess, and this isn't one I would pick," she said.

Though, Oltramari, added, she hates to see such a building destroyed without a plan.

UMMC will landscape the property once the building is removed and has no immediate plans to construct another building at the location.

Jeffery Donahue, director of the Holland Land Office Museum, was saddened to hear the news the building would be torn down.

"It's always a shame to lose one of the landmark buildings of Batavia," Donahue said. "We lose a little bit of history every time."

UMMC won an award from the Landmark Society earlier this year for its restoration of the former St. Jerome's Hospital, turning it into senior housing.

"The building (Elks Lodge) was not in good condition for renovation," Flynn said. "We do everything we can to protect and preserve Batavia's history."

Later in the day, Flynn issued a press release with the following quote:

The former Elk’s Club required extensive updates and renovations for reuse and was not handicap accessible. Coupled with the costs associated with making it handicap accessible and meeting NYS Department of Health regulations for healthcare use, it was decided that the building should be razed and the site would be improved with appropriate landscaping.

Over the years, Batavia has seen the north side of his downtown district demolished and replaced by a characterless mall and lost such grand structures as the Trumbull Cary Mansion and the Dean Richmond Mansion (the location is now a parking lot).

Local author Bill Kauffman, who has lamented previous losses to Batavia's cultural heritage, most notably in his book Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette, was upset this morning to hear about the Elks Lodge demolition.

"It's a shame," Kauffman said. "The Elks Lodge is a landmark of working-class Batavia, designed by Batavia's great architectual family."

UPDATE: County documents show an application was made in 1950 to add the current facade to the building. Frank Homelius died in 1941.  The information we use in the story above comes from a book on Frank and his father.

More than 13,000 years ago, a bit of history sunk in the mud of what is now a small swamp off a back road in Byron, and unearthing that archeological record has been the life's work of Richard Laub.

A chapter of local history closes some time in the coming week when Laub wraps up his final dig at a place he calls the Hiscock Site and most local residents know as the "Byron Dig."

Laub started archeological work at the site in 1982 and that work has continued unabated for 29 years. 

Several factors, Laub said, have led to the tough decision to shut down the dig. While being non-specific about all the factors, he acknowledged that financing the effort has become increasingly difficult in recent years.

"It’s been such a wonderful project, such a wonderful experience, especially working with these people (the volunteers at the site), that I used to wonder, ‘How do I let go?' to say, 'OK, it’s time to quit,'" Laub said. "Fortunately, with these factors converging, other forces are telling me it’s time to quit, and I’m looking at the whole situation and going, ‘Yeah, it’s time to let go.’ I guess you could say providence gave me a little kick in the pants."

The dig is probably among the top three archeological sites for uncovering mastodon remains in the world, and it's also given up a treasure trove of human habitation finds.

More than 70 scientific papers have been published related to the dig, Laub said.

The significance and the history of the research at the site will probably mean that at some point in the future -- who knows how far into the future -- another paleontologist will want to take over excavation of the dig, Laub said.

Complete excavation will take decades.

"This is a site that is known internationally," Laub said. "It’s been extremely productive and very rich in terms of what it taught us, so I would think there would be other people who are interested in it."

The name, the Hiscock Site, comes from Charles Hiscock, the land's former owner, who in 1959, decided to dig a pond and instead dug up a mastodon tusk.

Hiscock notified the Buffalo Museum of Science and that was as far as the discovery went. Hiscock kept his mastodon parts and nobody at the museum seemed much interested in the site until the early 1980s.

In 1982, an anthropologist at the museum, Richard Michael Gramly, Ph.D, heard from another staff member about the site and thought he should do a sample dig to see if he could find evidence of human and mastodone co-existence.

He did a sample dig and was dissatisfied with the results (evidence of human habitation would eventually be found there).

"So I figured things had gone that far," Laub recalled, "that with that opening crack in the doorway, I had an obligation as a paleontologist to take a look."

Typically, Laub said, property owners are reluctant to let archeologists keep what they find in excavations, but unless the artifacts are properly secured, there isn't much point in digging them up.

"Hiscock was extremely cordial," Laub said. "I was just absolutely bowled over."

Not only would Laub be allowed to keep what he found, but Hiscock turned over to the museum the tusks and bones he had already unearthed.

"We could not have started our research if he had not allowed our institution to keep those things," Laub said. "...that was a very generous thing and it made all the difference in the world.

In 1989, Hiscock donated the land to the museum.

"We became close friends," Laub said. "We spent a lot of evenings together after a day's digging and I miss him very much."

The significance of the dig can't be understated, according to Laub.

"I don’t know too many collections in museums (like this)," he said. "There are collections in museums of rodents from a particular cave or pottery shards from a particular site, but something that takes into account the human and the non-human and the environmental aspects, I don’t think there are a lot of places like this."

As clouded as the future is for the dig, so it is for Richard Laub.

Beyond the next few months, his future is "completely opaque."

But he said he does know there is a future for him, just as there is for the dig.

"There’s a saying, 'If all you are is what you do, you’re not very much,'" Laub said. "So if my being is defined exclusively by this, then basically I’m dead after it ends. And I know that life goes on, so the important thing is to appreciate what has been done here and build upon it."

Below, slide show of photos taken at the site on Friday. Be sure to click the button in the lower right to view in full-screen mode.

What's left of a once popular amusement park in Indian Falls was largely undamaged by a late evening fire along Phelps Road.

One small structure -- impossible to tell what it once was -- was charred while several structures remain, though largely overgrown by brush, vines and trees.

The causes of the fire, which was reported at 9:01 p.m., remains under investigation. 

The park, locally known as "Boulder Park," opened in 1949, the brainchild of Phil Morrot. Historians know it as "Morrot's Boulder."

While the park featured a miniature steam train and a Ferris wheel, the highlight of the park was reportedly its merry-go-round.

The carousel -- designed by Phil's sister, Emily Bourgard, and built by the Herschell Company -- was a menagerie of animals, including 32 horses, a lion, tigers and a giraffe.

The park was sold in the 1960s, fell into disrepair and was closed by 1970, at which time the animals of the carousel apparently went missing.

An Indian Falls resident, Cindy Henning Hanks, published a book in 2003 about the carousel and what happened to the animals. She's been able to track what happened to all but three of the wooden, hand-carved beasts.

According to her website, the giraffe sold at auction a few years ago for $51,000.

According to a Sheriff's Office report, the property is currently owned by Kelkco, LLC, out of Clarence Center.

The fire is being investigated by Deputy Kevin McCarthy.

Pictures below were taken today.

It's a ticket to one of the last hangings in Genesee County and it was last seen hanging in the Holland Land Office Museum in the early 1970s.

It was around that time, maybe a couple of years earlier, that it was apparently stolen.

In 1973, an unidentified couple bought it from a guy selling antiques out of the trunk of his car in Pavilion.

A few weeks ago, the now-elderly couple decided to donate it to the Genesee Country Museum, but the museum director there immediately recognized it as property of HLOM and called up Director Jeffrey Donahue to see about returning it.

A few days ago, Don Read, Bob Turk and Donahue drove to Mumford to recover the framed relic.

The ticket was issued in May 1866 by Sheriff Parley Upton (unknown family connection to Gen. Emery Upton) to Henry Todd, a local newspaper editor. It was donated to the HLOM by Philip Skelton Jr.

The murderer hanged was Levi Mayhew, a veteran of the Civil War who became the lover of another man's wife. The cuckold's wife wanted her husband dead and tried to get Mayhew to poison him, but he wouldn't do it. When she threatened to do it herself, Mayhew decided to kill the husband, Theodore Dunham, himself by beating him to death in Indian Falls.

Mayhew was hanged on May 4, 1866.

The last hanging in Genesee County was apparently 10 years later when Thomas B. Quackenbush was punished for the Dec. 3, 1875 murder of Sarah Norton, also in Indian Falls. He was executed by hanging in August 1876 by Sheriff Ward.

UPDATE: It looks like the last execution was Charles Stockley, hanged on Aug. 19, 1881 at the age of 24. Stockley shot and killed his former boss in a dispute over the man's daughter.

Driving around Le Roy this afternoon, I came across this interesting bit of local history on Summit Road -- a boulder with a historical plaque set in it in 1930.

The plaque reads: "This boulder marks the southern apex of the Triangle Tract, purchased from the Morris Reserve in 1783 by Herman Le Roy and William Bayard."

I got four emails from four different people this morning about a B-17 being parked at the Genesee County Airport.

It turns out it's been there almost a week. The plane is the Memphis Belle, a prop plane used in the movie of that name. Its proper home is the Geneseo Airport, but since that is a grass field, all the recent rains have made the runway too soggy for landing such a large bird.

The Memphis Belle is expected to depart some time Wednesday.

 

Photo and article submitted by Charm Robinson:

Jean Ianni, Linda Call and Phyllis Darling, all members of the Stafford Historical Society, gathered at the Stafford Rural Cemetary on Transit Road at 10 am on April 12, 2011 to observe the 150th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War.  The members stood at the Civil War Monument ringing bells for 150 times to represent the number of years.

The monument is known as the Soldier's Monument and was erected in 1868 to honor the soldiers from Stafford.  The monument is inscribed "Erected by the Town of Stafford in 1868, to the memory of the brave soldiers of our country who fell during the Great Rebellion".

Thirty three names are inscribed on the Soldier's Monument.

Shown in Photo: L to R: Jean Ianni, Linda Call, Phyllis Darling

To mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, there was a bell ringing at the Holland Land Office Museum this morning, at precisely 10.

The bell ringers were, from left, Elijah Monroe, Jeff Donahue, Shannon Guiste, Terry Lee and Ann Marie Starowitz.

Among the many things to do in Genesee County on Saturday was to stop by the Holland Land Office Museum and meet some Civil War reenactors and see some of their guns, swords and household items.

Tice's Rangers, a Revolutionary-era reenactment group was at the Oakfield Historical Museum, 7 Maple Ave., today for the museum's spring reopening.

Above, from left, are Bob Smith, of Batavia, John Dellapenna, of Batavia, Erick Michealsen, of Lockport, Paul Winnie, of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, Derek Lindquist, of Williamsville, Mark Houseman, of Medina, Joe Bucolo, of Lockport, Steve Kruppenbacher and Jeff Harding, of Newfane.

More pictures after the jump:

We don't usually think of bed-sheet-robed and pointy-hatted white men burning crosses as a New York kind of thing.

That only happened in the deep, racist South, right?

Several years ago a client delivered a set of pictures to Oakfield attorney Ray Cianfrini that were clearly shot decades before in his hometown, showing men dressed exactly like Ku Klux Klan members.

While Cianfrini knew his parents had faced prejudice because of their Italian heritage -- his mother was denied a job in an insurance agency and his father was barred from the volunteer fire department -- nobody had ever told him that the Klan was once quite popular in Genesee County.

"I was shocked," Cianfrini said. "I had never seen that depicted in a picture before. I never knew that the Klan was here."

The set of pictures -- which were taken to document the funeral of a top Klan official in Oakfield in 1922, including a cross burning -- started Cianfrini on a effort to completely research the history of the Klan locally.

But not because he wanted to show anybody up, embarrass the families of former Klan members, revenge the prejudice shown against his parents or otherwise seek some sort of retribution.

He just thought it was an interesting bit of Genesee County history that should be preserved.

"I don't hold any grudges," said Cianfrini, a former mayor of the Village of Oakfield and currently a county legislator.

From about the turn of the century until the Great Depression, large portions of the American population were gripped by anti-immigrant prejudice (see The Gangs of New York).

In the 1920s, the Klan -- originally founded in 1865 -- was resurgent and recruiting millions of members in all parts of the nation. Genesee County was no exception.

At its height of popularity, there were an estimated 3,500 to 4,500 Klan members in Batavia, Oakfield, Pembroke, Bergen, Byron, Le Roy and Alabama.

Cianfrini said the members were community leaders -- the bankers, shop owners, politicians and farmers. So long as you were native born, descended from Northern European stock and Protestant, you could join the Klan.

The primary thrust of the Northern Klan's hatred was not African-Americans, although its members certainly did hate them. It was the most recent immigrants -- primarily Italians, Poles and Jews -- who concerned them the most.

Cianfrini charted how Genesee County's populations changed in the early part of the 20th Century, when the percentage of foreign-born residents went from primarily Irish, English and German to the Irish and Polish.

The change in population corresponds to the rise of the Klan.

By 1915, for example, 55 percent of all foreign-born residents were Italian.

They were drawn here by factory work, and even though they had been farmers in their native countries, agriculture opportunities were closed to them here, so they took unskilled labor jobs.

Two events helped both kill the Klan locally and allow Italians and Poles to join the mainstream of the community, Cianfrini said.

The first occurred in 1924. 

The Klan announced a march down Main Street in Batavia, and a judge issued an order against the march. A regional daily newspaper had obtained a list of all of the Klan members in Western New York and threatened to publish the list if the march took place.

More than 20,000 Klansman showed up in Batavia on Labor Day, 1924.

The newspaper published the list.

"It drove the Klan underground," Cianfrini said.

Nobody wanted to be associated publicly with the Klan.

The second significant event was World War II.

"They always say there are not atheists in foxholes," Cianfrini said. "I say, there is no prejudice in foxholes."

When veterans returned from the war, they were much more willing to accept each other as neighbors. It wasn't long after the war that Oakfield had its first Italian board member and its first Italian firefighter.

"We can talk about how prevalent it was, but I'm impressed by how in this era, we've gone from a time when a father was subject to prejudice, (to when) his son became mayor of the village where he couldn't become a firefighter."

The Stafford estate of Vaughn Hahn was auctioned off by Bontrager's this afternoon. More than 150 bidders registered, according to owner and auctioneer Todd Jantzi.

There was a wide range of items available, from Victorian-era couches, dressers, dishes, books and pictures, as well as a car and yard equipment.

Hahn died April 29 when he was hit by a car while standing beside the roadway across from his house, which had been in the family for generations. Hahn was 87.

Jantzi said there were rooms on the second floor that hadn't touched in years.

He said estates such as Hahn's only come along once a year or only every other year.

People came from as far as Palmyra and Toronto to particpate in the auction. Cars lined both sides of Route 5 for at least a 1/4 mile.