#jerusalemny

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

How Yates County’s towns got their names

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Maybe I’m just a nerd (OK, I am a nerd and I admit it, but that’s beside the point right now), but I enjoy learning the origins and meanings of various words and phrases in the English language. That is particularly true when it comes to the origins of place names; I love knowing how certain communities around our state and country came to be called the names that they have.

So, especially as Yates County marks 200 years it was formally separated from Ontario County and established as its own county on February 5, 1823, I wanted to investigate the origins of the names of the nine towns in the county. Some of the towns, I already knew where the name came from; others of the towns, I thought I knew how they got their names. In both cases, I wanted to compile the official record of the namings as best as I could.

At first, I consulted former Yates County Historian Frances Dumas’ book “A Good Country, a Pleasant Habitation,” as I thought I had read a certain origin story in that book only to realize later I had seen it somewhere else. Though I did find several records of name origins in that book, when I couldn’t find a precise story, I look through our subject files on the individual towns. I even cracked open Stafford C. Cleveland’s “History and Directory of Yates County” to see what he had to say.

Then, of course, when I was researching a different topic in our collection of digitized newspapers, I came across an article written by Walter Wolcott – a historian of Penn Yan and Yates County – and published in several local newspapers in December 1920. The article is titled “How Names of Towns Originated: Names of the Nine Townships in Yates County Have Interesting History Information.” Voila, eureka, exactly what I was looking for.

With the information from Wolcott’s article and through research of my own in other sources, I now present the origins of the names of the nine towns in Yates County. Akin to what a playbill would do, I present these towns in the order of their incorporation.

Jerusalem, established as a town in what was then Ontario County in 1789, probably has the most well-known, and thus easiest to find out, origin story. As most people know, the Society of Friends, which followed the Public Universal Friend and became the first group to settle what is now Yates County, had a vision to create what they called the New Jerusalem – a place where they could set up their homes, their businesses, and their community. Though the territory of the current town is not where the Friends first settled, it is where the majority of the sect ended up and took its name for the vision they had for their community.

Middlesex was also organized as a town in 1789, shortly after the first permanent non-native, European settlers arrived on the western shore of Seneca Lake. However, at first it was called Augusta, though any source I consult indicates no one knows why that name was given. It seems another town in Oneida County took that name (possibly after this town was formed and possibly after a General Augustus VanHorn), so this town renamed itself Middlesex in 1808. This name apparently came from Middlesex County, Massachusetts where many of its settlers came from.

Benton was formed out of Jerusalem in 1803, though it originally was named Vernon (except a town in Oneida County took that name the year before) and then Snell (after Jacob Snell, a State Senator from Montgomery County who had no apparent connections to this part of Ontario County). It wasn’t until 1810 the town took on its current name; it could have been after Caleb Benton, who bought the title to this township and built a sawmill on Kashong Creek, or it could have been after his cousin Levi, to whom Caleb eventually sold the land. My sources point to Levi as the namesake.

Italy, even at its settlement, was the most remote and least populous part of what is now Yates County, and it remains so today. It was created as part of the town of Naples, which was organized as Middletown in 1789 and renamed in 1808, and Italy was split off from Naples in 1815. It is said Naples received its name from a surveyor who gazed upon the scenery around Canandaigua Lake and felt reminded of the seaside Italian city. When the town was divided, it is said, the decision was made to name the eastern portion after the city’s country.

Milo was formed out of Benton and organized in 1818, though it had been “settled almost as early as the very first pioneers came to City Hill,” according to Dumas. Its original name may have given Yates County another Italian flavor, as it was proposed as Milan after yet another European city. However, at the same time, a bill in the New York State Legislature organized a town of Milan in Dutchess County; thus, Samuel Lawrence, the Assemblyman for this area at the time, changed the name to Milo. According to Cleveland, the name could have come from a Greek athlete, a Roman tribune, or the Greek island of Milos.

We need to pause here for a moment and recognize Yates County, as these five towns alone made up the county as it was originally established 200 years ago. The name of the county is simple yet interesting – Joseph C. Yates was the governor of New York State at the time Yates County was formed. As Wolcott states, the governor reportedly signed his name on the bill creating the county “in a larger hand than usual.” Perhaps it was his exuberance for the legislation that led to the county being named for him or its being named for him that excited him.

Though they were not added to Yates County until 1826, Barrington was incorporated in 1822 and Starkey in 1824, albeit both were part of Steuben County at the time. Steuben County had been formed from Ontario in 1796, with Frederickstown – named after German immigrant Frederick Bartles – as its northernmost town. The town was enlarged in 1804, had Reading split off from it in 1806, and was renamed Wayne in 1808. Barrington was formed from Wayne in 1822, and Starkey was formed from Reading in 1824 when the latter became part of Schuyler County.

Like Middlesex, Barrington took its name from an area of Massachusetts – the town of Great Barrington – where its early settlers had come from. Starkey, meanwhile, was named for John Starkey, who had opened a store in 1816 and a post office in 1820.

Potter, which was “almost universally known as Potterstown,” even when its larger town was called Augusta, was officially established as its own town in 1832 and formed out of Middlesex. Finding the name origin of this town is almost as easy as finding the name origin of Jerusalem, and it is closely connected to that town. The Potter family, led by Judge Arnold Potter, were prominent followers of the Public Universal Friend and had purchased a tract of land comprising nearly the whole extent of the town. Judge Potter and his family also established the Potter Mansion, where they lived and which still stands in the town today.

Last but not least, Torrey has the dubious yet interesting distinction of being the site of the first permanent settlement of non-native, white Europeans while being the last town in Yates County to be officially incorporated. Its territory was taken from the southern portion of Benton and the northern portion of Milo, and it was named after Henry Torrey, the Potter town supervisor who was chairman of the county Board of Supervisors when the town was incorporated in 1851. Reportedly, the initial plan before the board to create a new town was voted down, but the board was persuaded to reconsider when the chairman got this honor.

Previous articles have covered the settlement and development – including name origins – of Yates County’s four villages, Penn Yan, Rushville, Dundee, and Dresden. And now you know the rest of the story on the origins of the towns’ names.

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[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Did Yates County used to have five villages?

By Jonathan Monfiletto

I would like to think the answer to the question I have posed in the title of this article is a resounding yes. After all, the Penn Yan Express of July 24, 1867 contained an item titled “Incorporated” and including the following declaration: “The village of Branchport has been granted a Charter and is now, as we understand, an incorporated village, in accordance with the vote of its citizens as announced in this paper two or three weeks since.”

Penn Yan became Yates County’s first officially incorporated village in 1833; Dundee became the second in 1848. Rushville followed in third in 1866; Dresden incorporated as the fourth – as far as I know – the next year. Indeed, the “Incorporated” item goes on to state: “Dresden is also aspiring to the dignity of an incorporated village, having voted in favor of incorporation at a late election.”

Regarding the vote in Branchport, the Express of July 10, 1867 indicated such an election took place in Branchport the Saturday before. “There was little or no opposition to the movement – the question being carried unanimously in the affirmative,” the newspaper stated in a “Branchport Items” column. “There is a good deal of enterprise and public spirit in Branchport, and this move is one that will add to the growth and thrift of that already thriving village.”

As delightful as these snippets are to uncover and peruse, the major problem with them – and it is a major problem in my mind – is they seem to be the only hard evidence I can uncover with regard to the idea (or fact?) that Branchport once existed as an officially incorporated village. Now a hamlet of the town of Jerusalem at the tip of the west branch of Keuka Lake, Branchport was once a thriving commercial area – as many small communities once were – and may have been its own village as well. However, to say the evidence is confusing and contradictory is about the same as saying the sky is blue and the grass is green. Yes, of course it is.

I located these items from the Express through our digitized newspaper database, which is hosted online through New York State Historical Newspapers (https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/). Yet, among the more than 700 results I browsed, I found neither proceedings of any Branchport village boards nor results of any Branchport village elections. A typewritten history of Branchport from our subject files asserts the village incorporated in 1867 and elected a president (a position similar to the office of mayor) and trustees on an annual basis. Another typewritten document from the files lists some of the “known presidents of the village”: Robert German in 1873, William Rynders in 1874 and again in 1881, Charles Hibbard from 1875 to 1876, and John L. Bronson in 1882.

Again, that seems to be the only hard evidence I can find to point to Branchport having been a real village (Pinocchio just exclaimed, “I’m a real boy!” in my head) at one point in time. Among the said 700-plus search results – using “village of Branchport” and “Branchport village” as keyword terms – nearly all of them reference a village of Branchport but seems to show it as nothing more than a wooden village (yes, a lame analogy with another Pinocchio reference), using village as a colloquial term. I have found similar references to the village of Bellona from sources who know Bellona is just a hamlet – a major one at that, having been settled around a stagecoach stop halfway between Geneva and Penn Yan – and not a village within the town of Benton.

Still, among those 700-plus search results are a few that seem to assert Branchport was indeed a real village, though to me they lack the smoking-gun hard evidence to make that a certain fact. For example, an article in the Yates County Chronicle, profiling 84-year-old Samuel Davis as one of the oldest residents of Jerusalem, contains an interesting parenthetical thought, noting Davis came to Jerusalem at the turn of the 19th century when “not a tree was cut in the vicinity of that somewhat assuming, (incorporated!) but moderate village of Branchport.” A letter to the editor in the Express in June 1874 references a meeting of the Board of Excise of the Village of Branchport during which the board granted a liquor license to a local drug store but denied the same to the Branchport Hotel. In December 1874, the Board of Health of the Village of Penn Yan banned residents of the village of Branchport from entering Penn Yan because of a small pox outbreak in Branchport.

These latter references are not alone in mentioning groups – including the Jerusalem Town Board, the Branchport Fire District, and the local Republican Committee – that met in, or discussed matters related to, a supposed village of Branchport or in mentioning a supposed village of Branchport alongside Yates County’s other villages. The Dundee Observer of June 8, 1881 listed population numbers for Yates County and its communities according to the 1880 U.S. Census; 271 people called Branchport home at that time. While there is an asterisk next to unincorporated villages – Bellona, Himrods’ Corners, and Eddytown among them – Branchport has no such asterisk, indicating it was an incorporated village. Proposed enlargements of the boundaries of the village of Penn Yan, considered by the New York State Legislature at various points, list the village of Branchport in relation to Penn Yan’s borders.

According to the November 22, 1882 edition of the Express, Louisa J. Wagener sued the village of Branchport after suffering an injury during a fall caused by – according to her argument – a defective or faulty sidewalk. “The injury sustained was the dislocation of the right shoulder joint, or the fracture of the neck of the scapula, by reason of which the use of the arm has been seriously and permanently impaired,” the newspaper noted in reporting the court awarded Wagener $2,000 (just over $64,000 in 2023 dollars). I threw the quote in for the shock value, but the item seems to indicate the village of Branchport was a real entity since only real entities can be sued. On the other hand, August 18, 1886, a publication called The Pioneer carried – on the same page – sketches titled “Village of Middlesex” and “Village of Branchport.” Since Middlesex has never been an incorporated village, though there is a hamlet of Middlesex Center, that image leads me to believe Branchport was never a truly incorporated village either.

On October 14, 1891, the Express carried the statistics for Yates County from the Census of the prior year. Branchport gained two more people for a population of 273, and once again the list seems to indicate it was an incorporated village. In fact, only the county’s nine towns and five incorporated villages are included; the list contains no other hamlets or communities. Indeed, October 6, 1897, while celebrating the opening of the Penn Yan, Keuka, Park, and Branchport Railway, the Chronicle published a brief history of the village of Branchport, noting: “In 1867 the village became incorporated, taking upon itself certain municipal characteristics that its local affairs might be ordered and governed independent of the township of Jerusalem, of which it forms a part.” Apparently, the village of Branchport was separate from the town of Jerusalem at some point and for at least three decades.

Over time, there are numerous seemingly colloquial references to the village of Branchport, where the newspaper calls the community a village but it isn’t necessarily an incorporated village. In October 1907, residents there started the Branchport Village Improvement Society, but whether they lived in an actual incorporated village then is unclear. Likewise, the Branchport Chamber of Commerce formed in March 1920 to oversee the community interests of the village of Branchport. When the Yates County Board of Supervisors established more county highways in March 1913, it referred to roadways in the village of Branchport.

When Yates County celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Sullivan Expedition in 1929, there was a general committee to oversee the county’s part of the commemoration in Geneva. Then, there were 14 smaller committees – one for each town and village – to oversee the festivities within its borders. That count includes committees for nine towns and five villages – with Branchport listed among the villages that exist today. So, Branchport may have been an incorporated village then, but the only record of an election taking place there that I could find was the vote to create the Branchport Fire District in 1933. Still, a report on the Jerusalem town budget in 1953 showed there were separate tax rates for the village of Branchport and for the town at large, indicating Branchport was a separate taxing entity and perhaps an incorporated village. Five years later, though, a legal notice referred to the hamlet of Branchport as the location of the Jerusalem town office.

In the 1960s, reports of a proposal for the town of Jerusalem to establish a water district in Branchport refers to the community as a village. A 1978 listing of deed transfers also refers to the village of Branchport alongside Yates County's other villages.

Branchport, of course, is no longer – if it ever was – an incorporated village and nowadays is considered a hamlet of the town of Jerusalem. Was Branchport ever an officially incorporated village? Looking at the evidence through more than 100 years of newspapers, part of me believes it was once a village and part of me thinks it never was a village. Can anyone out there shed some light for me?

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Taking matters into their own hands

By Jonathan Monfiletto

It is hard to tell whether the members of the United Detective Club actually went around fighting crime and catching bad guys or they were just a bunch of grown men playing cops and robbers and having a good time. I really would like to know more about this group.

In the collection of the Yates County History Center is a broadsheet document listing the officers and members of the club for 1894, apparently following the annual meeting for that year, and describing the club’s mission and objectives. By this point, the club was nearly a dozen years old, having incorporated on November 25, 1882 according to the document. In January 1883, the incorporation papers were signed by the New York State Supreme Court, signed and filed by the New York Secretary of State, and filed and recorded in the Yates County Clerk’s Office.

According to this document, the mission of the club was “to prevent the stealing of horses and other property,” and members paid $1 for a life membership. That membership obligated members to “hold themselves in readiness to pursue a thief in an hour’s notice.” Any member having a horse or property valued at least $25 stolen would alert the officers of the club and could select from among his fellow members “those who he wishes to be sent in pursuit.”

“…those sent in pursuit of a thief will bear in mind that upon you depends the success of the Club,” the document states. “You are to hold yourself in readiness to start at a moment’s notice; you are to obey the orders of the Directors, and when upon a search, be vigilant and active, and never abandon it while there is prospect of success; you are to communicate with, and ask assistance of the proper authorities, wherever you are.”

Members in pursuit of thieves were to follow any clues and exhaust any leads and apprise the club officers of their progress. Members would be “invested with the authority of the law,” according to the document, and should be armed.

“[Y]ou will remember that the capture of the thief is as much of an object as the recovery of the property,” the document states. “…in coming in contact with a thief it will be your duty to capture his body – alive if possible – but dead if necessary.”

As of 1894, the United Detective Club boasted 104 members; among the membership were four officers – a president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer – and 11 directors. The full name of the club, according to the document, was United Detective Club of Jerusalem, Yates County, NY with “including Benton, Potter, and Italy” listed on the document under the name of the club. Why Barrington, Middlesex, Milo, Starkey, and Torrey weren’t included, I’m not sure.

I’m also not really sure what the club was truly about. The digitized pages of our Yates County newspapers provide no coverage of the club or its members beyond announcements before and after its annual meetings, and even those are brief reports. If the United Detective Club actually participated in any activities of law enforcement, then it either eschewed mention in the newspapers or its pursuits weren’t considered newsworthy. The earliest mention of the club I could find in the newspapers, in fact, comes about a year after its incorporation, when the Penn Yan Express of December 27, 1882 carried a notice of a club meeting to take place on January 10, 1883 at Barrow’s Hall in Kinney’s Corners.

“The object of the meeting is to protect its members from the depredations of thieves,” the notice reads. Another thing I’m not sure about: whether criminal activity was that rampant in Yates County at that time.

The next mention doesn’t come until the Yates County Chronicle of February 7, 1894 with coverage of the annual meeting and election of officers as stated in the document from our collection. Four years later, the club seemed to step things up by gathering at the Knapp House in Penn Yan for its 1898 annual meeting. In 1900, the annual meeting took place at Cornwell’s Opera House in Penn Yan. By the way, none of the reports of these meetings divulge any details about the club’s activities.

The Chronicle’s report of the 1902 meeting doesn’t list where it took place but simply states, “The reports of the secretary and treasurer were satisfactory, showing a goodly increase in membership.” A report in the Express in December 1902 gives the number of members in the club, but the number is illegible on the digitized page – 100-something.

The club returned to the New Knapp House in Penn Yan for its 1903 meeting. In the report of that meeting, we learn: “The object of the club is to prevent the stealing of horses and other property. It numbers about 150 of the most prosperous farmers in the four towns represented.” The club gathered at the New Knapp House again in 1904, but we still don’t learn any specific details of its specific activities.

Aside from the “A Glance Backward” feature in The Chronicle-Express of September 19, 1940 listing a United Detective Club meeting from 50 years before, the 1904 meeting is the final newspaper mention for the club. It is possible it was around only for those 20 or so years.

What did the United Detective Club do, and what as its purpose? Did its members really go about trying to capture thieves and recover stolen property? Or did they just like getting together every year or so and having a good time?

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

The poor shall inherit the mansion

By Jonathan Monfiletto

For nearly 100 years, from just a few years after Yates County was formally established until the early 1920s, the Yates County Poor House – with a 200-acre farm whose products helped finance the cost of its operations and maintenance – stood, appropriately enough, on County House Road in the town of Jerusalem. In June 1922, though, a fire destroyed the nearly 50-year-old building, newly built in 1877, and the 34 inmates at the time were relocated to county homes in nearby counties.

Of course, that meant the county needed a new home for its “unfortunate and indigent” residents, as the original resolution stated the home’s purpose. The county Board of Supervisors soon had its answer in one of the most elegant mansions overlooking the west branch of Keuka Lake. A month after the fire, according to an article in the July 14, 1922 edition of the Penn Yan Democrat, the board closed a deal with Clinton B. Struble to purchase the Esperanza property near Branchport for $30,000.

The board met at a special meeting on Saturday, July 8, 1922 to approve the purchase, which it did in an 8-1 vote. According to the July 14, 1922 edition of the Rushville Chronicle & Gorham New Age, the supervisors gave their approval after “a thorough investigation of Esperanza” in company with Dr. Hill, of Albany, Superintendent of the New York State Board of Charities. Dr. Hill had inspected the buildings and property two days before and approved of the location. He promptly submitted the proposition to the State Board for a final decision.

Dr. Hill “seemed well pleased with Esperanza,” according to the Rushville Chronicle, but informed the supervisors they should plan on a building with fireproof walls and floors if they decided to rebuild on the site of the former county home. Planning to accommodate up to 50 inmates, such a project could cost close to $100,000 ($1.8 million in today’s money). Meanwhile, Struble had offered Esperanza – a home that “has been for sale for a long time,” according to the Democrat – to the county for much less than the cost to reconstruct the former home.

The purchase included the mansion home and about 50 acres of land, a packing house that could be used as a hospital for tuberculosis patients, and a reservoir that supplied ample water to the home. The sale did not include a vineyard or lakefront property. A noted advantage of the property was its location along a state road with daily trolley service along the Penn Yan, Keuka Park, and Branchport Railway. Because of this, the home was easily accessible to and from Penn Yan and Branchport.

The county planned to take possession of Esperanza on August 1. The Colonial-style mansion, according to the Democrat, contains 15 rooms with 12-foot ceilings. Before any inmates moved in, however, the county needed to install plumbing, electric lights, and a heating plant. The heating boiler from the former home was to be used, and electric current could be drawn from the trolley. Some of the rooms were to be divided by partitions to accommodate 40 inmates. Work began in October 1922, according to the May 4, 1933 edition of The Chronicle-Express, and finished within a year.

According to an article in the December 13, 1922 edition of the Yates County Chronicle, the construction involved additions and alterations such as a 20x65 dormitory, a 27x28 annex, and laundry cement cisterns as well as interior work. A balcony was built over the front porch, and the interior was remodeled according to the standards of the state for bathrooms, sleeping rooms, library, kitchen, and dining rooms to “provide the greatest possible comfort and safety of the occupants,” reported The Chronicle-Express.

B.F. Rogers, the contractor for the project, expected to have the building ready for occupancy by March 1, 1923 and completed by June 1. When complete, the building was to have room for 34 men and 21 women and “will be an ideal county home,” according to the Yates County Chronicle.

Rogers’ contract amounted to $37,300 and called for the complete work of the building and the heating and lighting equipment. The Yates County Chronicle reported supervisors had authorized the county treasurer to borrow $50,000 to complete the new county home. The county planned to offset the cost of the purchase and the construction by selling the property of the former county home. The barns and the walls of the home were left standing after the fire, and a tenant house and barn across the road also made up the altogether 215 acres of the property.

After almost a century on the road named for its location, the county house at Esperanza lasted just 25 years. According to a November 13, 1947 newspaper article, the supervisors authorized the welfare commissioner at Esperanza to discontinue the county home. The commissioner had previously been authorized to take no more admissions; there were only two inmates at the time, yet the house was kept up with the help of a housekeeper, a cook, and a furnace man who doubled as caretaker.

The commissioner had been placing other inmates, previously housed at Esperanza, in outside venues for several months. The county had found it was less expensive to have its needy residents cared for in private homes or nursing homes than to keep up the buildings and grounds at Esperanza.

On December 31, 1952, the supervisors approved selling the 50-acre site with three homes and a barn to Roger Fulkerson, of Starkey, for $11,200. The Fulkersons’ plans for the property went undisclosed at the time. However, the following month, the county attorney deemed that sale illegal, citing a recently enacted law requiring county-owned property to be sold through certain procedures involving a publicly advertised sale.

Thus, the supervisors authorized a public auction sale to take place January 19, 1953 on the steps of the county courthouse, with the Esperanza property being sold to the highest bidder. No bid could be refused at that time, though irresponsible bidding was mitigated with a requirement that 10 percent of the amount of the bid had to be posted at the time of its acceptance at the sale.

Garrett E. Bacorn, of Elmira, became the new owner of the Esperanza property with a winning bid of $12,500. He already owned the site of the former county home on County House Road and had extensively improved that property. At the time, Bacorn said he had a large family and would keep Esperanza for private use.

At the time of its sale, Esperanza had stood empty for five years. Now, the property went back into the hands of a private individual and onto the tax rolls for the first time in 30 years.

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

The good ol’ days of Italy Hill

By Jonathan Monfiletto

“How much more vividly we recall to memory incidents that happened during our younger years of life than we can events of much more importance that take place in later years.”

With this observation, Byron Ansley – writing as B.H. Ansley – began the first in a series of at least seven essays that appeared in The Chronicle-Express between March 1936 and May 1938. Whether commissioned as what we today might call a guest column or submitted as a letter to the editor, these essays describe in vivid and colorful detail Ansley’s childhood in Italy Hill, growing up on his family’s farm situated on the western border of the town of Jerusalem.

At the time Ansley wrote these essays, he and his wife, Minnie, were living at 460 North Main St. in Penn Yan – nowadays, this is roughly the vicinity across from the Yates Community Center and next to The Homestead nursing facility – and likely operating Ansley’s Dairy in the village. It might be difficult now to envision a farm within the village limits of Penn Yan, but it was there until at least the mid-1940s. Byron was in his mid-60s when he wrote these essays, and he had lived in Penn Yan for about 16 years after living and farming in Jerusalem.

I say Byron and Minnie “likely” operated Ansley’s Dairy because I haven’t yet seen “Byron Ansley” and “Ansley’s Dairy” in the same sentence anywhere, but I am almost certain Byron Ansley was the dairy’s owner. Someone once sent me a photo of a glass milk bottle embossed with “Ansley’s Dairy – Penn Yan, N.Y.,” which instigated my research into the Ansley family and their farming, and the limited information I have uncovered seems to show Byron and Minnie being the only Ansleys to live in Penn Yan and own a farm.

Whether Ansley intended to write his essays with any regularity, his first few contributions fall almost weekly – appearing in the March 26, April 9, April 16, and May 7, 1936 editions of The Chronicle Express. He talks about a period of time 50 years prior, in the mid-1880s when he was a young teenager; he talks about the remoteness of being 12 miles from the railroad and relying on the stagecoach to bring mail and newspapers. He recalls life on his parents’, William and Anna, farm and on the swamp the farm encompassed, listing the flora and fauna he discovered in his boyhood rambles. He names the classmates who attended Jerusalem School District No. 12 and their families who lived near and around the Ansleys, noting his family’s 10 children “furnished a baker’s dozen” of the school population.

Another time, Ansley writes about a hundred-year-old sawmill his father disassembled in order to re-use the lumber and about an old-fashioned threshing floor situated in a barn across from the schoolhouse. He remembers Mr. Prosser’s coal kiln – a circular structure 20 feet in diameter and 15 to feet in height, made of brick and mortar – and how a full load of black ash would burn and smolder for days to produce charcoal. The Ansley family, with William being an agent for farm machine companies, owned the first self-binder to cut and bind grain, and Ansley looks back on how those machines improved over time from unusable to efficient.

Ansley’s final three columns, at least from what I have been able to find, appear more infrequently – December 12, 1936; February 18, 1937; and May 19, 1938. He died at June 16, 1943 at age 70 – following a long illness, according to his obituary – so whether he realized it, these writings came toward the end of his life. It is these essays that offer the most colorful insight into Ansley’s boyhood adventures. In one, he describes a fox hunt “a triad of old veteran fox hunters” took part in – he being one of the three, presumably – but tells the tale from the perspective of the fox, who is eventually able to outfox (pun totally intended) the hunters and their dog and escape the hunt unscathed.

In another one, he relates the story of a drifting shyster who came to town under the guise of wanting to organize the local farmers into a new political party but wanting only to run off with their money. Ansley and some friends decided to hide out in the ceiling of the schoolhouse to witness a meeting of this shyster and the farmers because of some rumors they had heard about the initiation process of the group; in their attempt to get out of trouble when they were exposed, however, they ended up exposing the drifter for who he really was.

Ansley’s final essay – perhaps final indeed but at least final as far as I have been able to locate – brings a sense of nostalgia as he takes the reader along on a tramp through his beloved swamp. Throughout the journey, he stimulates one’s senses – the sight of the various bird species and the twilight sun, the sounds of farm animals and wildlife, the touch of the gentle breeze, the scent of the flowers and the trees – and makes a person feel as if he is actually walking in the swamp and not just reading words on paper.

So go Ansley’s remembrances of his boyhood in Italy Hill, on his family farm and in his beloved swamp and around this rural, remote community. Written 50 years after his teenage years, his words seem poignant and profound. Perhaps they are even more so today, nearly 90 years after they were first written.

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Falling head over heels and overboard

By Jonathan Monfiletto

If only the medium had been around at the time, then William Henry Stewart and Ann Elizabeth Ragg might have sold their story to a film company and had a movie made about their life and love. If not a serious romantic drama, then perhaps a Hallmark movie – the kind where boy meets girl, girl falls overboard, boy jumps in and rescues her, and the two live happily ever after, far away from the sea.

So goes the believe-it-or-not tale of falling – literally – head over heels in love for Captain Stewart and his first wife. It’s a tale that remains connected to a piece of Keuka Lake shore property called home by two of Yates County’s prominent families, and it’s a love so strong Captain Stewart left his life at sea for a life on the land.

Stewart was born on May 9, 1780 in Inverness, Scotland, and at an early age he was apprenticed aboard a man-of-war to study navigation. He quickly moved up the ranks from second mate to first mate and from second lieutenant to first lieutenant, and at a still-young age he became captain of the sailing vessel Antelope. He navigated around the world, making voyages to China, the East Indies, and many of the ports of Europe and South America. For several years, he was the captain of a packet service between Liverpool and New York City.

It was on one of these trips that Stewart was given a task by George Ragg, a wealthy merchant of New York who had come from England and left a daughter behind there. Ragg commissioned Stewart to bring his daughter, Ann Elizabeth, to America for him. She had apparently just finished her education in England and was returning to her parents’ home in New York. During the journey, a violent storm arose and passengers were kept belowdecks for safety.

According to a 1941 article in The Chronicle-Express, Miss Ragg had come up on deck for whatever reason when a sailor called that a wave was coming. The lady was about to be washed overboard when Captain Stewart caught her in his arms and saved her. According to a Stewart family history (possibly written by Stafford C. Cleveland as a precursor to his 1873 history of Yates County), however, Miss Ragg was indeed washed overboard by the wave dashing across the deck. Captain Stewart risked his life by plunging into the water and saving her from the sea.

Whichever version is more accurate, they agree Ann Elizabeth showed William Henry her gratitude by rewarding him with her undying love and devotion. During shore leave upon reaching New York, she invited the captain to visit her home and meet her parents, and their romance blossomed. The captain – and his display of bravery and courage – seems to have impressed the Raggs, and William Henry and Ann Elizabeth married on March 20, 1817 at her parents’ home.

It may have been a whirlwind marriage, as the family history indicates the Stewarts married upon reaching New York and moved to Yates County just two weeks after getting married. They settled on a farm on the west side of the east branch of Keuka Lake, about 3.5 miles south of Penn Yan in the town of Jerusalem. Captain Stewart’s father-in-law may have given the newlyweds the farm along with an annual income to meet their needs beyond the output of the farm. Mr. Ragg was wealthy certainly, but his gift might also have been an inducement for his son-in-law to quit his seafaring lifestyle and settle down permanently on the land.

Stewart later purchased 31 more acres so the farm property extended to the lake. However vibrant the Stewarts’ love, it was relatively brief. Ann Elizabeth died on May 29, 1835, leaving behind her husband and seven children. Stewart subsequently married Emma J. Merritt, daughter of John and sister of LaFayette, of the Jerusalem Merritt family. Stewart and his second wife had six more children, and they lived on the homestead until his death on July 18, 1852.

The legacy of the Stewart family still echoes on this Keuka Lake property, but the home standing there now is not the one this family lived in. That home was built by LaFayette Merritt in the Italianate style during the 1870s in a period of prosperity following the Civil War when that style was popular among homes. Merritt acquired the property when his sister remarried to James T. Davis after Stewart’s death. The Merritt family had moved to Yates County from Duchess County in 1825, when LaFayette was less than a year old, and settled on a large tract of land in Jerusalem the family converted into a substantial farm.

During LaFayette’s child on his family homestead, he gained “a relish for farming, and consequently became skillful in handling soils, stock, fruit trees and vines,” according to Lewis Aldrich’s 1892 “History of Yates County, “and not only made a good living but accumulated a comfortable property.” This included working part of the family farm in his adulthood, perhaps before or even after he married Hannah Bennet at age 34. With “an eye to beauty as well as profit,” he “surrounded and decorated his home with many attractive features.”

The grounds of the Stewart-turned-Merritt property once contained six large spruce trees and a couple of clumps of spring flowers, which may have been LaFayette’s influence. As well as building the home that still stands there on West Lake Road, he continued to improve upon and beautify the property the Stewart family had developed. “He had a lively taste for the beautiful and orderly, and impressed his ideas and feelings upon his farm, vineyards, and residence,” Aldrich states. After his death on April 22, 1891, his wife and one son remained living on the homestead.

Merritt wasn’t known only for his farming savvy, however, but also for his good character. “As a boy he was bright, industrious, temperate, and trustworthy,” according to Aldrich, “and grew to be a man of integrity, sound judgment and excellent habits.” He joined the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Penn Yan, which stood against slavery and for temperance, and took every chance to speak up for the causes he believed in. He was an early supporter of Keuka College when it was first proposed, and he devoted both his time and money to make it successful.

Merritt’s biography in Aldrich’s book reads like a eulogy, perhaps because his death occurred just a year before the book was published and was likely fresh on the minds of the people who knew him. Aldrich notes Merritt was “instinctively honest, honorable and kind, and frowned upon all injustice, oppression, and coarseness in speech, or conduct. … His word was as good as his bond and his honor above reproach.” It was said he delighted in anything that benefited the people around him and felt pain from anything that harmed them, until the day he died.

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

The great Jerusalem Antislavery Society mystery

By Jonathan Monfiletto

OK, so there is no “great mystery” involving the Jerusalem Antislavery Society, at least none that I am aware of in the wider universe. Yet, the origin and history of the organization is nevertheless a great mystery to me.

We have a folder in our subject files titled “African American History,” so after writing a piece about World War I veteran Franklin Clark and Civil War veteran Nathaniel Clark – who I recently discovered were grandson and grandfather, respectively, so that’s another story for another day – I browsed this folder from end to end to see what other stories I could uncover and retell. Among other items I hope to write about in the future, I found an apparent photocopy of a handwritten document titled “Constitution of Jerusalem Antislavery Society.”

This document has piqued my curiosity since I found it, almost to a frustrating extent; we appear not to have the original document anywhere in our collection at the History Center, and two of our members – one the Jerusalem Town Historian, the other the head of the Jerusalem History Club – know no other information about the document or the society. The document contains neither the year of the constitution nor the names of the society’s members; it is possible the society is not even related to Jerusalem, New York.

So, rather than detail the history of this apparently local antislavery society – in a region where the cause for abolition was very much championed and celebrated – as I had hoped, I will simply transcribe the text of the constitution and allow the document to speak for itself. To me, it is an interesting artifact of the pre-abolition time period that provides incredible insight into the thoughts and actions of the abolition movement, both within Yates County and throughout the United States.

My transcription presents the Constitution of Jerusalem Antislavery Society in its entirety as found on the apparent photocopy of the original handwritten document; few spelling and grammatical corrections were made to allow the document to be authentic but also allow for order and sense. I have been unable to find any other sources in our collection or on the internet that mention the Jerusalem Antislavery Society.

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Constitution of Jerusalem Antislavery Society

 Preamble

Whereas Slavery is admitted by almost the whole world to be a very great evil, and our Congress as well as the Parliament of Great Britain have pronounced the African Slave trade to be piracy, and those engaged in it to be worthy of death, and whereas we cannot discover any difference in the crimes of stealing an infant from its mother in Africa and selling it, or forcibly taking one from its mother in America and selling it; and whereas many are thus yearly taken and sold at Washington the capital of our country, and their frantic parents never permitted to behold them again, whilst Congress professes a constitutional right to put an end to this wicked traffic, and whereas the relicks of Slavery yet exist in our own state, in asmuch as the law permits slaveholders to bring slaves into the state and hold them as such, nine months, and whereas we believe that it is practicable, by appeals to the consciences, hearts and interest of the people to awaken a public sentiment throughout the nation that will be opposed to the continuance of slavery in any part of the republic; and whereas we believe we owe it to the oppressed, to our fellow citizens who hold slaves, to our whole country, and to God, to do all that we consistently can, to bring about the extinction of slavery, we do hereby agree, with a prayerful reliance on Divine aid, to form ourselves into a Society, to be governed by the following.

 Constitution

Art. 1 – This society shall be called Jerusalem Anti Slavery Society.

Art. 2 – The object of this Society is to aid in correcting public centiment upon the subject of American Slavery; as correct legislation upon any subject when necessary, inevitably follows correct public Opinion. Hence the Society will not step upon the arena of political action and strife but confine its labours to the convincing of the public that no man has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother, to hold or acknowledge him for one moment as a piece of merchandise – to keep back his hire by fraud – or to brutalize his mind by denying him the means of intellectual, social, and moral improvement that as the right to enjoy liberty is inalienable, to invade it is to usurp the prerogative of Jehovah; that all law that graduates human or political rights upon a difference of birth, or complexion is unjust and oppressive; that there is no difference in principle, between the African slave trade and American slavery, and hence that in view of the civil and religious privileges of this nation, the guilt of its oppression is unequalled by any other on the face of the earth and therefore

That it is bound to repent instantly, to undo the heavy burden to break every yoke and let the oppressed go free.

Art 3. – This Society shall aim to elevate the character and condition of the people of color, by encouraging their intellectual and moral improvement, but it will never in any way countenance the oppressed in vindicating their rights by resorting to physical force.

Art. 4 – Any person who consents to the principles of this Constitution may be a member of this Society, and shall be entitled to vote at its meetings.

Art. 5 – The officers of this Society shall be a President, two Vice Presidents, a Secretary, a Treasurer, and a Board of Managers, composed of the above and seven other members of the Society. They shall be annually elected by the members of the Society, and seven shall constitute a quorum.

Art. 6 – The Board of Managers shall direct the Treasurer in the application of all moneys, and call special meetings of the Society, make an annual written report of their doings, the income, expenditure, and funds of the Society, and shall hold stated meetings, and adopt the most energetic measures in their power to advance the objects of the Society.

Art. 7 – The President shall preside at all meetings of the Society, or in his absence one of the Vice Presidents, or in their absence a President pro tem. The Secretary shall conduct the correspondence of the Society, and keep records of its doings, and notify all meetings of the Society. The Treasurer shall receive collections and donations for the Society, hold its funds, make payments at the directions of the Managers and present a written and audited account to accompany the annual report.

Art. 8 – An annual meeting of the Society shall be held at such time and place, as the Board of Managers may direct, when the annual report shall be read, appropriate addresses delivered, the officers chosen, and such other business transacted as shall be deemed expedient.

Art. 9 – This Constitution may be amended at any annual meeting of the Society, by a vote of two thirds of the members present, provided the amendments proposed have been previously submitted in writing to the Board of Managers.

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