Community leaders from 1800s featured on annual tour

Photos by Tom Rivers

ALBION – Sue Starkweather Miller, the village of Albion historian,  speaks on Sunday at the grave of Anthony Tripp Sr., a Revolutionary War soldier who enlisted three times. He first served in Rhode Island in 1777 at age 15 as a drummer for three weeks. In 1779, he served in New York for two months and then for three more months in 1780.

He settled in Albion in 1811. Tripp died in 1846 at age 84.

The fence at Mount Albion was purchased by his wife Polly who had saved her widow’s pension funds.

He was one of four Revolutionary War soldiers highlighted on Sunday’s tour of Mount Albion Cemetery. This was the fifth and final of the local cemetery tours organized by the Orleans County Historical Association. There have been annual cemetery tours at Mount Albion since 1994.

Mount Albion was the first site from Orleans County to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Sept. 27, 1976. The 50^th anniversary of that designation is less than a month away.

About 100 people attended the tour which started at the chapel, a building from 1875 which just got a new slate roof to replace the original. The project was funded by donations from the community.

People were able to check the inside of the chapel, which will see major interior restorations beginning this winter.

The drop ceiling was recently removed to reveal a plaster and lathe vaulted ceiling.

The complete chapel restoration is a $225,000 project for the roof, exterior and interior work. Once it’s complete, Starkweather Miller said the chapel could be used for funerals, historical talks and other events.

People walk through the chapel including the area in the back where up to 16 caskets could be stored during the winter.

Upcoming work inside includes replastering of the north wall; electrical upgrades (wiring, outlets, internal and external lighting); heating unit for seasonal use; removal of old floor, repair subfloor and put in a new floor; and refurbish exterior doors and window trim.

Bill Lattin, retired county historian, co-led the tour with Starkweather Miller. He is holding a head board for Joseph White, a Civil War soldier buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Kendall. Lattin acquired the head board in the 1960s. It was in a janitor’s closet at the county courthouse.

Head boards temporarily were used until a headstone could be made and set.

Starkweather Miller shares about Howland Kimball, who entered the militia as private in Rhode Island and served for about six months. He lived to be about 95, dying in 1854. He was married to Hannah and had eight children.

William Butts, another Revolutionary War soldier, lived to be 85, dying in1841. He was originally from Rhode Island, and was a private, corporal and sergeant in Massachusetts. He served in 1775 to 1777, then again in 1779 and 1782. He and his family moved to Albion in 1835. He and his wife Rachel were married for 62 years.

The tour also featured Daniel Thurston, a Revolutionary War soldier who served in the New York militia. He died in 1829 at age 92. He was a farmer and a deacon in the Presbyterian Church for over 50 years.

Bill Lattin speaks by the grave of the Honorable Sanford E. Church, who served as lieutenant governor of New York, state comptroller and chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals. He died on May 14, 1880. His grave includes an elaborate marble canopy supported by red granite pillars.

The hitching post at far left is positioned in a stomping pad for horses. The pad helped to protect the dirt from the horses, Lattin said.

The tour included a stop at the grave for Michael Hanly, the first superintendent of Mount Albion Cemetery from 1862 to 1894. He lived from Sept. 4, 1821 to Sept. 11, 1907. He is buried next to wife Catherine.

Before there was a superintendent, people had to take care of their own plots, and not everyone kept them up, Starkweather Miller said.

The community has been very fortunate to have cemetery superintendents and employees so committed to the upkeep of the cemetery, she said.

“From the very first superintendent until now, I’ve seen nothing but dedication and care for this cemetery,” Starkweather Miller said.

Mount Albion opened in 1843. It was initially 25 acres that were purchased at $40 an acre or $1,000 total.

Daniel Cady, a lawyer and father of famed women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, gave the dedicatory address on Sept. 7, 1843 from this park in the cemetery.

The speech began:

“We have met to provide a mansion for the dead! We have come out of our quiet homes and the bright sun light and the crowded streets, and all the garish show of life to this secluded spot, to set apart a last final resting place where the weary pilgrim – the wandered through life’s thorny maze, may come and lay down his burdened form – where families may gather together the forms of those, their loved and lost ones – and whose sire and son, blooming youth and any age, the beautiful and the gifted, may sleep in undisturbed repose till the morning of the Resurrection.”

The tour highlighted Ebenezer Rogers, a shoemaker and tanner who later became a farmer. His brick home on South Main Street, just north of Allen Road, is the oldest house in Albion.

Building began in 1816 and was completed in 1820 for Rogers, who helped start the Barre Center Presbyterian Church as well as the First Presbyterian Church in Albion. The Presbyterian Church in Albion had 16 members when  the society formed in 1826 and grew to 420 by 1853.

Starkweather Miller also highlighted Joseph Hart. She has lived in his house for more than 50 years on South Main Street.

That house  was constructed between 1820-23 in the federal style. It was built to replace a log cabin which Joseph Hart erected in 1811/12 as an early settler. In 1921, the home was moved to its current location at 323 South Main St.

Joseph’s Hart son, Elizur, was a banker and congressman. He left $50,0000 for the First Presbyterian Church of Albion, plus another $5,000 for its Sunday school.

He helped has the money to erect the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, a Civil War memorial for the nearly 500 soldiers from the cunty killed in the war. It was dedicated on the 100^th anniversary of the USA –  July 4, 1876.

Bill Lattin highlights the monument for John Proctor, a key leader among the pioneers. He helped settle the hamlet of Childs in Gaines. Proctor first came to this area in 1810 at the age of 23 after purchasing several large parcels of land from the Holland Land Office.

He built a cabin in what is now Childs and lived modestly for his first few years in the area, surviving on a few acres of corn, wheat, and potatoes.

Perhaps John Proctor’s most famous accomplishment is his role as the “Paul Revere of Ridge Road.” In December of 1813, Proctor’s nearest neighbor woke him in the middle of the night to bring word that the British were invading from Canada and had already burned the village of Lewiston.

Proctor owned the only horse in the area, and so he rode 15 miles from Childs to Clarkson to warn other settlers that the British were coming.

Proctor had a vision for the hamlet and began to sell and rent his land to settlers, businesses, and churches that were starting to spring up in and around what is now Childs. In 1834 he paid for the construction of a cobblestone church for the Universalist Society of Gaines, and later sold a house of worship to the Free Congregationalist Church, an abolitionist congregation. Proctor was such a notable figure that before he named the hamlet Fair Haven, it was colloquially referred to as “Proctor’s Corners.”

Although he was an outstanding member of the community, Proctor’s personal life was marked by tragedy. John was married four times and had to bury three of his wives, and while he had six children, only two of them survived to adulthood.

The Proctor family obelisk memorialize Proctor’s wives and children, several of whom died in a typhoid breakout in 1828.

An Albion girl changed the face of the American presidency. Grace Bedell wrote the letter to Abraham Lincoln urging him to grow a beard to improve his chances for getting electing as president.

Her parents, Norman and Amanda, are buried at Mount Albion.

Grace Bedell grew up in Albion, but briefly lived in Westfield. She mailed the letter to Lincoln, recommending he grow whiskers, when she lived in Westfield.

Grace Bedell’s father Norman attended a country fair in the fall of 1860 and brought home a campaign poster featuring Abraham Lincoln and his vice presidential running mate Hannibal Hamlin. Grace, 11, didn’t see how Lincoln could win, not with that face. He was too homely looking. But Bedell, who lived in a pro-abolitionist home, had an idea that would make Lincoln more appealing to the masses: Grow a beard. On Oct. 15, 1860, she mailed a letter to Lincoln.

The Bedell family had lived in Albion for 40 years before they moved to Westfield in 1859. They stayed two years before returning to Albion.