By Bill Lattin, Orleans County retired historian

GAINES – In the year 1959, the Town of Gaines celebrated its sesquicentennial with various events and a huge parade on Route 104.

As part of that 150th anniversary celebration more than a half century ago, we see here sisters, Maude Perry (left) and Doris Kelley, dressed for the occasion.

By Bill Lattin
Retired Orleans County Historian

ALBION – In this photo from 1935 we see the students and their teacher from District No. 9, which served both parts of Albion and Murray.

The schoolhouse, known as The Yellow Schoolhouse, was located on the west side of Transit Road just south of Route 31. It was always painted a bright yellow and served as a landmark for many years.

The students which are numbered here are identified as follows: 1. Catherine Christopher; 2. Betty Lou Lewis; 3. Alfred Christopher; 4. Angelo Christopher; 5. Carmel Christopher; 6. Frank Christopher; 7. Lloyd Kuhn Jr. and 8. Mary Jane Kuhn.

The teacher standing behind the pupils is believed to be Ella Bacon.

Editor’s Note: We have a few more Vintage Orleans photos that Bill Lattin shared with us before he retired on Dec. 31.

Legislature chairman wants push for heritage tourism

File photo by Tom Rivers – Matt Ballard, interim director of the Cobblestone Museum, is pictured in front of the Cobblestone Universalist Church built in 1834. Ballard was appointed the county’s new historian today.

ALBION – Orleans County’s new historian is only 26. But Matthew Ballard already has shown a commitment to historical initiatives.

Ballard has served as interim director at the Cobblestone Museum for more than a year, and organized an exhibit and lecture series at the museum on medical history in Orleans County and Western New York.

He created a web site in 2010, www.albionpolonia.com, that highlights the history and art of the former St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Albion. Ballard grew up on Brown Street and was part of the St. Mary’s community while growing up. He was an altar server.

The Albion Polonia site includes baptismal records, marriage licenses, and funerals of the Polish community. Ballard has photos of many of the weddings. He has a searchable database that helps people on a genealogical quest.

Genesee Community College and Orleans Hub named Ballard one of the inaugural “Heritage Heroes” during a ceremony last April during the Civil War Encampment in Medina.

Ballard wants to build an on-line resource of many of the artifacts in the historian’s office. He praised the work done by Bill Lattin, the county historian for over 35 years. Lattin retired on Dec. 31.

“Bill has done a great job getting the history of the county out to the community and to all of Western New York,” Ballard said.

He intends to write a regular historical column for local publications, and wants to take stock of the photos and artifacts in the historian’s office. He said the county may want to pursue grants for archiving the materials and safeguarding them for the future.

Lattin has been pushing for Ballard to be historian for many months. Lattin said he observed Ballard give a tour of St. Mary’s several years ago, and Lattin saw Ballard’s knowledge of the church and community, and his ability to captivate a crowd with stories.

Lattin also was the Cobblestone Museum director before retiring. He said Ballard has proven himself in that role, bringing a high level of professionalism, especially with his organization of the medical exhibit. Ballard is now putting together an exhibit on World War I, and some of the local ties to that war from a century ago.

“I’ve really been impressed by what Matt has done,” Lattin said after Ballard was appointed historian by the County Legislature this afternoon. The part-time position pays $8,000 a year.

Orleans County Legislature Chairman David Callard wants to see Ballard work with local historical groups to help develop a heritage trail that would be county-wide. Callard said a “Sandstone Trail” could be one possibility.

He noted the state is providing funding for such endeavors that promote community pride, link attractions and draw visitors.

Ballard said the county is fortunate to have many dedicated historical enthusiasts. He mentioned the Clarendon Historical Society, Medina Sandstone Society, Orleans County Genealogical Society (where he is treasurer), Cobblestone Society, and several other local historical societies.

“There are a lot of people really interested and dedicated to local history,” Ballard said. “We need to draw them together to see what we can do as a group.”

Frederick Douglass addressed crowds in Medina

Courtesy of Chris Busch, ORG – A new historical marker, planned to be erected on Main Street in Medina, highlights abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who visited Medina to speak against slavery.

MEDINA – In 1849, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech in Medina at the former Methodist Episcopal Church on Main Street (the current Fuller block, home of Main Street Appliance).

Douglass, a leading abolitionist and editor of The North Star newspaper in Rochester, also visited Medina in 1869 and gave a celebratory address for Emancipation. That event was attended by African-Americans from throughout the state.

A new historical marker will highlight those visits by Douglass. The Orleans Renaissance Group has lined up $1,755 in contributions for the historical marker.

Chris Busch, ORG vice chairman, would like to have the marker up in time for the Civil War celebration in Medina in late April. He would like a Frederick Douglass re-enactor to also be part of the marker’s dedication.

The Village Board needs to approve the marker’s placement and accept it. The issue is on the board’s agenda for its 7 p.m. meeting today at the Shelby Town Hall.

Douglass frequently visited Orleans County and spoke at churches and meeting houses, trying to rally the community for the abolition cause.

He found an agreeable audience.

Local historian Dee Robinson found reports of a meeting in 1850 at the Orleans County Courthouse in Albion. Congress had just passed the Fugitive Slave Act, saying runaway slaves needed to be returned, but Orleans residents voted to not enforce the law locally.

“Aside from President Lincoln, Frederick Douglass stands as the most significant and consequential figure in the 19th century who routinely placed his life in danger in the cause of freedom and justice,” Busch said.

“The fact that the Village of Medina and Douglass are intertwined is a tremendous point of pride and should stand as an inspiration to current and future generations.”

Photo courtesy of Orleans County Department of History – Members of the Ku Klux Klan met in Albion for a rally in September 1925 at the Fairgrounds on Washington Street.

MEDINA – Lee-Whedon Memorial Library on Monday will host a program that explores the rise of the Ku Klux Klan locally in the early 1900s.

The waves of European immigrants who moved to the United States early in the 20th Century faced hostility and prejudice. The attitudes and fears of the established “old immigrants” brought about a revival of the KKK in the North.

Guest speaker Ray Cianfrini will present a program, “Clash of Cultures: the Rise of the KKK in Genesee County,” at 7 p.m. Monday at library, 620 West Ave.

Cianfrini, an Oakfield attorney and chairman of the Genesee County Legislature, has researched the Klan in Genesee and Orleans counties and unearthed a trove of photographs, newspaper articles and other documents that chronicle the sudden and frightening popularity of this fearful group in this area.

Cianfrini’s program is presented by the Medina Historical Society.

Provided photo – This photograph shows Sgt. Leo J. Grabowski, a prisoner of war in World War II with two Japanese guards. The one standing is likely Watanabe, known as “The Bird” in the film “Unbroken.”

Press Release, GCC

BATAVIA – Although the film “Unbroken” was not nominated for Best Picture for this year’s Academy Awards Ceremony scheduled on Feb. 22, the story of a American soldier surviving a World War II Japanese prisoner of war camp resonated with Edward Grabowski and his Introduction to Criminal Justice students at Genesee Community College.

While the film captures the extraordinary life and survival of Louis Zamperini, Grabowski’s father survived the horrors of a Japanese POW camp, and experienced his own hellish encounters with some of the guards, including the notorious Watanabe, the brutal guard known as “The Bird” who tortured and killed many prisoners.

When Ed Grabowski of Medina happened to mention this coincidence to his students, they wanted to know more. And when he told them he had a photograph of his father standing behind two Japanese guards – one likely “The Bird” – his students wanted to see it.

“They found it interesting so I brought in some of the historic materials about my father to share,” said Grabowski, who is an attorney with an office in Medina.

The photograph taken by a French photographer shows Leo J. Grabowski standing in a doorway unnoticed by the two prison guards who are in the foreground holding their rifles.

“I am 99 percent sure that the guard standing is Watanabe,” Grabowski stated. “My father said he would have been brutally beaten by those guards if they had known he was in the photograph.”

Sergeant Leo Grabowski served in the U.S. Army from 1932 through 1945, and was one of the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor as part of the 31st Infantry at Fort Santiago in Manila.

Captured by the Japanese, Grabowski survived the 60-mile Bataan Death March through the Philippine jungles to Camp O’Donnell. From there he was among the thousands transferred in overloaded freight cars, and he was eventually shipped to Mitsushima, a prisoner of war camp northwest of Tokyo where prisoners provided slave labor to construct the Hiraoka Dam.

Like Zamperini in “Unbroken,” Grabowski senior made it home bearing the scars of a POW, but he put together a meaningful post-war life with a career and having a family, including three children. His youngest son, Edward, spent 27 years teaching criminal justice at BOCES, and is now adjunct faculty member at GCC.

Upon request, he reflects on his father’s military distinctions with quiet pride, sharing a little of that tortured past through books, photos and clippings from decades-old newspapers. In doing so, he is giving his students a sense of world history, not from the silver screen of Hollywood or a text book, but from the connection of family and the bond of father and son.

By Bill Lattin
retired Orleans County Historian

ALBION – It is believed this picture was taken in early 1960 at a retirement party for Francis A. Sturges, Orleans County Judge, in the center. He served from 1951 to 1959.

Others in the photo include, from left: Carl I. Bergerson, superintendent of Albion schools; Archie Chapman, representing Sheret Post No. 35 of the American Legion, in which Judge Sturges was a member; Judge Sturges; Judge J. Kenneth Serve, who succeeded Francis Sturges, serving until 1973 as County Judge; and the Rev. Dr. Joseph L. Sullivan, minister of the Pullman Memorial Universalist Church, in which Judge Sturges served as a long-time member and trustee.

Provided photos – Rho Mitchell is pictured with Lorraine Oakley and the giant Candy Canes he made from drainage pipe and red ribbons. Mitchell placed them along Route 31 as a holiday decorations.

ALBION – As kids growing up in Albion, David and Patty Mitchell remember helping their father wrap red ribbon on white drainage pipes. Rho Mitchell was making giant Candy Canes as holiday decorations along Route 31.

It was one of the many ways he tried to promote community pride. His children, including another son Michael Mitchell, all played in the Clown Band and the Bum Band. Their father was the ringleader. Patty played the clarinet, David the trombone, and Michael the trumpet.

“We just had fun and staggered around the street during parades,” David said.

Rho Mitchell, co-founder of a funeral home in Albion in 1957, died on Feb. 1 at age 86. He is being remembered as a devoted community member, involved in many causes.

Rho Mitchell, left, leads the brass percussion section of the Lions Club Clown Band in May 1982. Other members pictured include, from left: Howard Cotton, drummer; Mark Brailey, trombone; Frank Mack, saxophone; Tom Fitzak, trumpet; Mike Coville, bass; Jeff Long, trumpet; and John Long, trumpet.

“He was a real sparkplug,” said John Keding, a long-time leader in the Albion Lions Club. “He did a lot of work, there’s no question about it. He came up with a lot of ideas and he worked on it. He didn’t just leave the work to other people.”

Keding and Mitchell were longtime friends and members of the Lions Club. Keding was impressed with Mitchell’s creativity and commitment, especially the Candy Canes that lined the Route 31 corridor. Most of the community decorations were focused in the downtown. Mitchell wanted 31 to be jazzed up for the holidays.

Mitchell was a medic in the Navy during the Korean War. Afterhis military service, he was active in the American Legion, twice serving as commander.

Rho Mitchell plays Taps at a Memorial Day service on West Park Street with the VFW and American Legion.

He served as funeral director at many of the services for veterans. He brought along his trumpet and played “Taps” at numerous funerals and also on Memorial Day.

Rho loved music, his children said, and he wanted to promote it as much as possible in the community. Besides the Clown and Bum bands, he recruited members for the Legion Band. When some of the members became older senior citizens and struggled to march and play on a parade route, Mitchell secured a school bus for the band. He and others took the top off the bus so the band could be seen in parades.

“He was a real go-getter,” Keding said. “He made things go.”

Mitchell grew up in Elmira. He married his high school sweetheart, Beverly. She was a year behind him in school. They had a study hall together in high school.

“We sat across from each other and he completely ignored me,” his wife said. “I was surprised when he asked me out for Valentine’s day.”

They attended a dance together and Rho, “Buck” as his wife calls him, impressed her by dancing the Jitterbug.

“He was a good dancer,” said Mrs. Mitchell, his wife of 64 years. “I had two left feet.”

Mitchell initially eyed a career in the printing business as a linotypist. But he was allergic to the lead used in printing. He had a friend whose father was in the funeral business. He suggested Rho pursue it as a career.

After serving in the Korean War as a medic, he graduated from Simmons Institute of Funeral Service in Syracuse. He moved to Albion in 1955, and started his funeral director career at the former Leon Grinnell Funeral Home. At the time Albion had four funeral homes.

“He wanted to help people,” David said. “Being a funeral director came natural for him.”

Rho Mitchell and Ken Scharett started Scharett-Mitchell Funeral Home in Albion in 1957. Here is how the property looked in 1958. Mitchell, a skilled woodworker, made the sign.

Mitchell had hoped to buy the Grinnell business in 1957. Grinnell sold it to another funeral director that year. Mitchell enjoyed the Albion community and didn’t want to leave.

Rho and a friend, a fellow funeral director Ken Scharett, started Scharett Mitchell Funeral Home in Albion in late 1957 at the Christopher Mitchell Funeral Homes site on Route 31. The site has been expanded twice since then.

Scharett retired in 1974. Mitchell joined with Michael Christopher and the two opened a new funeral home in Holley in 1971 on Route 31. Christopher would retire from the business in 1982.

Rho’s son David joined Christopher Mitchell in 1984 and David’s son Josh became a funeral director, joining the family business in 2012.

Rho Mitchell is pictured in 2012 with his son David and grandson Josh. All three made their careers as funeral directors. Bruce Landis took this photo that hangs inside Christopher Mitchell Funeral Homes.

David said his father welcomed input from his son and staff.

“I was very blessed with dad from a business end,” David said. “He wanted to know what ideas I had to improve the business. He wasn’t stuck in his ways.”

His father was skilled as a woodworker and made wagons, model ships, petal cars and dump trucks as toys for his grandchildren. Those toys have endured for decades and David and Josh say they will be treasured by the family for generations to come.

Rho and his wife moved to Florida for the winters in 1991. Rho was seriously injured in a car accident in 1997 in Florida. He had to relearn to walk and talk after suffering a brain inury, as well as a broken neck and other bones.

He was at The Villages of Orleans Health and Rehabilitation Center in Albion the past four years.

“They took wonderful care of him,” David said. “We can’t say enough about the staff.”
Patty, a vocational painting and wall papering instructor at the Orleans Correctional Facility, said her father left a powerful legacy in the community.

“It was all about working together and making it a better place,” she said.

Happy 204th Birthday to Horace Greeley!

Editor of the New York Tribune and one-time presidential candidate, Greeley was once owner of the Ward House here at The Cobblestone Museum. Co-signing the mortgage for the small cobblestone home was the only way his impecunious aunt and uncle could afford to purchase the home.

When Greeley’s Uncle Benjamin Dwinnell became ill and could no longer make payments on the mortgage, Horace took control of the property. We believe he made a brief visit to Gaines in the mid-1860s to sell the house at auction.

Editor’s note: Greeley’s birthday was on Tuesday. He lived to be 61, served as a congressman and also ran for U.S. president against Ulysses Grant in 1872.

Photo by Matt Ballard

Orleans welcomed Frederick Douglass, Underground Railroad and freed slaves

Photos by Tom Rivers  – Dee Robinson, a historian, shares a lecture today at the Hoag Library on early black history in Orleans County. The program was part of a Black History Month celebration.

ALBION – Orleans County was a stronghold for the abolition movement, as churches broke free from more conservative congregations to press freedom for slaves.

Schools urged students to favor the cause, and even welcomed a black student at the Albion Academy, decades before the Civil War.

Residents served as conductors on the Underground Railroad and they refused to follow the Fugitive Slave Act, defying the law that said runaway slaves needed to be returned to their owners.

Dee Robinson, the Gaines town historian, discussed the county’s anti-slavery leanings during a history talk today at Hoag Library.

“Albion schools have always been integrated,” Robinson said.

The Albion Academy used to stand on the East and West Academy Street block. The building was knocked down for a bigger Grammar School, which is now used as senior citizen apartments and the Meals on Wheels program.

When it was the Albion Academy, the school was part of the Underground Railroad, Robinson said. The school superintendent would keep blacks in a back room and would deliver them food during the day through a back staircase. At night, they would move to another stop on the Underground Railroad, perhaps up to Ridge Road at a cobblestone house owned by a local judge. That house still stands on the south side of Route 104, west of Route 98.

Robinson, the Gaines town historian, has written a book, Historical Amnesia, about the contributions of local women in Orleans County back in the 1800s. She has discovered facts about pioneer black residents and the community’s embrace of the abolition movement.

“There is still a lot of research to do on this subject in Orleans County,” Robinson told a group at her monthly “Tea with Dee” historical lecture at Hoag Library. “You have to separate the folklore from the fact.”

She combed through old newspapers, old Census records and copies of Frederick Douglass’s North Star newspaper based in Rochester for some of her findings on early black history in Orleans County.

One black freed slave left an enduring mark on Orleans County and later in Lansing, Mich., where he was that community’s first black resident.

James Little was born in approximately 1792. He was bought and sold several times, including one sale for $65. Little was given to Joseph Hart of Albion as part of his wife’s dowry. Hart would free Little. When he was about 20, Little took classes at the Albion Academy at Hart’s urging.

When Hart died in 1839, he left 80 acres to Little in Lansing, Mich. Little moved there in 1847 and farmed with his wife. The couple had no children.

Little was active in church and in many social causes, including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Industrial Aid Society. “Father Little,” as he was known in Lansing, was well regarded in black and white circles, and among the poor and more well to do.

“He was a welcome guest in the homes of many of the wealthiest, most cultured people,” according to a historical account of Little published on Jan. 8, 1961 by The State Journal in Lansing. “He was greeted lovingly in the humble homes of poverty, and no one, no matter how low or godless or profane, ever gave him taunt or insult or ill-treatment.”

Little died on March 10, 1884 at about age 90. The pallbearers at his funeral included six people, three black and three white.

Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass are depicted in “Let’s Have Tea,” statues in the Susan B. Anthony Square Park on Madison Street in Rochester.

One of the leading orators and writers for the abolition cause often visited Orleans County. Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery and became a famed orator and writer, arguing the abolitionist cause in the 1840s and 1850s. He travelled to the country’s biggest cities, trying to inspire the masses to talk up the cause.

Douglass also spent a lot of time in Orleans County. Twice he made extended visits in Orleans County, going from church to church and meeting hall to meeting hall. He wrote about those experiences in The North Star, the newspaper he owned in Rochester that pressed an anti-slavery message.

In 1849, he was in the Orleans County area for about three weeks. He first spoke at the Universalist Church in Clarendon on March 19 “to a small but attentive audience,” according to his account in the April 20, 1849 issue of The North Star.

He then spoke at South Barre at a schoolhouse on March 20, and then at Pine Hill in Barre the following day and then in Oakfield. Douglass expresses frustration in “protracted” church meetings that often didn’t take up social issues of the day.

“They are so busy in trying to save that invisible and undefined part of man called the soul, that they see his body, the image of God, trampled in the dust unheeded,” Douglass wrote.

Robinson shared Douglass’s accounts of his Orleans County visits. He was back in South Barre on March 22 and March 23. He spoke in Albion on March 24 and then at Eagle Harbor on March 25. “The streets were so muddy that the people could only get to the meeting house in wagons,” Douglass said.

He went to West Gaines the following day but there had been no arrangements made for a meeting. On the March 27-28, he gave lectures in Johnson’s Creek, first at the school house and then at a church.

He spoke to small crowds in Lockport on March 29-30, and then spoke in Ridgeway on March 31 at the Universalist Church. He then went to Lyndonville the next two days on April 1-2. Douglass wrote he was feeling feverish the second day in Lyndonville, but felt his strength renewed by children singing anti-slavery songs, such as “I am an abolitionist , I glory in the name.”

Douglas then spoke in Medina at the United Methodist Church on April 3, in Gaines, West Gaines and Albion on April 5, and at Eagle Harbor on April 7.

“The audience was quite disorderly, being in part made up of some boatmen, whose highest idea of manliness seemed to be disturbance,” Douglass wrote.

He ended that speaking tour of Orleans County on April 8, speaking to a large crowd at the Baptist church in Holley.

Douglass was back in Orleans County in 1855, speaking at several locations, including West Kendall, Carlton, The Two Bridges, Yates Center, Countyline Corners, Shelby Center, Eagle Harbor, Gaines, Clarendon and other spots.

“He had a heavy schedule in Orleans County,” Robinson said.

The county showed its support for abolition before Douglass visited. In 1833 the American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Philadelphia. Three years later a branch opened in Orleans County, with chapters started in Murray and Knowlesville in 1837.

Dee Robinson speaks at Hoag Library today in her monthly historical talk.

Robinson noted some churches were so adamant in pushing for abolition they broke from more conservative congregations. The Free Methodist Church in Albion was the first Free Methodist church in the world, founded partly on a pro-abolition platform. The Free Congregational Church in Gaines also splintered from the Congregational Church.

Robinson found reports of a meeting in 1850 at the Orleans County Courthouse in Albion. Congress had just passed the Fugitive Slave Act, but the local residents at the meeting issued an opinion on how the law should be enforced locally.

“They agreed to disregard the law,” Robinson said.

By Bill Lattin, retired Orleans County Historian

In this photo from around 1920 we see a very early tractor pulling a threshing machine or separator. Notice the huge iron tractor wheels with lugs. Identified in this picture are George, Everett and Clyde Smith of Morton.

By Bill Lattin, retired Orleans County Historian

EAGLE HARBOR – This photo was taken in May 1959 at the two-room District Schoolhouse in Eagle Harbor. It was the last district school to operate in Orleans County.

Mrs. Mary Long, the teacher, stands in the back of one of the classrooms while 16 of her students work on a lesson.