BARRE – In this panoramic view we see the mucklands off Route 98 north of Elba and in the southern part of Orleans County.
Here in the early 1930s are men harvesting lettuce and putting it into crates. Horse-drawn wagons stacked with the crop are shown hauling it out of the muckland.
Windbreaks of willow hedges were used to subdivide the great spaces down into smaller fields to help stop wind erosion.
Along with lettuce, the muck also produced carrots, potatoes, celery and of course the famous onions.
The fertile land was first drained from the Tonawanda Swamp beginning in 1909. The various farmers who owned and operated these lands were known as muckers.
HULBERTON – On this post card is a picture of the Hulberton Methodist Church in 1911.
It was built in 1836 and was used for regular services until 1945. This card was mailed out inviting people to attend an Old Home Day in 1911.
Dinner and supper for the event were 25 cents. After the church closed, it stood vacant and fell into disrepair. It eventually was torn down in 1969 when the grounds were properly cleaned up.
HOLLEY – In this window from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Holley we see St. Paul the Apostle holding a book and pointing upward.
The window was given in 1894 when the church was built. At the bottom it states: “Presented by Evangeline A. Johnson A.D. 1894.” Mrs. Johnson was a daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Edwin Armstrong of Holley who were among the first members of St. Paul’s Church.
In 1892 Evangeline married Robert Wood Johnson of the famed pharmaceutical company known as Johnson & Johnson.
Editor’s Note: The Cobblestone Society Museum in Gaines is currently featuring an exhibit, “Medicine at the Museum,” that includes several Orleans County ties to pharmaceutical and medical research, including Johnson’s. That exhibit will be on display until Oct. 13.
CARLTON – This stick style cottage, built in 1883, was one of the first at Oak Orchard-On-The-Lake.
The Isaac Signor Family and the Edwin Wage Family built the double cottage together. The Wages occupied the east half, the Signors the west half. Wage and Signor were law partners.
The photo of a gathering was taken in 1886. When the lake eroded to within inches of this cottage it was torn down in 1952.
MEDINA – In this 1908 view of Main Street on Medina we see tracks being laid for the B.L. & R. trolley system. Two sets of tracks were put down here so trolleys could bypass each other.
The trolley tracks did not go straight through Medina as they did in Albion. It seems people who lived in the fine residences on West Center Street did not want the trolley cars rumbling past their homes.
Therefore the trolley line made a right angle off East Center Street onto Main Street and followed Commercial Street out to Salt Works Road.
The noteworthy landmark in our photo is White’s Hotel in the distance with the seven-story tower.
By Mike Wertman, Sports Writer Posted 12 June 2014 at 12:00 am
Photo by Cheryl Wertman – A project is now underway to highlight the history of Albion’s Sandstone Park baseball diamond with the erection of a plaque.
Sandstone Park is a special part of the neighborhood and of the Albion Midget League and it has been for decades.
Like its neighbor just to the north across the Erie Canal the St. Mary’s Club field, the Sandstone Park diamond dates back to the formation of the Albion Midget League in 1956 making the two diamonds the oldest youth fields in the community.
It’s a neighborhood park, which gets its “Sandstone” name from the Medina sandstone quarry which once operated on the site.
And plans are now well underway to chronicle the quarry history of the site and of the baseball teams which have played on its diamond over the past six decades with the placing of a plaque on a block of sandstone near the backstop.
Photo by Cheryl Wertman – A view of the Sandstone diamond from right field.
“The kids I coach now many of their parents also played ball at Sandstone as did some of their grandparents,” said current Sandstone team Coach and Sandstone player alum Dan Bartlett in commenting on the importance of the park to the neighborhood.
“As kids we played ball there all the time. That’s all we did,” said Bartlett who is just Sandstone’s fourth coach in the 59 year history of the team.
“It’s a unique situation. It was a neighborhood thing playing there,” said former Albion High coach and Sandstone team alum Gary Mannella, whose father, Guido Mannella, was the Sandstone team’s first coach.
“I guess that’s where I got my baseball DNA from,” said Mannella of his early days playing at Sandstone.
In fact, a sign on the backstop honors the team’s four coaches, a list of mentors which also include Leonard Sidari and Steve Coville.
No date has been set yet for the placing of the plaque.
Photo by Cheryl Wertman – In addition to a baseball shaped sign with the Sandstone Park logo, a sign on the backstop also recognizes the only four coaches the Sandstone team has ever had and the years they served – Guido Mannella, Leonard Sidari, Steve Coville and Dan Bartlett.
By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 12 June 2014 at 12:00 am
Memorials honor local soldiers who made ultimate sacrifice
Photos by Tom Rivers – A member of the Special Forces Association Parachute Team descends with an American flag near the Pembroke Town Park this afternoon.
PEMBROKE – The Cost of Freedom Tribute opened today in the Pembroke Town Park, the beginning of four days in Genesee County. I took a drive out there because I knew veterans’ groups from Orleans County helped bring the memorial to the area.
I knew the Tribute including a replica of the Moving Wall in honor of Americans who died in the Vietnam War. I went looking for two local names: Rick Engle of Albion and George Fischer of Holley.
Engle was 19 when he was killed in Vietnam on Feb. 21, 1968. I know three of his sisters. Engle’s name is on the 36th panel east, on line 070.
I heard Gary Kent speak at Memorial Day a few years ago. He talked about his childhood friend named George W. Fischer of Holley. Fischer was 22 when he died in Vietnam on Aug. 3, 1968. He is one of eight to die from Holley in Vietnam, giving the community one of the highest per capita death rates from the war in all of the United States. Fischer’s name is located on panel 49 west, on line 004.
The Cost of Freedom Tribute includes sections to other wars. Here, two people look over a display about World War II.
I found the section on the Global War on Terror to be particularly moving. The names of soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan are listed in chronological order by order of their deaths.
Orleans County has lost one soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jason Johnston of Albion was 24 when he was killed on Dec. 26, 2009. He died in Afghanistan due to a roadside bomb.
The Cost of Freedom Tribute includes an 80 percent replica of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The American Legion in Oakfield-Alabama took the lead in bringing the Cost of Freedom Tribute to the area, but several Orleans County veterans’ groups provided donations and manpower for the event.
Today’s opening ceremonies included laying of wreaths by the memorials.
Students look over a memorial that will be dedicated on Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Pembroke Town Park.
In the mid-1890s mourners assembled at a cemetery by an open grave. A woman dressed all in black stands at the head of the grave.
On Friday, June 13 from 12 to 6 p.m. and on Saturday, June 14, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. a display of funeral-related photos and artifacts will be shown at the Merrill-Grinnell Funeral Home in Albion.
Many of these items are from the personal collection of County Historian Bill lattin, including the above photo.
A replica of Lincoln’s coffin made by Batesville Casket Co. will also be on loan from that business and will be displayed at Merrill-Grinnell’s.
ALBION – In this serene photo from the 1890s we see the old Albion Mill and Mill Pond. It was located off East State Street on the west branch of Sandy Creek at the edge of the Erie Canal.
Purity Flour was made here by Woods and Sprague using both steam and water power. When the canal was enlarged 100 years ago, the old mill was torn down and the pond reduced to a stream. This flows under the canal in a culvert, which is behind the Community Action building.
ALBION – From around 1910 we see a westbound trolley car on East State Street at Main Street in Albion. The First Presbyterian Church shows in the background.
The B.L. & R. Trolley System opened in 1908 and closed down in April 1931. It connected all of the small communities along the canal to Buffalo, Lockport and Rochester.
In Albion, the tracks ran in the middle of East State and West State, making a straight run through. The B.L. & R. depot was behind the Swan Library in Albion.
ALBION – This photo is the earliest view of downtown Albion that is known to exist.
It is labeled “Old ‘Empire Block’ burned Dec. 18th 1868.” Therefore our picture was taken before that.
This is the corner of Main Street and East Bank Street. The second block to the left is still there now housing Snell Realty and Fischer’s Newsstand. To the very far left is the old Burrows Block, part of which now houses Krantz Furniture.
Other buildings in this scene are long gone. Signage on the Old Empire Block includes: “Orleans American” (newspaper), “Dentist” and “Job Printing.”
Note the number of chimneys on all these buildings for heating stoves in a day and age before central heat.
By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 4 June 2014 at 12:00 am
Lift bridges, guard gates, waste weirs would get elevated historical status
Photos by Tom Rivers – The Eagle Harbor lift bridge is one of seven in Orleans County and one of 17 that remain from the canal’s widening from 1905 to 1918.
The Erie Canal gets a lot of attention from preservationists and heritage-minded New Yorkers. But the Barge Canal, which opened in 1918 as an enlarged and deeper Erie Canal, may soon get some recognition.
The Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor wants the Barge Canal to be recognized on the state and national registers of historic places. The New York State Board for Historic Preservation is scheduled to vote on the Barge Canal application on June 12.
“We want to elevate its importance,” said Jean Mackay, director of communications and outreach for the Corridor. “This would be another layer of recognition.”
The guard gates on the canal are 55 feet wide. This photo shows the gates in Albion, just east of the Gaines Basin Road bridge. These gates were built in 1913.
Congress in 2000 declared the canal as a National Heritage Corridor, one of 49 such areas in the country.
When the 363-mile-long waterway opened in 1825, it transformed Upstate New York into an economic powerhouse, raising the fortunes of canal towns such as Medina, Albion and Holley.
When railroads started to threaten the canal in the mid- to late-1800s, state officials moved to widen and deepen the canal. In 1918, after 13 years of construction, the Barge Canal was born, and many of the structures from that upgrade – lift bridges, single-truss bridges, guard gates, terminals and waste weirs – remain along the system today.
“There are a tremendous number of really interesting and historical sites along the canal corridor,” Mackay said.
This waste weir was constructed in 1910. It is used to drain water from the canal. The waste weir is located off State Street behind Community Action, west of Brown Street in Albion.
The Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor’s application is 267 pages long. It identifies 566 contributing structures along the canal that add to the historic significance of the barge system.
In Orleans County, the contributing structures include:
Murray – Bennetts Corners Road bridge from 1911; Holley Waste Weir built in 1914; Holley Embankment (the tallest on the system, rising 76 feet above the valley of the East Branch of Sandy Creek); East Avenue Lift Bridge constructed in 1911; Holley Terminal, constructed in 1915 as a 16-foot by 30-foot wood frame freight house;
Guard Gate that is west of North Main Street and constructed 1914; Telegraph Road Bridge built in 1911; Groth Road Bridge built in 1911; Hulberton Road Lift Bridge constructed 1913; Brockville Waste Weir east of Fancher Road Bridge, constructed 1911; Hindsburg Road Bridge constructed 1911; and Transit Road Bridge constructed 1911.
Albion – Densmore Road Bridge constructed in 1911; Keitel Road Bridge built in 1912; Butts Road Bridge constructed 1912; Brown Street Bridge from 1912 (includes a sidewalk); Albion Waste Weir off State Street behind Community Action, constructed in 1910; Ingersoll Street Lift Bridge from 1911; Main Street Lift Bridge from 1914;
Albion terminal and shops for Canal Corporation, built in 1917; Lattins Farm Road bridge from 1911; Guard Gates from 1913; Gaines Basin Road bridge from 1912; Eagle Harbor Waste Weir that includes three drain gates, built in 1912; Eagle Harbor Lift Bridge, built in 1910 with a wood frame tower; Allens Bridge Road Bridge built in 1909; and Presbyterian Road Bridge from 1909.
The Allens Bridge Road canal bridge was built in 1909 and is nearly 200 feet long.
Ridgeway – Knowlesville Lift Bridge from 1910 (During a 1975 rehabilitation, the tower was replaced by one-story brick control building on east side at south end of bridge.); Knowlesville Terminal, west of Knowlesville lift bridge, and built in 1910; Culvert Road (This is the only place where a road passes under a branch of the New York State Canal System. There has been a road culvert under the canal here 1823. Stone portals at either end of the enlarged Erie Canal culvert were dismantled and re-erected when it was extended to its current 200-foot length as part of Barge Canal construction, according to the Barge Canal application to the state.);
Beals Road Bridge from 1909; Bates Road Bridge constructed in 1914; Guard Gate, west of Bates Road bridge, and constructed in 1914; Pleasant Street/Horan Avenue Bridge built in 1914; Oak Orchard Creek Aqueduct, constructed in 1914. (The Oak Orchard Creek span is the only true aqueduct on the Barge Canal system. The structure consists of a concrete arch over Oak Orchard Creek at the head of Medina Falls with concrete walls on either side of the channel.)
Medina Terminal, a 24- by 70-foot frame freight house constructed in 1916; Eagle Street/Glenwood Avenue Bridge, constructed 1914; Prospect Avenue/ Route 63 Lift Bridge, built in 1914; Marshall Road Bridge from 1909; and a Guard Gate near Middleport, from 1913.
In this photo from Orleans County Historian Bill Lattin, crews work on the retaining walls at the Canal Basin in Medina on April 3, 1914.
The couple in this picture from around 1870 are dressed in full mourning attire. They are dressed in black, the woman most noticeably because of the mourning veil and huge black ribbon under her chin.
On the back of this photo is found: “P.J. Mathewson, Photographer, Marble Front, Medina, N.Y. – Duplicates may be had at any time without further sitting.” Marble Front was a block to the east side of Main Street.
No doubt a close relative of this couple died for whom they were expressing their grief in true Victorian style. It could have been a parent, sibling or perhaps a child.
