By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 7 February 2015 at 12:00 am
Photos by Tom Rivers
This mural inside KeyBank in Medina shows how the current Blissetts Specialty Shop looked at left more than a century ago. Rotary Park, at right, used to have a commercial building at the corner of Main and East Center streets.
MEDINA – Greg Stanton remembers coming into the former Marine Midland Bank on Main Street after hours and on weekends to paint a mural that stretches more than 20 feet long.
Stanton used panoramic photos of the downtown from about a century ago to create the scene that has now endured inside the bank since 1984. When he painted the mural, the bank was owned by Marine Midland. It was later bought by HSBC, which sold the Medina site in January 2012 to KeyBank.
Stanton created four murals in all for the bank in 1984. Three have been painted over, but the one of the historic downtown endures.
Customers enjoy the painting, and many often to stop to look at it, said Bob Rice, the relationship manager for the bank at 514 Main St.
I hadn’t been inside the bank for several years until Friday. I thought it was Mary Zelazny’s last day and wanted to do a story on her. She has one more week before she retires after 37 years. She is the site’s branch manager.
I hadn’t seen the mural before, and I think it’s an impressive depiction of the downtown. In many ways Main Street hasn’t changed too much, and that is one of the charms of Medina’s downtown.
Stanton was 28 when he painted that mural. He is happy it has remained inside the bank for 31 years and counting.
“I never expected it to last this long,” he said. “It’s something I love doing.”
The Napa Auto Parts building on Main Street used to have a tall tower.
Stanton also created murals of Medina’s coat of arms, the train depot, and he thinks a canal scene. Those ones were painted over.
Zelazny said she hopes the large mural will remain part of the bank.
“It was a fun job,” Stanton recalled. “It was a labor of love.”
He remembers trying to paint the mural during regular bank hours, but people kept talking to him, preventing him from working on the job.
“It’s kind of neat that it has stayed,” he said about the artwork. “Which will live longer, the mural or me?”
The current KeyBank site at 514 Main St. used to be a Post Office.
By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 6 February 2015 at 12:00 am
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.
By Matthew Ballard, Orleans County Historian Posted 4 February 2015 at 12:00 am
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.
By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 3 February 2015 at 12:00 am
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.
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.
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.
ALBION – In this picture from the early 1950s, an unidentified woman at left talks about a work of art with Albion art teachers. They are, left to right: Mary Poland, Doreen Sundell and Geraldine Larwood.
By Bill Lattin, Orleans County Historian
MEDINA – Can our readers recognize this fine red brick residence in a photo from the 1930s? The house remains today, although without the awnings and screened-in porch.
Our clue is in the lower right corner. Note the old-fashioned cast-iron road signs, and notice what they state: “Niagara Falls †’ 41, Lockport †’ 18, Gasport †’ 11, Middleport †’ 5, 45 † Rochester, 20 † Holley, 11 † Albion.”
The road signs could only have been in one place. Our answer is: East Center Street at the head of State Street diagonally across from State Street Park in Medina. You know, where all the Christmas decorations are displayed.
KENDALL – In this picture from the early 1900s, we get a view of the Nelson Stevens Furniture Store in Kendall.
Some of the visible merchandise includes: mattresses, rocking chairs, a Morris chair, a roll-top desk, coil springs for beds, framed pictures, chinaware, and even rubber boots. The store was illuminated with acetylene gas lights from the ceiling.
ALBION – This is a trick photo. It was taken in the Albion studio of R. Pollo Stillman around 1895. What appears to be two men in the picture is actually the same man. He is just dressed differently.
To the right he is holding a reversed lettered sign that states: “The Devil American.” Over the table at which he is seated is a sign on the wall stating, “This is my busy day.”
